ii6 



INDUCTION. 



dition of the phenomenon may be 

 taken in its turn, and, with equal 

 propriety in common parlance, but 

 with equal impropriety in scientific 

 discourse, may be spoken of as if it 

 were the entire cause. And in prac- 

 tice that particular condition is usually 

 styled the cause whose share in the 

 matter is superficially the most con- 

 spicuous, or whose requisiteness to 

 the production of the effect we happen 

 to be insisting on at the moment. 

 So great is the force of this last con- 

 sideration, that it sometimes induces 

 us to give the name of cause even to 

 one of the negative conditions. We 

 say for example, The army was sur- 

 prised because the sentinel was off 

 his post. But since the sentinel's 

 absence was not what created the 

 enemy or put the soldiers asleep, 

 how did it cause them to be surprised? 

 All that is really meant is, that the 

 event would not have happened if he 

 had been at his duty. His being off 

 his post was no producing cause, but 

 the mere absence of a preventing 

 cause : it was simply equivalent to 

 his non-existence. From nothing, 

 from a mere negation, no conse- 

 quences can proceed. All effects are 

 connected, by the law of causation, 

 with some set of positive conditions ; 

 negative ones, it is true, being almost 

 always required in addition. In other 

 words, every fact or phenomenon which 

 has a beginning invariably arises when 

 some certain combination of positive 

 facts exists, provided certain other 

 positive facts do not exist. 



There is, no doubt, a tendency 

 (which our first example, that of death 

 from taking a particular food, suffici- 

 ently illustrates) to associate the idea 

 of causation with the proximate ante- 

 cedent event, rather than with any of 

 the, antecedent states, or permanent 

 facts, which may happen also to be 

 conditions of the phenomenon ; the 

 reason being that the event not only 

 exists, but begins to exist immediately 

 previous ; while the other conditions 

 may have pre-existed for an indefinite 

 time. And this tendency shows itself 



very visibly in the different logical 

 fictions which are resorted to, even by 

 men of science, to avoid the necessity 

 of giving the name of cause to anything 

 which had existed for an indetermi- 

 nate length of time before the effect. 

 Thus, rather than say that the earth 

 causes the fall of bodies, they ascribe 

 it to a force exerted by the earth, or an 

 attraction by the earth, abstractions 

 which they can represent to them- 

 selves as exhausted by each effort, 

 and therefore constituting at each 

 successive instant a fresh fact, simul- 

 taneous with or only immediately pre- 

 ceding the effect. Inasmuch as the 

 coming of the circumstance which 

 completes the assemblage of condi- 

 tions, is a change or event, it thenc« 

 happens that an event is always 

 the antecedent in closest apparent 

 proximity to the consequent : and 

 this may account for the illusicn 

 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 

 contrary, any one of the conditions, 

 either positive or negative, is found, 

 on occasion, completely to accord.* 



* The assertion that any and every one 

 of the conditions of a phenomenon may 

 be and is, on some occasions and for some 

 purposes, spoken of as the cause, has been 

 disputed by an intelligent reviewer of this 

 work in the Prospective Review, (the pre- 

 decessor of the justly esteemed National 

 Review,) who maintains that "we always 

 apply the word cause rather to that ele- 

 ment in the antecedents which exercises 

 force, and which would tend at all times 

 to produce the same or a similar effect to 

 that which, under certain conditions, it 

 would actually produce." And he says, 

 that "every one would feel" the expres- 

 sion, that the cause of a surprise was 

 the sentinel's being off his post, to be in- 

 correct ; but that the "allurement or force 

 which drew him off his post might be so 

 called, because in doing so it removed a 

 resisting power which would have pre- 

 vented the surprise." I cannot think that. 



