Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/71

 other conditions, and so forth in infinitum. When a state contains all the requisite conditions for bringing about a new state excepting one, this one, when at last it arrives, is, in a sense, rightly called the cause κατ' ὲξοχήν, inasmuch as we here have the final—in this case the decisive—change especially in view ; but if we leave out this consideration, no single condition of the causal state has any advantage over the rest with reference to the determination of the causal connection in general, merely because it happens to be the last. Thus the removal of the cloud in the above example, is in so far the cause of the igniting, as it took place later than the direction of the burning-glass towards the object; but this might have taken place after the removal of the cloud and the addition of oxygen might have occurred later still : in this respect therefore it is the accidental order of things that determines which is the cause. On closer inspection, however, we find that it is the entire state which is the cause of the ensuing one, so that the chronological order in which its single conditions were brought about, is in all essential respects indifferent. With reference to a given case therefore, the last occurring condition of a state may be called the cause κατ' ὲξοχήν because it completes the measure of the necessary conditions, and its appearance thus becomes the decisive change. For purposes of general consideration, however, it is only the entire state which, by bringing about its successor, can be regarded as the cause. The single requisites which, added together, complete and constitute the cause may be called causal elements (ursächliche Momente) or even conditions, and into these accordingly the cause may be subdivided. On the other hand, it is quite wrong to call the objects themselves causes, instead of the states : some would, for instance, call the burning-glass in the above example the cause of the ignition ; while others, again, would call the cloud the cause; others the sun or the