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us at present deal with reflection of the former order, that which touches objects of perception, and not the objects of previous reflections.

of the first

covers the

limitations

tual de

of real

When reflection refers perceived beings to Reflection the essence of being, it sees how limited they are, order dishow little of the essence of being they include, different how far they come short of exhausting it. It and musees that they have the essence of being, but are pendence not that essence. In this way it discovers their beings. interdependence, inasmuch as the dependence of one being upon another is only a kind of limitation. That, therefore, which renders contingent limited beings separate, distinct beings is not the same as that which renders them independent. Things may be separate and distinct beings although they be dependent. Hence each of them, as a separate being, may be the object of a special perception. Its dependence is not the object of perception, but of reflection.

As far as mere perception goes, a table, for example, is a perfectly distinct thing. It is only when reflection comes to consider the act of its coming into existence that its dependence becomes conspicuous. When we think a time before the table was, and then a time after the table was, we find we cannot pass from the latter to the former with the idea of table in our minds, without throwing the existence of the table, in the form of cause, into the earlier time. This means that we cannot think absolute beginning, or passage from nothing to being. As Sir W. Hamilton puts it: "We are utterly unable to realize in thought the possibility of the complement of existence being either increased or diminished. ... There is conceived an absolute tautology between an effect and its causes" (Lectures on Metaphysics, vol. ii. p. 377).

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Notions
of cause
and effect.

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When we see a being, a reality, a mode, a new accident begin, reflection immediately says that there must be a cause for such being, reality, mode, or accident, and calls the new product an effect. When we consider this operation of the mind, we see that the concept and name of effect are posterior to the name of cause. It is only after we know that a given being could not exist without a cause that it receives the name of effect. What is the meaning of recognizing that a being had a cause? It simply means recognizing that that being (its essence) has not within itself its own subsistence, which, therefore, must come to it from elsewhere. But when we say that a being has not its subsistence in itself, but derives it from without, this is the same thing as saying that it has a cause. When, therefore, we judge that a being must have a cause, we merely recognize that it has not subsistence through its essence. To recognize that a being (or a reality belonging to a being) has not subsistence through its own essence, is only to compare the real perceived being with the essence of being, which, as we said, is the work of reflection. One of the conditions, therefore, under which reflection works, one of its essential rules, is the principle of causation.

Rosmini frequently adverts to the scepticism of those who deny the absolute universality and necessity of the principle of causation, and undertakes to show that such scepticism is groundless. "The fact," he says "which these

philosophers admit is this: 'All men assume the proposition that there is no effect without a cause, recognizing and using it as necessary and universal.' What they deny is, that this proposition is necessary and universal. They say it is so only in appearance. Now, setting out from the fact which they concede, we might reason as follows:- You admit that the proposition, 'Every effect must have a cause,' is necessary and universal in appearance, but you add, only in appearance. Now, I will show you that it could not even appear so to men, if they had not a cognition which was à priori and not due to the senses, that is, a cognition truly necessary and universal. Let us suppose, then, that the proposition, 'Every effect must have its cause,' is only a limited result of experience, which, expressed in rigorously accurate terms, would take this form: Certain events repeatedly precede certain others.' Now I ask, In order that men should have been able, by means of their imaginations, to transform this empirical proposition into this other rational one, 'Every effect must have a cause,' what ideas must they have possessed? It is plain that they could not have made the change without having, first, the idea of possibility; second, the idea of cause; third, the idea of necessity; fourth, the idea of universality. Now, all these are ideas that we cannot possibly have from the senses, as our adversaries themselves admit; that is, it is impossible to have (1) the idea of possibility, because the possible being of a thing does not fall under the senses; (2) the idea of cause, because only effects fall under the senses; (3) the idea of necessity, because the senses show only what is, not what must be; (4) the idea of universality, because sense experience is limited to a given number of things, and is repeated only a given number of times. The same difficulty, therefore, which occurs in admitting the principle of cause to be true, recurs in admitting it to be apparent (New Essay, vol. i. § 321).

The principle of cause is

merely an application of the idea of being to a perceived being, so

as to see whether the latter

has or has not in itself subsistence.

ΙΟΙ.

It follows from this that the principle of cause is only an application, made by reflection, of the idea of being to a perceived being, by which application it is seen that the essence of perceived being has not in itself subsistence, which therefore must come to it from without. Hence the principle of cause is in itself infallible, inasmuch as the object of perception is free from error, and the essence of being with which it is compared is truth itself. All that remains to be done is to recognize whether reality is or not included in the essence of the being perceived.

"Hypotheses," says Rosmini, "have relation to causes; but true causes are always metaphysical. Physical causes ... are only certain circumstances given by external experience, which, when they occur, are always accompanied by certain facts. Hence, there are two absolutely distinct kinds of hypotheses: first, hypotheses of true causes; second, hypotheses of physical causes" (Logic, § 962).

What are usually called physical causes are certain phenomena that, invariably preceding other phenomena, are supposed to have an active connection with them. Some recent thinkers would even deny the active connection, and define a physical cause as a phenomenon that invariably precedes another. But, in either case, a physical cause is only the place of true cause, not such cause itself. When I say that heat causes expansion, I have merely located the cause of the second phenomenon. To know this cause itself, I should have so to enter into the being of heat as to see that its union with a material body was tantamount to, or identical with, the expansion of that body. But identity is purely a metaphysical conception; hence all true cause is metaphysical.

I02.

being?

To say that the essence of a being does not What is include subsistence is equivalent to saying that contingent the perceived being has not in itself the ground of its own subsistence, and that it is contingent.

"In the concept of being it is necessary that they [all limited modes] exist, otherwise it would no longer be the concept of being, which has unlimited extension. There are, therefore, two necessities, both arising from the nature of being

"(1) The necessity that being should exist in itself, and, therefore, that it should have its proper terms, without which its existence in itself would be wanting, and therefore would annul itself in itself. This is the necessity of absolute being.

"(2) The necessity that being should exist as intelligible, because, if it were not intelligible, it would lack the concept of being in itself, and therefore, à fortiori, would lack existence in itself. The necessity of the concept of being implies that in this concept are contained also all the limited modes of being, without which that concept would be another, and no longer that of being. This is the necessity of the possible (possibilium), or of the essences of limited things (cf. New Essay, §§ 307 n., 375 n., 1106, 1158, 1460). Hence comes the concept of contingency. Every necessity springs out of the nature of being, and reduces itself to this formula: Necessity is the property which being has of existing in itself.' The conditions of the existence of being are two: (1) that it exist with its proper terms; (2) that the concept of it, embracing all improper terms, exist. But it is not a condition of the existence of being in itself that it exist in itself with its finite terms. The real existence of these is not, therefore, necessary. The absence of this necessity is called contingency. Contingency, therefore, is that negative property of finite

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