As shown in the foregoing chapter, in the course of the transition to modern times and modern ways of thinking the principle of efficient cause gradually replaced that of sufficient reason as the final ground of certitude in conclusions of a theoretical nature. This shifting of the metaphysical footing of knowledge from a subjective ground to an objective one first and most unreservedly affects the material sciences, as it should if it is at all to be construed as an outcome of the discipline exercised by the then current technology of handicraft. But the like effect is presently, though tardily, had in other lines of systematic knowledge that lie farther from the immediate incidence of technology and secular traffic. So that by the time of the industrial revolution the like mechanistic animus had come to pervade even the philosophical and theological speculations current in those communities that were most intimately and unreservedly touched by the discipline of craftsmanship and the petty trade.[147] By this time,--the latter part of the eighteenth century,--the material sciences (overtly) admit no principle of systematisation within their own jurisdiction other than that of efficient cause. But at that date the concept of causation still has much of the content given it by the technology of handicraft. The efficient cause is still conceived after an individualistic fashion; without grave exaggeration it might even be said that the concept of cause as currently employed in the scientific speculations of that time had something of a quasi-personal complexion. The inquiry habitually looked to some one efficient cause, engaged as creatively dominant in the case and working to its end under conditioning circumstances that might greatly affect the outcome but that were not felt (or avowed) to enter into the case with the same aggressive thrust of causality that belonged to the efficient cause proper. The “contributory circumstances” were conceived rather extrinsically as accessory to the event; “accessory before the fact,” perhaps, but none the less accessory. And scientific research took the form of an inquiry into the causal nexus between an antecedent (a cause or complex of causes) and its outcome in an event. The inquiry looked to the beginning and end of an episode of activity, the outcome of which would be a finished product, somewhat after the fashion in which a finished piece of work leaves the craftsman’s hands. The craftsman is the agency productively engaged in the case, while his tools and materials are accessories to his force and skill, and the finished goods leave his hands as an end achieved; and so an episode of creative efficiency is rounded off.