Lady Mary Shepherd's Causal Theory

What probable arguments may be advanced upon the matter, is foreign to the object of this Essay, and I shall not now enter upon them; but conclude by expressing my astonishment, that Mr. Hume's and Dr. Brown's definition of the relation fo Cause and Effect, should have continued so long, admired, adopted, and unanswered.

The necessary connexion of Cause and Effect, and our knowledge of it, in opposition to mere fancy or custom, is the governing proposition in every science. In vain should we look for improvement in any, could we run the risk of so vital a mistake, as to suppose that objects, however frequently conjoined, were therefore necessarily connected or, on the contrary, that in the necessary production of qualities, there was no more than an experienced conjunction of them, and that they might change hteir places by a "change in the course of nature."

I have endeavoured to show, that any one junciton of bodies in fit circumstances fo rwhat is termed the experimentum crucis, may be sufficient to establish where the power lies towards the production of certain qualities,--that ordinary life affords such experiment to the mind; and that without it, constant conjunctions of antecedent and subsequent objects, will not prove where the Cause of an Effect is. Conjunctions, however frequent, may be separable both in fact and fancy; Cause and Effect, a changed object with its changed qualities, are inseparable in both.

Let then the following just propositions be again received--

That objects cannot begin their own existences.

That like objects, must ever have like qualities.

That like Causes, must generate like Effects.

And that objects, of which we have no experience, must resemble those of which we have had experience, for that the course of Nature continues uniformly the same.

These ar ethe only true foundations of scientific research, of pracitcal knowledge, and of belief in a creating and presiding Deity.