CHAPTER XVII
We have now to describe that faculty of the intellect by which concepts of causation are produced. It will be remembered that the essential, constant, or absolute of this property is persistence, that the relative is change, and from the two time is derived; then, as motion becomes force through the collision of particles, time becomes causation as antecedent and consequent, or cause and effect; then, causation becomes metagenesis, and metagenesis becomes heredity, and heredity becomes evolution.
Words are used with many meanings, but in science we are compelled to use them with one meaning. All psychological words are singularly ambiguous, because they are used as tropes to such an extent as to conceal their fundamental meaning. It is necessary to select a word to signify the cognition of causation, or cause and effect, in the various phases of time and evolution, and I select the term reflection for this purpose. The term may also have a meaning synonymous with contemplation, but I select it with the meaning which is involved in it as a sign for the cognition of causation.
Once more it may be well to remind the reader of the total unlikeness of the properties of matter, so that they can not be classified. Things can be classified that are partly alike and partly unlike, but properties are totally unlike. We may consider properties separately, but this is abstraction, not classification, and we may schematize the properties. Fundamentally, we reason by abstraction because we consider properties severally. By reason of the total unlikeness of disparate properties, the most fundamental and clearest distinctions in psychology are those which we make when we call a faculty the cognition of a property. Reflection is one of those faculties because, as the term is here defined, it is the cognition of the property of causation.
Reflection, also, has the pentalogic elements, but in the inference the choice is of a concept of causation. These pentalogic elements are a consciousness of a sense impression, a choice, a concept, a comparison, and the judgment of likeness or of unlikeness.
Reflection is one of a series of judgments, and by its place in the series others are presupposed or posited. The series, so far as it has been built up, is composed of sensation, perception, apprehension, and reflection. I see an oak, and may make a judgment of sensation and conclude that it is green. I see an oak, and I may make a judgment of perception and conclude that it is a tree. I see an oak, and may make a judgment of apprehension, and conclude that its leaves and branches are in motion; I see an oak, and make a judgment of reflection and conclude that the motion in the tree is caused by the wind. These judgments differ from one another in the nature of the concept recalled, and these concepts differ in degrees of compounding.
Why do I make a judgment of sensation? Because I wish to note the color which I am painting. Why do I make a judgment of perception? Because I wish to seek the shade of the tree? Why do I make a judgment of apprehension? Because I am looking for birds. Why do I make a judgment of reflection? Because I wish to note the direction of the wind. Here again we see that the particular inference which we make depends upon the choice of a concept, and that this choice of the concept depends upon our purpose.
The concepts of reflection are compounded of judgments of causes and effects of events. Thus by reflection the relations of time are compounded into the relations of causation, and then these are compounded into relations of metagenesis, and these are compounded into relations of heredity, and these are compounded into relations of development, and these are compounded into relations of evolution.
It will be seen that the concepts of causation are exceedingly compound. In the practical affairs of life, events are of profound importance, for the events of yesterday affect the events of today, and those of today will have a consequence in the events of tomorrow; thus life is a constant discipline.
The time of which we speak is not void time, but the time of states and events, for of void time we know absolutely nothing, and language fails to express any concept of void time, and any reification of it is a pseudo-idea—a mythological notion.