CAUSES AND CONDITIONS, 



"The law of causation, the recognition of which is the main pillar of inductive science, 

 is but the familiar truth, that invariabiLity of succession is found by observation to obtain 

 between every fact in nature and some other fact which has preceded it. * * * The inva- 

 riable antecedent is termed the cause; the invariable consequent, the effect. * * * It 

 is seldom, if ever, between a consequent and a single antecedent, that this invariable sequence 

 subsists. It is usually between a consequent and the sum of several antecedents ; the concurrence 

 of all of them being requisite to produce, that is, to be certain of being followed by, the con- 

 sequent. In such cases it is very common to single out one only of the antecedents under the 

 denomination of cause, caUing the others merely conditions. * * * The real cause, is the 

 whole of these antecedents; and we have, philosophically speaking, no right to give the name 

 of cause to one of them, exclusively of the others. * * * All the conditions are equally 

 indispensable to the production of the consequent ; and the statement of the cause is incomplete, 

 unless in some shape or other we introduce them aU." 



John Stuart Mill. 



