A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive Volume I Part 30

Morbid changes in the nutrition of the brain and spinal cord, manifesting themselves by epilepsy, ch.o.r.ea, hysteria, and other diseases, occasioned by lesion of some of the nervous extremities in remote places, as by worms, calculi, tumours, carious bones, and in some cases even by very slight irritations of the skin.

4. From the foregoing and similar instances, we may see the importance, when a law of nature previously unknown has been brought to light, or when new light has been thrown upon a known law by experiment, of examining all cases which present the conditions necessary for bringing that law into action; a process fertile in demonstrations of special laws previously unsuspected, and explanations of others already empirically known.

For instance, Faraday discovered by experiment, that voltaic electricity could be evolved from a natural magnet, provided a conducting body were set in motion at right angles to the direction of the magnet: and this he found to hold not only of small magnets, but of that great magnet, the earth. The law being thus established experimentally, that electricity is evolved, by a magnet, and a conductor moving at right angles to the direction of its poles, we may now look out for fresh instances in which these conditions meet. Wherever a conductor moves or revolves at right angles to the direction of the earth's magnetic poles, there we may expect an evolution of electricity. In the northern regions, where the polar direction is nearly perpendicular to the horizon, all horizontal motions of conductors will produce electricity; horizontal wheels, for example, made of metal; likewise all running streams will evolve a current of electricity, which will circulate round them; and the air thus charged with electricity may be one of the causes of the Aurora Borealis. In the equatorial regions, on the contrary, upright wheels placed parallel to the equator will originate a voltaic circuit, and waterfalls will naturally become electric.

For a second example; it has been proved, chiefly by the researches of Professor Graham, that gases have a strong tendency to permeate animal membranes, and diffuse themselves through the s.p.a.ces which such membranes inclose, notwithstanding the presence of other gases in those s.p.a.ces. Proceeding from this general law, and reviewing a variety of cases in which gases lie contiguous to membranes, we are enabled to demonstrate or to explain the following more special laws: 1st. The human or animal body, when surrounded with any gas not already contained within the body, absorbs it rapidly; such, for instance, as the gases of putrefying matters: which helps to explain malaria. 2nd. The carbonic acid gas of effervescing drinks, evolved in the stomach, permeates its membranes, and rapidly spreads through the system. 3rd. Alcohol taken into the stomach pa.s.ses into vapour and spreads through the system with great rapidity; (which, combined with the high combustibility of alcohol, or in other words its ready combination with oxygen, may perhaps help to explain the bodily warmth immediately consequent on drinking spirituous liquors.) 4th. In any state of the body in which peculiar gases are formed within it, these will rapidly exhale through all parts of the body; and hence the rapidity with which, in certain states of disease, the surrounding atmosphere becomes tainted. 5th. The putrefaction of the interior parts of a carcase will proceed as rapidly as that of the exterior, from the ready pa.s.sage outwards of the gaseous products. 6th. The exchange of oxygen and carbonic acid in the lungs is not prevented, but rather promoted, by the intervention of the membrane of the lungs and the coats of the blood-vessels between the blood and the air. It is necessary, however, that there should be a substance in the blood with which the oxygen of the air may immediately combine; otherwise instead of pa.s.sing into the blood, it would permeate the whole organism: and it is necessary that the carbonic acid, as it is formed in the capillaries, should also find a substance in the blood with which it can combine; otherwise it would leave the body at all points, instead of being discharged through the lungs.

5. The following is a deduction which confirms, by explaining, the old but not undisputed empirical generalization, that soda powders weaken the human system. These powders, consisting of a mixture of tartaric acid with bicarbonate of soda, from which the carbonic acid is set free, must pa.s.s into the stomach as tartrate of soda. Now, neutral tartrates, citrates, and acetates of the alkalis are found, in their pa.s.sage through the system, to be changed into carbonates; and to convert a tartrate into a carbonate requires an additional quant.i.ty of oxygen, the abstraction of which must lessen the oxygen destined for a.s.similation with the blood, on the quant.i.ty of which the vigorous action of the human system partly depends.

