Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/554

 542 J. HUTCHISON STIRLING- : all that we wish explained. Hume never for a moment doubted that causality was a " real principle " ; but the whole relative work he set himself had its motive in him because of nothing but his conviction that causality was not, and could not be, independent of thought. It is really diffi- cult to understand how a Schelling could palm upon himself such uninitiated and inapplicable crudities. But these cru- dities may be now safely left to the reader himself to parti- cularise. Perhaps now, then, we may take it for granted that what is meant by necessity is, as regards the law of causality, sufficiently understood. Shortly to say it, it is a fact that there can be no effect without a cause, that a cause must originate its effect, or that between the cause A and the effect B the connexion is a necessary one. If the duality AB is a causal one, then that duality must so present itself : A must precede and B must follow. At any time A is, B ensues ; or B cannot be without A preceding it. The bond, the tie, between A and B is a necessary one. Kindle a fire and it is followed by light and heat. The sun rising, we have day; and setting, we have night. A cloud interposing, there is a shadow cast. Kain precedes the flood in the river. Cold freezes water, and heat melts ice, or converts water into steam. Salt dissolves in the glass, and sugar in the cup. Shut your shutters and you exclude the day-light. Turn off your gas, and the room is in darkness ; or just blow your candle out, and observe the result. All these are instances of causality, and no one can doubt that in each case the result, that is, the effect that follows, is a necessity of the case itself. Now this was the question that Hume put whence this necessity ? is there any reason we can give for it ? when we see the necessity can we see also the scientific ground on which it rests, and by which it is as plain to our understandings as, so to speak, it is, or at least seems, to our senses ? In a word, can we tell why it- is necessary that an effect should always have a cause ? That the law obtains, that the law actually is, that the law legiti- mately is, and that it is precisely that law which enables us to arrive at the enormous complex of knowledge, scientific and other, as it exists now, I have already quoted Hume's own words, not in admission only, but in unmistakable and even emphatic affirmation and assertion. But what he wants to have explained, what he wants light upon is the necessity. " Shall we then rest contented," he says (T., i., iii., ii,), "with these two relations of contiguity and suc- cession, as affording a complete idea of causation ? By no