200 INDUCTION. 



SO far as the ordinances of language are concerned, to give the name 

 of cause to almost any one of the conditions of a phenomenon, or any 

 portion of the whole number, arbitrarily selected, without excepting 

 even those conditions which are purely negative, and in themselves 

 incapable of causing anything ; it will probably be admitted without 

 longer discussion, that no one of the conditions has more claim to that 

 title than another, and that the real cause of the phenomenon is the as- 

 semblage of all its conditions. There is, no doubt, a tendency (which 

 our first example, that of death from taking a particular food, suffi- 

 ciently illustrates) to associate the idea of causation with the proximate 

 antecedent event, rather than with any of the antecedent states, or 

 permanent facts, which may happen also to be conditions of the phe- 

 nomenon ; the reason being that the event not only exists, but begins 

 to exist immediately previous : while the other conditions may have 

 preexisted for an indefinite time. And this tendency shows itself very 

 visibly in the different logical fictions which are resorted to even by 

 philosophers, to avoid the necessity of giving the name of cause to 

 anything which had existed for an indeterminate length of time before 

 the effect. Thus, rather than say that the earth causes the fall of 

 bodies, they ascribe it to ^ force exerted by the earth, or an attraction 

 by the earth, abstractions which they can represent to themselves as 

 exhausted by each eftbrt, and therefore constituting at each successive 

 instant a fresh act, simultaneous with, or only immediately preceding, 

 the effect. Inasmuch as the coming of the circumstance which com- 

 pletes the assemblage of conditions, is a change or event, it thence 

 happens that an event is always the antecedent in closest apparent 

 proximity to the consequent : and this may account for the illusion 

 which disposes us to look upon the proximate event as standing more 

 peculiarly in the position of a cause than any of the antecedent states. 

 But even this peculiarity of being in closer proximity to the effect 

 than any other of its conditions, is, as we have already seen, far 

 from being necessary to the common notion of a cause ; with which 

 notion, on the contiary, any one of the conditions, either positive or 

 negative, is found, upon occasion, completely to accord. 



The cause, then, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the con- 

 ditions, positive and negative, taken together ; the whole of the contin- 

 gencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent 

 invariably follows. The negative conditions, however, of any phenom- 

 enon, a special enumeration of which would generally be very prolix, 

 may be all summed up under one head, namely, the absence of pre- 

 venting or counteracting causes. The convenience of this mode of 

 expression is grounded mainly upon 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 (as mathematicians know) the same 

 quantity of eftect, as it does in its ordinary operation of causing the 

 fall of bodies when simply deprived of their support. If an alkaline 

 solution mixed with an acid destroys its sourness, and prevents it from 

 reddening vegetable blues, it is because the specific effect of the alkali 

 is to combine with the acid, and form a compound with totally different 

 qualities. This property, which causes of all descriptions possess, of 



