Page:Philosophical Review Volume 23.djvu/601

No. 5.] situations and conditions to warrant the existence of such a system. Bradley believes that it perverts ethics into an art of morality instead of permitting it to remain a purely theoretical science. But why must we have either a theoretical science or a perversion of ethics, an art of morality? Why not have both? There are two disciplines or sciences, ethics and casuistry, which deal with morality. They are not independent of each other; the latter is dependent upon the former. Ethics is a purely theoretical science which deals with general, abstract principles and is exact, while casuistry is a practical science which deals with inherited principles and is inexact. The principles of ethics are universal and absolute, but those of casuistry are mere general rules affected by and allowing for circumstances and conditions. These casuistic principles and rules must not be at variance with the purely ethical principles. Casuistry is the application of the general rule to the particular case, and especially the application of ethical principles to specific, perplexing problems of conduct. The present article is introductory to a subsequent one in which the author proposes to outline his own system.

This is the last of four articles on the nature of causation. An examination of the phenomena investigated by physics shows that all instances of causation are of two types: the composition type and the serial type, which ultimately reduce to one type, the unending, self-repeating series. All cases of causation have this common logical structure. The necessary and sufficient condition of the series is two terms in a relation of sameness and difference; the second is another case of the first with added differences. The first term is more fundamental than the second, because it precedes the second temporally and logically, defines the second, and can exist without the second. The past has an existential rank higher than that of the future; the tendency of an event is "in one certain direction," from higher to lower levels. Yet the series is impossible without the second term, for the first by itself is mere potentiality. Every cause is a potentiality plus a motion or change. The series contains necessity. Given these two related terms, and the effect, a never finished series, "of necessity and pure deduction" follows; each term implies indefinitely another case of itself. Events are necessitated by their causes; so far as there is causation, "nature deduces itself from the past." This, however, does not preclude indeterminate beginnings, which allow the universe to grow by adding new, unending series to its content. This discovery of the "objective existence of necessary connection" is the result of an empirical investigation of the content of experience. It enables us to answer Hume without having to resort to such hypotheses as the independent "subsistence" of universals or the presence of mind as a law-giver imposing its forms on nature. Although each term and relation of the series is particular, the concept of the universal may be derived from this system of two particular terms in a particular relation. The