Since it was David Hume’s view on causation that opened the early modern philosophical debate on causation, I begin with a presentation of his view, the so-called regularity view on causation, wherein causation is deemed to comprise patterns of priority, contiguity, and constant conjunction. Hume’s view strongly influenced the philosophical thinking on the nature of causation, and I emphasize that the mechanistic focus on discovering and representing causal relations can be understood as a response to Hume’s critique of causation. Mechanisms are what reveal the secret connection between causes and effects. Ernst Mach’s philosophy, which was influenced by Hume’s philosophy, left open at least two problems important for understanding the specificity of the new mechanical philosophy (NMP). On the one hand, Mach’s focus on biopsychology points to the idea that causal reasoning is constrained by the human cognitive apparatus shaped during the process of evolution. On the other hand, Mach’s attempt to combine the results of research in the physics with those in the biology was innovative, and such a theoretical move can be seen as a preview of the NMP approach, going beyond the domain of physics to speak about causation. Finally, I focus on Bertrand Russell’s view of causality expressed not only in his famous paper “On the Notion of Cause” but also in Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. In the latter work, Russell introduces his own account of causation, of particular importance for Wesley Salmon’s mechanistic approach to causation.