5 
southern observer suspect that the indication 
was, not a mere precursor, but an actual 
cause, of north wind he might, if the 
instrument were accessible, find that be could 
make the indication appear and disappear at 
his pleasure, and that a north wind was not 
raised in the one case or lulled in the other. 
But there may be eases in which the instrument 
is not accessible, and we could not work the 
indicator if it were. If the telescope were to 
reveal a sequence, to which no known terrestrial 
one bore either resemblance or analogy, we could 
not say whether it was destructible or not. A 
non-terrestrial observer might see the hoisting 
of a flag followed by a salute of artillery, with- 
out any idea of the nature of this terrestrial 
sequence. 
Daylight follows going to bed in the night. 
But we do not say that the recumbency is the 
cause of the light. This sequence is not destruc- 
tible. It is indeterminate. Of all the acts and 
events which precede daylight there is nothing 
to point to this particular one as its determinate 
cause. No determinate interval of time is 
assigned as elapsing between the antecedent 
and the subsequent Every event of to-day has 
been preceded by the events of yesterday, and 
of countless yesterdays ; and, unless we insist 
on determinateness, any of to-day’s events, 
grouped arbitrarily with any event of centuries 
ago, might be presented to us as a sequence. 
The signs of determinateness will vary with the 
sequence. Time, place, nr any circumstauce, 
may furnish one. The greater our experience, 
the more keen will be our sense of 
any indeterminateness. To the child who 
thought that going to bed caused dawn, 
probably the sequence seemed as determinate as 
any other. What other events, he might argue, 
Bhould occur in the night than going to bed P 
And as to the event being indeterminate, why 
it was the last thing he remembered doing ; and 
as to fluctuating intervals, what else could 
be expected when the people in the house were 
bo irregular in going to bed ? 
We now come to another kind of sequence. 
An explosion follows the contact or proximity 
of red-hot iron with dry gunpowder. This 
sequence is permanent. It is not cyclical, for 
no such contact or proximity follow- the ex- 
plosion. It is not formal, for we could con- 
ceive of an explosion without having any con- 
ception of gunpowder or red-hot iron ; and of 
the contact or proximity without any concep- 
tion of the explosion. Apart from ex- 
perience we should .no more anticipate an 
explosion from the contact of red-hot 
iron with gunpowder than we should from its 
contact with black seed, soot, or powdered char 
coal, or sand. The sequence, not being formal, 
is not spurious. It is not in the nature of a 
concurrence, for the contact or proximity pre- 
cedes the explosion. It is not destructible, for 
if we wet the gunpowder, or cool the iron, we 
change the antecedent. It is not indeterminate* 
for the events happen almost simultaneously, 
and nearly in the same place, and no other event, 
than the contact or proximity, has so determi- 
nate a relation to the explosion. This perma- 
nent sequence which is not cyclical, or formal, 
or in the nature of a concurrence, or destructible, 
or indeterminate, is a case of what is called 
cause and effect, or, say, of causal sequence. 
The foregoing remarks are to be restricted 
to immediate sequences, or we shall deviate 
from that popular use of the words cause and 
effect with which it is my object to conform. 
An immedia e sequence is one in which no 
recognised intermediate event occurs between 
the antecedent and the subsequent. But the 
antecedent in the first, and the subsequent in 
tie last, of a chain of sequences, may be stated 
as a sequence. And such sequence may, on 
examination, be seen to be mediate. Now a 
mediate causal sequence, though destructible, is 
not the less said to be causal. Thus the pulling 
the trigger of a cocked, capped, and loaded gun, 
is followed by its discharge. Here Me have a 
series of events — viz., pulling the trigger, re- 
lease of the spring, fall of the hammer, detona- 
tion of the cap, ignition of the powder, and 
discharge of the missile. At least four events 
intervene between the pull of the trigger and the 
discharge, and the mediate sequence is seen to 
be destructible. Nevertheless it is said that the 
pulling the trigger causes the discharge. This 
mediate sequence is neither accidental, indeter- 
minate, formal, cyclical, or in the nature of a 
concurrence. A mediate sequence may be con- 
stituted by other than causal sequences. The 
mediate cyclical sequence, spring, summer, 
autumn, winter, consist of four formal sequences. 
Experience may be said to inform us that 
every observed event has a cause and, as wo 
have no sufficient reason for believing that ob- 
servation of events alters their character, we 
may advance to the general proposition that 
every event liaB a cause. The rule has excep- 
tions, real or seeming. Experience, epitomised 
in the first law of motion, says that the motion 
of a free material particle, uninfluenced by im- 
pressed forces, is rectilinear, uniform and per- 
sistent. The law is silent as to any cause of 
the persistency. It, indeed, postulates the ab- 
sence of force, that is to say, of any cause of 
motion, and regards the movement as a Btate of 
the particle, and not as a series of events. If 
we express the phenomena as sequences we have 
to say, change of place follows change of place. 
But this sequence is formal, or even spurious, 
for, though we have an infinity of events, we 
have only one physical object — viz., the particle. 
Perhaps the result of experience, rigoiOisly ex- 
pressed, is, that every event is the subsequent in 
some sequence or sequences, and at least one 
such sequence is causal, except in cases within 
the first law of motion, or certain other 
oases of persistency. However this be, 
