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10 THE FOURFOLD HOOT. [CHAP. II.
transcendental law of cause and effect in Nature, persistently
mistaking one for the other. In the 9th Book "
Adversus
Mathematicos," that is, the Book "
Adversus Physicos,"
204, he undertakes to prove the law of causality, and says :
" He who asserts that there is no cause (a ma), either has
no cause (air/a) for his assertion, or has one. In the former
case there is not more truth in his assertion than in its
contradiction ; in the latter, his assertion itself proves the
existence of a cause."
By this we see that the Ancients had not yet arrived at
a clear distinction between requiring a reason as the ground
cf a conclusion, and asking for a cause for the occurrence
of a real event. As for the Scholastic Philosophers of
later times, the law of causality was in their eyes an
axiom above investigation :
"
non inqidrimus an causa sit,
quia nihil est per se notius" says Suarez. 1 At the same time
they held fast to the above quoted Aristotelian classification ;
but, as far as I know at least, they equally failed to arrive
at a clear idea of the necessary distinction of which we are
here speaking.
7. Descartes.
For we find even the excellent Descartes, who gave the
first impulse to subjective reflection and thereby became
the father of modern philosophy, still entangled in con
fusions for which it is difficult to account ; and we shall
soon see to what serious and deplorable consequences these
confusions have led with regard to Metaphysics. In the
"
Responsio ad secundas objectiones in meditationes deprima
philosophia" axioma i. he says : Nulla res existit, de qua non
possit quceri, qucenam sit causa, cur existat. Hoc enim de
ipso Deo quceri potest, non quod indigeat ulla causa ut existat,
1
Suarez,
"
Disp." 12, sect. 1.