Kitabı oku: «Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)», sayfa 34

CHAPTER VIII.
CAUSALITY IN ITSELF. – INSUFFICIENCY AND ERROR OF SOME EXPLANATIONS

85. Causality implies relation: if in exercise, it implies actual relation; considered not in exercise, but in potentia, it implies a possible relation. Nothing causes itself; causality always relates to another. There is no cause where there is no effect; and there is no effect where there is no transition from not-being to being. If this transition takes place in a substance which was not, but begins to be, it is called creation; and is said to be passive, relatively to the effect, and active, in relation to the cause. If the transition is of accidents only, the effect is a new modification; we do not then say that there is a new being, but that the being is in another manner.

86. From this it may be inferred that causality is not the same as activity: all causality is activity, but not all activity is causality. God is active in himself; but he is cause only in relation to the external. His intelligence and his will are certainly infinite activity, considered in themselves, and abstracted from creation, as we conceive God from all eternity before the beginning of the world; yet, inasmuch as they are purely immanent, they are causality, for they produce nothing new in God. His intelligence is a pure act, infinitely perfect, and can never suffer any change; the same must be said of his will: therefore the divine intelligence and will with respect to God himself are not acts of causality. Even as referred to external objects, they are a producing cause in reality, only by subjection to the free will of the Creator; for otherwise we should have to admit that God created the world necessarily.

Activity in creatures, even in immanent operations, is always causality; for they cannot exercise their activity without producing new modifications. Acts of understanding and will are the exercise of an immanent activity, and yet they modify us in different ways. When we think or will we are in a different manner from that in which we are when we do not think or will; and when we pass from thinking or willing one thing to think or will another, this transition cannot take place without our experiencing new modes of being.

87. In what does the relation of efficient causality consist? What is the meaning of the dependence of the effect in relation to the cause? This is a difficult and a profound question; one of the most difficult and most profound which can be presented to science. The majority of men and even of philosophers imagine that they can solve it, by using words which, rightly analyzed, explain nothing.

88. To cause, it is said, is to give being. What means to give? To give is here synonymous with to produce. What means to produce? With this the explanations are at an end, unless one should wish to fall into a vicious circle, saying that to produce is to cause or give being.

A cause, it is also said, is that from which a thing results. What is understood by resulting? To emanate. What is to emanate? To emanate is to proceed, to flow from another. Always the same thing: metaphorical expressions which at bottom have all the same meaning.

It is said that a cause is that which gives, produces, makes, communicates, generates, etc., and that an effect is that which receives, proceeds, emanates, results, flows, comes, springs, etc.

89. Causality implies succession, but is not identified with it. We can clearly conceive that B is after A, without A being the cause of B.

Internal and external experience present continual examples of succession distinct from causality. A man goes out into the field, another follows him: between the going out of both there is succession, but there may be no causality. The two phenomena, whether considered objectively in themselves, or subjectively, as known by us, are connected by the relation of succession, but not by that of causality. There is as great a difference in philosophy as in ordinary language between post and propter, after and because of. The same is true in purely internal phenomena. I think of a question of philosophy, and then pass to a literary question: the two thoughts are successive, but one is not the cause of the other.

90. The relation of causality is not the connection of the ideas of things. The representations of A and B may be strongly connected in our mind without our even thinking of the relation of causality. We have seen in a place a scene which made a profound impression on us; ever afterwards the remembrance of the place recalls the scene, and the recollection of the scene reminds us of the place; here we find two internal representations strongly connected, without our therefore attributing to the objects the relation of causality. We know that two persons arrive at the same place and without the coming of the one influencing the coming of the other. The idea of the coming of the one will be associated in the mind with the idea of the coming of the other. There will then be a connection of representations, although we deny to the objects the relation of causality.

91. Although the connection of the ideas in our understanding may, in consequence of a constant experience, be such that one is always preceded by the other, as the conditioned is by the condition, this is not enough for true causality. An observer may have remarked the correspondence of the ebb and flow of the tide with the motion of the moon; but whether for reasons of philosophy, or because it has never occurred to him that the motion of the moon could influence the motion of the sea, he considers these phenomena entirely independent of one another, although he may try hard to explain so strange a coincidence. In the mind of this observer the two phenomena will be always joined, in such a way that the phenomenon of the moon will always be that of the ebb and flow, without its being possible to invert the order and make the ebb and flow precede the motion of the moon. Here then is a necessary priority in an idea, and yet true causality is not attributed to the object.

