treaty of Fontainebleau on the 10th of April 1814. During the first Restoration, Caulaincourt lived in obscure retirement. When Napoleon returned from Elba, he became minister of foreign affairs, and tried to persuade Europe of the emperor’s peaceful intentions. After the second Restoration, Caulaincourt’s name was on the list of those proscribed, but it was erased on the personal intervention of Alexander I. with Louis XVIII.
Caulaincourt’s memoirs appeared under the title Souvenirs du duc de Vicence in 1837–1840. See A. Vandal, Napoléon et Alexandre (Paris, 1891–1895); Tatischeff, Alexandre Iᵉʳ et Napoleon (Paris, 1892); H. Houssaye, 1814 (Paris, 1888), and 1815 (Paris, 1893).
CAULICULUS (from Lat. caulis, a stalk), in architecture, the Stalks (eight in number) with two leaves from which rise the helices or spiral scrolls of the Corinthian capital to support the abacus.
CAULON (Gr. καυλωνία), a town of the district of the Bruttii, Italy, on the east coast. Its exact site is uncertain (though the name has been given to a modern village), and depends on the identification of the river Sagras. It was the southernmost of the Achaean colonies, founded either by Croton or direct from Greece itself. In the 7th century it was allied with Croton and Sybaris, and its coins, which go back to 550 B.C., prove its importance. It took the side of Athens in the Peloponnesian War. In 388 B.C. it was destroyed by Dionysius, but soon afterwards restored. It was captured during the invasion of Pyrrhus by Campanian troops. Strabo speaks of it as deserted in his time. The erection of the lighthouse at Capo Stilo, on the site of one of the medieval guard towers of the coast, led to the discovery of a wall of Greek origin, and close by of a number of terra-cottas, belonging perhaps to a temple erected in honour of the deities of the sea. Other remains were found at Fontanelle, 212 m. away, including the fragment of a capital of an archaic Greek temple (P. Orsi in Notizie degli Scavi, 1891, 61). These buildings may be connected with the Caulon or a village dependent on it. (T. As.)
CAUSATION or Causality (Lat. causa, derived perhaps from the root cav-, as in caveo, and meaning something taken care of; corresponding to Gr. αἰτία), a philosophical term for the operation of causes and for the mental conception of cause as operative throughout the universe. The word “cause” is correlative to “effect.” Thus when one thing B is regarded as taking place in consequence of the action of another thing A, then A is said to be the cause of B, and B the effect of A. The philosophical problems connected with causation are both metaphysical and psychological. The metaphysical problem is part of the whole theory of existence. If everything is to be regarded as causally related with simultaneous and prior things or actions, it follows logically that the investigation of existence must, by hypothesis, be a regress to infinity, i.e. that we cannot conceive a beginning to existence. This explanation has led to the postulate of a First Cause, the nature of which is variously explained. The empirical school sees no difficulty in assuming a single event; but such a theory seems to deny the validity of the original hypothesis. Theologians assert a divine origin in the form of a personal self-existent creator, while some metaphysical schools, preferring an impersonal First Cause, substitute the doctrine of the Absolute (q.v.). All the explanations are alike in this respect, that at a certain point they pass from the sphere of the senses, the physical world, to a metaphysical sphere in which the data and the intellectual operation of cognizing them are of a totally different quality. For example, the causal connexion between drunkenness and alcohol is not of the same observable character as that which is inferred between the infinite First Cause and the whole domain of sense-given phenomena.
A second metaphysical problem connected with causation arises when we consider the nature of necessity. It is generally assumed when two things are spoken of as cause and effect that their relation is a necessary one, or, in other words, that given the cause the effect must follow. The arguments connected with this problem belong to psychological discussions of causation. It is sufficient here to state that, in so far as causation is regarded as necessary connexion, it can form no part of a purely empirical theory of existence. The senses can say only that in all observed cases B has followed A, and this does not establish necessary connexion. The idea of causation is a purely intellectual (a priori) one.
The psychological problems connected with causation refer (1) to the origin of the conception in our minds; (2) to the validity of the conception. As regards the origin of the conception modern psychological analysis does not carry us beyond the doctrine of Locke contained in his chapter on “Power” (Essay, bk. ii. ch. 21), wherein he shows that the idea of power is got from the knowledge of our own activity. “Bodies by their causes,” he says, “do not afford us so clear and distinct an idea of active power as we have from reflection on the operation of our minds.” Putting Locke’s doctrine into modern language, we may say that a man has the conception of cause primarily because he himself is a cause. The conception thus obtained we “project,” that is, transfer to external objects, so far as we may find it useful to do so. Thus it is by a sort of analogy that we say that the sun is the “cause” of daylight. The rival theory to Locke’s is that of Hume (Treatise, bk. i.), who derives the conception from the unaided operation of custom. When one object, A, has been noticed frequently to precede another object, B, an association between A and B is generated; and by virtue of this association, according to Hume, we say that A is the cause of B. The weakness of this account is that many invariable successions, such as day and night, do not make us regard the earlier members of the successions as causing the later; while in numberless cases we assert a causal connexion between two objects from a single experience of them.
We may proceed now to consider the validity of the conception of causation, which has been attacked from two sides. From the side of absolute idealism it is argued that the conception of cause, as involving a transition in time, cannot be ultimately valid, since the time-relation is not ultimately real. Upon this view (ably stated in Professor Bosanquet’s Logic, bk. i. ch. 6) the more we know of causes and effects the less relevant becomes the time-relation and the nearer does the conception of cause and effect approach to another conception which is truly valid, the conception of ground and consequence. This means that, viewed from the standpoint of science, a draught of alcohol causes intoxication in no other sense than the triangularity of a triangle causes the interior angles to be equal to two right angles. This argument ceases to have cogency so soon as we deny its fundamental proposition that the time-relation is not ultimately real, but is irrelevant from the standpoint of science. This is a sheer assertion, contrary to all ordinary experience, which we have as much right to deny as the absolute idealists to affirm. It is only plausible to those who are committed to the Hegelian view of reality as consisting of a static system of universals, a view which has long been discredited in Germany, its native land, and is fast losing ground in England. Against the Hegelians we must maintain that the common distinction between “ground” and “cause” is perfectly justifiable. Whereas “ground” is an appropriate term for the relations within a static, simultaneous system, “cause” is appropriate to the relations within a dynamic, successive system.
From the other side the validity of causation has been attacked in the interests of the naturalism of the mechanical sciences. J. S. Mill argues that, scientifically, the cause of anything is the total assemblage of the conditions that precede its appearance, and that we have no right to give the name of cause to one of them exclusively of the others. The answer to this is that Mill fails to recognize that cause is a conception which we find useful in our dealings with nature, and that whatever conceptions we find useful we are justified in using. Among the conditions of an event there are always one or two that stand in specially close relation to it from our point of view; e.g. the draught of alcoholic liquor is more closely related to the man’s drunkenness than is the attraction of the earth’s gravity, though that also must co-operate in producing the effect. Such closely related conditions we find it convenient to single out by a term which expresses their analogy to the cause of causes, human volition.