The instances of new theories agreeing with and explaining old empiricisms, are innumerable. All the just remarks made by experienced persons on human character and conduct, are so many special laws, which the general laws of the human mind explain and resolve. The empirical generalizations on which the operations of the arts have usually been founded, are continually justified and confirmed on the one hand, or corrected and improved on the other, by the discovery of the simpler scientific laws on which the efficacy of those operations depends. The effects of the rotation of crops, of the various manures, and other processes of improved agriculture, have been for the first time resolved in our own day into known laws of chemical and organic action, by Davy, Liebig, and others. The processes of the medical art are even now mostly empirical: their efficacy is concluded, in each instance, from a special and most precarious experimental generalization: but as science advances in discovering the simple laws of chemistry and physiology, progress is made in ascertaining the intermediate links in the series of phenomena, and the more general laws on which they depend; and thus, while the old processes are either exploded, or their efficacy, in so far as real, explained, better processes, founded on the knowledge of proximate causes, are continually suggested and brought into use.[48] Many even of the truths of geometry were generalizations from experience before they were deduced from first principles. The quadrature of the cycloid is said to have been first effected by measurement, or rather by weighing a cycloidal card, and comparing its weight with that of a piece of similar card of known dimensions.

6. To the foregoing examples from physical science, let us add another from mental. The following is one of the simple laws of mind: Ideas of a pleasurable or painful character form a.s.sociations more easily and strongly than other ideas, that is, they become a.s.sociated after fewer repet.i.tions, and the a.s.sociation is more durable. This is an experimental law, grounded on the Method of Difference. By deduction from this law, many of the more special laws which experience shows to exist among particular mental phenomena may be demonstrated and explained:--the ease and rapidity, for instance, with which thoughts connected with our pa.s.sions or our more cherished interests are excited, and the firm hold which the facts relating to them have on our memory; the vivid recollection we retain of minute circ.u.mstances which accompanied any object or event that deeply interested us, and of the times and places in which we have been very happy or very miserable; the horror with which we view the accidental instrument of any occurrence which shocked us, or the locality where it took place, and the pleasure we derive from any memorial of past enjoyment; all these effects being proportional to the sensibility of the individual mind, and to the consequent intensity of the pain or pleasure from which the a.s.sociation originated. It has been suggested by the able writer of a biographical sketch of Dr. Priestley in a monthly periodical,[49] that the same elementary law of our mental const.i.tution, suitably followed out, would explain a variety of mental phenomena previously inexplicable, and in particular some of the fundamental diversities of human character and genius. a.s.sociations being of two sorts, either between synchronous, or between successive impressions; and the influence of the law which renders a.s.sociations stronger in proportion to the pleasurable or painful character of the impressions, being felt with peculiar force in the synchronous cla.s.s of a.s.sociations; it is remarked by the writer referred to, that in minds of strong organic sensibility synchronous a.s.sociations will be likely to predominate, producing a tendency to conceive things in pictures and in the concrete, richly clothed in attributes and circ.u.mstances, a mental habit which is commonly called Imagination, and is one of the peculiarities of the painter and the poet; while persons of more moderate susceptibility to pleasure and pain will have a tendency to a.s.sociate facts chiefly in the order of their succession, and such persons, if they possess mental superiority, will addict themselves to history or science rather than to creative art.

This interesting speculation the author of the present work has endeavoured, on another occasion, to pursue farther, and to examine how far it will avail towards explaining the peculiarities of the poetical temperament.[50] It is at least an example which may serve, instead of many others, to show the extensive scope which exists for deductive investigation in the important and hitherto so imperfect Science of Mind.

7. The copiousness with which the discovery and explanation of special laws of phenomena by deduction from simpler and more general ones has here been exemplified, was prompted by a desire to characterize clearly, and place in its due position of importance, the Deductive Method; which, in the present state of knowledge, is destined henceforth irrevocably to predominate in the course of scientific investigation. A revolution is peaceably and progressively effecting itself in philosophy, the reverse of that to which Bacon has attached his name.

That great man changed the method of the sciences from deductive to experimental, and it is now rapidly reverting from experimental to deductive. But the deductions which Bacon abolished were from premises hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed up, or arbitrarily a.s.sumed. The principles were neither established by legitimate canons of experimental inquiry, nor the results tested by that indispensable element of a rational Deductive Method, verification by specific experience. Between the primitive method of Deduction and that which I have attempted to characterize, there is all the difference which exists between the Aristotelian physics and the Newtonian theory of the heavens.

