Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/241

TIME AS BELATED TO CAUSALITY AND TO SPACE. 227 it is made up of unanalysable and immediate factors, feeling of change and feeling of connexion. These, as has been said, correspond exactly with the elements of time, meta- physically considered with its irrevocable manifoldness and with the universal connexion of its parts, the moments. IV. CAUSALITY. The definition of causality as necessary connexion of events, though it opposes at once the every-day belief that one thing or object may be the cause of another, is never- theless in accord with all philosophic thinking since Hume's time at least. Not the match, but the lighting of the match, causes the fire; not the bell, but the motion of its tongue, causes the sound. Another common theory demands notice; the doctrine that causality is a category of merely physical events, not a relation of phenomena of consciousness, feelings and volitions, percepts and images. On this view causality is distinguished from temporal unity, not only by its concreteness, but by the externality of the phenomena which it unites ; it is therefore an external, as opposed to time, an internal category. There is no lack of support for this doctrine. Kant's definite argument against Hume, by his distinction between objective and subjective causality, rests upon the assumption that causality is a relation of the external. Schopenhauer says distinctly 1 that causality is " der Regulator der Veranderungen der aiisseren Erf ah - rung," and indeed he makes matter synonymous with causality: "Ihr Wesen besteht in der Kausalitat ". 2 Modern thinkers, finally, very generally hold that the only categories of the inner life are those of worth or value, and that causality is a physical principle. Now it is undoubtedly true that causality is a more important category of the outer than of the inner life, for every natural science supplements observation of facts by investigation of their causal connexion, and only physical causality is capable of exact description and measurement. But these truths prove only that causality is a particularly 1 Vierfacfie Wurzel, u.s.w., 20. 2 Welt als Wille, u.s.w., L, p. 10; cf. i., p. 13, "Materie oder Kausalitat, denn beide sind Eines ". A slight modification of this doctrine is the definition of matter as " objektiv gewordene Kausalitat," and this again is expanded into the theory that matter is simultaneity, a combination of space and time, or " die Wahrnehmbarkeit von Zeit u nd Raum". Throughout, Schopenhauer's insistence upon the exter- nality of causation is clear.