And though things do not really revolve in this eternal round, the whole series of events in the history of the universe, past and future, is not the less capable, in its own nature, of being constructed à priori by any one whom we can suppose acquainted with the original distribution of all natural agents, and with the whole of their properties, that is, the laws of succession existing between them and their effects: saving the far more than human powers of combination and calculation which would be required, even in one possessing the data, for the actual performance of the task.
§ 8. Since everything which occurs is determined by laws of causation and collocations of the original causes, it follows that the coexistences which are observable among effects cannot be themselves the subject of any similar set of laws, distinct from laws of causation. Uniformities there are, as well of coexistence as of succession, among effects; but these must in all cases be a mere result either of the identity or of the coexistence of their causes: if the causes did not coexist, neither could the effects. And these causes being also effects of prior causes, and these of others, until we reach the primeval causes, it follows that (except in the case of effects which can be traced immediately or remotely to one and the same cause) the coexistences of phenomena can in no case be universal, unless the coexistences of the primeval causes to which the effects are ultimately traceable, can be reduced to an universal law: but we have seen that they cannot. There are, accordingly, no original and independent, in other words no unconditional, uniformities of coexistence, between effects of different causes; if they coexist, it is only because the causes have casually coexisted. The only independent and unconditional coexistences which are sufficiently invariable to have any claim to the character of laws, are between different and mutually independent effects of the same cause; in other words, between different properties of the same natural agent. This portion of the Laws of Nature will be treated of in the latter part of the present Book, under the name of the Specific Properties of Kinds.
§ 9. It is proper in this place to advert to a rather ancient doctrine respecting causation, which has been revived during the last few years in many quarters, and at present gives more signs of life than any other theory of causation at variance with that set forth in the preceding pages.
According to the theory in question, Mind, or, to speak more precisely, Will, is the only cause of phenomena. The type of Causation, as well as the exclusive source from which we derive the idea, is our own voluntary agency. Here, and here only (it is said) we have direct evidence of causation. We know that we can move our bodies. Respecting the phenomena of inanimate nature, we have no other direct knowledge than that of antecedence and sequence. But in the case of our voluntary actions, it is affirmed that we are conscious of power, before we have experience of results. An act of volition, whether followed by an effect or not, is accompanied by a consciousness of effort, "of force exerted, of power in action, which is necessarily causal, or causative." This feeling of energy or force, inherent in an act of will, is knowledge à priori; assurance, prior to experience, that we have the power of causing effects. Volition, therefore, it is asserted, is something more than an unconditional antecedent; it is a cause, in a different sense from that in which physical phenomena are said to cause one another: it is an Efficient Cause. From this the transition is easy to the further doctrine, that Volition is the sole Efficient Cause of all phenomena. "It is inconceivable that dead force could continue unsupported for a moment beyond its creation. We cannot even conceive of change or phenomena without the energy of a mind." "The word action" itself, says another writer of the same school, "has no real significance except when applied to the doings of an intelligent agent. Let any one conceive, if he can, of any power, energy, or force, inherent in a lump of matter." Phenomena may have the semblance of being produced by physical causes, but they are in reality produced, say these writers, by the immediate agency of mind. All things which do not proceed from a human (or, I suppose, an animal) will, proceed, they say, directly from divine will. The earth is not moved by the combination of a centripetal and a projectile force; this is but a mode of speaking, which serves to facilitate our conceptions. It is moved by the direct volition of an omnipotent Being, in a path coinciding with that which we deduce from the hypothesis of these two forces.
As I have so often observed, the general question of the existence of Efficient Causes does not fall within the limits of our subject: but a theory which represents them as capable of being subjects of human knowledge, and which passes off as efficient causes what are only physical or phenomenal causes, belongs as much to Logic as to Metaphysics, and is a fit subject for discussion here.
To my apprehension, a volition is not an efficient, but simply a physical, cause. Our will causes our bodily actions in the same sense, and in no other, in which cold causes ice, or a spark causes an explosion of gunpowder. The volition, a state of our mind, is the antecedent; the motion of our limbs in conformity to the volition, is the consequent. This sequence I conceive to be not a subject of direct consciousness, in the sense intended by the theory. The antecedent, indeed, and the consequent, are subjects of consciousness. But the connexion between them is a subject of experience. I cannot admit that our consciousness of the volition contains in itself any à priori knowledge that the muscular motion will follow. If our nerves of motion were paralysed, or our muscles stiff and inflexible, and had been so all our lives, I do not see the slightest ground for supposing that we should ever (unless by information from other people) have known anything of volition as a physical power, or been conscious of any tendency in feelings of our mind to produce motions of our body, or of other bodies. I will not undertake to say whether we should in that case have had the physical feeling which I suppose is meant when these writers speak of "consciousness of effort:" I see no reason why we should not; since that physical feeling is probably a state of nervous sensation beginning and ending in the brain, without involving the motory apparatus: but we certainly should not have designated it by any term equivalent to effort, since effort implies consciously aiming at an end, which we should not only in that case have had no reason to do, but could not even have had the idea of doing. If conscious at all of this peculiar sensation, we should have been conscious of it, I conceive, only as a kind of uneasiness, accompanying our feelings of desire.
It is well argued by Sir William Hamilton against the theory in question, that it "is refuted by the consideration, that between the overt fact of corporeal movement of which we are cognisant, and the internal act of mental determination of which we are also cognisant, there intervenes a numerous series of intermediate agencies of which we have no knowledge; and, consequently, that we can have no consciousness of any causal connexion between the extreme links of this chain, the volition to move and the limb moving, as this hypothesis asserts. No one is immediately conscious, for example, of moving his arm through his volition. Previously to this ultimate movement, muscles, nerves, a multitude of solid and fluid parts, must be set in motion by the will, but of this motion we know, from consciousness, absolutely nothing. A person struck with paralysis is conscious of no inability in his limb to fulfil the determinations of his will; and it is only after having willed, and finding that his limbs do not obey his volition, that he learns by this experience, that the external movement does not follow the internal act. But as the paralytic learns after the volition that his limbs do not obey his mind; so it is only after volition that the man in health learns, that his limbs do obey the mandates of his will."[22]
Those against whom I am contending have never produced, and do not pretend to produce, any positive evidence[23] that the power of our will to move our bodies would be known to us independently of experience. What they have to say on the subject is, that the production of physical events by a will seems to carry its own explanation with it, while the action of matter upon matter seems to require something else to explain it; and is even, according to them, "inconceivable" on any other supposition than that some will intervenes between the apparent cause and its apparent effect. They thus rest their case on an appeal to the inherent laws of our conceptive faculty; mistaking, as I apprehend, for the laws of that faculty its acquired habits, grounded on the spontaneous tendencies of its uncultured state. The succession between the will to move a limb and the actual motion, is one of the most direct and instantaneous of all sequences which come under our observation, and is familiar to every moment's experience from our earliest infancy; more familiar than any succession of events exterior to our bodies, and especially more so than any other case of the apparent origination (as distinguished from the mere communication) of motion. Now, it is the natural tendency of the mind to be always attempting to facilitate its conception of unfamiliar facts by assimilating them to others which are familiar. Accordingly, our voluntary acts, being the most familiar to us of all cases of causation, are, in the infancy and early youth of the human race, spontaneously taken as the type of causation in general, and all phenomena are supposed to be directly produced by the will of some sentient being. This original Fetichism I shall not characterize in the words of Hume, or of any follower of Hume, but in those of a religious metaphysician, Dr. Reid, in order more effectually to show the unanimity which exists on the subject among all competent thinkers.
