Common cause

“ The conditions of every causation are multifarious as we look at them in a regressus of causes or a progressus of effects, and as the mind of the individual can make but one judgment at a time, it may be that the one of the causes or effects which is considered, is in fact a trivial element in the causation, for in all our language we are accustomed to speak of one of the causes as the special cause, for it must be the special one in consideration. ”

“ The student has therefore failed to prove his argument that poor health, which is a legitimate cause, is responsible for his failure. The evidence shows that general dissipation, which is not a legitimate cause, has intervened between the alleged cause and the effect. ”

“ When we come to analyse the conception of Disease, physical or mental, in society or in the individual, it evidently means, as already hinted once or twice, loss of unity. Health, therefore, should mean unity, and it is curious that the history of the word entirely corroborates this idea. ”

“ So it is with more involved phenomena. Just as we here find that, throughout both its physical and intellectual divisions, healthful life implies continuance of the established successions of antecedents and consequents among our vital actions; so shall we find it throughout the moral division. In our dealings with external Nature and our fellow men, there are relations of cause and effect, on the maintenance of which, as on the maintenance of the internal ones above instanced, life depends. ”

“ The cases in which society is voluntarily shunned or forsaken are as rare as the cases of congenital disease or deformity; and for every such instance there may generally be assigned some grave, if not sufficient, cause. ”

“ WHEN one passes in review the individual causes that disturb and complicate our social life, by whatever names they are designated, and their list would be long, they all lead back to one general cause, which is this: the confusion of the secondary with the essential. Material comfort, education, liberty, the whole of civilization—these things constitute the frame of the picture ”

“ It is manifest, therefore, that, if we are to attempt to ascend to the Supreme Cause—if we are to try to frame an idea of the Cause of all these subordinate causes;—we must conceive it as more different from any of them, than the most diverse are from each other;—more elevated above the highest, than the highest is above the lowest. ”

“ No two persons—that is to say, human causes—present exactly the same effects. Every fact evolved will differ more or less. And, lastly, every cause is manifested as a unit by its occupation or pervasion of a given space. ”

“ What do you mean by the words ‘the good cause’? We are defending at this moment, in England, five or six causes, which does not prevent every one from considering his own not only as the good cause, but as the best. ”

“ The insanitary conditions abounding everywhere, and which are directly, or indirectly, the cause of much preventible suffering and mortality, call for your thoughtful attention as to the most practicable means of dealing with them. ”

“ Whatever can cause, or help to cause, discomfort, pain, sickness, death, vice, or crime—and whatever has a tendency to avert or destroy, or diminish such cases—are matters of interest to the sanitarian ”

“ To diagnose truly this malady we must look to some cause that is coterminous in time with the disease itself and which has been operative throughout civilization. We must seek some widespread change in social conditions, for man's essential nature has changed but little, and the change must, therefore, be of environment. ”

“ Again, there has, within quite a recent period of time, come a considerable change in the human system itself, attributable in a measure, probably, to some or all of the above causes, in relation to the character and tendencies of diseases. ”

“ It is clear that when the disturbing action, the cause of disease, works upon the fundamental element, the same causes will produce fundamentally similar effects; when, on the contrary, this action is exercised upon the acquired and special element of each race, the same causes will produce different effects. ”

“ But what has been just said suggests to us that it may be an improvement to put our problem in another shape:—not to take for granted that the cause of all vital processes is one, but to suppose that there may be several separate causes at work in a living body. ”

“ Touching the publication of articles and pamphlets bearing on the controversial and political issues of the day, I desire to remind my dearly-beloved fellow-workers that at the present stage when the Cause is still in its infancy, any minute and detailed analysis by the friends of subjects that are in the forefront of general discussion would often be misconstrued in certain quarters and give rise to suspicions and misunderstandings that would react unfavorably on the Cause. ”

“ And this can only be done by psychological deduction, through effect back to cause. If the results of an action produce pain and sorrow and evil, then the action—which is cause—must be bad. And, as there is nothing new under the sun—and all actions you would be likely to commit have already been committed by others in the past—you can get a general idea as to their probable result. But, above all other sides, the one to be examined is the effect upon the community. ”

“ Know that as all complex manifestations have a simple basis of origin, so the vast complexity of your national unrest, ill health, inability to think clearly and accurately concerning simple things, really vital things, is easily traceable to the single, actual, active cause—Dishonesty ”

“ Diseases, and, in time, constant ill Health being the almost never failing Effects of a lasting Discontent upon such feeble Constitutions. But I take leave to say, that the fault of those who make others thus miserable, and the weakness of such who thus suffer their Minds to think under Adversity, are in a great measure both owing to one and the same Cause, viz. ”

“ As many as shall settle their Judgments properly on this Principle, will never be imposed upon by the superficial Gloss of these Sophisms contrived to prove, that all Diseases proceed from one Cause; and that this Cause is so very tractable, as to yield to one boasted Remedy. They will perceive at once, that such an Assertion must be founded in the utmost Knavery or Ignorance; and they will readily discover where the Fallacy lies. ”

