A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive Volume I Part 31

[21] To the universality which mankind are agreed in ascribing to the Law of Causation, there is one claim of exception, one disputed case, that of the Human Will; the determinations of which, a large cla.s.s of metaphysicians are not willing to regard as following the causes called motives, according to as strict laws as those which they suppose to exist in the world of mere matter. This controverted point will undergo a special examination when we come to treat particularly of the Logic of the Moral Sciences (Book vi. ch. 2). In the mean time I may remark that these metaphysicians, who, it must be observed, ground the main part of their objection on the supposed repugnance of the doctrine in question to our consciousness, seem to me to mistake the fact which consciousness testifies against. What is really in contradiction to consciousness, they would, I think, on strict self-examination, find to be, the application to human actions and volitions of the ideas involved in the common use of the term Necessity; which I agree with them in objecting to. But if they would consider that by saying that a person's actions _necessarily_ follow from his character, all that is really meant (for no more is meant in any case whatever of causation) is that he invariably _does_ act in conformity to his character, and that any one who thoroughly knew his character would certainly predict how he would act in any supposable case; they probably would not find this doctrine either contrary to their experience or revolting to their feelings. And no more than this is contended for by any one but an Asiatic fatalist.

[22] _Lectures on Metaphysics_, vol. ii. Lect. x.x.xix. pp. 391-2.

I regret that I cannot invoke the authority of Sir William Hamilton in favour of my own opinions on Causation, as I can against the particular theory which I am now combating. But that acute thinker has a theory of Causation peculiar to himself, which has never yet, as far as I know, been a.n.a.lytically examined, but which, I venture to think, admits of as complete refutation as any one of the false or insufficient psychological theories which strew the ground in such numbers under his potent metaphysical scythe. (Since examined and controverted in the sixteenth chapter of _An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_).

[23] Unless we are to consider as such the following statement, by one of the writers quoted in the text: "In the case of mental exertion, the result to be accomplished is preconsidered or meditated, and is therefore known _ priori_, or before experience."--(Bowen's _Lowell Lectures on the Application of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the Evidence of Religion_, Boston, 1849.) This is merely saying that when we will a thing we have an idea of it. But to have an idea of what we wish to happen, does not imply a prophetic knowledge that it will happen.

Perhaps it will be said that the _first time_ we exerted our will, when we had of course no experience of any of the powers residing in us, we nevertheless must already have known that we possessed them, since we cannot will that which we do not believe to be in our power. But the impossibility is perhaps in the words only, and not in the facts; for we may _desire_ what we do not know to be in our power; and finding by experience that our bodies move according to our _desire_, we may then, and only then, pa.s.s into the more complicated mental state which is termed will.

After all, even if we had an instinctive knowledge that our actions would follow our will, this, as Brown remarks, would prove nothing as to the nature of Causation. Our knowing, previous to experience, that an antecedent will be followed by a certain consequent, would not prove the relation between them to be anything more than antecedence and consequence.

[24] Reid's _Essays on the Active Powers_, Essay iv. ch. 3.

[25] _Prospective Review_ for February 1850.

[26] Vide supra, p. 270, note.

[27] _Westminster Review_ for October 1855.

[28] See the whole doctrine in Aristotle _de Anim_: where the _??ept???

????_ is treated as exactly equivalent to _??ept??? d??a??_.

[29] It deserves notice that the parts of nature, which Aristotle regards as presenting evidence of design, are the Uniformities: the phenomena in so far as reducible to law. _????_ and _t? a?t??t??_ satisfy him as explanations of the variable element in phenomena, but their occurring according to a fixed rule can only, to his conceptions, be accounted for by an Intelligent Will. The common, or what may be called the instinctive, religious interpretation of nature, is the reverse of this. The events in which men spontaneously see the hand of a supernatural being, are those which cannot, as they think, be reduced to a physical law. What they can distinctly connect with physical causes, and especially what they can predict, though of course ascribed to an Author of Nature if they already recognise such an author, might be conceived, they think, to arise from a blind fatality, and in any case do not appear to them to bear so obviously the mark of a divine will.

And this distinction has been countenanced by eminent writers on Natural Theology, in particular by Dr. Chalmers: who thinks that though design is present everywhere, the irresistible evidence of it is to be found not in the _laws_ of nature but in the collocations, _i.e._ in the part of nature in which it is impossible to trace any law. A few properties of dead matter might, he thinks, conceivably account for the regular and invariable succession of effects and causes; but that the different kinds of matter have been so placed as to promote beneficent ends, is what he regards as the proof of a Divine Providence. Mr. Baden Powell, in his Essay ent.i.tled "Philosophy of Creation," has returned to the point of view of Aristotle and the ancients, and vigorously rea.s.serts the doctrine that the indication of design in the universe is not special adaptations, but Uniformity and Law, these being the evidences of mind, and not what appears to us to be a provision for our uses.

While I decline to express any opinion here on this _vexata qustio_, I ought not to mention Mr. Powell's volume without the acknowledgment due to the philosophic spirit which pervades generally the three Essays composing it, forming in the case of one of them (the "Unity of Worlds") an honourable contrast with the other dissertations, so far as they have come under my notice, which have appeared on either side of that controversy.

