Part Four

Origin of Pure Ideas, which derive nothing
from Feeling

CHAPTER 4

Origin of the ideas of cause and effect

615. The idea of cause, taken with the idea of substance, forms the basis of human cognitions. We shall not be wasting time, therefore, if we try to clarify its origin and show its validity clearly enough to prevent foolish attempts to overthrow the foundation of knowledge, the source of human dignity.
Common sense asserts: 'That which happens must have a cause.'

Our aim is to discover why human beings agree about this; why they accept it as evident; why they use it as a rule from the moment they begin to reason, although they form it much later as an abstract proposition worthy of philosophical attention. The origin assigned to the idea of cause must show how it comes to exist in the mind and explain the facts we have indicated. How is this idea conceived so easily? How can the uneducated, and even children, employ it as soon as they begin to chatter? How can we explain children's fascination with the why? of things, and their determination to know the cause of what affects their senses so wonderfully?
To answer these questions, let us: 1. express as clearly as possible the proposition we want to demonstrate; 2. analyse it in order to pinpoint its difficulty; 3. explain the difficulty.

616. We have to demonstrate the following proposition: 'Every fact (change) necessarily requires a cause capable of producing it.'
By fact I mean any action whatsoever, whether its effect is found externally or internally, provided it indicates some change or, in the most general sense, some movement.
It is not necessary for me to describe the various kinds of possible actions because my intention is to include in this word every type of action.
The proposition effectively states: every time we perceive an action, we perceive an agent or cause of this action. Explaining this fact, describing how it comes about in us, or showing the way in which we come to the idea of cause from the idea of some fact (happening, action), is to indicate the origin of the idea of cause.

617. The proposition we have undertaken to analyse is a judgment made up of three parts: 1. a fact, a happening or an action that we must have conceived mentally; 2. the connection between this action and the unknown agent or cause; 3. the idea of this agent or cause.
To explain how we mentally conceive such a judgment, we have to show how we come to conceive each of the three parts of which it is composed.

618. We first perceive the action, or happening, with the help of our internal and external sensibility.
Our consciousness assures us of our passivity when real, corporeal things impinge upon the nerves of our body,(84) and of our activity when we will to do something and, through the stimulus of our will, go on to think, move, etc.
Through the idea of being we proceed to form the idea of action, both that produced by us and that which happens in us without our positive intervention.
When we have acquired the concept of action and mentally conceived different kinds of action, we also learn of the existence of other real actions either through what others(85) tell us, or by imagining them for ourselves.

It is not difficult, therefore, to explain how we perceive action and form various concepts of it. We know it primarily through what takes place in us (given the idea of being), and through similar things which we can imagine happening to us.
Moreover, our consciousness provides awareness of all the actions of which we ourselves are the authors and causes.
We realise that it is we ourselves who desire, think, and so on. The cause of all these kinds of actions, therefore, is known to us, by perception; we know that we ourselves are doing these things. Analysing them, we distinguish myself, as responsible for them (their cause), from the actions caused. In this way, we form the idea of cause relative to actions done by us.
Once more, there is no difficulty, although here we already have an idea of cause.

619. We now have to show that the idea of cause contains something clearly seen as necessary to every happening or action. Our proposition ran as follows: 'Every new fact demands a cause.' In this proposition, one finds a necessary connection between what is produced and what produces, between action and agent. But a necessary connection between two ideas must come from the nature itself of the ideas which, like relative terms, cannot be thought separately. One of them is entailed in the thought and definition of the other in such a way that an analysis of either concept inevitably shows that the other is contained in it.

The whole difficulty lies here. We have to submit the two terms of the proposition to a rigorous analysis and show that: 1. action, and 2. cause, (that which produces action), cannot be thought except together.
If we succeed in doing this, we shall also have shown that: 1. a fact or happening cannot be thought without a cause; 2. no cause can be conceived mentally without thought of at least a possible effect.
After this, it will only be necessary to indicate the way in which we acquire one or other of these ideas. Analysis showing that one is in the other will also demonstrate that the presence of one accounts for the presence of the other.
The idea of action and the pure and simple idea of a cause present no difficulty. These ideas are given by experience and interior awareness. We are conscious of our actions, and of being their cause, as we have seen (cf. 618).
The difficulty lies in showing that when we think of action, we also think implicitly of cause, and vice versa. Let us examine the problem.

