VI. Expectation of the constancy of nature.

Dr. Brown has promulgated a doctrine of Causality, which may be numbered as the sixth; though perhaps it is hardly deserving of distinct enumeration. He actually identifies the causal judgment, which to us is necessary, with the principle by which we are merely inclined to believe in the uniformity of nature's operations.

Superseding any articulate consideration of this opinion, and reverting to the fifth, much might be said in relation to the several modifications of this opinion, as held by different philosophers; but I must content myself with a brief criticism of the doctrine in reference to its most general features.

Fifth opinion criticised.

Primary presumption of philosophy against assumption of special principle of causality.

Now it is manifest, that, against the assumption of a special principle, which this doctrine makes, there exists a primary presumption of philosophy. This is the law of Parcimony, which forbids, without necessity, the multiplication of entities, powers, principles, or causes; above all the postulation of an unknown force, where a known impotence can account for the effect. We are, therefore, entitled to apply Occam's razor to this theory of causality, unless it be proved impossible to explain the causal judgment at a cheaper rate, by deriving it from a higher and that a negative origin. On a doctrine like the present is thrown the onus of vindicating its necessity, by showing that unless a special and positive principle be assumed, there exists no competent mode to save the phænomena. It can only, therefore, be admitted provisorily; and it falls of course, if the phænomenon it would explain can be explained on less onerous conditions. Leaving, therefore, the theory to stand or fall according as the two remaining opinions are or are not found insufficient, I proceed to the consideration of these. The first, the seventh, is a doctrine that has long been exploded. It attempts to establish the principle of Causality upon the principle of Contradiction. Leibnitz was too acute a metaphysician to attempt to prove the principle of Sufficient Reason or Causality, which is an ampliative or synthetic principle, by the principle of contradiction, which is merely explicative or analytic. But his followers were not so wise. Wolf, Baumgarten,2 and many other Leibnitzians, paraded demonstrations of the law of the Sufficient Reason on the ground of the law of Contradiction;

VII. The principle of Non-Contradiction.

1 [Ontologia, § 70.]

2 [Metaphysik, § 18.] [Cf. Walch, Lexikon v.

Zureichender Grund. Zedler, Lexikon, v. Caussalität.]

but the reasoning always proceeds on the covert assumption of the very point in question. The same argument is, however, at an earlier date, to be found in Locke, and modifications of it in Hobbes2 and Clarke. Hume, who was only aware of the argument as in the hands of the English metaphysicians, has given it a refutation, which has earned the approbation of Reid; and by foreign philosophers its emptiness, in the hands of the Wolfian metaphysicians, has frequently been exposed. Listen to the pretended demonstration: — Whatever is produced without a cause, is produced by nothing; in other words, has nothing for its cause. But nothing

Fallacy of the supposed demonstration.

can no more be a cause than it can be something. The same intuition that makes us aware, that nothing is not something, shows us that everything must have a real cause of its existence. To this it is sufficient to say, that the existence of causes being the point in question, the existence of causes must not be taken for granted, in the very reasoning which attempts to prove their reality. In excluding causes we exclude all causes; and consequently exclude nothing considered as a cause; it is not, therefore, allowable, contrary to that exclusion, to suppose nothing as a cause, and then from the absurdity of that supposition to infer the absurdity of the exclusion itself. If everything must have a cause, it follows that, upon the exclusion of other causes, we must accept of nothing as a cause. But it is the very point at issue, whether everything must have a cause or not; and, therefore, it violates the first principles of reasoning to take this quæsitum itself as granted. This opinion is now universally abandoned. The eighth and last opinion is that which regards the judgment of causality as derived; and derives it not from a power, but from an impotence, of mind; in a word, from the principle of the Conditioned. I do not think it possible, without a detailed exposition of the various categories of thought, to make you fully understand the grounds and bearings of this opinion. In attempting to explain, you must, therefore, allow me to take for granted certain laws of thought, to which I have only been able incidentally to allude. Those, how

VIII. The Law of the Conditioned.

1 [Essay, book iv. c. 10, § 3. Works, i. p: 294.] [This is doubtless the passage of Locke which is criticized by Hume (Treat. of Hum. Nat., b. i. p. 1. § 3); but it will hardly bear the interpretation put upon it by Hume and Sir W. Hamilton. - ED.]

2 Of Liberty and Necessity, Works, edit. Molesworth, vol. iv. p. 276.- ED.

3 [Demonstration, p. 9, alibi. See also S. Gravesande, Introd. ad Phil. § 80.]

4 Treat. of Hum. Nature, b. i. p. iii. § 3,* Cf. Reid, Works, p. 455. Stewart, Dissert. Works, i p. 441.-ED.

5 [See Walch, Lex v. Zureichender Grund. Biedermanni Acta Scholastica, t. vii. p. 120, Schwab, Preisschriften über die Metaphysik, p. 149. Lossius, Lexikon, v. Caussalitat, i. p. 669.]

ever, which I postulate, are such as are now generally admitted by all philosophers who allow the mind itself to be a source of cognitions; and the only one which has not been recognized by them, but which, as I endeavored briefly to prove to you in my last Lecture, must likewise be taken into account, is the Law of the Conditioned, the law that the conceivable has always two opposite extremes, and that the extremes are equally inconceivable. That the Conditioned is to be viewed, not as a power, but as a powerlessness, of mind, is evinced by this, - that the two extremes are contradictories, and, as contradictories, though neither alternative can be conceived, thought as possible, one or other must be admitted to be necessary.

