any mistake we may make in the assigning of secondary causes, never impairs our conviction of the necessity of Cause-Proper.

As already indicated, I apply the same criterion to all the "Laws of Nature." Not one of them gives us, in itself, the notion of efficient cause, or of a priori necessity. In cognising the laws of Nature, we do nothing more than cognise an established course in Nature. It is a law of Nature that the blood circulates in our living bodies; but we are under no prior necessity of thinking that it should circulate; nor, the law having been discovered, can we detect any prior, vital efficiency in the circulating process. Both the law and its efficiency bear the note of mere contingency; but the law being an established fact, we are under a necessity of thinking of it as ordained, caused.

So with the laws of growth in plants and animals; so with all their organic or physiological functions; so with all the laws of nutrition and decay; so with all chemical laws; so with gravitation and the laws of physics; not one of them carries with it the note of necessary efficiency. It is of very high scientific importance to have realised this truth calculated to save us from endless labor ineptiae. Beyond learning these laws, we cannot enter into the adyta of causation. Everything we know concerning them is derived from a posteriori investigations. To us, their whole validity is founded upon such investigations. It is wholly different with the causal judgment touching these laws. The moment that a natural law is announced, we find ourselves under the intellectual necessity of thinking that it was ordained and originated by an efficient cause. Upon this point, Reid expresses himself thus lucidly :-All finite things "depend for their existence, and all that belongs to it, upon the will and power of the first cause; therefore neither their existence, nor their nature, nor anything that befalls them is necessary but contingent."1 1 Works, p. 430.

Now,

Though we had the most ample a posteriori proof that finite things had a cause, " that would not prove that they must have a cause." That is to say that no a posteriori proof whatever, gives us with it the note of necessity. A posteriori proofs show us "what in the established course of Nature, but can never show what connection of things is, in their nature, necessary." 1 This is also the Aristotelian view :-"Though every possible corruption and generation is from something, as one or more, yet why does this happen, and what is the cause of this, for undoubtedly, the subject, at least, itself, is in nowise instrumental in making itself undergo a change? I say, for example, that neither the wood nor the brass is the cause of either of these bodies undergoing a change; neither does the wood, indeed, produce a bed, nor the brass a statue; but there is something else that is the cause of change."2 "It makes no difference whether one or many media be assumed, nor whether they are things infinite or finite; but in this way, all the portions of things infinite and of the Infinite in general, are similarly media up to the extremity; so that if there is nothing that is first, there is in short, no cause.' What an enormous relief it would have been to our bookshelves, if Hume had been happy enough to have discovered, or even to have learned, these truths!

Thus it would appear that the right notion of cause is

1 Works, p. 455. In view of such passages it is amazing to find Professor Caird stating that Hume's opponents "set about proving the validity of the conception of Cause from the point of view of Common Sense." The Philosophy of Kant, p. 215. I am afraid that he fails to understand either Reid or Common Sense. Reid recognised the causal judgment as a first principle of intelligence or Common Sense. He was too clear a thinker to suppose that he could "prove" any first principle. See his letters to Kames and Gregory in Hamilton's edition of his Works, pp. 57, 58, etc.; and see Hamilton's recognition of the fact, with corresponding eulogium, p. 753. Both Kant and Caird seem to be fundamentally ignorant of the philosophy of Reid and Common Sense. They are continually drifting into ruinous collision with first principles.

2 Metaphysics, Bk. i. c. iii. 9.

3 Ib., Bk. i. The Less, c. ii. 1.

that of a Power which produces the first effects with all their implications and consecutions. On this understanding, Cause necessarily signifies First Cause. In the absolute sense there is no cause but the First Cause the Causa Causans, that which in itself, and wholly by itself, possesses the power of producing effects. As we have seen, none of the medial processes or "secondary causes possess this note of efficiency, whilst it is ineradicably fixed in our notion of First Cause. Therefore that everything contingent has a cause, ranks as an a priori or necessary truth.

