Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/132

116 strictly subordinated to the process to which they give terms, limits.

The analogy with the terms of an algebraic series is more than a metaphor. The earlier terms do not develop the later ones. The earlier term is just as incomprehensible in itself as is the later one. Taken together, they constitute elements in a problem which is solved by discovering a continuous process or course which, individualized by the limiting terms, shows itself first in one form and then in the other. The interest in the generation of water does not terminate with the discovery of H$2$ and O. We have also gained significant facts with reference to the H$2$ and the O in knowing that when they come together they give water. To know that about them is to know them through and in a process, exactly as analyzing water into them explains water in genetic terms. Excepting as H and O are known in this 'effect' (and, of course, in other similar ones), they are absolutely unknown—they are an algebraic X and Y.

The reason this matter is not clear to the popular consciousness, as well as to the expert writer, is because an older, purely metaphysical conception of causation survives, according to which the cause is somehow superior in rank and excellence to the effect. The effects are regarded as somehow all inside the womb of cause, only awaiting their proper time to be delivered. They are considered as derived and secondary, not simply in the order of time, but in the order of existence. Materialism arises just out of this fetichlike worship of the antecedent. Writers who ought to know better tell us that if we only had an adequate knowledge of the 'primitive' state of the world, if we only had some general formula by which to circumscribe it, we could deduce down to its last detail the entire existing constitution of the world, life, and society. It is pretty clear, however, that in order to have this adequate knowledge of primitive phenomena as 'cause,' we should have to know everything that has come after as 'effect.' We do not know what it is as 'cause' (that is we do not know it at all), excepting as we know it through its 'effects.' The entire novel of a penny-a-liner may possibly be deduced from its first chapter,