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INDUCTION. 



mena, they are so to such a degree as 

 to react forcibly on the causes which 

 acted upon them : and even when 

 this is not the case, they contribute, 

 in the same manner as any of the 

 other conditions, to the production of 

 the effect of which they are vulgarly 

 treated as the mere theatre. All the 

 positive conditions of a phenomenon 

 are alike agents, alike active ; and in 

 any expression of the cause which 

 professes to be complete, none of them 

 can with reason be excluded, except 

 such as have already been implied in 

 the words used for describing the 

 effect ; nor by including even these 

 would there be incurred any but a 

 merely verbal impropriety. 



§ 5. There is a case of causation 

 which calls for separate notice, as it 

 possesses a peculiar feature, and pre- 

 sents a greater degree of complexity 

 than the common case. It often hap- 

 pens that the effect, or one of the 

 effects, of a cause is, not to produce 

 of itself a certain phenomenon, but to 

 fit something else for producing it. 

 In other words, there is a case of 

 causation in which the effect is to 

 invest an object with a certain pro- 

 perty. When sulphur, charcoal, and 

 nitre are put together in certain pro- 

 portions and in a certain manner, the 

 effect is, not an explosion, but that 

 the mixture acquires a property by 

 which, in given circumstances, it will 

 explode. The various causes, natural 

 and artificial, which educate the hu- 

 man body or the human mind, have 

 for their principal effect, not to make 

 the body or mind immediately do 

 anything, but to endow it with cer- 

 tain properties — in other words, to 

 give assurance that in given circum- 

 stances certain results will take place 

 in it, or as consequences of it. Phy- 

 siological agencies often have for the 

 chief part of their operation to pre- 

 dispose the constitution to some mode 

 of action. To take a simpler in- 

 stance than all these : putting a coat 

 of white paint upon a wall does not 

 merely produce in those who see it 



done the sensation of white ; it con- 

 fers on the wall the permanent pro- 

 perty of giving that kind of sensation. 

 Regarded in reference to the sensa- 

 tion, the putting on of the paint is a 

 condition of a condition ; it is a con- 

 dition of the wall's causing that par- 

 ticular fact. The wall may have 

 been painted years ago, but it has 

 acquired a property which has lasted 

 till now and will last longer ; the 

 antecedent condition necessary to en- 

 able the wall to become in its turn a 

 condition has been fulfilled once for 

 all. In a case like this, where the 

 immediate consequent in the sequence 

 is a property produced in an object, 

 no one now supposes the property to 

 be a substantive entity "inherent" 

 in the object. What has been pro- 

 duced is what, in other language, 

 may be called a state of preparation 

 in an object for producing an effect. 

 The ingredients of the gunpowder 

 have been brought into a state of 

 preparation for exploding as soon as 

 the other conditions of an explosion 

 shall have occurred. In the case of 

 the gunpowder, this state of prepara- 

 tion consists in a certain collocation 

 of its particles relatively to one an- 

 other. In the example of the wall, 

 it consists in a new collocation of two 

 things relatively to each other — the 

 wall and the paint. In the example 

 of the moulding influences on the 

 human mind, its being a collocation 

 at all is only conjectural ; for, even 

 on the materialistic hypothesis, it 

 would remain to be proved that the 

 increased facility with which the brain 

 sums up a column of figures when it 

 has been long trained to calculation, 

 is the result of a permanent new 

 arrangement of some of its material 

 particles. We must, therefore, con- 

 tent ourselves with what we know, 

 and must include among the effects 

 of causes the capacities given to ob- 

 jects of being causes of other effects. 

 This capacity is not a real thing 

 existing in the objects ; it is but a 

 name for our conviction that they 

 will act in a particular manner when 