It would, however, be a mistake to expect that those great generalizations, from which the subordinate truths of the more backward sciences will probably at some future period be deduced by reasoning (as the truths of astronomy are deduced from the generalities of the Newtonian theory), will be found, in all, or even in most cases, among truths now known and admitted. We may rest a.s.sured, that many of the most general laws of nature are as yet entirely unthought of; and that many others, destined hereafter to a.s.sume the same character, are known, if at all, only as laws or properties of some limited cla.s.s of phenomena; just as electricity, now recognised as one of the most universal of natural agencies, was once known only as a curious property which certain substances acquired by friction, of first attracting and then repelling light bodies. If the theories of heat, cohesion, crystallization, and chemical action, are destined, as there can be little doubt that they are, to become deductive, the truths which will then be regarded as the _principia_ of those sciences would probably, if now announced, appear quite as novel[51] as the law of gravitation appeared to the cotemporaries of Newton; possibly even more so, since Newton's law, after all, was but an extension of the law of weight--that is, of a generalization familiar from of old, and which already comprehended a not inconsiderable body of natural phenomena. The general laws of a similarly commanding character, which we still look forward to the discovery of, may not always find so much of their foundations already laid.

These general truths will doubtless make their first appearance in the character of hypotheses; not proved, nor even admitting of proof, in the first instance, but a.s.sumed as premises for the purpose of deducing from them the known laws of concrete phenomena. But this, though their initial, cannot be their final state. To ent.i.tle an hypothesis to be received as one of the truths of nature, and not as a mere technical help to the human faculties, it must be capable of being tested by the canons of legitimate induction, and must actually have been submitted to that test. When this shall have been done, and done successfully, premises will have been obtained from which all the other propositions of the science will thenceforth be presented as conclusions, and the science will, by means of a new and unexpected Induction, be rendered Deductive.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Dr. Whewell thinks it improper to apply the term Induction to any operation not terminating in the establishment of a general truth.

Induction, he says (_Philosophy of Discovery_, p. 245), "is not the same thing as experience and observation. Induction is experience or observation _consciously_ looked at in a _general_ form. This consciousness and generality are necessary parts of that knowledge which is science." And he objects (p. 241) to the mode in which the word Induction is employed in this work, as an undue extension of that term "not only to the cases in which the general induction is consciously applied to a particular instance, but to the cases in which the particular instance is dealt with by means of experience in that rude sense in which experience can be a.s.serted of brutes, and in which of course we can in no way imagine that the law is possessed or understood as a general proposition." This use of the term he deems a "confusion of knowledge with practical tendencies."

I disclaim, as strongly as Dr. Whewell can do, the application of such terms as induction, inference, or reasoning, to operations performed by mere instinct, that is, from an animal impulse, without the exertion of any intelligence. But I perceive no ground for confining the use of those terms to cases in which the inference is drawn in the forms and with the precautions required by scientific propriety. To the idea of Science, an express recognition and distinct apprehension of general laws as such, is essential: but nine-tenths of the conclusions drawn from experience in the course of practical life, are drawn without any such recognition: they are direct inferences from known cases, to a case supposed to be similar. I have endeavoured to show that this is not only as legitimate an operation, but substantially the same operation, as that of ascending from known cases to a general proposition; except that the latter process has one great security for correctness which the former does not possess. In Science, the inference must necessarily pa.s.s through the intermediate stage of a general proposition, because Science wants its conclusions for record, and not for instantaneous use. But the inferences drawn for the guidance of practical affairs, by persons who would often be quite incapable of expressing in unexceptionable terms the corresponding generalizations, may and frequently do exhibit intellectual powers quite equal to any which have ever been displayed in Science: and if these inferences are not inductive, what are they? The limitation imposed on the term by Dr. Whewell seems perfectly arbitrary; neither justified by any fundamental distinction between what he includes and what he desires to exclude, nor sanctioned by usage, at least from the time of Reid and Stewart, the princ.i.p.al legislators (as far as the English language is concerned) of modern metaphysical terminology.

[2] Supra, p. 214.

[3] _Novum Organum Renovatum_, pp. 72, 73.

[4] _Novum Organum Renovatum_, p. 32.

[5] _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, vol. ii. p. 202.

