Page:Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays.djvu/193

Rh In order to find out what philosophers commonly understand by "cause," I consulted Baldwin's Dictionary, and was rewarded beyond my expectations, for I found the following three mutually incompatible definitions:—

". (I) The necessary connection of events in the time-series. . ..

" (notion of). Whatever may be included in the thought or perception of a process as taking place in consequence of another process. . ..

". (I) Cause and effect . . . are correlative terms denoting any two distinguishable things, phases, or aspects of reality, which are so related to each other that whenever the first ceases to exist the second comes into existence immediately after, and whenever the second comes into existence the first has ceased to exist immediately before."

Let us consider these three definitions in turn. The first, obviously, is unintelligible without a definition of "necessary." Under this head, Baldwin's Dictionary gives the following:—

". That is necessary which not only is true, but would be true under all circumstances. Something more than brute compulsion is, therefore, involved in the conception; there is a general law under which the thing takes place."

The notion of cause is so intimately connected with that of necessity that it will be no digression to linger over the above definition, with a view to discovering, if possible, some meaning of which it is capable; for, as it stands, it is very far from having any definite signification.

The first point to notice is that, if any meaning is to be given to the phrase "would be true under all circumstances," the subject of it must be a propositional