HEAL AND APPAKENT CAUSES. 411 



or chemical phenomena. There are several ways in which 

 an event may appear to be caused by another without 

 being really so ; for instance, the effect may be due to our 

 imagination instead of to the cause to which we ascribe 

 it; thus an expectation of death helps to produce that 

 event. The occurrence of one event may, by causing us 

 to notice another, lead us to conclude that they are 

 related to each other as cause and effect, when they are 

 not ; or the fact of observing an effect before we perceived 

 its cause may lead us to conclude that the cause was pro- 

 duced by its effect instead of the reverse. 1 We rarely 

 possess sufficient intellectual acumen to discern the true 

 and immediate causes of things, because they are usually 

 the least apparent ; the causes we infer are often proxi- 

 mate only. As, however, by progress of knowledge our 

 intellectual discernment increases, we gradually abandon 

 the ideas of more easily conceivable causes, because we 

 discover them to be false, and adopt less easily conceivable 

 ones, because they are more true. At the same time, by 

 adopting those which are more consistent with natural 

 truths, we are better enabled to predict the future course 

 of events. We gradually abandon the more easily con- 

 ceivable ideas of action by chance, caprice, and unintelli- 

 gible power in natural phenomena, and adopt the more 

 Grod-like ideas of law and certainty. 



Some apparent causes, volition for example, may be 

 termed exciting, releasing, or determining ones, and may 

 be denned as those which liberate latent ones and enable 

 them to act. Strictly speaking, these are often not really 

 causes, but static conditions, and will therefore be treated 

 of again under that heading. A little error of the eye, 

 a misguidance of the hand, a slip of the foot, a starting 

 of a horse, a sudden mist, or a great shower, or a word un- 



1 Compare Jevons's Principles of Science., vol. ii. p. 13. 



