Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/267

No. 3.] guarantee (except the rather doubtful one of probability) that such propositions will continue to hold in the future. Finally, it is seen that we can go no further than this from the objective standpoint of science. It might also be pointed out that, strictly speaking, the term 'causal law' ought not to be applied at all to such propositions as we have been considering. For, in view of the concrete meaning which 'cause' has for us, the word 'causal' implies that the sequences to which the propositions refer, have their ground in the activity of individuals.

The results of this analysis by the scientific method are valuable for the philosopher, for they make clear the exact nature of the assumptions he is making in applying the pluralistic hypothesis to the sequences observed in experience. Still more valuable are they for the physicist, seeing that they warn him from unwarrantable applications of causality, and point out the only valid way, from the scientific (and therefore descriptive) point of view, of looking upon the succession of phenomena with which he deals. There is no doubt that physicists of all times have been strongly influenced by the notion of causality based on subjective activity. One fact alone is sufficient to show this, namely, the curious reluctance which has always been shown to accept the idea of action at a distance. Attempts are invariably made to reduce everything to terms of contact action. The reason is that our own interference with the environment is conditioned by the contact of our bodies with other bodies. Had we been endowed with powers of levitation and removal without contact, the notion of action at a distance would probably have been adopted as a matter of course.

Thus far, and in this application, we may recognize the truth and value of the results due to analysis by the scientific method. Pluralism, on the other hand, approaches the question in a different way, and with a different purpose in view. It is concerned not simply with the phenomena as such, but with an explanation of them which shall satisfy such beings as we are. On the basis of our own existence as efficient individuals, and of the fact that