620. All things, including actions, can be objects of the understanding (cf. 603).
But according to the principle of knowledge (cf. 564-565), every intellectual operation has being or ens as its object.
Everything, therefore, that pertains to or determines being or ens is not thought per se by the understanding but only as a determination of being or ens.
In order to think that which pertains to ens, but is not itself ens, the understanding must first think ens, and through it (not without it) conceive and understand these determinations.(86) We have seen all this in the course of our work, and I have to say that the argument, if considered in itself independently of the rather abstract expressions used, should not raise any difficulties. However, in order to facilitate understanding, I shall present the teaching as smoothly and familiarly as I can.
First, in everything we think, we must think one of the following kinds of things: 1. an ens; and 2. some quality or attribute belonging to an ens.

I believe there is no middle term between these two. If we examine all the possible objects of our thought, we will see that everything we understand is ultimately classed either as an ens, or as something necessarily pertaining or related to an ens.
It is important, however, to understand the word ens correctly, and not to restrict its meaning unduly.
By ens, I mean that which is; that which is not, is nothing. Consequently, that which is not an ens, nor even something included in ens, is nothing. The word ens, therefore, embraces everything; nothing is excluded; nor can we say that there is something outside the 'all'. If we conceive something, therefore, either we conceive ens, or something contained in ens. Affirming the contrary would be an obvious contradiction. We would both affirm and eliminate the affirmation. In other words, we would not be speaking, but 'sounding off' unintelligibly.

It is true, of course, that through abstraction we can consider the appurtenances of ens separately from ens but in carrying out this operation, by which we mentally separate from ens something which belongs to it, we do not form, from what has been separated, an ens on its own. And we must have already thought ens in its entirety because it is on the idea of ens that we have carried out our abstraction. Abstracting, or taking something from a whole is impossible if we do not already possess the whole from which we separate and rescind the required part.

Things which in themselves are not entia or being, but pertain to some ens in which they are perceived, are intellectual abstractions and as such presuppose the total idea of the thing of which they are considered as a part. Consequently 'ens is thought per se. By means of ens and using our faculty of abstraction, we think the things contained in or pertaining to ens or in any way related to it'.
The truth of this principle can also be understood if we consider carefully the nature of abstract ideas.

When we separate a quality or relationship or any of the parts from an ens, we have indeed separated and mentally cut the thing off from the whole. However, we are not deceived because we can view the part only as pertaining to its ens as a whole. It is impossible for the understanding to think of anything pertaining to an ens without first thinking the ens itself. If afterwards the understanding fixes its attention willingly upon a part of the ens (which is what abstraction means), it never forgets (unless it deceives itself) that the part is inseparable from the ens in which it is seen to exist.

621. If these very simple principles are kept in mind, it is no longer difficult to see how the understanding forms the idea of cause.
In our perceptions, as I have said, we are conscious of an action done in us of which we are not the authors.
If we ourselves initiated the action, we would perceive it as something pertaining to us, that is, we would perceive it (something pertaining to an ens) in our own ens. In this case our intellective perception would have all the conditions necessary to take place. But if our consciousness provides an action for our understanding without also proffering an author of the action, could it perceive and understand the action?

An action is not an ens, nor does it make an ens subsist (substance); it merely pertains to an ens.(87)
Moreover, we have seen that the understanding cannot conceive anything except through the conception of an ens in which it conceives the thing.
The understanding therefore conceives the action only by referring it to an ens which, although unknown to the understanding, is necessarily felt by the understanding as that to which the action pertains or by which it is produced. This ens we call cause.
These are all undeniable propositions, comprising an irrefutable demonstration that our understanding must think, together with the idea of action of which we are not the authors, an ens different from ourselves as the author. In other words, it must think a cause.

