We have seen that A is not B, nor, again, a relation to B. " Followed by B," u changing into A B,'} are not the same as A; and we were able to discover no way of combining these with A which could be more than mere appearance. In causation we must now consider a fresh effort at combination, and its essence is very simple. If "A becomes B" is a self-contradiction, then add something to A which will divide the burden. In " A + C becomes B" we may perhaps find relief. But this relief, considered theoretically, is a mass of contradictions.
It would be a thankless task to work these out into detail, for the root of the matter may be stated at once. If the sequence of the effect is different 1 I have touched on the Law of Causation in Chapter xxiii.
CAUSATION. 55 from the cause, how is the ascription of this differ- ence to be rationally defended? If, on the other hand, it is not different, then causation does not exist, and its assertion is a farce. There is no escape from this fundamental dilemma.
We have in the cause merely a fresh instance of compromise without principle, another case of pure makeshift. And it soon exhibits its nature. The cause was not mere A; that would be found too intolerable. The cause was^4 + C; but this com- bination seems meaningless. It is offered in the face of our result as to the nature of relations (Chapter iii.); and by that result it has already been undermined and ruined. But let us see how it pro- poses to go about its business. In " A 4- C followed by B" the addition of C makes a difference to A, or it makes no difference. Let us suppose, first, that it does make a difference to A. But, if so, then A has already been altered; and hence the problem of causation breaks out within the very cause. A and C become A + C, and the old puzzle begins about the way in which A and C become other than they are. We are concerned here with A, but, of course, with C there is the same difficulty. We are, there- fore, driven to correct ourselves, and to say that, not A and C merely, but A and C+D become A + C, and so B. But here we perceive at once that we have fallen into endless regress within the cause. If the cause is to be the cause, there is some reason for its being thus, and so on indefinitely.
Or let us accept the other alternative. Let us assert boldly that in A + C, which is the cause of Bt their relation makes no difference either to A or to C, and yet accounts for the effect. Although the conjunction makes no difference, it justifies appar- ently our attribution to the cause of the difference expressed by the effect But (to deal first with the cause) such a conjunction of elements has been shown (Chapter iii.) to be quite unintelligible. And 56 APPEARANCE.
to the defence that it is only our own way of going on, the answer is twofold. If it is only our way, then, either it does not concern the thing at all, or else is admitted to be a mere practical makeshift If, on the other hand, it is a way of ours with the thing which we are prepared to justify, let the justi- fication be produced. But it cannot be produced in any form but in the proof that our thinking is consistent. On the other hand, the only reason for our hesitation above to attribute our view to reality seemed to lie in the fact that our view was not con- sistent. But, if so, it surely should not be our view. And, to pass now to the effect, the same reasoning there holds good. The sequence of a difference still remains entirely irrational. And, if we attempt here to take this difference upon ourselves, and to urge that it does not attach to the thing, but only to our view, the same result follows. For what is this but a manner of admitting politely that in real- ity there is no difference and is no causation, and that, in short, we are all agreed in finding causation to be makeshift and merely appearance? We are so far agreed, but we differ in our further conclu- sions. For I can discover no merit in an attitude which combines every vice of theory. It is forced to admit that the real world is left naked and empty; while it cannot pretend itself to support and to own the wealth of existence. Each party is robbed, and both parties are beggared.
The only positive result which has appeared from our effort to justify causation, seems to be the im- possibility of isolating the cause or the effect. In endeavouring to make a defensible assertion, we have had to go beyond the connection as first we stated it. The cause A not only recedes backwards in time, but it attempts laterally to take in more and more of existence. And we are tending to the doctrine that, to find a real cause, we must take the complete state of the world at one moment as this CAUSATION. 57 passes into another state also complete. The several threads of causation seem, that is, always to imply the action of a background. And this background may, if we are judicious, be irrelevant practically. It may be practically irrelevant, not because it is ever idle, but because often it is identical, and so makes no special difference. The separate causes are, therefore, legitimate abstractions, and they con- tain enough truth to be practically admissible. But it will be added that, if we require truth in any strict sense, we must confine ourselves to one entire state of the world. This will be the cause, and the next entire state will be the effect.