"When we turn our attention to external objects, and begin to exercise our rational faculties about them, we find that there are some motions and changes in them which we have power to produce, and that there are many which must have some other cause. Either the objects must have life and active power, as we have, or they must be moved or changed by something that has life and active power, as external objects are moved by us.
"Our first thoughts seem to be, that the objects in which we perceive such motion have understanding and active power as we have. 'Savages,' says the Abbé Raynal, 'wherever they see motion which they cannot account for, there they suppose a soul.' All men may be considered as savages in this respect, until they are capable of instruction, and of using their faculties in a more perfect manner than savages do.
"The Abbé Raynal's observation is sufficiently confirmed, both from fact, and from the structure of all languages.
"Rude nations do really believe sun, moon, and stars, earth, sea, and air, fountains, and lakes, to have understanding and active power. To pay homage to them, and implore their favour, is a kind of idolatry natural to savages.
"All languages carry in their structure the marks of their being formed when this belief prevailed. The distinction of verbs and participles into active and passive, which is found in all languages, must have been originally intended to distinguish what is really active from what is merely passive; and in all languages, we find active verbs applied to those objects, in which, according to the Abbé Raynal's observation, savages suppose a soul.
"Thus we say the sun rises and sets, and comes to the meridian, the moon changes, the sea ebbs and flows, the winds blow. Languages were formed by men who believed these objects to have life and active power in themselves. It was therefore proper and natural to express their motions and changes by active verbs.
"There is no surer way of tracing the sentiments of nations before they have records, than by the structure of their language, which, notwithstanding the changes produced in it by time, will always retain some signatures of the thoughts of those by whom it was invented. When we find the same sentiments indicated in the structure of all languages, those sentiments must have been common to the human species when languages were invented.
"When a few, of superior intellectual abilities, find leisure for speculation, they begin to philosophize, and soon discover, that many of those objects which at first they believed to be intelligent and active are really lifeless and passive. This is a very important discovery. It elevates the mind, emancipates from many vulgar superstitions, and invites to further discoveries of the same kind.
"As philosophy advances, life and activity in natural objects retires, and leaves them dead and inactive. Instead of moving voluntarily, we find them to be moved necessarily; instead of acting, we find them to be acted upon; and Nature appears as one great machine, where one wheel is turned by another, that by a third; and how far this necessary succession may reach, the philosopher does not know."[24]
There is, then, a spontaneous tendency of the intellect to account to itself for all cases of causation by assimilating them to the intentional acts of voluntary agents like itself. This is the instinctive philosophy of the human mind in its earliest stage, before it has become familiar with any other invariable sequences than those between its own volitions or those of other human beings and their voluntary acts. As the notion of fixed laws of succession among external phenomena gradually establishes itself, the propensity to refer all phenomena to voluntary agency slowly gives way before it. The suggestions, however, of daily life continuing to be more powerful than those of scientific thought, the original instinctive philosophy maintains its ground in the mind, underneath the growths obtained by cultivation, and keeps up a constant resistance to their throwing their roots deep into the soil. The theory against which I am contending derives its nourishment from that substratum. Its strength does not lie in argument, but in its affinity to an obstinate tendency of the infancy of the human mind.
That this tendency, however, is not the result of an inherent mental law, is proved by superabundant evidence. The history of science, from its earliest dawn, shows that mankind have not been unanimous in thinking either that the action of matter upon matter was not conceivable, or that the action of mind upon matter was. To some thinkers, and some schools of thinkers, both in ancient and in modern times, this last has appeared much more inconceivable than the former. Sequences entirely physical and material, as soon as they had become sufficiently familiar to the human mind, came to be thought perfectly natural, and were regarded not only as needing no explanation themselves, but as being capable of affording it to others, and even of serving as the ultimate explanation of things in general.
One of the ablest recent supporters of the Volitional theory has furnished an explanation, at once historically true and philosophically acute, of the failure of the Greek philosophers in physical inquiry, in which, as I conceive, he unconsciously depicts his own state of mind. "Their stumbling-block was one as to the nature of the evidence they had to expect for their conviction.... They had not seized the idea that they must not expect to understand the processes of outward causes, but only their results: and consequently, the whole physical philosophy of the Greeks was an attempt to identify mentally the effect with its cause, to feel after some not only necessary but natural connexion, where they meant by natural that which would per se carry some presumption to their own mind.... They wanted to see some reason why the physical antecedent should produce this particular consequent, and their only attempts were in directions where they could find such reasons."[25] In other words, they were not content merely to know that one phenomenon was always followed by another; they thought that they had not attained the true aim of science, unless they could perceive something in the nature of the one phenomenon from which it might have been known or presumed previous to trial that it would be followed by the other: just what the writer, who has so clearly pointed out their error, thinks that he perceives in the nature of the phenomenon Volition. And to complete the statement of the case, he should have added that these early speculators not only made this their aim, but were quite satisfied with their success in it; not only sought for causes which should carry in their mere statement evidence of their efficiency, but fully believed that they had found such causes. The reviewer can see plainly that this was an error, because he does not believe that there exist any relations between material phenomena which can account for their producing one another: but the very fact of the persistency of the Greeks in this error, shows that their minds were in a very different state: they were able to derive from the assimilation of physical facts to other physical facts, the kind of mental satisfaction which we connect with the word explanation, and which the reviewer would have us think can only be found in referring phenomena to a will. When Thales and Hippo held that moisture was the universal cause, and external element, of which all other things were but the infinitely various sensible manifestations; when Anaximenes predicated the same thing of air, Pythagoras of numbers, and the like, they all thought that they had found a real explanation; and were content to rest in this explanation as ultimate. 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. Moisture, or air, or numbers, carried to their minds a precisely similar impression of making intelligible what was otherwise inconceivable, and gave the same full satisfaction to the demands of their conceptive faculty.
