CONCEPTS OF &quot;REASON&quot; AND &quot;CAUSE&quot; 89 



&quot; necessarily results in rendering it useless for any purposes of inference &quot;. 

 &quot; Make it perfectly complete and accurate,&quot; he continues, &quot; and you make it at 

 once hypothetical and the statement of what is to all intents and purposes a 

 mere identity.&quot; l [Such an over- refinement of the law of causation] &quot; renders 

 that law suitable only for hypothetical conclusions, in other words, renders it 

 useless for positive inductions about matters of fact &quot;. a 



Now, it is of course true that if we make our concepts of 

 &quot;cause &quot;and &quot;effect&quot; so comprehensive and closely connected 

 as to involve each other reciprocally, we are not likely to get 

 beyond the hypothetical &quot; If A then C and vice versa&quot; to the 

 categorical &quot;This A will always involve this C and vice versa&quot;. 

 It is true, too, that knowledge of the one immediate, indispensable 

 &quot; cause &quot; of C is of less practical utility than knowledge of the 

 numerous alternative groups of antecedents in which this one 

 &quot; cause&quot; is operative. But it is likewise true that if we want a 

 scientific, even though conditional, knowledge of C, a knowledge of 

 how it is produced, we must try to seize the process at the instant 

 of the production of C, and to detect if we can, or as far as we 

 can all that is indispensable for its production. In other words, 

 when our aim is not directly practical like that of the &quot; savage &quot; 

 for instance : to compass a person s death in some way or other 

 but rather speculative like that of the coroner, for instance : 

 to discover how this person s death has been compassed we must 

 obviously seek, not for all the alternative ways in which the person, 

 could have been killed, but for all the factors indispensable to the 

 way in which this particular person has been killed. So, too, 

 when we want to explain a kind of result, we must seek, not for 

 the various modes of producing it in different sets of circumstances, 

 but for that which is common to all the modes, and which, being 

 always &quot;sufficient&quot; and always &quot;indispensable,&quot; will produce it 

 in any and every conceivable set of circumstances. For instance, 

 that &quot;kind&quot; of effect called &quot;death&quot; that which is common to 

 all individal instances of death and in virtue of which we call each 

 of them a &quot; death &quot; will be scientifically explained by us only 

 when we have succeeded in discovering what precise factor (or 

 group of factors) is present in every conceivable mode of pro 

 ducing &quot; death,&quot; as being sufficient and indispensable for its pro 

 duction. A full scientific knowledge were such attainable of 

 the relation between a &quot; natural &quot; or &quot; necessary &quot; cause and its 

 effect, would thus show the relation to be reciprocal. One and 



1 Empirical Logic, p. 71 (italics ours). 3 ibid., p. 53. 



