Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/131

No. 2.] brief mention. The simple fact of the case is that the genetic method, whether used in experimental or historical science, does not 'derive' or 'deduce' a consequent from an antecedent, in the sense of resolving it, or dissolving it, into what has gone before. The later fact in its experienced quality is unique, irresolvable, and underived. Water is water with all its peculiar characteristics, after the presence of oxygen and hydrogen gas has been shown to be a necessary condition of its generation as much as before. A statement of the conditions under which a given thing shows itself in existence, does not detract one iota from the individual properties of that thing; it does not alter them. This is as true of water or any physical product as it is of the sense of obligation or of any spiritual product. It is not the quality, but the coming into existence with which science deals directly. What is 'derived' is just the appearance of the quality, its emerging into experience. The value of apprehending it in terms of its antecedent conditions is, as repeatedly stated, that of control : intellectual control—the ability to interpret both obviously allied facts and divergent facts, showing the same modus operating under different conditions ; and practical control, ability to get or to avoid an experience of a given sort when we desire. The fallacy assumes that the earlier datum has some sort of fixity and finality of its own. Even those who assert most positively that causation is a simple matter of antecedent and consequent, are still given to speaking as if the antecedent supplied the sole stamp of meaning and reality to the consequent. If, for example, the earlier stage shows only social instincts on the part of the animal, then, somehow or other, the later manifestations of human conscience are only animal instincts disguised and overlaid. To attribute any additional meaning to them, is an illusion to be banished by a proper scientific view. Now, the earlier fact is no more a finished thing, or completely given reality, than is the later. Indeed, the entire significance of the experimental method is that attention centers upon either antecedent or consequent simply because of interest in a process. The antecedent is of worth because it defines one term of the process of becoming; the consequent because it defines the other term. Both are