It was not the Greeks alone, who "wanted to see some reason why the physical antecedent should produce this particular consequent," some connexion "which would per se carry some presumption to their own mind." Among modern philosophers, Leibnitz laid it down as a self-evident principle that all physical causes without exception must contain in their own nature something which makes it intelligible that they should be able to produce the effects which they do produce. Far from admitting Volition as the only kind of cause which carried internal evidence of its own power, and as the real bond of connexion between physical antecedents and their consequents, he demanded some naturally and per se efficient physical antecedent as the bond of connexion between Volition itself and its effects. He distinctly refused to admit the will of God as a sufficient explanation of anything except miracles; and insisted upon finding something that would account better for the phenomena of nature than a mere reference to divine volition.[26]
Again, and conversely, the action of mind upon matter (which, we are now told, not only needs no explanation itself, but is the explanation of all other effects), has appeared to some thinkers to be itself the grand inconceivability. It was to get over this very difficulty that the Cartesians invented the system of Occasional Causes. They could not conceive that thoughts in a mind could produce movements in a body, or that bodily movements could produce thoughts. They could see no necessary connexion, no relation à priori, between a motion and a thought. And as the Cartesians, more than any other school of philosophical speculation before or since, made their own minds the measure of all things, and refused, on principle, to believe that Nature had done what they were unable to see any reason why she must do, they affirmed it to be impossible that a material and a mental fact could be causes one of another. They regarded them as mere Occasions on which the real agent, God, thought fit to exert his power as a Cause. When a man wills to move his foot, it is not his will that moves it, but God (they said) moves it on the occasion of his will. God, according to this system, is the only efficient cause, not quâ mind, or quâ endowed with volition, but quâ omnipotent. This hypothesis was, as I said, originally suggested by the supposed inconceivability of any real mutual action between Mind and Matter: but it was afterwards extended to the action of Matter upon Matter, for on a nicer examination they found this inconceivable too, and therefore, according to their logic, impossible. The deus ex machinâ was ultimately called in to produce a spark on the occasion of a flint and steel coming together, or to break an egg on the occasion of its falling on the ground.
All this, undoubtedly, shows that it is the disposition of mankind in general, not to be satisfied with knowing that one fact is invariably antecedent and another consequent, but to look out for something which may seem to explain their being so. 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. The writers whom I oppose declare this inconceivable, but can conceive that mind, or volition, is per se an efficient cause: while the Cartesians could not conceive even that, but peremptorily declared that no mode of production of any fact whatever was conceivable, except the direct agency of an omnipotent being. Thus giving additional proof of what finds new confirmation in every stage of the history of science: that both what persons can, and what they cannot, conceive, is very much an affair of accident, and depends altogether on their experience, and their habits of thought; that by cultivating the requisite associations of ideas, people may make themselves unable to conceive any given thing; and may make themselves able to conceive most things, however inconceivable these may at first appear: and the same facts in each person's mental history which determine what is or is not conceivable to him, determine also which among the various sequences in nature will appear to him so natural and plausible, as to need no other proof of their existence; to be evident by their own light, independent equally of experience and of explanation.
By what rule is any one to decide between one theory of this description and another? The theorists do not direct us to any external evidence; they appeal each to his own subjective feelings. One says, the succession C, B, appears to me more natural, conceivable, and credible per se, than the succession A, B; you are therefore mistaken in thinking that B depends upon A; I am certain, though I can give no other evidence of it, that C comes in between A and B, and is the real and only cause of B. The other answers—the successions C, B, and A, B, appear to me equally natural and conceivable, or the latter more so than the former: A is quite capable of producing B without any other intervention. A third agrees with the first in being unable to conceive that A can produce B, but finds the sequence D, B, still more natural than C, B, or of nearer kin to the subject matter, and prefers his D theory to the C theory. It is plain that there is no universal law operating here, except the law that each person's conceptions are governed and limited by his individual experience and habits of thought. We are warranted in saying of all three, what each of them already believes of the other two, namely, that they exalt into an original law of the human intellect and of outward nature, one particular sequence of phenomena, which appears to them more natural and more conceivable than other sequences, only because it is more familiar. And from this judgment I am unable to except the theory, that Volition is an Efficient Cause.
I am unwilling to leave the subject without adverting to the additional fallacy contained in the corollary from this theory; in the inference that because Volition is an efficient cause, therefore it is the only cause, and the direct agent in producing even what is apparently produced by something else. Volitions are not known to produce anything directly except nervous action, for the will influences even the muscles only through the nerves. Though it were granted, then, that every phenomenon has an efficient, and not merely a phenomenal cause, and that volition, in the case of the peculiar phenomena which are known to be produced by it, is that efficient cause; are we therefore to say, with these writers, that since we know of no other efficient cause, and ought not to assume one without evidence, there is no other, and volition is the direct cause of all phenomena? A more outrageous stretch of inference could hardly be made. Because among the infinite variety of the phenomena of nature there is one, namely, a particular mode of action of certain nerves, which has for its cause, and as we are now supposing for its efficient cause, a state of our mind; and because this is the only efficient cause of which we are conscious, being the only one of which in the nature of the case we can be conscious, since it is the only one which exists within ourselves; does this justify us in concluding that all other phenomena must have the same kind of efficient cause with that one eminently special, narrow, and peculiarly human or animal, phenomenon? The nearest parallel to this specimen of generalization is suggested by the recently revived controversy on the old subject of Plurality of Worlds, in which the contending parties have been so conspicuously successful in overthrowing one another. Here also we have experience only of a single case, that of the world in which we live, but that this is inhabited we know absolutely, and without possibility of doubt. Now if on this evidence any one were to infer that every heavenly body without exception, sun, planet, satellite, comet, fixed star or nebula, is inhabited, and must be so from the inherent constitution of things, his inference would exactly resemble that of the writers who conclude that because volition is the efficient cause of our own bodily motions, it must be the efficient cause of everything else in the universe. It is true there are cases in which, with acknowledged propriety, we generalize from a single instance to a multitude of instances. But they must be instances which resemble the one known instance, and not such as have no circumstance in common with it except that of being instances. I have, for example, no direct evidence that any creature is alive except myself: yet I attribute, with full assurance, life and sensation to other human beings and animals. But I do not conclude that all other things are alive merely because I am. I ascribe to certain other creatures a life like my own, because they manifest it by the same sort of indications by which mine is manifested. I find that their phenomena and mine conform to the same laws, and it is for this reason that I believe both to arise from a similar cause. Accordingly I do not extend the conclusion beyond the grounds for it. Earth, fire, mountains, trees, are remarkable agencies, but their phenomena do not conform to the same laws as my actions do, and I therefore do not believe earth or fire, mountains or trees, to possess animal life. But the supporters of the Volition Theory ask us to infer that volition causes everything, for no reason except that it causes one particular thing; although that one phenomenon, far from being a type of all natural phenomena, is eminently peculiar; its laws bearing scarcely any resemblance to those of any other phenomenon, whether of inorganic or of organic nature.
