Note (return) — Chapter VII

1. As to Events and Causes.--"Events do not occur isolated, apart, by themselves; they occur and are conceived by us only in connection. Our observation affords us no example of a phenomenon which is not an effect; nay, our thought can not even realize to itself the possibility of a phenomenon without a cause. By the necessity we are under of thinking some cause for every phenomenon, and by our original ignorance of what particular causes belong to what particular effects, it is rendered impossible for us to acquiesce in the mere knowledge of the fact of the phenomenon; on the contrary, we are determined, we are necessitated to regard each phenomenon as only partially known until we discover the causes on which it depends for its existence. 280 Philosophic knowledge is thus, in its widest acceptation, the knowledge of effects as dependent on causes. Now what does this imply? In the first place, as every cause to which we can ascend is only an effect, it follows that it is the scope, that is, the aim, of philosophy to trace up the series of effects and causes until we arrive at causes which are not in themselves effects," 281--that is, to ultimate and final causes. And then, finally, "Philosophy, as the knowledge of effects in their causes, necessarily tends, not towards a plurality of ultimate or final causes, but towards one alone." 282