For example, the moon was eclipsed because
the earth intervened, is becoming eclipsed because the earth is in
process of intervening, will be eclipsed because the earth will
intervene, is eclipsed because the earth intervenes.
To take a second example: assuming that the definition of ice is
solidified water, let C be water, A solidified, B the middle, which is
the cause, namely total failure of heat. Then B is attributed to C,
and A, solidification, to B: ice when B is occurring, has formed
when B has occurred, and will form when B shall occur.
This sort of cause, then, and its effect come to be simultaneously
when they are in process of becoming, and exist simultaneously when
they actually exist; and the same holds good when they are past and
when they are future. But what of cases where they are not
simultaneous? Can causes and effects different from one another
form, as they seem to us to form, a continuous succession, a past
effect resulting from a past cause different from itself, a future
effect from a future cause different from it, and an effect which is
coming-to-be from a cause different from and prior to it? Now on
this theory it is from the posterior event that we reason (and this
though these later events actually have their source of origin in
previous events--a fact which shows that also when the effect is
coming-to-be we still reason from the posterior event), and from the
event we cannot reason (we cannot argue that because an event A has
occurred, therefore an event B has occurred subsequently to A but
still in the past-and the same holds good if the occurrence is
future)-cannot reason because, be the time interval definite or
indefinite, it will never be possible to infer that because it is true
to say that A occurred, therefore it is true to say that B, the
subsequent event, occurred; for in the interval between the events,
though A has already occurred, the latter statement will be false.
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