Download (PDF, 23.58MB) - Plurality Press

GENERAL SURVEY. 23
et ssqq., he rightly defines the ratio cognoscendi as a condition
of the proposition ; but in an example, 125, he neverthe
less confounds it with cause.
Lambert, in the new Organon, does not mention Wolfs
he shows, however, that he recognizes a diffe
distinctions ;
rence between reason of knowledge and cause ;
l
for he
says that God is the principium essendi of truths, and that
truths are the principia cognoscendi of G-od.
" What is called
Plattner, in his Aphorisms, 868, says :
reason and conclusion within our knowledge (principium
cognoscendi, ratio rationatum), is in reality cause and effect
(causa efficiens effectus). Every cause is a reason, every
effect a conclusion." He is therefore of opinion that
cause and effect, in reality, correspond to the conceptions
reason and consequence in our thought ; that the former
stand in a similar relation with respect to the latter as
substance and accident, for instance, to subject and predi
cate, or the quality of the object to our sensation of that
quality, &c. &c. I think it useless to refute this opinion,
for it is easy to see that premisses and conclusion in judg
ments stand in an entirely different relation to one another
from a knowledge of cause and effect ; although in indi
vidual cases even knowledge of a cause, as such, may be
the reason of a judgment which enunciates the effect. 2
12. Hume.
No one before this serious thinker had ever doubted
what follows. First, and before all things in heaven and
on earth, is the Principle of Sufficient Eeason in the form
of the Law of Causality. For it is a veritas ceterna : i.e. it is
in and by itself above Gods and Fate; whereas every
thing else, the understanding, for instance, which thinks
1
Lambert,
" New Organon," vol. i. 572.
8 Compare 36. of this treatise.