particular antecedent. If the external cause or object be absent, the consequent feeling, direct or indirect, which we term perception, will not be induced, precisely as any other feeling will not arise without its peculiar antecedent. The relation of cause and effect, in short, is exactly the same in perception as in all the other mental phenomena, a relation of invariable sequence of one change after another change."[1]
This doctrine, which explains the phenomena of perception by placing them under the law of causality, is maintained, we believe, in one form or another, by every philosopher who has theorised on the subject,[2] from Aristotle, down through his scholastic followers, past the occasionalists and pre-established harmonists, and onwards to Dr Brown, who is merely to be considered as one of its most explicit expounders. One and all of them assume that the
- ↑ 'Physiology of the Mind,' p. 125-6.
- ↑ We are aware that Dr Brown and others have endeavoured to teach the doctrine of causation as a simple relation of antecedence and consequence, emptying our notion of cause of the idea of efficiency, that is, of the element which constitutes its very essence. But, unlike Hume, who adopted the same views and never swerved from them, but carried them forth into all their consequences, they never remain consistent with themselves for ten consecutive pages. They keep constantly resuming the idea they profess to have abjured; as, for instance, in their admission with respect to the efficiency or power of the Divine will. Therefore, their doctrine, whatever it may be, does not in any degree affect the line of argument followed out in the text, addressed though that argument is to those who entertain the common notion of causation, as, no doubt, Dr Brown himself did, however different a one he may have professed.
