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Updated: May 6, 2025
In these cases we say that it is due to sameness of substance in same circumstances. The most cursory reflection upon our actions will show us that it is no more possible for living action to have more than one set of proximate consequents at any given time than for oxygen and hydrogen when mixed in the proportions proper for the formation of water.
The ordinary sequences of the external universe appeared to them, no less than to their critic, to be inconceivable without the supposition of some universal agency to connect the antecedents with the consequents; but they did not think that Volition, exerted by minds, was the only agency which fulfilled this requirement.
Numberless were the advantages and privileges which did redound to these nations by, and were the lovely attendants and sweet consequents of, these covenants; whereby God did set to his seal of approbation, and gave clear evidence and demonstration of his acceptance of his people's cheerful and willing adventures in this duty of covenanting with him: and as these blessings and mercies, which, as the dew of Hermon, were distilled upon his people's heads and hearts, while they abode steadfast with him, and faithful in his covenant were so many irrefragable proofs of his acquiescence in their first and laudable undertakings; so the many sad and fearful plagues, distractions, confusions and miseries, which have attended and followed the many gross breaches and violations of these covenants and departures from God, are no less evident discoveries, undeniable signs and pregnant convictions of the Lord's most just displeasure and indignation with the bypast and present courses of revolting and backsliding from him; which courses of declension and grievous apostatizing from God and his covenant, all the three kingdoms and in special this nation, and every individual therein capable of such a work, are, without all controversy, called to bewail and confess before God, and by speedy amendment to turn from them, in order to avert judgments, and turn away justly impendent wrath and long threatened strokes.
Thus it appeared that the attributes of straightness and crookedness were not inherent in the shadow, but corresponded to certain positions in the body . . . . "Holding this Theory of Consequents," says Liehtse, "is to be at home in the antecedent."
Wherever, having nothing to guide us to the cause, we are obliged to set out from the effect, and to apply the rule of varying the circumstances to the consequents, not the antecedents, we are necessarily destitute of the resource of artificial experimentation. We can not, at our choice, obtain consequents, as we can antecedents, under any set of circumstances compatible with their nature.
We shall denote antecedents by the large letters of the alphabet, and the consequents corresponding to them by the small. Let A, then, be an agent or cause, and let the object of our inquiry be to ascertain what are the effects of this cause.
In illustration of this point, he says: “Let us suppose a real and sure connexion between a man having his eyes open in the clear daylight, with good organs of sight, and seeing; so that seeing is connected with opening his eyes, and not seeing with his not opening his eyes; and also the like connexion between such a man attempting to open his eyes and his actually doing it: the supposed established connexion between these antecedents and consequents, let the connexion be never so sure and necessary, certainly does not prove that it is in vain for a man in such circumstances to attempt to open his eyes, in order to seeing; his aiming at that event, and the use of the means, being the effect of his will, does not break the connexion, or hinder the success.”
But we also see that this demand may be completely satisfied by an agency purely physical, provided it be much more familiar than that which it is invoked to explain. To Thales and Anaximenes, it appeared inconceivable that the antecedents which we see in nature, should produce the consequents; but perfectly natural that water, or air, should produce them.
Law can only prevent miracles by compelling and making necessary the succession of nature, i.e. in the sense of causation; but science has itself proclaimed the truth that we see no causes in nature, that the whole chain of physical succession is to the eye of reason a rope of sand, consisting of antecedents and consequents, but without a rational link or trace of necessary connection between them.
If certain musical progressions are already associated with many different sets of antecedents and consequents, they have no special association, except in so far as they may be connected with a school or epoch; no one, therefore, is offended at finding them associated with one set the more.
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