NOTE SUPPLEMENTARY TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER.
The author of the Second Burnett Prize Essay (Dr. Tulloch), who has employed a considerable number of pages in controverting the doctrines of the preceding chapter, has somewhat surprised me by denying a fact, which I imagined too well known to require proof—that there have been philosophers who found in physical explanations of phenomena the same complete mental satisfaction which we are told is only given by volitional explanation, and others who denied the Volitional Theory on the same ground of inconceivability on which it is defended. The assertion of the Essayist is countersigned still more positively by an able reviewer of the Essay:[27] "Two illustrations," says the reviewer, "are advanced by Mr. Mill: the case of Thales and Anaximenes, stated by him to have maintained, the one Moisture and the other Air to be the origin of all things; and that of Descartes and Leibnitz, whom he asserts to have found the action of Mind upon Matter the grand inconceivability. In counterstatement as to the first of these cases the author shows—what we believe now hardly admits of doubt—that the Greek philosophers distinctly recognised as beyond and above their primal material source, the νοῦς, or Divine Intelligence, as the efficient and originating Source of all: and as to the second, by proof that it was the mode, not the fact, of that action on matter, which was represented as inconceivable."
A greater quantity of historical error has seldom been comprised in a single sentence. With regard to Thales, the assertion that he considered water as a mere material in the hands of νοῦς rests on a passage of Cicero de Naturâ Deorum: and whoever will refer to any of the accurate historians of philosophy, will find that they treat this as a mere fancy of Cicero, resting on no authority, opposed to all the evidence; and make surmises as to the manner in which Cicero may have been led into the error. (See Ritter, vol. i. p. 211, 2nd ed.; Brandis, vol. i. pp. 118-9, 1st ed.; Preller, Historia Philosophiæ Græco-Romanæ, p. 10. "Schiefe Ansicht, durchaus zu verwerfen;" "augenscheinlich folgernd statt zu berichten;" "quibus vera sententia Thaletis plane detorquetur;" are the expressions of these writers.) As for Anaximenes, he, even according to Cicero, maintained, not that air was the material out of which God made the world, but that the air was a god: "Anaximenes aëra deum statuit:" or according to St. Augustine, that it was the material out of which the gods were made; "non tamen ab ipsis [Diis] aërem factum, sed ipsos ex aëre ortos credidit." Those who are not familiar with the metaphysical terminology of antiquity, must not be misled by finding it stated that Anaximenes attributed ψυχὴ (translated soul, or life) to his universal element, the air. The Greek philosophers acknowledged several kinds of ψυχὴ, the nutritive, the sensitive, and the intellective.[28] Even the moderns with admitted correctness attribute life to plants. As far as we can make out the meaning of Anaximenes, he made choice of Air as the universal agent, on the ground that it is perpetually in motion, without any apparent cause external to itself: so that he conceived it as exercising spontaneous force, and as the principle of life and activity in all things, men and gods inclusive. If this be not representing it as the Efficient Cause, the dispute altogether has no meaning.
If either Anaximenes, or Thales, or any of their cotemporaries, had held the doctrine that νοῦς was the Efficient Cause, that doctrine could not have been reputed, as it was throughout antiquity, to have originated with Anaxagoras. The testimony of Aristotle, in the first book of his Metaphysics, is perfectly decisive with respect to these early speculations. After enumerating four kinds of causes, or rather four different meanings of the word Cause, viz. the Essence of a thing, the Matter of it, the Origin of Motion (Efficient Cause), and the End or Final Cause, he proceeds to say, that most of the early philosophers recognised only the second kind of Cause, the Matter of a thing, τὰς ἐν ὕλης εἴδει μόνας ᾠήθησαν ἀρχὰς εἶναι πάντων. As his first example he specifies Thales, whom he describes as taking the lead in this view of the subject, ὁ τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχηγὸς φιλοσοφίας, and goes on to Hippon, Anaximenes, Diogenes (of Apollonia), Hippasus of Metapontum, Heraclitus, and Empedocles. Anaxagoras, however, (he proceeds to say,) taught a different doctrine, as we know, and it is alleged that Hermotimus of Clazomenæ taught it before him. Anaxagoras represented, that even if these various theories of the universal material were true, there would be need of some other cause to account for the transformations of the material, since the material cannot originate its own changes: οὐ γὰρ δὴ τό γε ὑποκείμενον αὐτὸ ποιεῖ μεταβάλλειν ἑαῦτο; λέγω δ' οἶον οὔτε τὸ ξύλον οὔτε ὅ χαλκὸς αἴτιος τοῦ μεταβάλλειν έκάτερον αὐτῶν, οὐδὲ ποιεῖ τὸ μἑν ξύλον κλίνην ὅ δέ χαλκὸς ἀνδριάντα, ἀλλ' ἑτερον τι τῆς μεταβολῆς αἴτιον, viz., the other kind of cause, ὅθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως—an Efficient Cause. Aristotle expresses great approbation of this doctrine (which he says made its author appear the only sober man among persons raving, οἶον νήφων ἐφάνη παρ' εἰκῆ λέγοντας τοῦς πρότερον); but while describing the influence which it exercised over subsequent speculation, he remarks that the philosophers against whom this, as he thinks, insuperable difficulty was urged, had not felt it to be any difficulty: οὐδὲν ἐδυσχεράναν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς. It is surely unnecessary to say more in proof of the matter of fact which Dr. Tulloch and his reviewer deny.