There is much truth in this conclusion, but it remains indefensible. This tendency of the separ- ate cause to pass beyond itself cannot be satisfied, while we retain the relational form essential to causation. And we may easily, I think, convince ourselves of this. For, in the first place, a complete state of existence, as a whole, is at any one moment utterly impossible. Any state is forced by its con- tent to transcend itself backwards in a regress with- out limit. And the relations and qualities of which it is composed will refer themselves, even if you keep to the moment, for ever away from themselves into endless dissipation. Thus the complete state, which is necessary, cannot be reached. And, in the second place, there is an objection which is equally fatal. Even if we could have one self- comprised condition of the world preceding another, the relation betwen them would still be irrational. We assert something of something else; we have to predicate B of A, or else its sequence of A, or else the one relation of both. But in these cases, or in any other case, can we defend our assertion? It is the old puzzle, how to justify the attributing to a subject something other than itself, and which the subject is not. If " followed by £" is not the nature of A, then justify your predication. If it is essen- 5 8 APPEARANCE.
tial to Ay then justify, first, your taking A without it; and in the next place show how, with such an incongruous nature, A can succeed in being more than unreal appearance.
And we may perhaps fancy at this point that a door of exit is opened. How will it be, since the difference is the source of our trouble, if we fall back upon the identity of cause and effect? The same essence of the world, persisting in unchanged self-conservation from moment to moment, and superior to diversity — this is perhaps the solution. Perhaps; but, if so, what has been done with causa- tion? So far as I am able to understand, that con- sists in the differences and in their sequence in time. Mere identity, however excellent, is emphatically not the relation of cause and effect. Either then once more you must take up the problem of recon- ciling intelligibly the diversity with the unity, and this problem so far has shown itself intractable. Or you yourself have arrived at the same conclusion with ourselves. You have admitted that cause and effect is irrational appearance, and cannot be reality.
I will add here a difficulty, in itself superfluous, which comes from the continuity of causal change. Its succession, on the one hand, must be absolutely without pause; while, on the other hand, it cannot be so. This dilemma is based upon no new principle, but is a mere application of the insoluble problem of duration. The reader who is not attracted may pass on.
For our perception change is not properly con- tinuous. It cannot be so, since there are durations which do not come to us as such; and however our faculties were improved, there must always be a point at which they would be transcended. On the other hand, to speak of our succession as being pro- perly discrete seems quite as indefensible. It is in fact neither the one nor the other. I presume that CAUSATION. 59 what we notice is events with time between them, whatever that may mean. But, on the other hand, when we deal with pieces of duration, as wholes containing parts and even a variable diversity of parts, the other aspect comes up. And, in the end, reflection compels us to perceive that, however else it may appear, all change must really be continuous. This conclusion cannot imply that no state is ever able to endure for a moment. For, without some duration of the identical, we should have meaning- less chaos, or, rather, should not have even that. States may endure, we have seen, so long as we abstract. We take some partial state, or aspect of a state, which in itself does not alter. We fix one eye upon this, while we cast, in fear of no principle, our other eye upon the succession that goes with it, and so is called simultaneous. And we solve practically in this way the problem of duration. We have en- during aspects, A, B, C, one after the other. Along- side of these there runs on a current of changes minutely subdivided. This goes on altering, and in a sense it alters A, B, C, while in another sense they are unchanged pieces of duration. They do not alter in themselves, but in relation to other changes they are in constant internal lapse. And, when these other changes have reached a certain point of alteration, then A passes into B} and so later B into C. This is, I presume, the proper way of taking causation as continuous. We may perhaps use the following figure: — ABC A—A—A—B—B—B—C—C—C 60 APPEARANCE.
