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Illustration of Mr. Mill's contention.
arise of its being supposed to cause itself. To cite an instance we have the falling of bodies. "What is the cause which makes a stone fall ?" observes Mill, "and if the answer had been the stone itself' the expression would have been in apparent contradiction to the meaning of the word cause. The stone, therefore, is conceived as the patient and the earth (or according to the common and most unphilosophical practice, an occult quality of the earth) is represented as the agent or cause. But that there is nothing fundamental in the distinction may be seen from this that it is quite possible to conceive the stone as causing its own fall provided the language employed be such as to save the mere verbal incongruity. We might say that the stone moves towards the earth by the properties of the matter composing it, and according to this mode of presenting the phenomenon, the stone itself might without impropriety be called the agent ; though to save the established doctrine of the inactivity of matter, men usually prefer here also to ascribe the effect to an occult quality and
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