[30] In the words of Fontenelle, another celebrated Cartesian, "les philosophes aussi bien que le peuple avaient cru que l'me et le corps agissaient rellement et physiquement l'un sur l'autre. Descartes vint, qui prouva que leur nature ne permettait point cette sorte de communication vritable, et qu'ils n'en pouvaient avoir qu'une apparente, dont Dieu tait le Mdiateur."--_uvres de Fontenelle_, ed. 1767, tom. v. p. 534.

[31] I omit, for simplicity, to take into account the effect, in this latter case, of the diminution of pressure, in diminis.h.i.+ng the flow of water through the drain; which evidently in no way affects the truth or applicability of the principle, since when the two causes act simultaneously the conditions of that diminution of pressure do not arise.

[32] Unless, indeed, the consequent was generated not by the antecedent, but by the means employed to produce the antecedent. As, however, these means are under our power, there is so far a probability that they are also sufficiently within our knowledge, to enable us to judge whether that could be the case or not.

[33] _Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy_, p. 179.

[34] For this speculation, as for many other of my scientific ill.u.s.trations, I am indebted to Professor Bain, of Aberdeen, who has since, in his profound treatises ent.i.tled "The Senses and the Intellect," and "The Emotions and the Will," carried the a.n.a.lytic investigation of the mental phenomena according to the methods of physical science, to the most advanced point which it has yet reached, and has worthily inscribed his name among the successive constructors of an edifice to which Hartley, Brown, and James Mill had each contributed their part.

[35] This view of the necessary coexistence of opposite excitements involves a great extension of the original doctrine of two electricities. The early theorists a.s.sumed that, when amber was rubbed, the amber was made positive and the rubber negative to the same degree; but it never occurred to them to suppose that the existence of the amber charge was dependent on an opposite charge in the bodies with which the amber was contiguous, while the existence of the negative charge on the rubber was equally dependent on a contrary state of the surfaces that might accidentally be confronted with it; that, in fact, in a case of electrical excitement by friction, four charges were the minimum that could exist. But this double electrical action is essentially implied in the explanation now universally adopted in regard to the phenomena of the common electric machine.

[36] Pp. 159-162.

[37] Infra, book iv. ch. ii. On Abstraction.

[38] I must, however, remark, that this example, which seems to militate against the a.s.sertion we made of the comparative inapplicability of the Method of Difference to cases of pure observation, is really one of those exceptions which, according to a proverbial expression, prove the general rule. For in this case, in which Nature, in her experiment, seems to have imitated the type of the experiments made by man, she has only succeeded in producing the likeness of man's most imperfect experiments; namely, those in which, though he succeeds in producing the phenomenon, he does so by employing complex means, which he is unable perfectly to a.n.a.lyse, and can form therefore no sufficient judgment what portion of the effects may be due, not to the supposed cause, but to some unknown agency of the means by which that cause was produced. In the natural experiment which we are speaking of, the means used was the clearing off a canopy of clouds; and we certainly do not know sufficiently in what this process consists, or on what it depends, to be certain _ priori_ that it might not operate upon the deposition of dew independently of any thermometric effect at the earth's surface. Even, therefore, in a case so favourable as this to Nature's experimental talents, her experiment is of little value except in corroboration of a conclusion already attained through other means.

[39] In his subsequent work, _Outlines of Astronomy_ ( 570), Sir John Herschel suggests another possible explanation of the acceleration of the revolution of a comet.

[40] Discourse, pp. 156-8, and 171.

[41] _Outlines of Astronomy_, 856.

[42] _Philosophy of Discovery_, pp. 263, 264.

[43] See, on this point, the second chapter of the present Book.

[44] Ante, ch. vii. 1.

[45] It seems hardly necessary to say that the word _impinge_, as a general term to express collision of forces, is here used by a figure of speech, and not as expressive of any theory respecting the nature of force.

[46] _Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy_, Essay V.

[47] _Vide_ Memoir by Thomas Graham, F.R.S., Master of the Mint, "On Liquid Diffusion Applied to a.n.a.lysis," in the _Philosophical Transactions_ for 1862, reprinted in the _Journal of the Chemical Society_, and also separately as a pamphlet.

[48] It was an old generalization in surgery, that tight bandaging had a tendency to prevent or dissipate local inflammation. This sequence, being, in the progress of physiological knowledge, resolved into more general laws, led to the important surgical invention made by Dr.

Arnott, the treatment of local inflammation and tumours by means of an equable pressure, produced by a bladder partially filled with air. The pressure, by keeping back the blood from the part, prevents the inflammation, or the tumour, from being nourished: in the case of inflammation, it removes the stimulus, which the organ is unfit to receive; in the case of tumours, by keeping back the nutritive fluid, it causes the absorption of matter to exceed the supply, and the diseased ma.s.s is gradually absorbed and disappears.

[49] Since acknowledged and reprinted in Mr. Martineau's _Miscellanies_.

[50] _Dissertations and Discussions_, vol. i., fourth paper.

[51] Written before the rise of the new views respecting the relation of heat to mechanical force; but confirmed rather than contradicted by them.

END OF VOL. I.