All that remains to explain is how the understanding can think this ens (cause) which is presented neither by consciousness nor by internal feeling. I have shown that it must do this but not how it must do it.
This will become clear however if I sum up all that has been said in this Section.
The idea of a cause is the idea of an ens that produces an action. Analysing this idea, we find it is composed of three parts: 1. action; 2. ens, and 3. their connection.

But the action is given by feeling; being is innate [App., no. 20]; their connection arises from the necessity already indicated as inherent to the nature of the understanding, or more properly to the nature of its objects which cannot be conceived mentally without being. Ens is the first thing conceived by the intellect because it is the first thing to exist, and that through which all other things are conceived, since everything else exists through ens.

622. When, as intelligent natures, we supply being to our sense perception, we form for ourselves the idea of substance, that is, of an ens which we conceive as existing in itself and not in something else.
When we supply ens in the intellective perception of an action, we form for ourselves the idea of cause, that is, a substance that carries out an action.(88)
Our act of understanding is the same in the formation of the idea of substance and of the idea of cause; both operations consist in supplying ens(89) to what is provided by feeling or perception. This is possible through the identity of the subject (MYSELF) which feels, perceives intellectually, and reflects. In addition to enjoying external and internal sense, we possess the idea of being which constitutes our intellect [App., no. 21]. What is felt is perceived by our senses, and we refer it to being, of which we consider it a determination. We think a determinate ens, and with it the idea of substance. When we perceive an action, we refer it to an ens and consider it as an act of the ens. In this way, we come to perceive the ens as operative, and along with it the idea of cause. Substance is an ens producing an act which we consider immanent to the substance itself (accidents);(90) cause is an ens which produces an action outside itself (effect).
The idea of substance is generated by the need for an ens antecedent to accidents; the idea of another ens, or cause properly so called, is generated by the need for an ens antecedent to the coming into existence of contingent ens.

623. A sensible quality cannot exist without a substance; an action cannot exist without a cause.
The understanding adds being to the sensible qualities (the terms of sensations) and forms a determinate ens. To the action it adds the ens which produces the action. In this way, by completing sensation, the understanding arrives at substance; by completing perception, it arrives at cause.

From the instant that being is present in the closest way to the intellect, which it constitutes, the intellect must perceive ens, nothing else.
In intellective perception, therefore, the intellect can first see only ens; secondly, in seeing ens, it must see that in which ens is grounded (de ratione entis). If it did not see everything in which ens is grounded, it would not see ens. But if we grant that it does see ens, and at the same time deny that it sees that in which ens is grounded, we affirm and deny the same thing.

This is not difficult to understand if we grasp that ens, and "that which is grounded" in ens, are the same thing. It is confirmed to the highest degree once we know that the idea of being is the most universal of all ideas, as we have seen, and consequently the simplest.
Hence, perceiving with our sense some appurtenance of ens, something which is grounded in ens (such as sensations or action that renders us passive), and seeing being, as we already do in a continual, fundamental, natural vision, we immediately perceive substance and argue to cause.
Our perception of substance and our conception of cause is simply 'perception of an ens to which pertain sensible qualities, and to which we attribute the action that we experience or perceive.'

Once a philosopher has demonstrated his teaching, he may use images. We could say therefore that indeterminate ens, continually and unmovably present to us, is like a sheet of white paper. The determinations of the object are accidental additions, like writing on the paper. The writing, or determinations of the object to which our intellect continually directs its watchful, interior gaze, are sensations or feelings referred to being as terms to their principle.
Thus, with the same act with which we see being, we also see in it the determinations of being, determinations which we never see without being. We are like people looking at a screen: with one and the same gaze we see both the screen and all that is happening on it.

624. Our understanding, therefore, is governed inexorably by the following law which it receives from the nature of its object: it must complete feeling and perception. The nature of the understanding consists in a continual gaze directed to being and ens, a gaze which beholds everything in which ens is grounded, such as the determinations and conditions of ens itself. When the particular power of internal or external sense provides determinations of ens, the understanding naturally integrates and completes them. With our internal vision we inevitably add being to what we sense and from being form a determinate ens, to which we again add all that necessarily belongs to ens. This intellective aptitude can be called 'integrative faculty of the understanding.'