Having pointed out what he thinks the error of these early speculators in not recognising the need of an efficient cause, Aristotle goes on to mention two other efficient causes to which they might have had recourse, instead of intelligence: τύχη, chance, and τὸ αὐτομάτον, spontaneity. He indeed puts these aside as not sufficiently worthy causes for the order in the universe, οὐδ' αὖ τῷ αὐτομάτῳ καὶ τῇ τύχῃ τοσοῦτον ἐπιτρέψαι πρᾶγμα καλῶς εἶχεν: but he does not reject them as incapable of producing any effect, but only as incapable of producing that effect. He himself recognises τύχη and τὸ αὐτομάτον as co-ordinate agents with Mind in producing the phenomena of the universe; the department allotted to them being composed of all the classes of phenomena which are not supposed to follow any uniform law. By thus including Chance among efficient causes, Aristotle fell into an error which philosophy has now outgrown, but which is by no means so alien to the spirit even of modern speculation as it may at first sight appear. Up to quite a recent period philosophers went on ascribing, and many of them have not yet ceased to ascribe, a real existence to the results of abstraction. Chance could make out as good a title to that dignity as many other of the mind's abstract creations: it had had a name given to it, and why should it not be a reality? As for τὸ αὐτομάτον, it is recognised even yet as one of the modes of origination of phenomena, by all those thinkers who maintain what is called the Freedom of the Will. The same self-determining power which that doctrine attributes to volitions, was supposed by the ancients to be possessed also by some other natural phenomena: a circumstance which throws considerable light on more than one of the supposed invincible necessities of belief. I have introduced it here, because this belief of Aristotle, or rather of the Greek philosophers generally, is as fatal as the doctrines of Thales and the Ionic school, to the theory that the human mind is compelled by its constitution to conceive volition as the origin of all force, and the efficient cause of all phenomena.[29]
With regard to the modern philosophers (Leibnitz and the Cartesians) whom I had cited as having maintained that the action of mind upon matter, so far from being the only conceivable origin of material phenomena, is itself inconceivable; the attempt to rebut this argument by asserting that the mode, not the fact, of the action of mind on matter was represented as inconceivable, is an abuse of the privilege of writing confidently about authors without reading them: for any knowledge whatever of Leibnitz would have taught those who thus speak of him, that the inconceivability of the mode, and the impossibility of the thing, were in his mind convertible expressions. What was his famous Principle of the Sufficient Reason, the very corner stone of his philosophy, from which the Preestablished Harmony, the doctrine of Monads, and all the opinions most characteristic of Leibnitz, were corollaries? It was, that nothing exists, the existence of which is not capable of being proved and explained à priori; the proof and explanation in the case of contingent facts being derived from the nature of their causes; which could not be the causes unless there was something in their nature showing them to be capable of producing those particular effects. And this "something" which accounts for the production of physical effects, he was able to find in many physical causes, but could not find it in any finite minds, which therefore he unhesitatingly asserted to be incapable of producing any physical effects whatever. "On ne saurait concevoir," he says, "une action réciproque de la matière et de l'intelligence l'une sur l'autre," and there is therefore (he contends) no choice but between the Occasional Causes of the Cartesians, and his own Preestablished Harmony, according to which there is no more connexion between our volitions and our muscular actions than there is between two clocks which are wound up to strike at the same instant. But he felt no similar difficulty as to physical causes: and throughout his speculations, as in the passage I have already cited respecting gravitation, he distinctly refuses to consider as part of the order of nature any fact which is not explicable from the nature of its physical cause.
With regard to the Cartesians (not Descartes; I did not make that mistake, though the reviewer of Dr. Tulloch's Essay attributes it to me) I take a passage almost at random from Malebranche, who is the best known of the Cartesians, and, though not the inventor of the system of Occasional Causes, is its principal expositor. In Part 2, chap. 3, of his Sixth Book, having first said that matter cannot have the power of moving itself, he proceeds to argue that neither can mind have the power of moving it. "Quand on examine l'idée que l'on a de tous les esprits finis, on ne voit point de liaison nécessaire entre leur volonté et le mouvement de quelque corps que ce soit, on voit au contraire qu'il n'y en a point, et qu'il n'y en peut avoir;" (there is nothing in the idea of finite mind which can account for its causing the motion of a body;) "on doit aussi conclure, si on veut raisonner selon ses lumières, qu'il n'y a aucun esprit créé qui puisse remuer quelque corps que ce soit comme cause véritable ou principale, de même que l'on a dit qu'aucun corps ne se pouvait remuer soi-même:" thus the idea of Mind is according to him as incompatible as the idea of Matter with the exercise of active force. But when, he continues, we consider not a created but a Divine Mind, the case is altered; for the idea of a Divine Mind includes omnipotence; and the idea of omnipotence does contain the idea of being able to move bodies. Thus it is the nature of omnipotence which renders the motion of bodies even by the divine mind credible or conceivable, while, so far as depended on the mere nature of mind, it would have been inconceivable and incredible. If Malebranche had not believed in an omnipotent being, he would have held all action of mind on body to be a demonstrated impossibility.[30]
A doctrine more precisely the reverse of the Volitional theory of causation cannot well be imagined. The volitional theory is, that we know by intuition or by direct experience the action of our own mental volitions on matter; that we may hence infer all other action upon matter to be that of volition, and might thus know, without any other evidence, that matter is under the government of a divine mind. Leibnitz and the Cartesians, on the contrary, maintain that our volitions do not and cannot act upon matter, and that it is only the existence of an all-governing Being, and that Being omnipotent, which can account for the sequence between our volitions and our bodily actions. When we consider that each of these two theories, which, as theories of causation, stand at the opposite extremes of possible divergence from one another, invokes not only as its evidence, but as its sole evidence, the absolute inconceivability of any theory but itself, we are enabled to measure the worth of this kind of evidence; and when we find the Volitional theory entirely built upon the assertion that by our mental constitution we are compelled to recognise our volitions as efficient causes, and then find other thinkers maintaining that we know that they are not, and cannot be such causes, and cannot conceive them to be so, I think we have a right to say, that this supposed law of our mental constitution does not exist.
Dr. Tulloch (pp. 45-7) thinks it a sufficient answer to this, that Leibnitz and the Cartesians were Theists, and believed the will of God to be an efficient cause. Doubtless they did, and the Cartesians even believed, though Leibnitz did not, that it is the only such cause. Dr. Tulloch mistakes the nature of the question. I was not writing on Theism, as Dr. Tulloch is, but against a particular theory of causation, which if it be unfounded, can give no effective support to Theism or to anything else. I found it asserted that volition is the only efficient cause, on the ground that no other efficient cause is conceivable. To this assertion I oppose the instances of Leibnitz and of the Cartesians, who affirmed with equal positiveness that volition as an efficient cause is itself not conceivable, and that omnipotence, which renders all things conceivable, can alone take away the impossibility. This I thought, and think, a conclusive answer to the argument on which this theory of causation avowedly depends. But I certainly did not imagine that Theism was bound up with that theory; nor expected to be charged with denying Leibnitz and the Cartesians to be Theists because I denied that they held the theory.
§ 1. To complete the general notion of causation on which the rules of experimental inquiry into the laws of nature must be founded, one distinction still remains to be pointed out: a distinction so radical, and of so much importance, as to require a chapter to itself.
