existences and real activities of which the true universe actually consists which is the problem we proposed to investigate. CHAPTER 18. OF PHYSICAL CAUSES AND OF EFFICIENT CAUSES. Causation, in the full sense of that term, implying efficiency in the cause, can only prevail in the operations of auta. When an efficient cause operates within the sense-compelling universe, it produces some change therein, and if this change be such that the sense-compelling universe can produce one set of effects within human minds before the change and another set after the change, then will the hypothetical existence which we call nature also undergo a change. This is because nature before the change is the syntheton made by fitting together the former set of possible effects, and nature after the change is the syntheton of the latter set of possible effects. We may liken the sense-compelling universe to a mighty machine, and nature to a shadow cast by it in a very special way. If the machine is set in motion and changed from one position to another, it produces one shadow before the change and another after; and if the change in the machine has followed a definite order, the second shadow will succeed the first in a corresponding orderly sequence: but the relation between the shadows is not the relation of cause and effect. Accordingly, in the laws of Nature which have been discovered by scientific investigation we find abundant instances of unfailingly concomitant events and of uniformities of sequence, but not a single instance of genuine cause and effect. The so-called Physical causes are not causes in the full sense of that term. We might write them as [causes]' with a dash, but not as [causes] without one. Nevertheless it is legitimate as an hypothesis, to treat them as though they were causes when and so long as we are engaged in making use of the Objective Hypothesis. If a stone be allowed to drop in the vicinity of the earth, its downward speed is accelerated by a perfectly definite law. In this case the vicinity of the earth to the stone and the acceleration of the stone's vertical velocity are two unfailingly concomitant events. This is one of the Uniformities of Nature which scientific inquiry has brought to light. But within the domain of Physics there is no cause for the acceleration. To reach the cause we must travel beyond the hypothetical domain of Physics and study the events that have taken place in the universe of real existences. If we confine our view to Nature, the facts as to what occurs can be observed; the circumstances under which they occur can be investigated; similar cases can be compared; and the laws to which the simultaneous or successive events conform can be brought to light. But here the knowledge conveyed to us by the great Objective Hypothesis ends: Physical Science has said its Now all this is changed when we turn to the only field of observation accessible to us in which we are dealing directly with auta. The thoughts of which I consist, the thoughts that are my mind, are auta: no doubt a very small group of auta in the stupendous totality of all auta, but still an actual sample, although a very special and perhaps one-sided sample, of what auta are. In the operations that go on in my mind I do find instances, some few instances, of causes producing effects. The familiar case of a geometrical demonstration producing in a man's mind a belief in the truth of the conclusion is a case in point. Here the understanding of the proof is the efficient cause of the belief in the conclusion which accompanies that understanding. A wish to accomplish something, and a knowledge of how to go about it, are part of the autic universe since they are thoughts, and they are a part of the efficient cause of subsequent events in the autic universe, unless counteracted by other causes. A few other examples can be obtained from the same small field of investigation: and this is all that man, in his isolated position, has any right to expect; for the bulk of his thoughts are due, at least in large part, to autic causes which lie outside his mind, either in the synergos or beyond it in the sensecompelling part of the universe; and it is there also that those of his thoughts that are known to be causes usually exhibit their effects. When perceptions or when memories arise in my mind, the effect is indeed within my mind, but the cause lies beyond it; and when I move my muscles,' the cause is within my mind, but it is outside my mind, upon the antitheta of those muscles, that it operates. The instances are indeed few where the causes and the effects are both within my tiny group of auta, and it is only in these few cases that I can have the process of causes producing effects under my inspection. But since cases can be cited, however few, they suffice to establish the fact that the relation of cause and effect in its full sense PRINTED JUNE 11, 1903. PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XLII. 173. J. does exist in some instances in the autic universe; whereas it has nowhere any place within the domain of physical science. I am even under the impression that every event which has occurred in the real universe, every change that has taken place there, has been, as a matter of fact, brought about by true adequate causes; although I am bound to admit that man lives too secluded from the rest of the universe, and with channels for communicating with it that are far too indirect, for me to be entitled to dogmatize and to say to myself or my fellow-men that I absolutely know this to be so. At the same time