CHAPTER X. 509 such are bricklayers, carpenters, labourers, &c. the instrumental causes are hammers, axes, trowels, &c: 3. Efficient internal causes are distinguished from external when the inward humours of the body produce pain or death, it is different from the case when outwardwounds and bruisespro- duce the sameeffects. 4. Efficient causes may be exciting and disposing, as when 'hunger excites a horse to eat, or a farmer holds hay to his mouth : But when a farrier constrains him to take a drench, this is a compelling and constraining cause. .5. A cause isforced, as when a man driven by robbers runs in at his 'neighbour's window by night for shelter : or it is free, as when a robber breaks into the house to plunder it. 6. Yet further, efficient causes may be necessary, as when the sea drowns a child who falls into it ; or contingent, as when a tile falls from a house and kills a child ; whereas it might only have wounded him, or perhaps not hurt him, or never touched him. 7. Again, Causes may be accidental, as when a boy throws a stone at a bird and breaks a window : But when he doth mis- chief on purpose, the cause is, designing, and the effect is de- signed. When a groom leads a lame horse to water, the groom is the designing cause of the horse's walking, but he is only the accidental cause of his halting. The famous pair of causes which in the schools is called Causa per accidens and Causa per se, may be applied to these two or three last distinctions of efficient causes.* 8. Again efficient causes may be either procuring or con- firming, preventing or removing. So medicines confirm or pro- cure health, and prevent or remove diseases. 9. Efficient causes may be creative, conservative, alterative, or destructive. The very names of these describe them suffi- ciently. Note, Here might be introduced that famous axiom of the schools, that every cause contains its effect, or that there is nothing in the effect which was not in the cause : but this must not be understood always formally, as a fountain contains water, but sometimes, only eminently, i. e. as the root of a tree contains leaves and fruit, because it can produce them ; and indeed when we search this axiom to the bottom, it means nothing more than that every cause canproduce its effect, which is a very dilute and * I know accidental and contingent causes are much the same ; but I thought it more proper here to multiply the divisions of cause than to crowd all these causes, (viz.) forced, free, designing, contingent, and necessary into one division, because some of them have-two or three opposites, and have their ideas a little distinct, which best appears in distinct pairs. See more in the chap. of Act and .[.ower, Neecssity and Freedom.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=