92. There is a fact in the history of philosophy which proves with the greatest evidence the truth of what I have just said. This fact is the system of occasional causes maintained by eminent philosophers. If a body, they say, strike another body at rest, it will communicate to it its motion; but this communication does not imply a true causality, but that the motion of the impinging body is a mere occasion of the motion of the body impinged. Here then a thing is conceived as a necessary condition of the existence of another, and yet it is denied that there is between them the relation of causality. In thinking of the two phenomena we cannot invert the order, and conceive the motion of the body impinged as the condition of the motion of the impinging body, yet we can deny the relation of causality between the condition and the conditioned. Therefore the idea of causality represents something besides the necessary order of things among themselves.

93. This brings us to a new phasis of the question. Is the relation of causality faithfully represented in the conditional proposition: if A exists, B will exist? The connection expressed by this proposition is not the relation of causality. If the fruit-tree N flourishes in a certain country, M will flourish. A constant experience proves it. The conditional proposition in this case does not express the relation of causality of the flourishing of N with respect to the flourishing of M; yet the proposition is true. One phenomenon may be the sign of the immediate approach of another, without being its cause.

94. Conditional propositions, in which the existence of one object is affirmed as the condition of the existence of another, express a connection; but this may not be a connection of the objects with each other, but with a third. If a gentleman's servant goes to a place, and then another servant of the same gentleman goes to the same place, the cause of the going of the second may not be the going of the first, but simply that their master wished them to go one after the other. The crops in one field indicate the state of the crops of another field, and this indication may be expressed by a conditional proposition. Why so? Is it on account of the causality of the crops in one field in relation to those in another? Certainly not; but because the circumstances of the climate and the soil produce a sufficiently fixed order between them to verify the conditional proposition, without the intervention of the idea of the causality of one in relation to the other.

95. There are many cases in which the relation between the condition is necessary, and yet the condition neither is, nor can be, the cause of the conditioned. We are here treating of efficient cause, of that which gives being to the thing, and it would often be absurd to attribute this kind of causality to conditions which on the other side are necessarily connected with the conditioned. Take away the pillar on which a body rests, and the body will fall; the connection of the condition with the conditioned, or of the taking away the pillar with the fall of the body is necessary; the proposition in which this connection is expressed is true and necessary in the natural order; and still it cannot be said that the removal of the pillar is the efficient cause of the fall of the body.

96. Even a purely occasional connection is all that is necessary for the truth of the conditional proposition; and no one ever confounds the occasion with the cause. In the present example, the body cannot fall unless the pillar is removed; and it must necessarily fall if it is removed; but the cause of the fall is not in the removal of the pillar, but in the weight of the body, as is evident if we suppose the specific gravity of the body to be equal to that of the fluid in which it is submerged, since in that case, the removal of the pillar is not followed by the fall of the body.

97. Causality cannot express a necessary relation of the condition to the conditioned, unless we deny all free causes. Supposing the idea of causality to be correctly expressed in this proposition: if A exists, B will exist; by substituting God and the world for A and B, it will become: if God exists the world will exist; which would lead us into the error of the necessity of the creation. By substituting man and determinate actions for A and B, we shall have the proposition: if man exists, his determinate actions will exist, which implies necessity, and destroys free will.

98. Here arises the question: would the relation of causality be correctly expressed by a conditional proposition, taken in an inverse sense, or with the effect, as the condition and the cause as the conditioned, (not conditioned in the order of existence, but only as a thing necessarily supposed,) that is, if, instead of saying: if A exists, B will exist, we say: if B exists, A exists? In this case, the proposition may be applied even to the dependence of creatures on God, and in general of all free actions on their causes; for we can say with truth: if the world exists, God exists; if there is a free action, there is a free agent.

