some body or deflected by some other force. The earth, however, not being annihilated, goes on producing in the second instant an effect similar and of equal amount with the first, which two effects being added together, there results an accelerated velocity; and this operation being repeated at each successive instant, the mere permanence of the cause, though without increase, gives rise to a constant progressive increase of the effect, so long as all the conditions, negative and positive, of the production of that effect continue to be realized.
It is obvious that this state of things is merely a case of the Composition of Causes. A cause which continues in action must on a strict analysis [pg 363] be considered as a number of causes exactly similar, successively introduced, and producing by their combination the sum of the effects which they would severally produce if they acted singly. The progressive rusting of the iron is in strictness the sum of the effects of many particles of air acting in succession upon corresponding particles of iron. The continued action of the earth upon a falling body is equivalent to a series of forces, applied in successive instants, each tending to produce a certain constant quantity of motion; and the motion at each instant is the sum of the effects of the new force applied at the preceding instant, and the motion already acquired. In each instant a fresh effect, of which gravity is the proximate cause, is added to the effect of which it was the remote cause; or (to express the same thing in another manner), the effect produced by the earth’s influence at the instant last elapsed is added to the sum of the effects of which the remote causes were the influences exerted by the earth at all the previous instants since the motion began. The case, therefore, comes under the principle of a concurrence of causes producing an effect equal to the sum of their separate effects. But as the causes come into play not all at once, but successively, and as the effect at each instant is the sum of the effects of those causes only which have come into action up to that instant, the result assumes the form of an ascending series; a succession of sums, each greater than that which preceded it; and we have thus a progressive effect from the continued action of a cause.