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 may be due to its inveterate habit of taking time determinations as final. When the effect is present, it says, the cause is past, and surely the past cannot be present. If we are to understand the conception of causality, however, we must rise above this naïve view; we must remember that we are looking for a connexion that is not broken by the passage of time, and that the externality of moments of time to one another cannot be the last word on the subject. If time enters at all its proper place is within the single content, not between two isolated facts with separate contents of their own. Further, one must rise above mere picture thinking. A material effect does not have a material reproduction of its cause inside it; we are dealing with conceptions, not with images. If a material thing is conceived as cause, it contains in its conception a reference to that which it produces; and if the two are separated in time it is only by thinking a unity which can transcend temporal distinctions that we can think of causality at all.

Secondly, we must note the other aspect. Following Hegel’s view of causa sui, we have seen that he regards cause and effect as one content. But this unity is not achieved at the expense of difference: such a course would imply