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Various theories are put forward concerning the causation of the longings of pregnant women, but none of these seems to furnish by itself a complete and adequate explanation of all cases. Thus it is said that the craving is the expression of a natural instinct, the system of the pregnant woman really requiring the food she longs for.
And the same vice underlies the further argument by which Mr. Green meets the familiar objection to the personality of the Absolute as involving contradictory conceptions. For how, he asks, can any Will which is causative of reality be conceived as a Will except by conceiving it as se finiens, predetermining itself to the specific processes required by the act of causation? How, indeed?
Many of our impressions are incapable of place or local position; and yet those very impressions we suppose to have a local conjunction with the impressions of sight and touch, merely because they are conjoined by causation, and are already united in the imagination.
The accumulated proof of which the Theory of Dew has been found susceptible, is a striking instance of the fulness of assurance which the inductive evidence of laws of causation may attain, in cases in which the invariable sequence is by no means obvious to a superficial view.
But to the very last the idea of causation retains the traces of its origin. For in the first place every step in this building up of science assumes a permanence underlying all phenomena. We cannot believe that the future will be like the past except because we believe that there is something permanent which was in the past and will be in the future.
" ... as the same individual republic may not only change its members, but also its laws and constitutions; in like manner the same person may vary his character and disposition, as well as his impressions and ideas, without losing his identity. Whatever changes he endures, his several parts are still connected by the relation of causation.
The only study of science that can benefit any one is the study of causation, and causation cannot be cognized by the physical senses. We never see, hear, feel, taste, or smell cause. What we see or hear is effect. Causation is mental. Natural science is dealing with phenomena, with effect not cause.
Her recovery was very gradual and marked by many relapses. In her treatment as in our ideas as to the causation of the disorder, we put the accent on the psychic rather than on the physical factors. We did not however underrate the latter but constantly sought to improve her bodily health and condition.
If we knew these, and found none competent to originate species, we should have good ground for denying their origin by natural causation. Till we know them, any hypothesis is better than one which involves us in such miserable presumption.
There certainly are cases in which the effect follows without any interval perceptible by our faculties; and when there is an interval, we cannot tell by how many intermediate links imperceptible to us that interval may really be filled up. But even granting that an effect may commence simultaneously with its cause, the view I have taken of causation is in no way practically affected.
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