[6] Dr. Whewell, in his reply, contests the distinction here drawn, and maintains, that not only different descriptions, but different explanations of a phenomenon, may all be true. Of the three theories respecting the motions of the heavenly bodies, he says (_Philosophy of Discovery_, p. 231): "Undoubtedly all these explanations may be true and consistent with each other, and would be so if each had been followed out so as to show in what manner it could be made consistent with the facts. And this was, in reality, in a great measure done. The doctrine that the heavenly bodies were moved by vortices was successfully modified, so that it came to coincide in its results with the doctrine of an inverse-quadratic centripetal force.... When this point was reached, the vortex was merely a machinery, well or ill devised, for producing such a centripetal force, and therefore did not contradict the doctrine of a centripetal force. Newton himself does not appear to have been averse to explaining gravity by impulse. So little is it true that if one theory be true the other must be false. The attempt to explain gravity by the impulse of streams of particles flowing through the universe in all directions, which I have mentioned in the _Philosophy_, is so far from being inconsistent with the Newtonian theory, that it is founded entirely upon it. And even with regard to the doctrine, that the heavenly bodies move by an inherent virtue; if this doctrine had been maintained in any such way that it was brought to agree with the facts, the inherent virtue must have had its laws determined; and then it would have been found that the virtue had a reference to the central body; and so, the 'inherent virtue' must have coincided in its effect with the Newtonian force; and then, the two explanations would agree, except so far as the word 'inherent' was concerned. And if such a part of an earlier theory as this word _inherent_ indicates, is found to be untenable, it is of course rejected in the transition to later and more exact theories, in Inductions of this kind, as well as in what Mr. Mill calls Descriptions. There is, therefore, still no validity discoverable in the distinction which Mr. Mill attempts to draw between descriptions like Kepler's law of elliptical orbits, and other examples of induction."

If the doctrine of vortices had meant, not that vortices existed, but only that the planets moved _in the same manner_ as if they had been whirled by vortices; if the hypothesis had been merely a mode of representing the facts, not an attempt to account for them; if, in short, it had been only a Description; it would, no doubt, have been reconcileable with the Newtonian theory. The vortices, however, were not a mere aid to conceiving the motions of the planets, but a supposed physical agent, actively impelling them; a material fact, which might be true or not true, but could not be both true and not true. According to Descartes' theory it was true, according to Newton's it was not true.

Dr. Whewell probably means that since the phrases, centripetal and projectile force, do not declare the nature but only the direction of the forces, the Newtonian theory does not absolutely contradict any hypothesis which may be framed respecting the mode of their production.

The Newtonian theory, regarded as a mere _description_ of the planetary motions, does not; but the Newtonian theory as an _explanation_ of them does. For in what does the explanation consist? In ascribing those motions to a general law which obtains between all particles of matter, and in identifying this with the law by which bodies fall to the ground.

If the planets are kept in their orbits by a force which draws the particles composing them towards every other particle of matter in the solar system, they are not kept in those orbits by the impulsive force of certain streams of matter which whirl them round. The one explanation absolutely excludes the other. Either the planets are not moved by vortices, or they do not move by a law common to all matter. It is impossible that both opinions can be true. As well might it be said that there is no contradiction between the a.s.sertions, that a man died because somebody killed him, and that he died a natural death.

So, again, the theory that the planets move by a virtue inherent in their celestial nature, is incompatible with either of the two others: either that of their being moved by vortices, or that which regards them as moving by a property which they have in common with the earth and all terrestrial bodies. Dr. Whewell says that the theory of an inherent virtue agrees with Newton's when the word inherent is left out, which of course it would be (he says) if "found to be untenable." But leave that out, and where is the theory? The word inherent _is_ the theory. When that is omitted, there remains nothing except that the heavenly bodies move by "a virtue," _i.e._ by a power of some sort; or by virtue of their celestial nature, which directly contradicts the doctrine that terrestrial bodies fall by the same law.

If Dr. Whewell is not yet satisfied, any other subject will serve equally well to test his doctrine. He will hardly say that there is no contradiction between the emission theory and the undulatory theory of light; or that there can be both one and two electricities; or that the hypothesis of the production of the higher organic forms by development from the lower, and the supposition of separate and successive acts of creation, are quite reconcileable; or that the theory that volcanoes are fed from a central fire, and the doctrines which ascribe them to chemical action at a comparatively small depth below the earth's surface, are consistent with one another, and all true as far as they go.

