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Any object present to perception which is associated with antecedents and consequents with the same degree of cohesion, calls up its consequents rather than its antecedents. The spectacle of the rising of the sun carries the mind much more forcibly forwards to the advancing morning than backwards to the receding night.
The sequences which we observe in the production and subsequent life of an animal or a vegetable, resting on the Method of Agreement only, are mere empirical laws; but though the antecedents in those sequences may not be the causes of the consequents, both the one and the other are doubtless, in the main, successive stages of a progressive effect originating in a common cause, and therefore independent of collocations.
This is "moral necessity" which has reference solely to the connection between means and ends, but that connection, being ordained, is immutable and invariable. "Physical necessity," again, exists wherever there is either a causal connection between antecedents and consequents in the material world, or even a coactive and compulsory constraint in the moral world.
Why should it not be supposed to become so upon the same grounds namely, that it is made of the same stuffs, and put together in like proportions in the same manner? The one faith on which all normal living beings consciously or unconsciously act, is that like antecedents will be followed by like consequents.
Now, in the world of matter, we discover nothing but antecedents and consequents; the former are the mere signs, not the causes, of the latter; no necessary connection no connection at all, except sequence in time can be discerned between them.
In like manner, he considers what effects and consequents of his actions are imputable to the agent; remarking, by the way, that the want of a proper degree of good affections and of solicitude for the public good is morally evil. He then discusses the bearing of ignorance and error, vincible and invincible, and specially the case wherein an erroneous conscience extenuates.
The order of nature, as perceived at a first glance, presents at every instant a chaos followed by another chaos. We must decompose each chaos into single facts. We must learn to see in the chaotic antecedent a multitude of distinct antecedents, in the chaotic consequent a multitude of distinct consequents.
I endeavoured to see how far I could get on without volition and memory, and reasoned as follows: A repetition of like antecedents will be certainly followed by a repetition of like consequents, whether the agents be men and women or chemical substances.
And the topics which are incidental to a discussion of this kind are those drawn from consequents, or antecedents, or inconsistencies, with the addition also of those two topics which are deduced from causes and effects.
O Giver of all good gifts, who art thyself the one only absolute Good, from whom I have received whatever good I have, whatever capability of good there is in me, and from thee good alone, from myself and my own corrupted will all evil and the consequents of evil, with inward prostration of will, mind, and affections I adore thy infinite majesty; I aspire to love thy transcendent goodness!
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