The preceding discussions have rendered us familiar with the case in which several agents, or causes, concur as conditions to the production of an effect: a case, in truth, almost universal, there being very few effects to the production of which no more than one agent contributes. Suppose, then, that two different agents, operating jointly, are followed, under a certain set of collateral conditions, by a given effect. If either of these agents, instead of being joined with the other, had operated alone, under the same set of conditions in all other respects, some effect would probably have followed; which would have been different from the joint effect of the two, and more or less dissimilar to it. Now, if we happen to know what would be the effect of each cause when acting separately from the other, we are often able to arrive deductively, or à priori, at a correct prediction of what will arise from their conjunct agency. To enable us to do this, it is only necessary that the same law which expresses the effect of each cause acting by itself, shall also correctly express the part due to that cause, of the effect which follows from the two together. This condition is realized in the extensive and important class of phenomena commonly called mechanical, namely the phenomena of the communication of motion (or of pressure, which is tendency to motion) from one body to another. In this important class of cases of causation, one cause never, properly speaking, defeats or frustrates another; both have their full effect. If a body is propelled in two directions by two forces, one tending to drive it to the north and the other to the east, it is caused to move in a given time exactly as far in both directions as the two forces would separately have carried it; and is left precisely where it would have arrived if it had been acted upon first by one of the two forces, and afterwards by the other. This law of nature is called, in dynamics, the principle of the Composition of Forces: and in imitation of that well-chosen expression, I shall give the name of the Composition of Causes to the principle which is exemplified in all cases in which the joint effect of several causes is identical with the sum of their separate effects.
This principle, however, by no means prevails in all departments of the field of nature. The chemical combination of two substances produces, as is well known, a third substance with properties entirely different from those of either of the two substances separately, or both of them taken together. Not a trace of the properties of hydrogen or of oxygen is observable in those of their compound, water. The taste of sugar of lead is not the sum of the tastes of its component elements, acetic acid and lead or its oxide; nor is the colour of blue vitriol a mixture of the colours of sulphuric acid and copper. This explains why mechanics is a deductive or demonstrative science, and chemistry not. In the one, we can compute the effects of all combinations of causes, whether real or hypothetical, from the laws which we know to govern those causes when acting separately; because they continue to observe the same laws when in combination which they observed when separate: whatever would have happened in consequence of each cause taken by itself, happens when they are together, and we have only to cast up the results. Not so in the phenomena which are the peculiar subject of the science of chemistry. There, most of the uniformities to which the causes conformed when separate, cease altogether when they are conjoined; and we are not, at least in the present state of our knowledge, able to foresee what result will follow from any new combination, until we have tried the specific experiment.
If this be true of chemical combinations, it is still more true of those far more complex combinations of elements which constitute organized bodies; and in which those extraordinary new uniformities arise, which are called the laws of life. All organized bodies are composed of parts similar to those composing inorganic nature, and which have even themselves existed in an inorganic state; but the phenomena of life, which result from the juxtaposition of those parts in a certain manner, bear no analogy to any of the effects which would be produced by the action of the component substances considered as mere physical agents. To whatever degree we might imagine our knowledge of the properties of the several ingredients of a living body to be extended and perfected, it is certain that no mere summing up of the separate actions of those elements will ever amount to the action of the living body itself. The tongue, for instance, is, like all other parts of the animal frame, composed of gelatine, fibrin, and other products of the chemistry of digestion, but from no knowledge of the properties of those substances could we ever predict that it could taste, unless gelatine or fibrin could themselves taste; for no elementary fact can be in the conclusion, which was not in the premises.
There are thus two different modes of the conjunct action of causes; from which arise two modes of conflict, or mutual interference, between laws of nature. Suppose, at a given point of time and space, two or more causes, which, if they acted separately, would produce effects contrary, or at least conflicting with each other; one of them tending to undo, wholly or partially, what the other tends to do. Thus, the expansive force of the gases generated by the ignition of gunpowder tends to project a bullet towards the sky, while its gravity tends to make it fall to the ground. A stream running into a reservoir at one end tends to fill it higher and higher, while a drain at the other extremity tends to empty it. Now, in such cases as these, even if the two causes which are in joint action exactly annul one another, still the laws of both are fulfilled; the effect is the same as if the drain had been open for half an hour first,[31] and the stream had flowed in for as long afterwards. Each agent produced the same amount of effect as if it had acted separately, though the contrary effect which was taking place during the same time obliterated it as fast as it was produced. Here then are two causes, producing by their joint operation an effect which at first seems quite dissimilar to those which they produce separately, but which on examination proves to be really the sum of those separate effects. It will be noticed that we here enlarge the idea of the sum of two effects, so as to include what is commonly called their difference, but which is in reality the result of the addition of opposites; a conception to which mankind are indebted for that admirable extension of the algebraical calculus, which has so vastly increased its powers as an instrument of discovery, by introducing into its reasonings (with the sign of subtraction prefixed, and under the name of Negative Quantities) every description whatever of positive phenomena, provided they are of such a quality in reference to those previously introduced, that to add the one is equivalent to subtracting an equal quantity of the other.
There is, then, one mode of the mutual interference of laws of nature, in which, even when the concurrent causes annihilate each other's effects, each exerts its full efficacy according to its own law, its law as a separate agent. But in the other description of cases, the agencies which are brought together cease entirely, and a totally different set of phenomena arise: as in the experiment of two liquids which, when mixed in certain proportions, instantly become, not a larger amount of liquid, but a solid mass.
§ 2. This difference between the case in which the joint effect of causes is the sum of their separate effects, and the case in which it is heterogeneous to them; between laws which work together without alteration, and laws which, when called upon to work together, cease and give place to others; is one of the fundamental distinctions in nature. The former case, that of the Composition of Causes, is the general one; the other is always special and exceptional. There are no objects which do not, as to some of their phenomena, obey the principle of the Composition of Causes; none that have not some laws which are rigidly fulfilled in every combination into which the objects enter. The weight of a body, for instance, is a property which it retains in all the combinations in which it is placed. The weight of a chemical compound, or of an organized body, is equal to the sum of the weights of the elements which compose it. The weight either of the elements or of the compound will vary, if they be carried farther from their centre of attraction, or brought nearer to it; but whatever affects the one affects the other. They always remain precisely equal. So again, the component parts of a vegetable or animal substance do not lose their mechanical and chemical properties as separate agents, when, by a peculiar mode of juxtaposition, they, as an aggregate whole, acquire physiological or vital properties in addition. Those bodies continue, as before, to obey mechanical and chemical laws, in so far as the operation of those laws is not counteracted by the new laws which govern them as organized beings. When, in short, a concurrence of causes takes place which calls into action new laws bearing no analogy to any that we can trace in the separate operation of the causes, the new laws, while they supersede one portion of the previous laws, may coexist with another portion, and may even compound the effect of those previous laws with their own.