99. Although at first sight this seems to explain the relation of causality, this new formula cannot be regarded as correct. For, though it is true in general, that if there is an effect there is a cause, it is also certain that oftentimes one thing supposes another, not as its cause, but as a mere occasion, as a condition sine qua non; which is far from being true causality. Supposing the body supported by the pillar to be so placed that it cannot fall unless the pillar is removed, we might form the conditional proposition: if the body has fallen, the pillar has been taken away; the proposition is true, although the removal of the pillar is not the efficient cause of the fall of the body.

100. God could have so created the world that creatures would have no true action of causality upon one another, and yet have so arranged them that the phenomena would correspond with each other in the same manner as they now do. This is the opinion of defenders of the doctrine of occasional causes, and to this is reduced the pre-established harmony of Leibnitz, according to which all the monads constituting the universe are like so many clocks, which, though independent of one another, agree with admirable exactness. On this hypothesis we might form infinite conditional propositions expressing the correspondence of the phenomena without the idea of causality entering into any of them.

101. From what has been said we must infer that this idea is something distinct from the necessary connection, and that it is not correctly expressed in all its purity by the relation contained in the conditional propositions, whether the cause be taken as the condition or as the conditioned. The dependence of the effect on its cause is something more than the simple connection. To say that whatever is necessarily connected, even successively and in a fixed order, is connected by the relation of causality, is to confound the ideas of common language as well as those of philosophy.

CHAPTER IX.
NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT CONDITIONS OF TRUE ABSOLUTE CAUSALITY

102. We have just seen that the necessary connection of two objects is not enough to establish the character of causality; what circumstances are then necessary?

103. If we conceive an object, B, which begins, and suppose that the object A was necessary to its existence, and that of itself alone it was sufficient for the existence of B, we find in the relation of A to B the true character of the relation of a cause to its effect. For the complete character of absolute cause, two conditions are indispensable: I. The necessity of the existence of A for the existence of B. II. That the existence of A be sufficient for the existence of B, without any thing more being requisite.

These conditions may be expressed in the following propositions or formulas:

If B exists, A exists.

The existence of A alone is sufficient for the existence of B.

When the relation between two objects is such that both these propositions are true at the same time, there is a relation of absolute causality.

104. From this explanation it is evident that the character of cause must be denied to all mere occasions, since the second proposition cannot be applied to them. When two facts are occasionally connected, it may be said that if the one exists the other must exist, and the first proposition is verified in this case; but it cannot be said that the existence of the one is sufficient for the existence of the other; and therefore the second proposition fails of its application. If two men have agreed that the one shall fire a pistol when the other gives a signal with his hand, it may be said that if the signal is given the pistol will be fired, but not that the signal alone contains what is sufficient for the firing of the pistol. For, supposing the man with the pistol to be asleep, the signal may be repeated a number of times without the firing of the pistol.

105. The character of cause must also be denied to every condition which is only the removal of an obstacle (removens prohibens). To such the first proposition is applicable, but not the second. In the case of a body resting on a pillar so that it cannot fall unless the pillar be removed, we may say: if the body has fallen, the pillar has been taken away; but not that the removal of the pillar is sufficient for the fall of the body; because if the body were of a less specific gravity than the fluid in which it is submerged, or united to another body which would prevent its falling, it would not fall. It is evident that the removal of the obstacle is not sufficient for the fall, but that something more is required, as the force of gravity, or an impulse.

106. All phenomena connected in succession of time necessarily and in a fixed order, must be denied the relation of cause and effect, unless the application of these ideas is made legitimate by something else; because, although the constant order authorizes us to say that if A happens, B will happen, and then C, and then D, and so on successively, it cannot be said that in the existence of A is contained that which is sufficient for the existence of B, nor in the existence of B what is sufficient for the existence of C, since we suppose an indispensable condition outside of the series.

107. The first proposition: if B exists, A exists; is true of every cause whether necessary or free. The second proposition is likewise applicable to both these classes of causes. It is necessary to observe with care that the proposition does not say that if A exists, B will exist; but that the existence of A is all that is requisite in order that B may exist. If, supposing A, B is necessarily supposed also, the cause is necessary; but if, supposing A, only that which is sufficient for the existence of B is supposed, the cause remains free; because the existence of B is not affirmed, but only the possibility of its existence.

