PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON THE GENERAL NATURE AND OBJECTS By the will of the Almighty Creator, all things in nature have been placed in certain relations to each other, which are fixed and uniform. In other words, they have been endowed with capacities of acting and capabilities of being acted upon, according to certain uniform laws; so that their actions take place in the same manner in every instance in which the same bodies are brought together under similar circumstances. We have a conviction, which appears to be original and instinctive, of the general uniformity of these relations; and in this consists our confidence in the regularity of all the operations of nature. But the powers or principles on which the relations depend are entirely hidden from us in our present state of being. The province of human knowledge is merely to observe the facts, and to trace what their relations or sequences are. This is to be accomplished only by a careful and extensive observation of the facts as they pass before us, and by carefully distinguishing their true or uniform relations from connexions which are only incidental and temporary. In our first observation of any particular series of facts or events, we find a certain number of them placed together in a state of contiguity or apparent connexion. But we are not entitled from this to assume the connexion to be any thing more than incidental juxtaposition. When, in the further progress of observation, we find the same events occurring a certain number of times, in the same relations or sequences to each other, we suspect that their connexion is not merely that of incidental contiguity. We begin to believe that there exists among them such a relation as leads us, when we meet with some of these events, to expect that certain others are to follow. Hence is excited our idea of power in reference to these events, or of the relation of cause and effect. This relation, however, according to the utmost extent of our knowledge of it in any individual instance, is founded entirely upon the fact of certain events uniformly following one another. But when we have found, by sufficient observation, the particular events which do thus follow one another, we conclude that there is a connexion, whatever may be the nature of it, in consequence of which the sequence which we have observed will continue to recur in the same fixed and uniform manner. In other words, we conclude with confidence, that when we observe the first of two such events, the second will follow; and that when we observe the second, the first has preceded it. The first we call cause, the second effect. Thus our general confidence in the uniformity of the true relations or sequences of events is an original or instinctive principle, and not the result of experience; but it is by experience that we ascertain what the individual sequences are which observe this uniformity; or, in other words, learn to distinguish connexions which consist of incidental contiguity from those which constitute true and uniform relations. 'The natural tendency of the mind appears indeed to be, to infer causation from every succession of phenomena, and to expect uniformity in every sequence. It is from experience we learn that this impression is not to be relied on in regard to individual sequences, but requires to be corrected by observation. The result of our further experience then is, to ascertain what those sequences or connexions are which are uniform, and which, consequently, we may consider as connected in the manner of causation. We are thus first taught by experience the caution which is necessary in considering events as connected in the manner of cause and effect, and learn not to assume this relation till, by further experience, we have ascertained that the sequence is uniform. This caution, however, has no reference to our instinctive impression of causation, or our absolute conviction that every event must have an adequate cause; it only relates to our fixing the arrangement of individual antecedents, or, in other words, to our determining what individual events we are warranted in considering as the true antecedents or causes of certain other events. This, accordingly, can in many cases be accomplished only by long and extensive observation; while, in others, a single instance may be sufficient to produce an absolute conviction of what is the true antecedent. A child who has been only once burnt may dread the fire as certainly as if the accident had happened a hundred times; and there are many other instances in which the conviction may be produced in the same rapid manner. The natural tendency of the mind, in fact, is not only to infer the connexion, but in many cases to carry it further than the truth. If, for instance, we suppose a man who, for the first time in his life, has seen gunpowder explode upon a match being applied to it, he would probably have an immediate conviction that a similar explosion would take place again in similar circumstances. But he would perhaps go further than this: he would probably expect a similar explosion when he applied a match to other black powders, with the nature of which he was unacquainted, such as powdered charcoal. It is by experience that this erroneous expectation would be corrected, and that he would learn the precise instances in which the particular result takes place. But it is also by experience that he learns the former, though the conviction was produced more immediately; for there is nothing in the characters of gunpowder and charcoal from which any man could pronounce, by reasoning à priori, that the one would explode with violence when a match was applied to it, and the other remain entirely unchanged. It is in Thus, our general impression of causation is not the result of experience, but an original and intuitive principle of belief; that is, our absolute conviction that every event must have an adequate cause. This is, in fact, that great and fundamental truth by which, from the properties of a known effect, we infer the powers and qualities of an unknown cause. this manner, for example, that from the works of nature we infer the existence and the attributes of the Almighty Creator. But in judging of the connexion between any two individual events in that order of things which he has established, our idea of causation is derived from experience alone. For, in regard to any two such events, our idea of causation or of power amounts to nothing more than our knowledge of the fact, that the one is invariably the antecedent of the other. Of the mysterious agency on which the connexion depends, we know nothing, and never can know any thing in our present state of being. We know that the application of a match always sets fire to gunpowder, and we say that it has the power of doing so, or that it is the cause of the explosion; but we have not the least concep tion why the application of fire produces combustion in an inflammable substance; these expressions, therefore, amount to nothing more than a statement of the fact, that the result is universal. When we speak, therefore, of physical causes, in regard to any of the phenomena of nature, we mean nothing more than the fact of a certain uniform connexion which has been observed between events. Of efficient causes, or the manner in which the result takes place, we know nothing. In this sense, indeed, we may be said not to know the cause of any thing, even of events which at first sight appear the most simple and obvious. Thus, the communication of motion from one body to another by impulse appears a very simple phenomenon,-but how little idea have we of the cause of it! We say the bodies touch each other, and so the motion is communicated. But, in the first place, we cannot say why a body in motion, coming in contact with one at rest, should put the latter in motion; and further, we know that they do not come in contact. We may consider it, indeed, as ascertained that there is no such thing as the actual contact of bodies under these circumstances; and therefore the fact which appears so simple comes to be as unaccountable as any phenomenon in nature. What, again, appears more intelligible than an unsupported body falling to the ground? Yet what is more inexplicable than that one mass of matter should thus act upon another, at any distance, and even though a vacuum be interposed between them? The same observation will be seen to apply to all the facts which are most familiar to us. Why, for example, one medicine acts upon the stomach, another on the bowels, a third on the kidneys, a fourth on the skin, ' we have not the smallest conception; we know only the uniformity of the facts. It is of importance to keep in mind the distinction now referred to between physical and efficient causes, as the former only are the proper objects of philosophical inquiry. The term final cause, again, has been applied to a subject entirely different; namely, to the appearances of unity of design in the phenomena of nature, and the manner in which means are |