Again, laws which were themselves generated in the second mode, may generate others in the first. Though there are laws which, like those of chemistry and physiology, owe their existence to a breach of the principle of Composition of Causes, it does not follow that these peculiar, or as they might be termed, heteropathic laws, are not capable of composition with one another. The causes which by one combination have had their laws altered, may carry their new laws with them unaltered into their ulterior combinations. And hence there is no reason to despair of ultimately raising chemistry and physiology to the condition of deductive sciences; for though it is impossible to deduce all chemical and physiological truths from the laws or properties of simple substances or elementary agents, they may possibly be deducible from laws which commence when these elementary agents are brought together into some moderate number of not very complex combinations. The Laws of Life will never be deducible from the mere laws of the ingredients, but the prodigiously complex Facts of Life may all be deducible from comparatively simple laws of life; which laws (depending indeed on combinations, but on comparatively simple combinations, of antecedents) may, in more complex circumstances, be strictly compounded with one another, and with the physical and chemical laws of the ingredients. The details of the vital phenomena, even now, afford innumerable exemplifications of the Composition of Causes; and in proportion as these phenomena are more accurately studied, there appears more reason to believe that the same laws which operate in the simpler combinations of circumstances do, in fact, continue to be observed in the more complex. This will be found equally true in the phenomena of mind; and even in social and political phenomena, the results of the laws of mind. It is in the case of chemical phenomena that the least progress has yet been made in bringing the special laws under general ones from which they may be deduced; but there are even in chemistry many circumstances to encourage the hope that such general laws will hereafter be discovered. The different actions of a chemical compound will never, undoubtedly, be found to be the sums of the actions of its separate elements; but there may exist, between the properties of the compound and those of its elements, some constant relation, which, if discoverable by a sufficient induction, would enable us to foresee the sort of compound which will result from a new combination before we have actually tried it, and to judge of what sort of elements some new substance is compounded before we have analysed it. The law of definite proportions, first discovered in its full generality by Dalton, is a complete solution of this problem in one, though but a secondary aspect, that of quantity: and in respect to quality, we have already some partial generalizations sufficient to indicate the possibility of ultimately proceeding farther. We can predicate some common properties of the kind of compounds which result from the combination, in each of the small number of possible proportions, of any acid whatever with any base. We have also the curious law, discovered by Berthollet, that two soluble salts mutually decompose one another whenever the new combinations which result produce an insoluble compound, or one less soluble than the two former. Another uniformity is that called the law of isomorphism; the identity of the crystalline forms of substances which possess in common certain peculiarities of chemical composition. Thus it appears that even heteropathic laws, such laws of combined agency as are not compounded of the laws of the separate agencies, are yet, at least in some cases, derived from them according to a fixed principle. There may, therefore, be laws of the generation of laws from others dissimilar to them; and in chemistry, these undiscovered laws of the dependence of the properties of the compound on the properties of its elements, may, together with the laws of the elements themselves, furnish the premises by which the science is perhaps destined one day to be rendered deductive.
It would seem, therefore, that there is no class of phenomena in which the Composition of Causes does not obtain: that as a general rule, causes in combination produce exactly the same effects as when acting singly: but that this rule, though general, is not universal: that in some instances, at some particular points in the transition from separate to united action, the laws change, and an entirely new set of effects are either added to, or take the place of, those which arise from the separate agency of the same causes: the laws of these new effects being again susceptible of composition, to an indefinite extent, like the laws which they superseded.
§ 3. That effects are proportional to their causes is laid down by some writers as an axiom in the theory of causation; and great use is sometimes made of this principle in reasonings respecting the laws of nature, though it is incumbered with many difficulties and apparent exceptions, which much ingenuity has been expended in showing not to be real ones. This proposition, in so far as it is true, enters as a particular case into the general principle of the Composition of Causes; the causes compounded being, in this instance, homogeneous; in which case, if in any, their joint effect might be expected to be identical with the sum of their separate effects. If a force equal to one hundred weight will raise a certain body along an inclined plane, a force equal to two hundred weight will raise two bodies exactly similar, and thus the effect is proportional to the cause. But does not a force equal to two hundred weight actually contain in itself two forces each equal to one hundred weight, which, if employed apart, would separately raise the two bodies in question? The fact, therefore, that when exerted jointly they raise both bodies at once, results from the Composition of Causes, and is a mere instance of the general fact that mechanical forces are subject to the law of Composition. And so in every other case which can be supposed. For the doctrine of the proportionality of effects to their causes cannot of course be applicable to cases in which the augmentation of the cause alters the kind of effect; that is, in which the surplus quantity superadded to the cause does not become compounded with it, but the two together generate an altogether new phenomenon. Suppose that the application of a certain quantity of heat to a body merely increases its bulk, that a double quantity melts it, and a triple quantity decomposes it: these three effects being heterogeneous, no ratio, whether corresponding or not to that of the quantities of heat applied, can be established between them. Thus the supposed axiom of the proportionality of effects to their causes fails at the precise point where the principle of the Composition of Causes also fails; viz., where the concurrence of causes is such as to determine a change in the properties of the body generally, and render it subject to new laws, more or less dissimilar to those to which it conformed in its previous state. The recognition, therefore, of any such law of proportionality, is superseded by the more comprehensive principle, in which as much of it as is true is implicitly asserted.
The general remarks on causation, which seemed necessary as an introduction to the theory of the inductive process, may here terminate. That process is essentially an inquiry into cases of causation. All the uniformities which exist in the succession of phenomena, and most of the uniformities in their coexistence, are either, as we have seen, themselves laws of causation, or consequences resulting from, and corollaries capable of being deduced from, such laws. If we could determine what causes are correctly assigned to what effects, and what effects to what causes, we should be virtually acquainted with the whole course of nature. All those uniformities which are mere results of causation, might then be explained and accounted for; and every individual fact or event might be predicted, provided we had the requisite data, that is, the requisite knowledge of the circumstances which, in the particular instance, preceded it.
To ascertain, therefore, what are the laws of causation which exist in nature; to determine the effect of every cause, and the causes of all effects,—is the main business of Induction; and to point out how this is done is the chief object of Inductive Logic.
§ 1. It results from the preceding exposition, that the process of ascertaining what consequents, in nature, are invariably connected with what antecedents, or in other words what phenomena are related to each other as causes and effects, is in some sort a process of analysis. That every fact which begins to exist has a cause, and that this cause must be found somewhere among the facts which immediately preceded the occurrence, may be taken for certain. The whole of the present facts are the infallible result of all past facts, and more immediately of all the facts which existed at the moment previous. Here, then, is a great sequence, which we know to be uniform. If the whole prior state of the entire universe could again recur, it would again be followed by the present state. The question is, how to resolve this complex uniformity into the simpler uniformities which compose it, and assign to each portion of the vast antecedent the portion of the consequent which is attendant on it.
