Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/423

* CAUSALITY. 361 CAUSEBIE. which we have learned that we can rely, have in eominon the assumption of the principle of causality as obtaining within the sphere covered by the induction. This assumption, at first and for a long time, was not consciously made, but none the less we can now see that it was made. Gradually, in certain spheres, the prin- ciple of causality came to be clearly recognized as obtaining, but still not as supporting the induc- tions formerly made. As time went on, the prevalence of causality in still other and other spheres was ascertained. Then the natural ten- dencj- of thought to generalize caused men to make inductions to the universal prevalence of causality. Then when the question arose as to the foundation of induction, it was finally dis- covered that it rested upon an unrecognized as- sumption of causality, even in the case where the universal prevalence of causality was the subject matter of induction. Is this vicious? Xo, unless it can be shown that the assumption has led to results that are untenable. On the contrary, in this case the assumption lies at the foundation of every valuable structure raised by thought, and the tenability of the assumption is guaran- teed by the validity of all that follows from the assumption and that would be invalidated were the assumption unjustifiable. See Ixdvctiox; Knowledge, Theoby of. Along with this account of the origin of knowledge of cause goes a definition of cause which is at the present day quite widely ac- cepted. The cause of any event is a preceding event without which the event in question would not have occurred. Both causes and effects are always events; not things, but things in action. The complete cause would be all the indispens- able previous events. But as all inquiry that is of any value is confined within limits, the ques- tion as to the cause of an event is not generally a demand for a complete inventory- of indispens- able previous events, but for some event which, in connection with other events taken for granted, is needed to account for the event under discussion. According to this view of cause neither the 'material cause' nor the 'formal cause' is a cause ; and the 'final cause' is a cause only in the sense that the idea of the end to be obtained, together with all the affections belong- ing to it. may, as an event, be an indispensable temporal prerequisite to an action that ter- minates in the attainment of the end. A final cause is then not a future event as an event that in time will take place, but as one now anticipated. And the anticipation precedes the effect it produces. This brings up again the question as to the temporal relation of cause and effect. Some philosophers of to-day, following Se.xtus Em- piricus, maintain that cause cannot be anterior to effect. This, however, is a mistake resting upon a failure to appreciate the continuous character of time (q.v.). The cause exists be- fore the effect, but continues itself into the ef- fect. It is to some extent an arbitrary matter where the line be drawn that divides cause from effect; but drawn it must be somewhere if one is to be clear-headed in talking about causality, and when drawn all the part of the continuous cause-effect process that precedes the line is cause, and all the part that follows is effect. And the line itself does not exist as a gap be- tween cause and effect, but simply as the line of juncture of cause and effect. See CoNTiirmTV, Law of. This last statement brings us to the last point here to be made as to the nature of causality. After all that has been said the relation between caiise and effect is still left unknown, provided one assumes that the indispensableness of cause to effect is the result of an unknown something in the nature of the cause and of the effect. But such an assumption is ungrounded, if by nature one means a mysterious constitution of qualities. A simple view which seems to satisfy all the conditions of the case, and to leave no insoluble mystery, is that the causal relations in which an event stands are part of the attributes of the event. We do not have two self-subsistent in- dependent events, which are then in some incom- prehensible way made to depend one on the other, as effect upon cause. Neither event is properly thought unless its discoverable causal relation to the other is thought of as being part of its nature as much as any other quality it may have. Thus we think of cause and effect not as magicallj' conditioning each other, but as being different steps in a continuous process. ithin which each step is what it is by virtue of its relation to all otlier steps. Cause and effect are organically inter-related, and the organic whole within which they interact is the ground of their interaction. Consult: Bosanquet, Logic, Vol. I. (Oxford, 1888); Bradley, Principles of Logic (London, 1883) ; Hobhouse, Theory of Knoicledgc (London, 1896), consulting index for pertinent passages; Mill, System of Logic, Book III. (London, 1856) ; Hume, Treatise of Human ^'ature. Book L, Part III. (London, 1882) : and id.. An Enquiry Concerning the Human Undo- standing (Oxford. 1804) ; Kant, "Transcendental Logic," in Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Max Miiller (London, 1881); and Kant's com- mentators, among whom may be mentioned Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (Glasgow, 1889), and Watson, Kant and His English Critics (Glasgow, 1881). CAUSE CELEBRE, k6z sa'lebV (Fr., cele- brated ease). A term for any specially interest- ing or important legal case, criminal or civil. During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centu- ries it was more particularly applied to the State trials in France. There is a French collec- tion of Causes cclebres ct int&ressantes, by Gavot de Pitaval (20 vols., 1734-4:1), with later con- tinuation, and Desessarts also contributed a val- uable work (178,5-87) to this branch of legal literature. Tj-pical examples of modem cases to which the term is applied are that of Calas. who was broken on the wheel at Toulouse in 1702 on a baseless charge of having put his son to death to prevent him from becoming a Roman Cath- olic: the Tichborne trial, in which for years (1871-74) all Fngland was interested, involving the identity of a claimant to title and estates,j and the recent trial of Captain Dreyfus in France, which attracted the attention of the en- tire civilized world. CAUSERIE, k6z'r*' (Fr., chat, from rauser, to dial, go.;^ip, from Lat. causari, to plead, from causa, cause, case). A term first used in a lite- rary way by Sainte-Beuve in his famous Causerics du Lundi. It signifies a short, famil- iar paper on any subject, usually published in magazines or newspapers. As the writer is