LAW OF CAUSATION. 371 



conditions, however, of any phenomenon, a special enumeration 

 of which would generally be very prolix, may be all summed 

 up under one head, namely, the absence of preventing or coun- 

 teracting causes. The convenience of this mode of expression 

 is mainly grounded on the fact, that the effects of any cause in 

 counteracting another cause may in most cases be, with strict 

 scientific exactness, regarded as a mere extension of its own 

 proper and separate effects. If gravity retards the upward 

 motion of a projectile, and deflects it into a parabolic trajectory, 

 it produces, in so doing, the very same kind of effect, and even 



closest apparent proximity to the effect) are all of them so obviously implied, 

 that it is hardly possible there should exist that necessity for insisting on them, 

 which alone gives occasion for speaking of a single condition as if it were the 

 cause. Wherever this necessity exists in regard to some one condition, and does 

 not exist in regard to any other, I conceive that it is consistent with usage, when 

 scientific accuracy is not aimed at, to apply the name cause to that one condi- 

 tion. If the only condition which can be supposed to be unknown is a nega- 

 tive condition, the negative condition may be spoken of as the cause. It might 

 be said that a person died for want of medical advice : though this would not 

 be likely to be said, unless the person was already understood to be ill, and 

 in order to indicate that this negative circumstance was what made the illness 

 fatal, and not the weakness of his constitution, or the original virulence of the' 

 disease. It might be said that a person was drowned because he could not 

 swim ; the positive condition, namely, that he fell into the water, being already 

 implied in the word drowned. And here let me remark, that his falling into the 

 water is in this case the only positive condition : all the conditions not expressly 

 or virtually included in this (as that he could not swim, that nobody helped 

 him, and so forth) are negative. Yet, if it were simply said that the cause 

 of a man's death was falling into the water, there would be quite as great a 

 sense of impropriety in the expression, as there would be if it were said that the 

 cause was his inability to swim ; because, though the one condition is positive 

 and the other negative, it would be felt that neither of them was sufficient, with- 

 out the other, to produce death. 



With regard to the assertion that nothing is termed the cause, except the 

 element which exerts active force ; I wave the question as to the meaning of 

 active force, and accepting the phrase in its popular sense, I revert to a former 

 example, and I ask, would it be more agreeable to custom to say that a man 

 fell because his foot slipped in climbing a ladder, or that he fell because of his 

 weight ? for his weight, and not the motion of his foot, was the active force 

 which determined his fall. If a person walking out in a frosty day, stumbled 

 and fell, it might be said that he stumbled because the ground was slippery, or 

 because he was not sufficiently careful ; but few people, I suppose, would say, 

 that he stumbled because he walked. Yet the only active force concerned was 

 that which he exerted in walking : the others were mere negative conditions ; 



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