ABSTRACT
We have been chiefly concerned, in recent chapters, with a kind of causation that may be called “intrinsic”. This is the kind that is interpreted as the persistence of a thing or a process. Owing to the fact that the persistence of things is taken for granted and regarded as involving identity of substance, this form of causation has not been recognized as what it is. It may be stated as follows: “Given an event at a certain time and place, it usually happens that, at every neighbouring time, a closely similar event occurs at some neighbouring place”. This principle affords a basis for a great many inductions, but it does not, prima facie, enable us to deal with what commonly count as interactions, e.g. collisions between billiard balls. It is causal processes of this kind that are to be considered in the present chapter.
