LECTURE IV. NATURE IS BUT THE NAME FOR AN EFFECT WHOSE CAUSE IS GOD. I. We have now to consider the principle of causality so far as it is implied in the theistic inference, and the theistic inference so far as it is conditioned by the principle of causality. It is not necessary to discuss the nature of the principle of causality in itself or for its own sake; it is even expedient, I believe, not to attempt to penetrate farther into its metaphysics and psychology than the work on hand imperatively requires. We must of course go as far as those have gone who have maintained on metaphysical or psychological grounds that the principle of causality warrants no theistic inference; we must show that their metaphysics and psychology are irrelevant when true, and false when relevant; but we may be content to stop when we have reached this result. The truth of theism has been very generally represented, both by those who admit and by those who deny the validity of the theistic inference, as much more dependent than it really is on the truth or falsity of some one or other of the many views which have been entertained as to the nature of causation, and the origin of the causal judgment. We are constantly being warned by theists that unless we accept this or that particular notion of causation, and account for it in this or that particular manner, we cannot reasonably believe in the existence of God; we are constantly being assured by anti-theists that belief in God is irrational, because it assumes some erroneous view of causation, or some erroneous explanation of the process by which causation is apprehended. But it will be found that representations of this kind seldom prove more than one-sidedness and immaturity of thought in those who make them. An accurate and comprehensive view of the nature of causation, and of our apprehension of it, will, it is true, have here, as elsewhere, great advan tages over an erroneous and narrow one, but hardly any of the theories which have been held on these points can be consistently argued by those who hold them to invalidate theistic belief. Even utterly inadequate statements and explanations of the principle of causality-as, for example, those of Hume and J. S. Mill-are not more incompatible with the theistic inference than they are with any G other inference which is a real extension of knowledge. Unless they are understood and applied more rigidly than by those who propound them, they allow us to draw the theistic inference; if understood and applied so as to forbid our drawing it, they logically disallow all scientific inference except such as is purely formal and deductive. In a word, if compatible with science they are compatible with theism, and if incompatible with theism they are incompatible with science. When we assume the principle of causality in the argument for the existence of God, what precisely is it that we assume? Only this that whatever has begun to be, must have had an antecedent, or ground, or cause which accounts for it. We do not assume that every existence must have had a cause. We have no right, indeed, to assume that any existence has had a cause until we have found reason to regard it as not an eternal existence, but one which has had an origin. Whatever we believe, however, to have had an origin, we at once believe also to have had a cause. The theistic argument assumes that this belief is true. It assumes that every existence, once new, every event or occurrence or change, must have a cause. This is certainly no very large assumption: on the contrary, if any assumption can claim to be selfevident, it surely may. Thought implies the truth of it every moment. Sensation only gives rise to thought in virtue of it. could be no such thing as thought. To deny that the principle of causality, understood as has been indicated, is true, would be to deny that reason is reason; it would be equivalent to affirming that to seek for a reason is always and essentially an unreasonable process. And, in fact, so understood, the principle never has been denied. Hume even did not venture to deny it, although he ought in consistency to have denied it, and obviously desired to be able to deny it. He did not, however, deny that every object which begins to exist must have a cause, he did not venture to do more than deny that this is either intuitively or demonstratively certain, and that any bond or tie can be perceived between what is called a cause and what is called an effect. The inquiry which he instituted was not whether we pronounce it necessary that everything whose existence has a beginning should also have a cause or not, but for what reason we pronounce it necessary. He assumed that we pronounce it necessary, and his elaborate investigation into the nature of causation was undertaken expressly and entirely to discover why we do so. The conclusion to which he came—viz., that the causal judgment is an "offspring of experience engendered upon custom❞—was not only a very inadequate and erroneous one in itself, but inconsistent with the reality of what it professed to Unless it were true there explain: still the admission which has been mentioned was what was professed to be explained. - We that Now, if it be true at all that every event, whether it be a new existence or a change in an old existence, presupposes an explanatory antecedent or cause, there can, of course, be no accepting in all its breadth one of the propositions which Hume urges most strenuously-viz., that the mere study of an event can tell us nothing about its cause. may grant that it can tell us very little, Hume performed an immense service in showing how extremely little we can know of the particular causes of particular events apart from the study of both in connection, apart from observation, experiment, and induction,-but we cannot grant that the event itself teaches us absolutely nothing. If every event must have a cause, every event must have a sufficient cause. For these two statements, although verbally different, are really identical. The second seems to mean, but does not actually mean, more than the first. The whole cause of the elevation of a weight of ten pounds a foot high cannot be also the whole cause of the elevation of twenty pounds to the same height, for the simple reason that in the latter case the elevation of ten pounds—of half the weight—would be an event which had no cause at all. And this is universally true. If every event have not a sufficient cause, some events have no cause at all. This, |