Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/76

 to the defence that it is only our own way of going on, the answer is twofold. If it is only our way, then, either it does not concern the thing at all, or else is admitted to be a mere practical makeshift. If, on the other hand, it is a way of ours with the thing which we are prepared to justify, let the justification be produced. But it cannot be produced in any form but in the proof that our thinking is consistent. On the other hand, the only reason for our hesitation above to attribute our view to reality seemed to lie in the fact that our view was not consistent. But, if so, it surely should not be our view. And, to pass now to the effect, the same reasoning there holds good. The sequence of a difference still remains entirely irrational. And, if we attempt here to take this difference upon ourselves, and to urge that it does not attach to the thing, but only to our view, the same result follows. For what is this but a manner of admitting politely that in reality there is no difference and is no causation, and that, in short, we are all agreed in finding causation to be makeshift and merely appearance? We are so far agreed, but we differ in our further conclusions. For I can discover no merit in an attitude which combines every vice of theory. It is forced to admit that the real world is left naked and empty; while it cannot pretend itself to support and to own the wealth of existence. Each party is robbed, and both parties are beggared.

The only positive result which has appeared from our effort to justify causation, seems to be the impossibility of isolating the cause or the effect. In endeavouring to make a defensible assertion, we have had to go beyond the connection as first we stated it. The cause $$A$$ not only recedes backwards in time, but it attempts laterally to take in more and more of existence. And we are tending to the doctrine that, to find a real cause, we must take the complete state of the world at one moment as this