Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If men are compelled by the force of circumstances, or by any force, to move only in one direction, they cannot be responsible for not moving in a different direction. Nor is it more to the purpose to undertake a subtle analysis of the nature of causation, and to explain that it does not, properly speaking, involve compulsion, but simply means invariable antecedence.
I must necessarily set out from the one, to which therefore I give hypothetical antecedence, in order to arrive at the other. But as there are but two factors or elements in the problem, subject and object, and as it is left indeterminate from which of them I should commence, there are two cases equally possible. The notion of the subjective is not contained in the notion of the objective.
'Power' is a word which only covers a statement of 'invariable antecedence. Brown traces the various confusions which have obscured the true nature of this belief. He insists especially that we can no more discover power in mental than in physical sequences.
They record certain uniformities of antecedence and consequence in the region of human conduct Want of faith in the persistency of these uniformities is only a little less fatuous in the moral order than a corresponding want of faith would instantly disclose itself to be in the purely physical order.
If we can produce the antecedent artificially, and if, when we do so, the effect follows, the induction is complete; that antecedent is the cause of that consequent. But we have then added the evidence of experiment to that of simple observation. Until we had done so, we had only proved invariable antecedence within the limits of experience, but not unconditional antecedence, or causation.
The unity of action, the regularity of antecedence and consequence in outward events, which we commonly designate by the lame metaphor of law, then become the fitting expression of the consistent doings of an all-wise Being, in whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. The Creator, then, is no longer banished from his creation, nor is the latter an orphan, or a deserted child.
Likeness and unlikeness, therefore, as well as antecedence, sequence, and simultaneousness, must stand apart among relations, as things sui generis. They are attributes grounded on facts, that is, on states of consciousness, but on states which are peculiar, unresolvable, and inexplicable.
Causation, as Brown had finally proved, means simply antecedence and consequence. 'Resemblance' remains and is, as Mill afterwards says, a most important principle; but in an unlucky moment he is half inclined to reduce even 'resemblance' to 'contiguity. Resemblance is, he even suggests, merely 'a case of frequency, because we generally see like things together.
Likeness and unlikeness, therefore, as well as antecedence, sequence, and simultaneousness, must stand apart among relations, as things sui generis. They are attributes grounded on facts, that is, on states of consciousness, but on states which are peculiar, unresolvable, and inexplicable.
That there can be but one such principle, may be proved a priori; for were there two or more, each must refer to some other, by which its equality is affirmed; consequently neither would be self-established, as the hypothesis demands. And a posteriori, it will be proved by the principle itself when it is discovered, as involving universal antecedence in its very conception.
Word Of The Day