The character of people may be changed by the circumstances around them. Few people are so perfect as not to err sometimes; and if you are convinced of your errors, you will be more cautious how you give them a second time. It should be noted that the Universality and uniformity of causation are two entirely different claims. Either could be true without the other’s being true. The Universality of causation has throughout the history of philosophy, until very recent times, usually been regarded as very obvious, sometimes even self-evident. There are many thinkers today, however, who consider it quite possible that certain changes involving the minutest constituents of matter simply have no causes at all. There are also philosophers who consider it doubtful whether all voluntary human acts are caused in any generally accepted sense. Thus, what was once considered quite obvious is now at least controversial. There is, in any case, no philosophical way of proving the Universality of causation, for such a proof would have to demonstrate some absurdity in the denial of it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

 It is not the least difficult to imagine a change occurring without anything causing that change, and there is no contradiction whatever in asserting that this sometimes happens, although, of course, it may be false. Anyone who labors under the pressure of pecuniary embarrassments is, with the generality of people, at a disadvantage. I have never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companionship of the steady, plain, hardworking qualities, and hope to gain its ends. Words never influence the course of the cards, or the course of the dice. It is obvious, too, that there is no scientific or empirical to prove either Universality or the nonuniversality of causation. If some change occurs and no cause of that change is observed—as often happens, of course, even in one’s ordinary daily experiences—then one can say that no such cause exists or, upon the same negative evidence, fall back upon the supposition that there is such a cause but that it has eluded discovery. There are chords in the human heart. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

The power of sentences has nothing to do with their sense or the logic of their construction. A word carries far—very far—deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space. Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We cannot learn people from books. The causes of many events that humans have experienced have never been experienced at all. If the reverse were true, there would be such thing as an unsolved murder. Causes are in such cases assumed to exist r inferred from other causal connections that humans have experienced, but they are not experienced. The doctrine of the uniformity of causation, on the other hand, is relatively recent in philosophy and arose, more or less, with the development and growth of science and its increasing emphasis upon laws of nature. Of course, philosophers have always been aware of certain uniformities of nature, but there was little emphasis upon the absolute uniformity of causation before the rise of experimental science. There seemed, moreover, to be certain causes—such as the Sun, for instance—whose effects were so numerous and diverse that there appeared to be almost no similarity between them at all. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

Experience, that unvarying and rational order of the World which has been the appointed instrument of human’s training since life and thought began. It was at first thought that causes produced their effects by virtue of their power or efficacy to do so. (Such is, in fact, part of the original meaning of an efficient cause.) This easily gave rise to the idea that a cause must be at least as great as its rise to the idea that a cause must be at least as great as its effect, that the lesser cannot produce the greater, a claim that was made, and considered self-evident. The supposition that a given kind of cause could have but one kind of effect was seldom considered obvious, however. Nevertheless, I think it expedient and justifiable to continue to use the illustrative idea of the two systems. We shall avoid any abuse of this mode of representation if we remember that ideas, thoughts, and psychic formations in general must not in any case be localized in organic elements of the nervous system but, so to speak, between them, where resistances and association-tracks from the correlate corresponding to them. Has experience the same opinion of the World as ignorance? It should have more charity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

Everything that can become an object of internal perception is virtual, like the image in the telescope produced by the crossing of light-rays. However, we are justified in thinking of the systems—which has nothing psychic in themselves, and which never become accessible to our psychic perception—as something similar to the lenses of the telescope, which project the image. If we continue this comparison, we might say that the censorship between the two systems corresponds to the refraction of the rays on passing into a new medium. Thus far, we have developed our psychology on our own responsibility; it is now time to turn and look at the doctrines prevailing in modern psychology, and to examine the relation of these to our theories. Patience is not the same as indifference; patience conveys the idea of someone who is tremendously strong and able to withstand all assaults. Having the vision of God is the source of endurance because it gives us God’s true and proper inspiration. A person who has the vision of God is not devoted to a cause or to any particular issue—one is devoted absolutely and explicitly to God only. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

Delight become pictorial when viewed through pain, more fair, because impossible that any gain. The mountain at a given distance in amber lies; approached, the amber flits a little, and that is the skies. Upon the gallows hung a wretch, too sullied for the Hell to which the law entitled one. As nature’s curtain fell the one who bore him tottered in, for this was woman’s son. “It was all I had,” she stricken gasped; oh, what livid boon! Remorse is memory awake, her companies astir—a presence of departed acts at a window and at door. It is past set down before the soul, and lighted with a match, perusal to facility of its condensed dispatch. Remorse is cureless—the disease not even God can heal; for it is his institution the complement of Hell. God never again opens the doors that have been closed. Death and dying force upon us a certain honesty about life and living. Where truth is lacking in living, truth will be lacking in dying. In fact, life and death appear related: the more life the easier death; the less life the more terrible the death. When we face finitude we find ourselves driven to deal with our work, our worth, our love, our life. #RandolphHarris 6 or 7

What is most terrifying about dying and death is the lack of a living connectedness. Without presence, we are without hope; without contact, we are without grounding. So we find we are required to face what separates the living from the dying. We find we are required to face our own limits and our own end. For wee, too will die. In facing death we are finding life. And in finding life we establish a living and a sense of community. We come closer to one another for mutual gratification and upbuilding. In our friendships and affection, we are subject to some inscrutable moral law, similar in its effect to what the chemists call affinity. God opens doors, but he reminds us there are doors which we have shut. Let your memory have it way with you. It is a minister of God bringing its rebuke and sorrow to you. God will turn what might have been into a wonderful lesson of growth for the future. That is what is meant by faith being exercised in the realities of life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7