I notice something, and try to discover the reason of it: originally this was, I look for an _intention_ behind it, and, above all, I look for one who has an intention, for a subject, an agent: every phenomenon is an action, formerly intentions were seen behind _all_ phenomena, this is our oldest habit. Has the animal also this habit? As a living organism, is it not also compelled to interpret things through itself. The question why? is always a question concerning the _causa finalis,_ and the general "purpose" of things. We have no sign of the "sense of the efficient cause"; in this respect Hume is quite right, habit (but not only that of the individual) allows us to expect that a certain process, frequently observed, will follow upon another, but nothing more! That which gives us such an extraordinarily firm faith in causality, is not the rough habit of observing the sequence of processes, but our _inability_ to _interpret_ a phenomenon otherwise than as the result of _design._ It is the _belief in_ living and thinking things, as the only agents of _causation_; it is the belief in will, in design--the belief that all phenomena are actions, and that all actions presuppose an agent; it is the belief in the "subject." Is not this belief in the concepts subject and object an arrant absurdity? Question: Is the design the cause of a phenomenon? Or is that also illusion? Is it not the phenomenon itself? 551. _A criticism of the concept "cause."_--We have absolutely no experience concerning _cause_, viewed psychologically we derive the whole concept from the subjective conviction, that _we_ ourselves are causes--that is to say, that the arm moves.... _But that is an error._ We distinguish ourselves, the agents, from the action, and everywhere we make use of this scheme--we try to discover an agent behind every phenomenon. What have we done? We have _misunderstood_ a feeling of power, tension, resistance, a muscular feeling, which is already the beginning of the action, and posited it as a cause; or we have understood the will to do this or that, as a cause, because the action follows it. There is no such thing as "Cause," in those few cases in which it seemed to be given, and in which we projected it out of ourselves in_ order to understand a phenomenon,_ it has been shown to be an illusion. Our understanding of a phenomenon consisted in our inventing a subject who was responsible for something happening, and for the manner in which it happened. In our concept "cause" we have embraced our feeling of will, our feeling of "freedom," our feeling of responsibility and our design to do an action: _causa efficiens_ and _causa finalis_ are fundamentally one.