625. I have shown that the understanding cannot conceive sensible qualities without thinking a substance. This argument is universally applicable, valid for both external qualities of bodies and facts connected with internal feeling.
As I have said, human beings when thinking of sensible qualities, think them in a subject and thus form the idea of substance in the way I have explained.
Let us apply the same argument to facts connected with internal sense, that is, to feelings.

Human beings have interior feelings and are aware of possessing ideas, along with spiritual pains and pleasures. We conceive these feelings of ours intellectually as well, and refer these modifications to an existing ens (ourselves). In this way, we can form the idea of our own substance.

626. But the reality of our own substance is presented to our understanding in another, more immediate way, prior to what we have described. The feeling of OURSELVES is a substantial feeling. Our understanding, therefore, does not supply but perceives our own substance immediately in the feeling which proffers it to us. Perception of our own substance enables the intellect to acquire from the beginning the positive idea of substance by abstracting from the judgment invariably united to intellective perception.

627. There is a very noticeable difference, therefore, between perceiving the substance of external bodies and the substance of our spirit. In the perception of external bodies, our feeling receives only 1. a force, 2. to which we refer sensations as effects, considering them as sensible qualities determining the force. This force is indeed a substantial action, but because it lacks subjective existence it is not an ens. Nevertheless because we have to consider it as an ens (this is a necessary condition of our perceiving it intellectually), we attribute to it a mode of subjective existence which makes it exist in itself as well as relative to us. In this way, we assign to the force the support or substance without which it would not be an ens. However, because we experience this substance only in its action upon us, we conceive an ens to which this action belongs, without defining what the ens is. For us the ens remains defined as the proximate cause of the action.

For this reason, some philosophers have considered the substance of bodies as hidden. We are in fact obliged to consider the actual agent as substance and give it the substantive name 'body'. This agent is therefore a substance determined by a relationship, although a real relationship. I call 'extrasubjective' everything that concerns the body, because in such an idea of the substance of bodies we do not think any subject in a positive way, but solely something foreign to ourselves, foreign to our own subject.
In the perception of our own substantial feeling, however, a substantial subject is present. Here only the idea of being need be applied; we have no need to supply this substance with a concept of relationship.

628. Finally, we can perceive our own body in the way we perceive any foreign body, that is, extrasubjectively; we can also perceive it as the term of our internal feeling, subjectively. But I shall have to deal with this subjective perception of our body at greater length later.

(84) I express myself like this to determine the action in some way. In fact, knowledge that our body has been touched by real things comes after awareness of our passivity so that the expression used is posterior to our experience.

(85) Language would be of no use to us unless we already possessed the ideas signified by language, or had the capacity for forming them on the occasion of sounds that we hear. St. Augustine acutely notes: 'We can all move a finger to indicate something but we cannot confer the faculty of sight. Similarly we can speak words externally, which are signs of truth, but we cannot bestow the power of understanding, which belongs to God alone.'

(86) It is easy to see that this necessity arises from the nature of what is thought. The necessity is therefore an objective, not a subjective law of the intellectual faculty. The determination of ens exists only through ens. But because the determination can be mentally conceived only in so far as it exists, it would be absurd to say that it could be conceived before or independently of the ens to which it belongs, and through which it is something.

(87) We prove this proposition from the definition of the action of which we are speaking. We are not considering first, immanent act, which is existence itself, but an action following upon first, immanent act.

(88) We could imagine something operating differently from substances: for example, one thought producing another. This takes place, however, through abstraction. The true cause of all our thoughts is the substance of the spirit.

(89) 'Supplying this ens' does not mean that we create it or produce it as something immanent to ourselves; it is the object of our intuition from the first moment of our existence.

(90) Although substance is therefore 'cause' relative to accidents, it is called 'substance' when considered under the concept of act of being relative to its terms, which exist through and in this act. It is not called 'substance' when considered as producing something. We need to remember that all these concepts are abstraction.