Certain portions of a narrative may be expanded by the addition of illustrative or decorative adjuncts: for example, the historian may contrast the appearance of Xerxes, on his return to the Hellespont, with his appearance when he crossed it from Asia, and may moralize on the reverse of fortune; or, in the account of St. Paul, he may illustrate the rule of law which prevented the Roman officer from subjecting him to torture for purposes of judicial investigation; but all that is essential to the narrative-the bony skeleton which holds the organism together -is so much as deduces the causation of the consecutive events. Much, it is true, in a narrative consists of successive steps, which stand to one another as the conditioning and conditioned facts, rather than as cause and effect, in the ordinary acceptation of the words. They resemble successive stages in a journey, each one of which must be travelled over before the next is reached; but the completion of one stage is merely a condition for performing the next stage, though the completion of all the stages is the cause of the traveller reaching his journey's end. A narrative is imperfect and unintelligible, unless enough is stated to trace the subject of it through its several changes, and thus to account for acts done in situations, which imply the previous occurrence of those changes. For example, a narrative of Alexander's campaigns, which, after the battle of Issus, should proceed to describe his proceedings on the banks of the Indus, without relating any of his intermediate movements, would leave unexplained how Alexander came to be at that distance from Asia Minor. Nevertheless, those movements are to be denominated rather the condition than the cause of his attack upon Porus, &c. They enabled him to reach the Indus; without them, he could not have reached this distant region: but the cause, or leading antecedent, was his eager desire of glory and love of conquest. So, the appointment of Bacon to the office of lord chancellor is not properly the cause of his taking bribes for deciding suits in chancery; but his tenure of that office was a necessary condition for his acceptance of the bribes; and the one event would be unintelligible without the other. A material circumstance in a narrative is either a cause or a condition (that is, a constituent part of a compound cause) of something which follows. In historical narration, however, many conditions are omitted, and are left to the sagacity of the reader to supply—which is easily done by persons living at or near the time, and inhabiting the same country; but in perusing the history of a remote period, the reader has often great difficulty in perceiving the concatenation of the events, and in construing them correctly, because he is unable to supply those links which were suggested at the time by a knowledge of phrases, customs, laws, and facts, now lost in oblivion. The careful comparison of other historical monuments, aided by natural ingenuity, often enables the skilful commentator to remove this obscurity, and to interpolate the circumstances which bind together events apparently unconnected, or give a meaning to facts which call for an interpreter. (6) Much of the duty of the modern writer of ancient history, as well as of the expositor of the Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament, consists in this process. § 24 In the preceding remarks, we have attempted to explain and illustrate the process by which the causes of actual and positive facts, of events which have really happened, are determined in politics. We have shown how the inductive process, by which political causes are investigated, is checked and verified by a subsidiary process of deduction; and we have compared the corresponding modes of reasoning in physical and other subjects. If the methods to which we have referred were steadily and successfully applied, they would doubtless prevent many of the erroneous deductions of causes with which political (63) An example of the propositions which a historian, writing for contemporaries, omits, as being known to his readers, but which the commentator of a later age must supply, in order to make the connexion intelligible, is afforded by an observation of Aristotle in his Rhetoric. Speaking of the difference between a syllogism and an enthymem, he remarks that if the question is, whether a certain person has gained the prize in a crowned contest, it is sufficient to say that he has conquered at the Olympic games, without any further addition; for everybody knows that the victors in the Olympic contests are crowned.-Rhet. 1, 2, § 13. There is, however, so strong discussion so much abounds. a disposition in political reasoning to arrive at conclusions as to causation by short cuts, and to acquiesce in summary inferences, made without a careful survey of the ground, without due analysis and correction, and without a proper observance of the Baconian caution as to negative instances, that it will be desirable to dwell somewhat more at length on the proneness to assume false causes in politics, and to exemplify it in its various phases. This we propose to do in the following chapter. 398 § 1 CHAPTER X. ON THE ASSUMPTION OF FALSE CAUSES A IN POLITICS. S soon as men emerge from the savage state-when they rise above an exclusive absorption in the satisfaction of their animal appetites, and the exercise of their domestic authority, they begin to speculate about the causes of the phenomena by which they are surrounded. Ignorance begets wonder ; wonder begets curiosity; and curiosity soon produces some theory, more or less crude, by which the fact in question is referred to a cause. These speculations are at first the mere desultory attempts of hasty generalization, and of fanciful analogies; afterwards they assume a systematic form, though the system is unsound ;(') the last stage is that of sound theory, based upon a wide survey of well-ascertained facts. The earliest efforts of physical philosophy consisted in assigning natural causes for those phenomena, which the popular belief attributed to the direct agency of a supernatural power.() Thus, Jupiter was supposed to hurl his thunderbolts on the earth, and the sun was conceived as a god, driving his (1) Les observations sont l'histoire de la physique, les systèmes en sont la fable.'-Montesquieu, Pensées Diverses, tom. vii. p. 248. (2) Sed qui nondum ea, quæ multis post annis tractari cœpissent, physica didicissent, tantum sibi persuaserant, quantum naturâ admonente cognoverant: rationes et causas rerum non tenebant.-Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 13. Plutarch, in his Life of Nicias, speaks of the alarm caused among the Athenians, at Syracuse, by the eclipse of the moon; and in referring to the ignorance of physical causes in Greece at that time, he says that the doctrines of Anaxagoras were still confined to a few, and that men in general could not endure that the speculators on physics and on the heavenly bodies should reduce (or comminute) the divine action to unreasoning causes, and unprovidential forces, and necessary phenomena: οὐ γὰρ ἠνείχοντο τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ μετεωρολέσχας τότε καλουμένους, ὡς εἰς αἰτίας ἀλόγους καὶ δυνάμεις ἀπρονοήτους καὶ κατηναγκασμένα πάθη διατρίβοντας Tò delov.-Nic. c. 23. Compare Pericl. 6. chariot through the sky. sun was an ignited millstone; and when Epicurus and others taught that thunder and lightning were caused by an explosion in the clouds, their explanations were intended to suggest a constant physical cause, where the people saw only a direct divine action. Hence the verses of the Epicurean poet : When Anaxagoras taught that the Ignorantia causarum conferre deorum Cogit ad imperium res, et concedere regnum. According to the view of the ancients, natural philosophy consisted mainly in assigning causes for known phenomena. Thus, Ovid describes Pythagoras as penetrating the mysteries of nature, and explaining to a rude age the causes of celestial appearances : Cumque animo et vigili perspexerat omnia curâ, Quid quateret terras, quâ sidera lege mearent, Virgil, in like manner, considers a knowledge of the causes of things as the great privilege of the physical philosopher, and as his shield against the terrors of superstition : Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari.(5) § 2 Men are constantly surrounded by the objects and powers of nature, and are perpetually exposed to their influence. Hence, they soon find some mode of accounting for the phenomena of the heavenly bodies, the succession of night and day, the (3) Lucret. vi. 53-6, 89-90. (5) Georg. ii. 490. αἰτίαι φυσικαὶ of Plutarch. (4) Met. xv. 65-72. Compare the Problems of Aristotle, and the |