The Purport of the Principle of Causation By the principle...

The Purport of the Principle of Causation By the principle of causation is meant those propositions which denote the need of the effect for a cause, and they imply that an effect will not occur without a cause. This matter can be expounded as a ‘verity proposition’ ( qaḍiyyah ḥaqīqiyyah ) in the following form: Every effect needs a cause.

The purport of this is that whenever an effect occurs in the external world, it will be in need of a cause, and there is no existent which can be characterized as an effect and which has come into existence without a cause. So, the existence of an effect indicates that it has been brought into existence by a cause.

This is an analytic proposition, and the concept of its predicate is obtained from the concept of its subject, for the concept of being an effect, as has been explained, consists in being an existent whose existence is dependent upon another existent of which it is in need. Hence, the concept of the subject (effect) includes the meaning of need and dependency on a cause which constitutes the predicate of the above-mentioned proposition.

Thus, it is one of the primary self-evident propositions ( badīhiyyāt awwaliyyah ) and has no need for any sort of reason or proof, and merely imagining the subject and predicate is sufficient for affirming this proposition.

However, this proposition does not denote the existence of an effect in the external world, and on the basis of it one cannot establish that in the world of being there exists an existent which is in need of a cause, for a verity proposition ( qaḍiyyah ḥaqīqiyyah ) is considered to be a conditional proposition, and by itself it is not capable of establishing the existence of its subject in the external world, and it denotes no more than that if an existent with the characteristic of being an effect occurs, then it cannot but have a cause.

This principle can be presented in another way, such that it denotes the existence of an instance of the subject in the external world, as in the following form: Effects which exist in the external world are in need of causes.