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Updated: May 11, 2025
One of these errors is the notion that any object is remote from divine causality in the degree in which it has the cause of its origin in the natural connection, and that it would be easier for us to trace the origin of an object to the authorship of God, if we could not find any natural cause of its origin, than if we had knowledge of such a natural cause.
But we do not wish to dwell on facts so disputed. The ambiguity of the term "adaptation," and the necessity of transcending both the point of view of mechanical causality and that of anthropomorphic finality, will stand out more clearly with simpler examples.
But since theological arguments serve only those who believe in the concept of a god, which is not given to us by science, we take recourse to the laws which we observe in force and matter, and to the law of causality.
And we can apprehend the infinite essence of God or Nature because every particular finite thing is a determinate expression of the infinite. The law of causality requires that there be an essential identity of nature between cause and effect; otherwise it would follow that something can be produced from nothing.
But, if we begin our proof cosmologically, by laying at the foundation of it the series of phenomena, and the regress in it according to empirical laws of causality, we are not at liberty to break off from this mode of demonstration and to pass over to something which is not itself a member of the series.
Consideration of this question leads us to assert that the principle of causality only tends to accentuate the difference between objects in a realm wherein regular succession may be observed and predicted and a realm where it may not be observed or predicted, the realm of the self. Just because I endure and change I do not necessarily act to-day as I acted yesterday, when under like conditions.
For example, respecting Causality and the Freedom of the Will, we detect no want of activity and fertility, though marked evidence of other defects especially the unconditional surrender of a powerful mind to certain privileged inspirations, worshipped as 'necessities of thought.
No doubt the reason why the old "law of causality" has so long continued to pervade the books of philosophers is simply that the idea of a function is unfamiliar to most of them, and therefore they seek an unduly simplified statement.
And such is the nature of simple substances they continue to evolve steadily. Leibniz replies that his remark refers to the causality behind an action, not to the reasons for it.
But so much the more clearly does this theory show the limits of mechanism: mechanism reigns in the world of bodies from the Auslösungen and to the Auslösungen, with which the mind induces the body to activity, and the body the mind; beyond these limits causality still reigns, but no longer mechanism.
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