Thoughts on Causality. 



239 



the masses and distances of bodies, when applied to a certain 

 assemblage of phenomena, renders them intelligible in a 

 certain sense ; it discloses the consummate harmony sub- 

 sisting amongst them, and reveals correlations which seem 

 to be the work of intelligence ; but we deceive ourselves 

 when we imagine that the law produces a single result. 

 The law itself is a result — an induction from the order 

 of the phenomena which a mistaken science summons it 

 to explain. If a progressive improvement of race is an 

 outcome of the continuous " survival of the fittest," then 

 this order of sequence is a law ; and in accordance with it, 

 we shall expect every race left to itself to undergo a gra- 

 dual improvement ; but such order of sequence is no more 

 a cause in this case than in any other. The immediate 

 causes of this result are the agencies which destroy the 

 individuals not "fitted to survive" — or more accurately, 

 the forces concerned in the continuance of the species, 

 under the conditions (extermination of the weakest), 

 through the surviving individuals. 



Still employing the term cause in the symbolical sense cus- 

 tomary with science, there is another set of circumstances 

 which ought not to escape notice in scrutinizing the princi- 

 ples of causality. I refer to conditions of causation — some- 

 times called conditioning causes. There are conditions 

 indeed to the efficiency of every cause — conditions of its ope- 

 rativeness in any degree ; and there are others which merely 

 modify its operation ; and, not unfrequently, the two charac- 

 ters are united in one condition. There is danger of con- 

 founding conditions with causes. I agree to write a book, 

 for instance, on the condition that my publishers will put it 

 in print. It will not be written with that condition left out. 

 But the publisher does not thereby become the author of 

 my book. The dilute acid iu the battery will attack the 

 zinc only on condition that you connect the zinc and 

 platiuum externally by means of a conductor; but this does 

 not render the conductor the agent which dissolves the zinc. 