If different explanations of the same fact cannot both be true, still less, surely, can different predictions. Dr. Whewell quarrels (on what ground it is not necessary here to consider) with the example I had chosen on this point, and thinks an objection to an ill.u.s.tration a sufficient answer to a theory. Examples not liable to his objection are easily found, if the proposition that conflicting predictions cannot both be true, can be made clearer by any examples. Suppose the phenomenon to be a newly-discovered comet, and that one astronomer predicts its return once in every 300 years--another once in every 400: can they both be right? When Columbus predicted that by sailing constantly westward he should in time return to the point from which he set out, while others a.s.serted that he could never do so except by turning back, were both he and his opponents true prophets? Were the predictions which foretold the wonders of railways and steamships, and those which averred that the Atlantic could never be crossed by steam navigation, nor a railway train propelled ten miles an hour, both (in Dr. Whewell's words) "true, and consistent with one another"?

Dr. Whewell sees no distinction between holding contradictory opinions on a question of fact, and merely employing different a.n.a.logies to facilitate the conception of the same fact. The case of different Inductions belongs to the former cla.s.s, that of different Descriptions to the latter.

[7] _Phil. of Discov._ p. 256.

[8] _Essays on the Pursuit of Truth._

[9] In the first edition a note was appended at this place, containing some criticism on Archbishop Whately's mode of conceiving the relation between Syllogism and Induction. In a subsequent issue of his _Logic_, the Archbishop made a reply to the criticism, which induced me to cancel part of the note, incorporating the remainder in the text. In a still later edition, the Archbishop observes in a tone of something like disapprobation, that the objections, "doubtless from their being fully answered and found untenable, were silently suppressed," and that hence he might appear to some of his readers to be combating a shadow. On this latter point, the Archbishop need give himself no uneasiness. His readers, I make bold to say, will fully credit his mere affirmation that the objections have actually been made.

But as he seems to think that what he terms the suppression of the objections ought not to have been made "silently," I now break that silence, and state exactly what it is that I suppressed, and why. I suppressed that alone which might be regarded as personal criticism on the Archbishop. I had imputed to him the having omitted to ask himself a particular question. I found that he had asked himself the question, and could give it an answer consistent with his own theory. I had also, within the compa.s.s of a parenthesis, hazarded some remarks on certain general characteristics of Archbishop Whately as a philosopher. These remarks, though their tone, I hope, was neither disrespectful nor arrogant, I felt, on reconsideration, that I was hardly ent.i.tled to make; least of all, when the instance which I had regarded as an ill.u.s.tration of them, failed, as I now saw, to bear them out. The real matter at the bottom of the whole dispute, the different view we take of the function of the major premise, remains exactly where it was; and so far was I from thinking that my opinion had been "fully answered" and was "untenable," that in the same edition in which I cancelled the note, I not only enforced the opinion by further arguments, but answered (though without naming him) those of the Archbishop.

For not having made this statement before, I do not think it needful to apologize. It would be attaching very great importance to one's smallest sayings, to think a formal retractation requisite every time that one commits an error. Nor is Archbishop Whately's well-earned fame of so tender a quality as to require, that in withdrawing a slight criticism on him I should have been bound to offer a public _amende_ for having made it.

[10] But though it is a condition of the validity of every induction that there be uniformity in the course of nature, it is not a necessary condition that the uniformity should pervade all nature. It is enough that it pervades the particular cla.s.s of phenomena to which the induction relates. An induction concerning the motions of the planets, or the properties of the magnet, would not be vitiated though we were to suppose that wind and weather are the sport of chance, provided it be a.s.sumed that astronomical and magnetic phenomena are under the dominion of general laws. Otherwise the early experience of mankind would have rested on a very weak foundation; for in the infancy of science it could not be known that _all_ phenomena are regular in their course.

Neither would it be correct to say that every induction by which we infer any truth, implies the general fact of uniformity _as foreknown_, even in reference to the kind of phenomena concerned. It implies, _either_ that this general fact is already known, _or_ that we may now know it: as the conclusion, the Duke of Wellington is mortal, drawn from the instances A, B, and C, implies either that we have already concluded all men to be mortal, or that we are now ent.i.tled to do so from the same evidence. A vast amount of confusion and paralogism respecting the grounds of Induction would be dispelled by keeping in view these simple considerations.

