Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/75

 from the cause, how is the ascription of this difference to be rationally defended? If, on the other hand, it is not different, then causation does not exist, and its assertion is a farce. There is no escape from this fundamental dilemma.

We have in the cause merely a fresh instance of compromise without principle, another case of pure makeshift. And it soon exhibits its nature. The cause was not mere $$A$$; that would be found too intolerable. The cause was $$A+C$$; but this combination seems meaningless. It is offered in the face of our result as to the nature of relations (Chapter iii.); and by that result it has already been undermined and ruined. But let us see how it proposes to go about its business. In “$$A+C$$ followed by $$B$$” the addition of $$C$$ makes a difference to $$A$$, or it makes no difference. Let us suppose, first, that it does make a difference to $$A$$. But, if so, then $$A$$ has already been altered; and hence the problem of causation breaks out within the very cause. $$A$$ and $$C$$ become $$A+C$$, and the old puzzle begins about the way in which $$A$$ and $$C$$ become other than they are. We are concerned here with $$A$$, but, of course, with $$C$$ there is the same difficulty. We are, therefore, driven to correct ourselves, and to say that, not $$A$$ and $$C$$ merely, but $$A$$ and $$C+D$$ become $$A+C$$, and so $$B$$. But here we perceive at once that we have fallen into endless regress within the cause. If the cause is to be the cause, there is some reason for its being thus, and so on indefinitely.

Or let us accept the other alternative. Let us assert boldly that in $$A+C$$, which is the cause of $$B$$, their relation makes no difference either to $$A$$ or to $$C$$, and yet accounts for the effect. Although the conjunction makes no difference, it justifies apparently our attribution to the cause of the difference expressed by the effect. But (to deal first with the cause) such a conjunction of elements has been shown (Chapter iii.) to be quite unintelligible. And