Judgment of Causality, how deduced from this law.

Categories of thought.
Existence.

Philosophers, who allow a native principle to the mind at all, allow that Existence is such a principle. I shall, therefore, take for granted Existence as the highest category or condition of thought. As I noticed to you in my last Lecture,' no thought is possible except under this category. All that we perceive or imagine as different from us, we perceive or imagine as objectively existent. All that we are conscious of as an act or modification of self, we are conscious of only as subjectively existent. All thought, therefore, implies the thought of existence; and this is the veritable exposition of the enthymeme of Descartes, Cogito ergo sum. I cannot think that I think, without thinking that I exist, I cannot be conscious, without being conscious that I am. Let existence, then, be laid down as a necessary form of thought. As a second category or subjective condition of thought, I postulate that of Time. This, likewise, cannot be denied me. It is the necessary condition of every conscious act; thought is only realized to us as in succession, and succession is only conceived by us under the concept of time. Existence and existence in Time is thus an elementary form of our intelligence.

Time.

The Conditioned.

But we do not conceive existence in time absolutely or infinitely, we conceive it only as conditioned in time; and Existence Conditioned in Time expresses, at once and in relation, the three categories of thought, which afford us in combination the principle of Causality. This requires some explanation.

When we perceive or imagine an object, we perceive or imagine it-1°, As existent, and, 2°, As in Time; Existence and Time be

1 P. 526.-ED.

Existence Conditioned in Time affords the principle of Causality.

ing categories of all thought. But what is meant by saying, I perceive, or imagine, or, in general, think, an object only as I perceive, or imagine, or, in general, think it to exist? Simply this;-that, as thinking it, I cannot but think it to exist, in other words, that I cannot annihilate it in thought. I may think away from it, I may turn to other things; and I can thus exclude it from my consciousness; but, actually thinking it, I cannot think it as non-existent, for as it is thought, so it is thought existent.

But a thing is thought to exist, only as it is thought to exist in time. Time is present, past, and future. We cannot think an object of thought as non-existent de presenti,—as actually an object of thought. But can we think that quantum of existence of which an object, real or ideal, is the complement, as non-existent, either in time past, or in time future? Make the experiment. Try to think the object of your thought as non-existent in the moment before the present. You cannot. Try it in the moment before that. You cannot. Nor can you annihilate it by carrying it back to any moment, however distant in the past. You may conceive the parts of which this complement of existence is composed, as separated; if a material object, you can think it as shivered to atoms, sublimated into æther; but not one iota of existence can you conceive as annihilated, which subsequently you thought to exist. In like manner try the future, try to conceive the prospective annihilation of any present object, — of any atom of any present object. You cannot. All this may be possible, but of it we cannot think the possibility. But if you can thus conceive neither the absolute commencement nor the absolute termination of anything that is once thought to exist, try, on the other hand, if you can conceive the opposite alternative of infinite non-commencement, of infinite non-termination. To this you are equally impotent. This is the category of the Conditioned, as applied to the category of Existence under the category of Time.

But in this application is the principle of Causality not given? Why, what is the law of Causality? Simply this, that when an object is presented phænomenally as commencing, we cannot but suppose that the complement of existence, which it now contains, has previously been;-in other words, that all that we at present come to know as an effect must previously have existed in its causes; though what these causes are we may perhaps be altogether unable even to surmise.

LECTURE XL.

THE REGULATIVE FACULTY.-LAW OF THE CONDITIONED, IN

Recapitulation.

ITS APPLICATIONS.-CAUSALITY.

OUR last Lecture was principally occupied in giving a systematic view and a summary criticism of the various opinions of philosophers, regarding the origin of that inevitable necessity of our nature, which compels us to refuse any real commencement of existence to the phænomena which arise in and around us; in other words, that necessity of our nature, under which we cannot but conceive everything that occurs, to be an effect, that is, to be something consequent, which, as wholly derived from, may be wholly refunded into, something antecedent. The opinions of philosophers with regard to the genealogy of this claim of thought, may be divided into two summa genera or categories; as all opinions on this point view the Causal Judgment either, 1°, As resting immediately or mediately on experience, or 2°, As resting immediately or mediately on a native principle of the mind itself; -in short, all theories of causality make it either a posteriori or Empirical, or make it a priori or Pure.

I shall not again enumerate the various subordinate doctrines into which the former category is subdivided; and, in relation to all of these, it is enough to say that they are one and all wholly worthless, as wholly incapable of accounting for the quality of necessity, by which we are conscious that the causal judgment is characterized.

The opinions which fall under the second category are not obnoxious to this sweeping objection (except Brown's), as they are all equally competent to save the phænomenon of a subjective necessity. Of the three opinions (I discount Brown's) under this head, one supposes that the law of Causality is a positive affirmation, and a primary fact of thought, incapable of all further analysis. The other two, on the contrary, view it as a negative principle, and as capable of resolution into a higher law.