[11] Infra, chap. xxi.

[12] Infra, chap. xxi. xxii.

[13] Dr. Whewell (_Phil. of Discov._ p. 246) will not allow these and similar erroneous judgments to be called inductions; inasmuch as such superst.i.tious fancies "were not collected from the facts by seeking a law of their occurrence, but were suggested by an imagination of the anger of superior powers, shown by such deviations from the ordinary course of nature." I conceive the question to be, not in what manner these notions were at first suggested, but by what evidence they have, from time to time, been supposed to be substantiated. If the believers in these erroneous opinions had been put on their defence, they would have referred to experience: to the comet which preceded the a.s.sa.s.sination of Julius Csar, or to oracles and other prophecies known to have been fulfilled. It is by such appeals to facts that all a.n.a.logous superst.i.tions, even in our day, attempt to justify themselves; the supposed evidence of experience is necessary to their hold on the mind. I quite admit that the influence of such coincidences would not be what it is, if strength were not lent to it by an antecedent presumption; but this is not peculiar to such cases; preconceived notions of probability form part of the explanation of many other cases of belief on insufficient evidence. The _ priori_ prejudice does not prevent the erroneous opinion from being sincerely regarded as a legitimate conclusion from experience; though it improperly predisposes the mind to that interpretation of experience.

Thus much in defence of the sort of examples objected to. But it would be easy to produce instances, equally adapted to the purpose, and in which no antecedent prejudice is at all concerned. "For many ages," says Archbishop Whately, "all farmers and gardeners were firmly convinced--and convinced of their knowing it by experience--that the crops would never turn out good unless the seed were sown during the increase of the moon." This was induction, but bad induction: just as a vicious syllogism is reasoning, but bad reasoning.

[14] The a.s.sertion, that any and every one of the conditions of a phenomenon may be and is, on some occasions and for some purposes, spoken of as the cause, has been disputed by an intelligent reviewer of this work in the _Prospective Review_ (the predecessor of the justly esteemed _National Review_), who maintains that "we always apply the word cause rather to that element in the antecedents which exercises _force_, and which would _tend_ at all times to produce the same or a similar effect to that which, under certain conditions, it would actually produce." And he says, that "every one would feel" the expression, that the cause of a surprise was the sentinel's being off his post, to be incorrect; but that the "allurement or force which _drew_ him off his post, might be so called, because in doing so it removed a resisting power which would have prevented the surprise." I cannot think that it would be wrong to say, that the event took place because the sentinel was absent, and yet right to say that it took place because he was bribed to be absent. Since the only direct effect of the bribe was his absence, the bribe could be called the remote cause of the surprise, only on the supposition that the absence was the proximate cause; nor does it seem to me that any one (who had not a theory to support) would use the one expression and reject the other.

The reviewer observes, that when a person dies of poison, his possession of bodily organs is a necessary condition, but that no one would ever speak of it as the cause. I admit the fact; but I believe the reason to be, that the occasion could never arise for so speaking of it; for when in the inaccuracy of common discourse we are led to speak of some one condition of a phenomenon as its cause, the condition so spoken of is always one which it is at least possible that the hearer may require to be informed of. The possession of bodily organs is a known condition, and to give that as the answer, when asked the cause of a person's death, would not supply the information sought. Once conceive that a doubt could exist as to his having bodily organs, or that he were to be compared with some being who had them not, and cases may be imagined in which it might be said that his possession of them was the cause of his death. If Faust and Mephistopheles together took poison, it might be said that Faust died because he was a human being, and had a body, while Mephistopheles survived because he was a spirit.