it recommends itself to my mind as intrinsically probable; and it is supported by direct evidence which makes it seem to me probable in a high degree— 1. Since there are some instances in which the whole process of causation operating among auta can be observed; 2. Since no instance can be found in which observation is possible, and in which it does not prevail; and 3. Since the alternative supposition appears to be improbable. The only alternative is that, while the few changes among auta which can be investigated are found to be due to adequate causes, the rest, or some of the rest, which we cannot investigate are uncaused. All men experience within themselves what is called the freedom of their Wills; and this may by some be regarded as presenting an exception to the second of the above statements. But no amount of introspection has enabled me to detect any exercise of my Will which had not been caused by some motive, i.e., by a thought which forms one of my group of thoughts, or else by some inherited or acquired habit; that is, by the intervention of my synergos. This shows me that what I describe as the freedom of my Will does not exclude adequate causes. It is noteworthy that statistical inquiries have revealed to us the fact that averages taken over great numbers of the acts due to the free exercise of the Wills of human beings, conform to definite laws. This suggests that a corresponding freedom of the Will may prevail throughout the mighty Autos-the totality of all auta—and may, nevertheless, produce perceptions in egoistic minds (i.e., in minds supplied by the Autos with information through organs of sense) of such a kind that these perceptions when synthesized into the objects of nature exhibit that orderly sequence of events which we find in nature. What has been chiefly learned in the foregoing pages is: 1. That the objects of nature are syntheta of perceptions; and 2. That there is no warrant for our assuming that the true autic cause of human perceptions, or of the events that occur among the objects of nature, are in the least like those objects. On the contrary, every evidence that we can collect points to the conclusion that the true source of the perceptions of our egoistic minds, and of those events in nature which are usually attributed to an interaction of the objects of nature upon one another, is in reality as utterly unlike those objects of nature as the thoughts of a man are unlike the events within his brain associated with those thoughts. These considerations when followed up lead us to reject the common belief in material substances' as erroneous, and it is moreover found to be misleading. It is an error which blinds the minds of those who entertain it to the stupendous Autic Universe, which is what really exists, and which transcends the supposed material universe as much as do the boundless range and vast variety of the thoughts of a human mind altogether differ from and infinitely transcend that selection of movements within the brain which accompanies those thoughts. A theory of existence, such as that which we have sought to expound in this essay, is to be judged, not by the use we are able to make of it, but by its truth. At the same time this theory is far from being useless to the thoughtful student of nature. It becomes available just at those points where the assumptions usually made by scientific men leave us in the lurch-as when we are brought face to face with the problem of the true relation between a man's thoughts and the events in his brain associated with them; or when the problem is to ascertain of what kind are the true efficient causes of those events that occur about us in nature. APPENDIX. In the foregoing pages the author has freely used passages extracted from others of his writings, altering them and adding to them so as to obviate, as much as in him lay, difficulties which have been felt by some of the readers of those preceding papers; and his hope is that none of these difficulties will be felt in reading the present essay. The attempt has been made to keep to that one special path through the territory opened up to us by the study of ontology, which pursues its way among the topics of most use to us as scientific students of nature. But much may be learned by other excursions into this great field of exploration, and they end in presenting us with a spectacle of unsurpassed sublimity. It may be well so far to trespass upon this new ground as to mention some results of the further inquiry. In certain parts of the new territory we have to venture on less firm ground than that which we have trodden in the preceding essay, and must be content with results arrived at with probability. It is then found that such evidence as can be brought to bear appears to tend with considerable emphasis to the conclusion that not only the auta that are our minds are thoughts, but that the same is true of the auta that are our synergos. Now the mind and its synergos are, when taken together, the antitheton or true autic existence corresponding to the objective brain. A similar conclusion is indicated with regard to the rest of objective nature. The antitheta of the objective events -the true autic events which correspond to them-seem, with a considerable degree of probability, to be essentially thoughts; most of them no doubt with vastly different time relations to those of the thoughts that are the human mind, but still in several material respects not unlike them. If this view is correct, the only things that [really] exist are thoughts, and the effects produced by |