“ Few realize to what degree the mind can become warped and disordered, even with a brief time, by trouble and the violation of the laws of health; and some, by education and temperament, are peculiarly predisposed to abnormal conditions. ”

“ All sorts of insufficient and contradictory causes are assigned for the same general and universal complaint. However inadequate in themselves, they serve to emphasize the universal recognition of a difficulty whose cause without close inquiry is likely to elude detection. ”

“ We may therefore broadly conclude that the only circumstance, within the range of those by which persons of similar conditions of life are affected, capable of producing a marked effect on the character of adults, is illness or some accident which causes physical infirmity. ”

“ Perhaps one might say that you have discovered [Pg 200] the unitary principle underlying the laws of health and disease, for which men have searched since the beginning of time. Behind all physical ills they have looked for Evil. Behind diseases they have looked for Disease. ”

“ Fallacies of cause occur in every hour of waking life. We attribute effects to wrong causes. We are especially liable to this from the fact that both cause and effect are conditions, and causation is a change of condition from an antecedent to a consequent. ”

“ They omit, indeed, to calculate upon the accidents of disease, and temperament, and organization, and circumstance, together with the multitude of independent agencies which affect the opinions, the conduct, and the happiness of individuals, and produce determinations of the will, and modify the judgment, so as to produce effects the most opposite in natures considerably similar. ”

“ So a good social diagnosis will name many misfortunes of mind, body, and estate, healed wounds of the spirit that have left their scar, ossifications, degenerations, contagious crazes which the person has caught, deformities which he has acquired. ”

“ Hence, to those who are struggling with disease and pain, with ignorance and defect, with vice, and with crime, but for the most part too separately, it is time to say that all these four evils are capable of being viewed together, and largely even treated together. ”

“ It will be within the scope of such a foundation to investigate and study the causes of adverse social conditions, including ignorance, poverty and vice, to suggest how these conditions can be remedied or ameliorated, and to put in operation any appropriate means to that end. ”

“ It is necessary to take into account all phases of the social emergency. The question is not merely one of physiology, or pathology, or diseases, or wages, or industrial education, or recreation, or knowledge, or commercial organization, or legal regulation, or lust, or social customs, or cultivation of will power, or religion. It is all of this and more. The danger is that we shall see only one or two sides of a many-sided problem. A solution may appear adequate because it leaves essential factors out of consideration. ”

“ A history of moral epidemics, drawn up by a philosophic pen, would add much to our knowledge of the mysteries of human character and human power, as well as of the probable contingencies of human destiny. ”

“ I shall point out the difference that exists between the debility which is brought on by the diminished action of the powers which support life, and that which results from their too powerful action; I shall then inquire into the nature of diseases of increased excitement; and after having shown how the undue action of the powers which support life, operates in producing disease, I shall endeavour to lay down such rules for the preservation of health, as are the result of reasoning on these subjects, and are also confirmed by experience. ”

“ Measure as we may the progress of the world,—materially, in the advantages of steam, electricity, and other mechanical appliances; sociologically, in the great improvements in the conditions of life; intellectually, in the diffusion of education; morally, in a possibly higher standard of ethics,—there is no one measure which can compare with the decrease of physical suffering in man, woman, and child when stricken by disease or accident. ”

“ Every illness is a factor simple or complex, which is multiplied by a second factor, invariably complex—the individual, that is to say, who is suffering from it, so that the result is a special problem, demanding a special solution, the more so the greater the remoteness of the patient from childhood or from country life. ”

“ They came openly, frankly and ready to stand the consequences, ready to give their own lives.
In diagnosing the true nature of our social disease I cannot condemn those who, through no fault of their own, are suffering from a wide-spread malady. ”

“ The hysteria of repression will probably subside, but it is now a well-recognized fact that in disease, whether organic or mental, the abnormal and excessive are but instructive exaggerations and perversions of the usual course of things. ”

“ But in doing it they are dealing daily—and ought to deal, and must deal—with the exceptional, and not with the normal; with cases of palpable and shocking disease, and not with cases of at least seeming health. ”

“ What is not supposed to be my concern! [2] First and foremost, the good cause [3] , then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. "Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!" ”

“ Section XV. Diseases Of The Social Organism. If the public economy of a people be an organism, we must expect to find that the perturbations, which affect it, present some analogies to the diseases of the body physical. ”

“ Nowadays, all this is past, in medical science. As to the causes of disease, we know that they are facts of nature,—various, but distinguishable by diagnosis and research, and more or less capable of prevention or control or counter-action. ”

“ The historian will discern what social feelings are produced among nations by great events, and to the physician a picture of suffering will be unveiled, to which the diseases of the present time afford no parallel. ”

“ Thus much premised, we pass at once to the statement of the law, which is this:—Every active force produces more than one change—every cause produces more than one effect. ”

“ From a sociological standpoint, we are compelled by incontrovertible evidence to acknowledge that it is of all causes the most frequent source of poverty, unhappiness, divorce, suicide, immorality, crime, insanity, disease, and death. ”

“ At the same time we confess that what we call disturbing causes are simply those parts of the true circumstances which we do not know or have neglected, and we endeavour in future to take account of them. ”