It is for the same reason that no one (as the reviewer remarks) "calls the cause of a leap, the muscles or sinews of the body, though they are necessary conditions; nor the cause of a self-sacrifice, the knowledge which was necessary for it; nor the cause of writing a book, that a man has time for it, which is a necessary condition." These conditions (besides that they are antecedent _states_, and not proximate antecedent _events_, and are therefore never the conditions in closest apparent proximity to the effect) are all of them so obviously implied, that it is hardly possible there should exist that necessity for insisting on them, which alone gives occasion for speaking of a single condition as if it were the cause. Wherever this necessity exists in regard to some one condition, and does not exist in regard to any other, I conceive that it is consistent with usage, when scientific accuracy is not aimed at, to apply the name cause to that one condition. If the only condition which can be supposed to be unknown is a negative condition, the negative condition may be spoken of as the cause. It might be said that a person died for want of medical advice: though this would not be likely to be said, unless the person was already understood to be ill, and in order to indicate that this negative circ.u.mstance was what made the illness fatal, and not the weakness of his const.i.tution, or the original virulence of the disease. It might be said that a person was drowned because he could not swim; the positive condition, namely, that he fell into the water, being already implied in the word drowned. And here let me remark, that his falling into the water is in this case the only positive condition: all the conditions not expressly or virtually included in this (as that he could not swim, that n.o.body helped him, and so forth) are negative. Yet, if it were simply said that the cause of a man's death was falling into the water, there would be quite as great a sense of impropriety in the expression, as there would be if it were said that the cause was his inability to swim; because, though the one condition is positive and the other negative, it would be felt that neither of them was sufficient, without the other, to produce death.

With regard to the a.s.sertion that nothing is termed the cause, except the element which exerts active force; I wave the question as to the meaning of active force, and accepting the phrase in its popular sense, I revert to a former example, and I ask, would it be more agreeable to custom to say that a man fell because his foot slipped in climbing a ladder, or that he fell because of his weight? for his weight, and not the motion of his foot, was the active force which determined his fall.

If a person walking out in a frosty day, stumbled and fell, it might be said that he stumbled because the ground was slippery, or because he was not sufficiently careful; but few people, I suppose, would say, that he stumbled because he walked. Yet the only active force concerned was that which he exerted in walking: the others were mere negative conditions; but they happened to be the only ones which there could be any necessity to state; for he walked, most likely, in exactly his usual manner, and the negative conditions made all the difference. Again, if a person were asked why the army of Xerxes defeated that of Leonidas, he would probably say, because they were a thousand times the number; but I do not think he would say, it was because they fought, though that was the element of active force. To borrow another example, used by Mr. Grove and by Mr. Baden Powell, the opening of floodgates is said to be the cause of the flow of water; yet the active force is exerted by the water itself, and opening the floodgates merely supplies a negative condition.

The reviewer adds, "there are some conditions absolutely pa.s.sive, and yet absolutely necessary to physical phenomena, viz. the relations of s.p.a.ce and time; and to these no one ever applies the word cause without being immediately arrested by those who hear him." Even from this statement I am compelled to dissent. Few persons would feel it incongruous to say (for example) that a secret became known because it was spoken of when A. B. was within hearing; which is a condition of s.p.a.ce: or that the cause why one of two particular trees is taller than the other, is that it has been longer planted; which is a condition of time.

[15] There are a few exceptions; for there are some properties of objects which seem to be purely preventive; as the property of opaque bodies, by which they intercept the pa.s.sage of light. This, as far as we are able to understand it, appears an instance not of one cause counteracting another by the same law whereby it produces its own effects, but of an agency which manifests itself in no other way than in defeating the effects of another agency. If we knew on what other relations to light, or on what peculiarities of structure, opacity depends, we might find that this is only an apparent, not a real, exception to the general proposition in the text. In any case it needs not affect the practical application. The formula which includes all the negative conditions of an effect in the single one of the absence of counteracting causes, is not violated by such cases as this; though, if all counteracting agencies were of this description, there would be no purpose served by employing the formula, since we should still have to enumerate specially the negative conditions of each phenomenon, instead of regarding them as implicitly contained in the positive laws of the various other agencies in nature.

[16] I mean by this expression, the ultimate laws of nature (whatever they may be) as distinguished from the derivative laws and from the collocations. The diurnal revolution of the earth (for example) is not a part of the const.i.tution of things, because nothing can be so called which might possibly be terminated or altered by natural causes.

[17] I use the words "straight line" for brevity and simplicity. In reality the line in question is not exactly straight, for, from the effect of refraction, we actually see the sun for a short interval during which the opaque ma.s.s of the earth is interposed in a direct line between the sun and our eyes; thus realizing, though but to a limited extent, the coveted desideratum of seeing round a corner.

[18] _Second Burnett Prize Essay_, by Princ.i.p.al Tulloch, p. 25.

[19] _Letters on the Philosophy of the Human Mind_, First Series, p.

219.

[20] _Essays_, pp. 206-208.