30 Sept. 1814

Logic

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Ch.2. Ontology

Entities classed

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{Purely natural, purely factitious, and mixed: to one or other of these heads may every motion be referred, considered with reference to the part which the human will is capable of bearing in the production of it.}

{Solid, liquid, or gaseous, - in one or other of these states, at the time of the motion, will the moving body be found.}

The internal constitution of the moving body - the internal constitution of the unmoveable or unmoving /non-moving/ bodies with which it comes in contact, and the configuration of these same bodies; - upon all these several circumstances, or rather groups of circumstances, must the nature of the ultimate effect produced by the motion be dependent, - whether that effect be a purely physical result, or a human work.

In so far then as, by the term cause, nothing more is meant to be designated than one alone of all those sets of co-operating circumstances; be the effect what it may, the cause can never of itself be adequate to the production o

f it; nor, between the quantum of the effect and the quantum of the cause, can any determinate proportion have place.

But, of the case in which, in the extent given to the import attributed to the word cause the whole assemblage of these influencing circumstances is taken into the account and comprised, it seems questionable whether so much as a single example would be to be found.

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