International Congress of Arts and Science Part 46

The final consequence, too, that forces itself upon our attention is close at hand in the preceding discussion. The tradition prevailing since Hume, together with its inherent opposition to the interpretation of causal connection given by the concept philosophy, permitted us to make the uniform sequences of events the basis of our discussion. In so doing, however, our attention had to be called repeatedly to one reservation. In fact, only a moment ago, in alluding to the psychological interdependences, we had to emphasize the uniform _sequence_. Elsewhere the arguments depended upon the _uniformity_ that characterizes this sequence; and rightly, for the reduction of the causal relation to the fundamental relation of the sequence of events is merely a convenient one and not the only possible one. As soon as we regard the causal connection, along with the opposed and equal reaction, as an interconnection, then cause and effect become, is a matter of principle, simultaneous. The separation of interaction from causation is not justifiable.

In other ways also we can so transform every causal relation that cause and effect must be regarded as simultaneous. Every stage, for instance, of the warming of a stone by the heat of the sun, or of the treaty conferences of two states, presents an effect that is simultaneous with the totality of the acting causes. The a.n.a.lysis of a cause that was at first grasped as a whole into the multiplicity of its const.i.tuent causes and the comprehension of the const.i.tuent causes into a whole, which then presents itself as the effect, is a necessary condition of such a type of investigation. This conception, which is present already in Hobbes, but especially in Herbart's "method of relations," deserves preference always where the purpose in view is not the shortest possible argumentation but the most exact a.n.a.lysis.

If we turn our attention to this way of viewing the problem,--not, however, in the form of Herbart's speculative method,--we shall find that the results which we have gained will in no respect be altered. We do, however, get a view beyond. From it we can find the way to subordinate not only the uniform sequence of events, but also the persistent characteristics and states with their mutual relations, under the extended causal law. In so doing, we do not fall back again into the intellectual world of the concept philosophy. We come only to regard the _persisting coexistences_--in the physical field, the bodies, in the psychical, the subjects of consciousness--as systems or modes of activity. The thoughts to which such a doctrine leads are accordingly not new or unheard of. The substances have always been regarded as sources of modes of activity. We have here merely new modifications of thoughts that have been variously developed, not only from the side of empiricism, but also from that of rationalism. They carry with them methodologically the implication that it is possible to grasp the totality of reality, as far as it reveals uniformities, as a causally connected whole, as a cosmos. They give the research of the special sciences the conceptual bases for the wider prospects that the sciences of facts have through hard labor won for themselves. The subject of consciousness is unitary as far as the processes of memory extend, but it is not simple. On the contrary, it is most intricately put together out of psychical complexes, themselves intricate and out of their relations; all of which impress upon us, psychologically and, in their mechanical correlates, physiologically, an ever-recurring need for further empirical a.n.a.lysis. Among the mechanical images of physical reality that form the foundation of our interpretation of nature, there can finally be but one that meets all the requirements of a general hypothesis of the continuity of kinetic connections. With this must be universally coordinated the persistent properties or sensible modes of action belonging to bodies. The mechanical const.i.tution of the compound bodies, no matter at what stage of combination and formation, must be derivable from the mechanical const.i.tution of the elements of this combination. Thus our causal thought compels us to trace back the persistent coexistences of the so-called elements to combinations whose a.n.a.lysis, as yet hardly begun, leads us on likewise to indefinitely manifold problems. Epistemologically we come finally to a universal phenomenological dynamism as the fundamental basis of all theoretical interpretation of the world, at least fundamental for our scientific thought, and we are here concerned with no other.