FORMULA AND DEMONSTRATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSALITY.
55. The principle of causality, or the proposition: all that commences must have a cause; has been somewhat disputed latterly; hence it is necessary for us to place it beyond the reach of attack. I believe it possible to do this, by presenting the doctrine of the preceding chapters under a clear point of view, which shall drive away all doubt and clear up all difficulty. I beg the reader's attention for a few moments to the argument which I am going to propose.
56. Let us take any being, A. In order that the principle of causality may be applied to it it is necessary that itshould have begun to be, and that it should not have existed before; for, if we do not suppose this beginning, A must have existed always.
We can then assign a duration in which A was not, and in which there was not-A. Therefore in the order of duration there has been a little series of two terms:
not-A ... A.
To begin is to pass from the first term, not-A to A. The principle of causality says: the transition from the first term to the second is not possible without the intervention of a third term, B, which must be something real.
57. What does the term not-A represent by itself alone? the pure negation of A, the mere nonentity of A. In the conception of not-A, instead of A, we find its contradictory term; so that, instead of the second being contained in the former, they mutually exclude each other, and make the proposition: it is impossible for not-A and A to exist at the same time, absolutely true. Thus it is impossible for A ever to emanate from the conception not-A, and consequently without a real term to produce the transition it is impossible to pass from not-A to A, even in the purely ideal order.
58. Observe, however, that I do not pretend to say that, conceiving not-A so as to deny A as known, it would be impossible to conceive A; for it is evident that whoever conceives not-A, must have just conceived A, and he might conceive it entirely alone, by simply destroying the negation; but I say that on the supposition that there is an absolute conception of not-A, conformed to the absolute objective not-A, A could never emanate from this conception; and if we reflect on it we shall see that there could not even be this conception, since the thought of pure negation is no thought, no conception. There would then be an absolute absence of conception; and in the purely idealorder, we should find ourselves in the first term of the series, in a pure negation, in not-A, without any means of passing to the second term, A.
59. Those, then, who deny the principle of causality, conceive the transition from not-A to A without any reason, or any intermediary: those who deny creation, admit what is a thousand times more incomprehensible than creation. Whence do they infer the possibility of this transition? Not from experience; because experience presents only succession, and therefore not absolute appearance in the manner which they suppose: not from reason; because reason cannot make a positive conception emanate from a pure negation.
60. How is the transition from not-A to A effected? Those who admit the principle of causality, say it is effected by the action of B, which they call the cause. If it is a substance which is produced, they suppose the intervention of an infinite power. But those who deny the principle of causality can only answer that the transition from not-A to A is made absolutely. They imagine the instant M, in which A did not exist; and then the instant N, in which A exists. But why? They allege no reason: without their knowing how, A has arisen from nothing, without the action of any thing. This is a manifest contradiction.
61. The principle of causality is founded on the pure ideas of being and not-being. Suppose only not-being, and we see evidently that being cannot begin. The principle then is purely ontological: those who, in order to establish, or oppose it, appealonlyto reasons of experience, put the question badly; they take it from its true field; they confound thenoticeof causality with thenotionor idea of causality.
Those philosophers who keep within the sensible order, cannot give a solid foundation to this principle; for thisreason, they who admit no other ideas than sensations, have all fallen into errors or doubts on this point; and all sensists would have fallen into the same doubt if they had only been logical enough to draw the last consequences of their doctrine.