Here A, B, C, is the causal succession of enduring states. The Greek letters represent a flow of other events which are really a determining element in the succession of A, B, C. And we understand at once how A, B, and C both alter and do not alter. But the Greek letters represent much more, which cannot be depicted. In the first place, at any given moment, there are an indefinite number of them; and, in the second place, they themselves are pieces of duration, placed in the same difficulty as were A, B, C. Coincident with each must be a succession of events, which the reader may try to represent in any character that he prefers. Only let him remember that these events must be divided indefinitely by the help of smaller ones. He must go on until he reaches parts that have no divisibility. And if we may suppose that he could reach them, he would find that causation had vanished with his success.
The dilemma, I think, can now be made plain. (a) Causation must be continuous. For suppose that it is not so. You would then be able to take a solid section from the flow of events, solid in the sense of containing no change. I do not merely mean that you could draw a line without breadth across the flow, and could find that this abstraction cut no alteration. I mean that you could take a slice off, and that this slice would have no change in it. But any such slice, being divisible, must have duration. If so, however, you would have your cause, en- during unchanged through a certain number of moments, and then suddenly changing. And this is clearly impossible, for what could have altered it? Not any other thing, for you have taken the whole course of events. And, again, not itself, for you have got itself already without any change. In short, if the cause can endure unchanged for any the very smallest piece of duration, then it must endure for ever. It cannot pass into the effect, CAUSATION. 6 1 CAUSATION. 6 1 and it therefore is not a cause at all. On the other hand, (6) Causation cannot be continuous. For this would mean that the cause was entirely without duration. It would never be itself except in the time occupied by a line drawn across the succession. And since this time is not a time, but a mere ab- straction, the cause itself will be no better. It is unreal, a nonentity, and the whole succession of the world will consist of these nonentities. But this is much the same as to suppose that solid things are made of points and lines and surfaces. These may be fictions useful for some purposes, but still fictions they remain. The cause must be a real event, and yet there is no fragment of time in which it can be real. Causation is therefore not continuous; and so, unfortunately, it is not causation, but mere appearance.
The reader will understand at once that we have repeated here the old puzzle about time. Time, as we saw, must be made, and yet cannot be made, of pieces. And he perhaps will not be sorry to have reached an end of these pages through which I have been forced to weary him with continuitv and discreteness. In the next chapter we shall arrive at somewhat different matter.
CHAPTER VII.
ACTIVITY.
In raising the question if activity is real or is only appearance, I may be met by the assertion that it is original, ultimate, and simple. I am satisfied my- self that this assertion is incorrect, and is even quite groundless; but I prefer to treat it here as merely irrelevant. If the meaning of activity will not bear examination, and if it fails to exhibit itself intel- ligibly, then that meaning cannot, as such, be true of reality. There can be no origin, or want of origin, which warrants our predicating nonsense. And if I am told that, being simple, activity can have no meaning, then it seems a quality like one of our sensations or pleasures, and we have dealt with it already. Or I may possibly be answered, No, it is not simple in that sense, nor yet exactly composite. It somehow holds a variety, and is given in that character. Hence its idea may be indefensible, while itself is real. But the business of metaphysics is surely to understand; and if anything is such that, when thought of and not simply felt, it goes to pieces in our hands, we can find but one verdict. Either its nature is nonsensical, or we have got wrong ideas about it. The assertor of the latter alternative should then present us with the right ideas — a thing which, I need not add, he is not forward to perform. But let us leave these poor excuses to take care of themselves, and let us turn to the facts. There, if we examine the way in which the term activity is employed, the result is ACTIVITY. 63 not doubtful. Force, energy, power, activity, these phrases certainly are used too often without clear understanding. But no rational man employs them except to convey some kind of meaning, which is capable of being discovered and subjected to ana- lysis. And if it will not bear scrutiny, then it clearly does not represent reality.
There is a sense in which words like power, force, or energy, are distinguished from activity. They may be used to stand for something that does not happen at all, but somehow remains in a state of suspended animation, or in a region between non- existence and existence. I do not think it worth while to discuss this at present, and shall pass at once to the signification in which force means force in exercise — in other words, activity.