(2) Cause is necessarily intelligent.-Further, the notion of cause-proper includes not only an efficiency to produce effects, but also involves an a priori or necessary assumption that it is in any event, not less than intelligent. In other words, intelligence is necessarily involved in the notion of efficient cause. "Who hath ascended up into Heaven?" asks the Hebrew philosopher. "Who hath gathered the wind in His fists? Who hath bound the waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His son's name, if thou canst tell?" Certainly nothing less than Intellect will accomplish these wonders. Hence the unqualified futility of all materialistic hypotheses and theories touching the genesis of things. No materialistic account of the genesis of anything is, or can be, an answer to the question "why?"—which universally employed word always assumes and involves Intellect, at least, as the necessary Basis of Nature.1 Intellect, or something superior, or at least not inferior, to Intellect, is the only rationally assignable cause of Nature. There is no rational departure from this conclusion: we cannot rationally depart from it, however anxious we may be to do so. Materialism itself

1 Dr. John Caird clearly notes this fact:-The materialist while contemning all that is supersensible, is an "unconscious spiritualist." "All materialistic explanations involve the vicious circle." Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 91, 94.

is an unconscious attempt to satisfy intelligence; but intelligence will not rest satisfied with the materialistic answer. Mind claims superiority over matter. Intelligence quietly laughs at the materialistic answer, and scorns the audacity of materialism. Nothing less than Intellect at the root of the Universe will satisfy intelligence. This, I think, is Nature's great intimation to us of Deity and First Cause grandly expressed by some great son of Abraham :-" The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath He established the Heavens; by His knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew." Cause is necessarily not less than intelligent, or it is no cause cannot yield us the notion of Cause.

This view of causation,-namely, that it must be intelligent, has long been scientifically, as well as religiously, held. About the beginning of the twelfth century, according to Sir William Hamilton, Algazel, a Mahommedan philosopher, maintained "that God was the only efficient cause in Nature, and that second causes were not properly causes, but only occasions, of the effect. That we have no perception of any real agency of one body on another, is a truth," Sir William thinks, "which has not been more clearly stated, or illustrated by any subsequent philosopher than by him who first proclaimed it. The doctrine of Algazel was adopted by that great sect among the Mussulman doctors who were styled those speaking in the law, that is the law of Mahommed. From the Eastern schools the opinion passed to those of the West; and we find it a problem which divided the scholastic philosophers whether God was the only efficient, or whether causation could be attributed to created existences." 1

Plato's saying "The beginning of motion is that which moves itself," seems to express the natural conviction of mankind upon causality; a conviction which they probably held prior to any strictly scientific considera1 Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 389-90.

tion of the subject.

I should take this natural conviction to be the natural root of Theism in all its forms-from the lowest animistic notions of the poorest savages up to the divinest conceptions of the Hebrew seers. Nor does it matter what the actual genesis of the causal judgment may have been-whether a priori and immediate, or suggested by a posteriori and mediate observations. It may, as Reid

thought, be “derived from the power I feel in myself to produce certain effects"; but whether this be so or not, the characteristic of the causal judgment, like all others of a necessary nature, is that, once apprehended and considered, it is seen to be of a purely mental nature, and to carry on its face the stamp of necessity. Though we properly speak of a priori and necessary truth, the crude thought of it, as well as the crude observation of contingent truth, has to be refined and rendered definite by reflection-for, as already remarked, necessary truths might properly be called truths of reflection. Thought clarifies itself by patient pondering. Thus, I repeat, the note of necessity need not be instantaneously marked on any truth in order to establish its claim to necessary rank. It is sufficient for all purposes when the truth is seen on reflection to be a priori or necessary.3

Ineptitude of the attempt to rise above first principles.— As to the First Cause, it is illogical and absurd,—a contradiction in terms, even to ask how it arose. One might

as well ask how space, or time, or logical, or mathematical, or ethical truth arose.1 All first principles of necessary truth are beyond proof; that is, they do not admit of

1 Works, p. 77.

2 Cf. Reid, pp. 77, 78, 81.

"From the existence of things contingent and mutable, we can infer the existence of an immutable and eternal cause of them." Ib. p. 442.

3 Cf. supra, p. 216.

"The Moral Sense, thank God, is a thing you will never account for " (Carlyle, Essays, vol. v. p. 28). He should have seen this truth with regard to First Principles generally.