ii CAUSATION CONTINUOUS 73 



are nothing but guesses at the details of 

 the processes through which causation 

 has long been recognised as working its 

 way from innumerable small beginnings 

 to innumerable great and complicated 

 results. Every one of these guesses 

 may be wrong in whole, or in essential 

 parts, but the universal facts of growth 

 and development in Nature remain as 

 certain and as obvious as before. 



It is a bad thing, at least for a time, 

 when the undoubtedness of a great 

 general conception such as this of the 

 continuity of causation and of the 

 gradual accumulation of its effects 

 gets hooked on (as it were) in the minds 

 of theorists to their own little fragment- 

 ary fancies as to particular modes of 

 operation. But it is a worse thing 

 still when this spurious and accidental 

 affiliation becomes so established in the 

 popular mind that men are afraid not to 