This operation, which we have called analytical, inasmuch as it is the resolution of a complex whole into the component elements, is more than a merely mental analysis. No mere contemplation of the phenomena, and partition of them by the intellect alone, will of itself accomplish the end we have now in view. Nevertheless, such a mental partition is an indispensable first step. 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. This, supposing it done, will not of itself tell us on which of the antecedents each consequent is invariably attendant. To determine that point, we must endeavour to effect a separation of the facts from one another, not in our minds only, but in nature. The mental analysis, however, must take place first. And every one knows that in the mode of performing it, one intellect differs immensely from another. It is the essence of the act of observing; for the observer is not he who merely sees the thing which is before his eyes, but he who sees what parts that thing is composed of. To do this well is a rare talent. One person, from inattention, or attending only in the wrong place, overlooks half of what he sees: another sets down much more than he sees, confounding it with what he imagines, or with what he infers; another takes note of the kind of all the circumstances, but being inexpert in estimating their degree, leaves the quantity of each vague and uncertain; another sees indeed the whole, but makes such an awkward division of it into parts, throwing things into one mass which require to be separated, and separating others which might more conveniently be considered as one, that the result is much the same, sometimes even worse, than if no analysis had been attempted at all. It would be possible to point out what qualities of mind, and modes of mental culture, fit a person for being a good observer: that, however, is a question not of Logic, but of the Theory of Education, in the most enlarged sense of the term. There is not properly an Art of Observing. There may be rules for observing. But these, like rules for inventing, are properly instructions for the preparation of one's own mind; for putting it into the state in which it will be most fitted to observe, or most likely to invent. They are, therefore, essentially rules of self-education, which is a different thing from Logic. They do not teach how to do the thing, but how to make ourselves capable of doing it. They are an art of strengthening the limbs, not an art of using them.
The extent and minuteness of observation which may be requisite, and the degree of decomposition to which it may be necessary to carry the mental analysis, depend on the particular purpose in view. To ascertain the state of the whole universe at any particular moment is impossible, but would also be useless. In making chemical experiments, we do not think it necessary to note the position of the planets; because experience has shown, as a very superficial experience is sufficient to show, that in such cases that circumstance is not material to the result: and, accordingly, in the ages when men believed in the occult influences of the heavenly bodies, it might have been unphilosophical to omit ascertaining the precise condition of those bodies at the moment of the experiment. As to the degree of minuteness of the mental subdivision; if we were obliged to break down what we observe into its very simplest elements, that is, literally into single facts, it would be difficult to say where we should find them: we can hardly ever affirm that our divisions of any kind have reached the ultimate unit. But this too is fortunately unnecessary. The only object of the mental separation is to suggest the requisite physical separation, so that we may either accomplish it ourselves, or seek for it in nature; and we have done enough when we have carried the subdivision as far as the point at which we are able to see what observations or experiments we require. It is only essential, at whatever point our mental decomposition of facts may for the present have stopped, that we should hold ourselves ready and able to carry it farther as occasion requires, and should not allow the freedom of our discriminating faculty to be imprisoned by the swathes and bands of ordinary classification; as was the case with all early speculative inquirers, not excepting the Greeks, to whom it seldom occurred that what was called by one abstract name might, in reality, be several phenomena, or that there was a possibility of decomposing the facts of the universe into any elements but those which ordinary language already recognised.
§ 2. The different antecedents and consequents, being, then, supposed to be, so far as the case requires, ascertained and discriminated from one another; we are to inquire which is connected with which. In every instance which comes under our observation, there are many antecedents and many consequents. If those antecedents could not be severed from one another except in thought, or if those consequents never were found apart, it would be impossible for us to distinguish (à posteriori at least) the real laws, or to assign to any cause its effect, or to any effect its cause. To do so, we must be able to meet with some of the antecedents apart from the rest, and observe what follows from them; or some of the consequents, and observe by what they are preceded. We must, in short, follow the Baconian rule of varying the circumstances. This is, indeed, only the first rule of physical inquiry, and not, as some have thought, the sole rule; but it is the foundation of all the rest.
For the purpose of varying the circumstances, we may have recourse (according to a distinction commonly made) either to observation or to experiment; we may either find an instance in nature, suited to our purposes, or, by an artificial arrangement of circumstances, make one. The value of the instance depends on what it is in itself, not on the mode in which it is obtained: its employment for the purposes of induction depends on the same principles in the one case and in the other; as the uses of money are the same whether it is inherited or acquired. There is, in short, no difference in kind, no real logical distinction, between the two processes of investigation. There are, however, practical distinctions to which it is of considerable importance to advert.
§ 3. The first and most obvious distinction between Observation and Experiment is, that the latter is an immense extension of the former. It not only enables us to produce a much greater number of variations in the circumstances than nature spontaneously offers, but also, in thousands of cases, to produce the precise sort of variation which we are in want of for discovering the law of the phenomenon; a service which nature, being constructed on a quite different scheme from that of facilitating our studies, is seldom so friendly as to bestow upon us. For example, in order to ascertain what principle in the atmosphere enables it to sustain life, the variation we require is that a living animal should be immersed in each component element of the atmosphere separately. But nature does not supply either oxygen or azote in a separate state. We are indebted to artificial experiment for our knowledge that it is the former, and not the latter, which supports respiration; and for our knowledge of the very existence of the two ingredients.
Thus far the advantage of experimentation over simple observation is universally recognised: all are aware that it enables us to obtain innumerable combinations of circumstances which are not to be found in nature, and so add to nature's experiments a multitude of experiments of our own. But there is another superiority (or, as Bacon would have expressed it, another prerogative) of instances artificially obtained over spontaneous instances,—of our own experiments over even the same experiments when made by nature,—which is not of less importance, and which is far from being felt and acknowledged in the same degree.
When we can produce a phenomenon artificially, we can take it, as it were, home with us, and observe it in the midst of circumstances with which in all other respects we are accurately acquainted. If we desire to know what are the effects of the cause A, and are able to produce A by means at our disposal, we can generally determine at our own discretion, so far as is compatible with the nature of the phenomenon A, the whole of the circumstances which shall be present along with it: and thus, knowing exactly the simultaneous state of everything else which is within the reach of A's influence, we have only to observe what alteration is made in that state by the presence of A.
For example, by the electric machine we can produce in the midst of known circumstances, the phenomena which nature exhibits on a grander scale in the form of lightning and thunder. Now let any one consider what amount of knowledge of the effects and laws of electric agency mankind could have obtained from the mere observation of thunder-storms, and compare it with that which they have gained, and may expect to gain, from electrical and galvanic experiments. This example is the more striking, now that we have reason to believe that electric action is of all natural phenomena (except heat) the most pervading and universal, which, therefore, it might antecedently have been supposed could stand least in need of artificial means of production to enable it to be studied; while the fact is so much the contrary, that without the electric machine, the Leyden jar, and the voltaic battery, we probably should never have suspected the existence of electricity as one of the great agents in nature; the few electric phenomena we should have known of would have continued to be regarded either as supernatural, or as a sort of anomalies and eccentricities in the order of the universe.