Activity-situations come, in short, each with an original touch. A
'principle' of free will if there were one, would doubtless manifest
itself in such phenomena, but I never say, nor do I now see, what the
principle could do except rehearse the phenomenon beforehand, or why it
ever should be invoked.
186
for philosophy is to leave off grubbing underground
for what effects effectuation, or what
makes action act, and to try to solve the concrete
questions of where effectuation in this
world is located, of which things are the true
causal agents there, and of what the more
remote effects consist.
From this point of view the greater sublimity
traditionally attributed to the metaphysical
inquiry, the grubbing inquiry, entirely disappears.
If we could know what causation
really and transcendentally is in itself, the only
_use_ of the knowledge would be to help us to
recognize an actual cause when we had one,
and so to track the future course of operations
more intelligently out. The mere abstract
inquiry into causation's hidden nature
is not more sublime than any other inquiry
equally abstract. Causation inhabits no more
sublime level than anything else. It lives,
apparently, in the dirt of the world as well
as in the absolute, or in man's unconquerable
mind.
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