Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/88

 in the “sum.” Then, as before, in every case we have conditions beside the cause; and, as before, we are asked for a principle by which to effect the distinction between them. And, for myself, I return to the statement that I know of none which is sound. We seem to effect this distinction always to suit a certain purpose; and it appears to consist in our mere adoption of a special point of view.

But let us return to the consideration of passivity and activity. It is certain that nothing can be active without an occasion, and that what is active, being made thus by the occasion, is so far passive. The occasion, again, since it enters into the causal process—a thing it never would have done if left to itself—suffers a change from the cause; and it therefore itself is passive in its activity. If the cause is A, and the occasion B, then each is active or passive, according as you view the result as the expression of its nature, or as an adjective imported from outside.

And we are naturally brought here to a case where both these aspects seem to vanish. For suppose, as before, that we have A and B, which enter into one process, and let us call the result ACB. Here A will suffer a change, and so also will B; and each again may be said to produce change in the other. But if the nature of A was, before, Acb, and the nature of B was, before, Bca, we are brought to a pause. The ideas which we are applying are now plainly inadequate and likely to confuse us. To A and B themselves they might even appear to be ridiculous. How do I suffer a change, each would answer, if it is nothing else but what I will? We cannot adopt your points of view, since they seem at best quite irrelevant.

To pass to another head, the conclusion, which so far we have reached, seems to exclude the possibility of one thing by itself being active. Here we must