The element in its meaning, which comes to light at once, is succession and change. In all activity something clearly becomes something else. Activity implies a happening and a sequence in time. And, when I spoke of this meaning as coming to the light, I might have added that it positively stares us in the face, and it is not to be hidden. To deal frankly, I do not know how to argue this question. I have never seen a use of the term which to my mind retained its sense if time-sequence is removed. We can, of course, talk of a power sustaining or pro- ducing effects, which are subordinate and yet not subsequent; but to talk thus is not to think. And unless the sequence of our thought, from the power to its manifestation, is transferred to the fact as a succession there, the meaning is gone. We are left with mere co-existence, and the dependence, either of adjective on substantive, or of two adjectives on one another and on the substance which owns them. And I do not believe that any one, unless influenced by, and in the service of, some theory, would attempt to view the matter otherwise. And I fear that I must so leave it.
6d APPEARANCE.
6d APPEARANCE.
Activity implies the change of something into something different. So much, I think, is clear; but activity is not a mere uncaused alteration. And in fact, as we have seen, that is really not conceiv- able. For Ab to become Ac, something else be- side Ab is felt to be necessary; or else we are left with a flat self-contradiction. Thus the transition of activity implies always a cause.
Activity is caused change, but it also must be more. For one- thing, altered by another, is not usually thought active, but, on the contrary, passive. Activity seems rather to be self-caused change. A transition that begins with, and comes out of, the thing itself is the process where we feel that it is active. The issue must, of course, be attributed to the thing as its adjective; it must be regarded, not only as belonging to the thing, but as beginning in it and coming out of it. If a thing carries out its own nature we call the thing active.
But we are aware, or may become aware, that we are here resting on metaphors. These cannot quite mean what they say, and what they intimate is still doubtful. It appears to be something of this kind: the end of the process, the result or the effect, seems part of the nature of the thing which we had at the beginning. Not only has it not been added by something outside, but it is hardly to be taken as an addition at all. So far, at least, as the end is considered as the thing's activity, it is regarded as the thing's character from the first to the last. Thus it somehow was before it happened. It did not exist, and yet, for all that, in a manner it was there, and so it became. We should like to say that the nature of the thing, which was ideal, realized itself, and that this process is what we mean by activity. And the idea need not be an idea in the mind of the thing; for the thing, perhaps, has no mind, and so cannot have that which would amount to volition. On the other hand, the idea in the thing is not a ACTIVITY. 65 ACTIVITY. 65 mere idea in our minds which we have merely about the thing. We are sure of this, and our meaning falls between these extremes. But where precisely it falls, and in what exactly it consists, seems at present far from clear. Let us, however, try to go forwards.
Passivity seems to imply activity. It is the alter- ation of the thing, in which, of course, the thing survives, and acquires a fresh adjective. This adjective was not possessed by the thing before the change. It therefore does not belong to its nature, but is a foreign importation. It proceeds from, and is the adjective of, another thing which is active — at the expense of the first. Thus passivity is not possible without activity; and its meaning is obviously still left unexplained.
It is natural to ask next if activity can exist by itself and apart from passivity. And here we begin to involve ourselves in further obscurity. We have spoken so far as if a thing almost began to be active without any reason; as if it exploded, so to speak, and produced its contents entirely on its own motion, and quite spontaneously. But this we never really meant to say, for this would mean a happening and a change without any cause at all; and this, we agreed long ago, is a self-contradiction and im- possible. The thing, therefore, is not active without an occasion. This, call it what you please, is some- thing outside the standing nature of the thing, and is accidental in the sense of happening to that essential disposition. But if the thing cannot act unless the act is occasioned, then the transition, so far, is im- ported into it by the act of something outside. But this, as we saw, was passivity. Whatever acts then must be passive, so far as its change is occasioned. If we look at the process as the coming out of its nature, the process is its activity. If we regard the same process, on the other hand, as due to the occasion, and, as we say, coming from that, wc 66 APPEARANCE.
66 APPEARANCE.
still have activity. But the activity now belongs to the occasion, and the thing is passive. We seem to have diverse aspects, of which the special existence in each case will depend on our own minds.
