Allama Tabatabai on the Universal Law of Causality

While speaking about the Universal Law of Causality in his monumental exegesis on the Quran, the Tafseer Al-Mizan, Allama Tabatabai mentions that there is a mutual implication between a cause and its effect, such that whenever a perfect-cause علت تامہ is realized into existence, its effect is also unfailingly realized into existence, and it is impossible for a perfect-cause to exist without its effect also existing with it ; similarly it is also equally impossible for an effect to exist without its perfect-cause also existing together with it; this is due to the fact that a perfect or complete cause is regarded as such only when it realizes the existence of its effect, and hence a cause cannot be considered as being complete or perfect in the absence or non-existence of its effect ; now since the effect is essentially-contingent ممکن بالذات therefore it cannot come into existence and remain in existence without a perfect cause granting preference to the possibility of its existence امکان وجود over the possibility of its non-existence امکان عدم; therefore if an effect exists it logically follows that the possibility of its existence still maintains a preference ترجیح over the possibility of its non-existence, and we know that such a preference cannot be realized except by some cause ; therefore the existence of every effect is proof of the existence of its perfect-cause without fail ; in other words given the existence of a perfect cause, the existence of its effect is also necessary لازم ; and given the existence of an effect, the existence of its perfect-cause is also necessary, such that neither can exist or be found without the other ; but there is a difference in our saying that the existence of a cause necessarily implies the existence of its effect and in the statement that the existence of an effect necessarily implies the existence of its cause ; this is because when it is said that the existence of a cause necessarily implies the existence of its effect, so by this is meant that the existence of the cause necessitates or realizes the existence of its effect ; and when it is said that an effect necessarily implies the existence of its cause, so by this we do not mean that the existence of a cause is necessitated or realized by its effect, but that which is meant is the fact that since every effect by reason of its essential-contingency and ontological-poverty فقر وجودی derives its being from its perfect-cause therefore given the existence of an effect it can be safely concluded that its cause must also exist.