108. Let us apply this doctrine to the first cause. If the world exists, God exists: this proposition is absolutely true. If God exists, the world exists; this proposition is false, because, God existing, the world might not have existed. If God exists, the world may exist; that is, in the existence of God is contained that which is sufficient for the possibility of the existence of the world: this proposition is true; because in the infinite being is contained the possibility of finite beings, and in him is found sufficient power to give them existence, if he thus freely wills it.

CHAPTER X.
SECONDARY CAUSALITY

109. In determining in the last chapter the conditions of true causality, I spoke only of absolute causality; the reason of this, which I shall now explain, turns on the difference between the first cause and second causes.

110. We have seen that the pure idea of absolute causality is the perception of three conditions: the necessity of one thing for the existence of another; the sufficiency of the first alone for the existence of the second; and lastly (when the cause is free) the act of the will necessary for the production of the effect. These three conditions are fulfilled absolutely in the first cause, since nothing can exist unless God exists; and for the existence of any object the existence of God, with the free will of creating the object, is sufficient. It is evident that causality cannot be applied in the same sense to second causes; of none of them can it be said that its existence is absolutely necessary for the existence of the effect, since God could have produced it either by means of another secondary agent, or immediately by himself; neither is its existence alone sufficient for the existence of the effect, since whatever exists presupposes and requires the existence of the first cause.

111. Thus, then, the idea of causality applied to God has a very different meaning from that which it has when applied to second causes: it is necessary to bear this in mind, and not to raise questions concerning second causes before the meaning of the word cause is strictly defined. It is certain that the relation of an effect to its cause is a relation of dependence; but we have seen that the words dependence, connection, condition, etc., are susceptible of different meanings; if they are not clearly and strictly determined it is impossible to give any solution to these questions.

112. What then is meant by secondary causality? After the observations which we have made, it is not difficult to say. In the order of created beings A will be the cause of B when the following conditions are fulfilled.

I. That the existence of A is necessary (according to the order established) for the existence of B; which may be expressed by this formula: if B exists, A exists or has existed.

II. That in the order established B and A form a series which goes back to the first cause, without the concurrence of the terms of any other series being requisite.

This last condition will not, perhaps, be understood, unless explained by some examples.

113. The motion of my pen is the effect of the motion of my hand; here I have the true relation of secondary causality, for I pass through a series of conditions, which do not require the conditions of any other series: the motion of the pen depends on the motion of my hand; that of my hand depends on the animal spirits (or whatever cause physiologists may please to assign); that of the animal spirits depends on the command of my will; and my will depends on God, who created it, and preserves it. I here find a series of second causes to which I give the true character of causality, in so far as it can exist in a secondary order; and the efficient cause, the principal among secondary causes is my will; because in the secondary order of it is the first term of the series. The motion of the pen of my secretary depends on my will, not however as its true efficient cause, but as its occasion; because in the secretary is found the same series as in the former example: the first term of this series is his will, which I cannot absolutely determine, since being free, it determines itself. There is true efficient causality in the will of the secretary; because there ends the series whose first term is at my disposal only in an improper sense, that is to say, so long as the secretary pleases.

114. The body, A, in motion strikes upon the body, B at rest: the motion of the body A is the cause of the motion of the body B, and the causality will be found in all the terms of the series, that is, in all the motions whose successive communication has been necessary in order that the motion might reach the body B. Let us suppose that in the series of these communications obstacles have been removed which impeded the communication of the motion; the removal of the obstacles is an indispensable condition on the supposition that they existed, but it is not a true cause, since it is a term foreign to the series of the communications, and might not have existed, without the motion therefore ceasing to exist. For, supposing there had been no obstacles, they would not have been removed, and yet the motion would have been communicated. But it is not the same with respect to the terms which form the series of the communications; for if we represent them by A. B. C. D. E. F… the motion of A cannot reach F if one of the intermediate bodies serving as the vehicle of the communication be taken away.

115. From this theory it follows that the idea of secondary causality represents a concatenation of various objects forming a series, which terminates in the first cause, whether by a necessary order, as in the phenomena of corporeal nature, or by the medium of a first term in the secondary order with a determination of its own, as is the case in things which depend on free will.