We find this ambiguity in the common distinction between cause and condition, and it is worth our while to examine this more closely. Both of these elements are taken to be wanted for the production of the effect; but in any given case we seem able to apply the names almost, or quite, at discretion. It is not unusual to call the last thing which happens the cause of the process which ensues. But this is really just as we please. The body fell because the support was taken away; but probably most men would prefer to call this " cause " a condition of a certain kind. But apparently we may gratify what- ever preference we feel. And the well-meant attempt to get clear by defining the cause as the " sum of the conditions " does not much enlighten us. As to the word " sum," it is, I presume, intended to carry a meaning, but this meaning is not stated, and I doubt if it is known. And, further, if the cause is taken as including every single con- dition, we are met by a former difficulty. Either this cause, not existing through any part of duration, is really non-existent; or else a condition will be wanted to account for its change and its passing into activity. But if the cause already includes all, then, of course, none is available (Chapter vi.). But, to pass this point by, what do you mean by these condi- tions, that all fall within the cause, so as to leave none outside? Do you mean that what we commonly call the " conditions " of an event are really com- plete? In practice certainly we leave out of the account the whole background of existence; we isolate a group of elements, and we say that, whenever these occur, then something else always happens; and in this group we consider ourselves to possess the " sum of the conditions." And this ACTIVITY. 67 assumption may be practically defensible, since the rest of existence may, on sufficient ground, be taken as irrelevant. We can therefore treat this whole mass as if it were inactive. Yes, but that is one thing, and it is quite another thing to assert that really this mass does nothing. Certainly there is no logic which can warrant such a misuse of abstraction. The background of the whole world can be elimin- ated by no sound process, and the furthest conclusion which can be logical is that we need not consider it practically. As in a number of diverse cases it seems to add nothing special, we may for each purpose consider that it adds nothing at all. But to give out this working doctrine as theoretically true is quite illegitimate.
The immediate result of this is that the true " sum of conditions" must completely include all the contents of the world at a given time. And here we run against a theoretical obstacle. The nature of these contents seems such as to be essentially incomplete, and so the " sum " to be nothing attain- able. This appears fatal so far, and, having stated it, I pass on. Suppose that you have got a complete sum of the facts at one moment, are you any nearer a result? This entire mass will be the '• sum of conditions," and the cause of each following event. For there is no process which will warrant your taking the cause as lest. Here there is at once another theoretical trouble, for the same cause produces a number of different effects; and how will you deal with that consequence? But, leaving this, we are practically in an equal dilemma. For the cause, taken so widely, is the cause of everything alike, and hence it can tell us nothing about any- thing special; and, taken less widely, it is not the sum, and therefore not the cause. And by this time it is obvious that our doctrine must be given up. If we want to discover a particular cause (and nothing else is a discovery), we must make a dis- 68 APPEARANCE.
68 APPEARANCE.
tinction in the "sum." Then, as before, in every case we have conditions beside the cause; and, as before, we are asked for a principle by which to effect the distinction between them. And, for myself, I return to the statement that I know of none which is sound. We seem to effect this distinction always to suit a certain purpose; and it appears to consist in our mere adoption of a special point of view.
But let us return to the consideration of passivity and activity. It is certain that nothing can be active without an occasion, and that what is active, being made thus by the occasion, is so far passive. * The occasion, again, since it enters into the causal process — a thing it never would have (lone \i left to itself — suffers a change from the cause; and it therefore itself is passive in its activity. If the cause is A, and the occasion By then each is active or passive, according as you view the result as the expression of its nature, or as an adjective imported from out- side.
And we are naturally brought here to a case where both these aspects seem to vanish. For suppose, as before, that we have A and Z?, which enter into one process, and let us call the result A CB. Here A will suffer a change, and so also will B; and each again may be said to produce change in the other. But if the nature of A was, before, Acb, and the nature of B was, before, Bcay we are brought to a pause. The ideas which we are applying are now plainly inadequate and likely to confuse us. To A and B themselves they might even appear to be ridiculous. How do I suffer a change, each would answer, if it is nothing else but what I will? We cannot adopt your points of view, since they seem at best quite irrelevant.
To pass to another head, the conclusion, which so far we have reached, seems to exclude the possibility of one thing by itself being active. Here we must ACTIVITY. 69