hic knowledge is "the
knowledge of effects as dependent on their causes,"[278] and "of
qualities as inherent in substances."[279]

[Footnote 278: "Lectures on Metaphysics," vol. i. p. 58.]

[Footnote 279: Ibid., vol. i. p. 138.]

1. _As to Events and Causes_.--"Events do not occur isolated, apart, by
themselves; they occur and are conceived by us only in connection. Our
observation affords us no example of a phenomenon which is not an
effect; nay, our thought can not even realize to itself the possibility
of a phenomenon without a cause. By the necessity we are under of
thinking some cause for every phenomenon, and by our original ignorance
of what particular causes belong to what particular effects, it is
rendered impossible for us to acquiesce in the mere knowledge of the
fact of the phenomenon; on the contrary, we are determined, we are
necessitated to regard each phenomenon as _only partially known until we
discover the causes_ on which it depends for its existence.[280]
Philosophic knowledge is thus, in its widest acceptation, the knowledge
of effects as dependent on causes. Now what does this imply? In the
first place, as every cause to which we can ascend is only an effect, it
follows that it is the scope, that is, the aim, of philosophy to trace
up the series of effects and causes until we arrive at _causes which are
not in themselves effects_,"[281]--that is, to ultimate and final
causes. And then, finally, "Philosophy, as the knowledge of effects in
their causes, necessarily tends, not towards a plurality of ultimate or
final causes, but towards _one_ alone."[282]

[Footnote 280: Ibid., vol. i. p. 56.]

[Footnote 281: "Lectures on Metaphysics," vol. i. p. 58.]

[Footnote 282: Ibid., vol. i. p. 60.]

2. _As to Qualities and Substance, or Phenomena and Reality_.--As
phenomena appear only in conjunction, we are compelled, by the
constitution of our nature, to think them conjoined in and by something;
and as they are phenomena, we can not think them phenomena of nothing,
but must regard them as properties or qualities of something.[283] Now
that which manifests its qualities--in other words, that in which the
appearing causes inhere, that to which they belong--is called their
_subject_, or _substance_, or _substratum_.[284] The subject of one
grand series of phenomena (as, _e.g._, extension, solidity, figure,
etc.) is called _matter_, or _material substance_. The subject of the
other grand series of phenom