External condition

“ Why should the necessary being exclude the possibility of other beings? Is it not more reasonable to conclude that it contains the reason of their possibility and existence? The being which has in itself the necessity of existing, must possess activity, and the external term of this activity is production. Why may not other beings be the result of this production? ”

“ Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being. ”

“ The causes of every social phenomenon which we are particularly interested about, security, wealth, freedom, good government, public virtue, general intelligence, or their opposites, are infinitely numerous, especially the external or remote causes, which alone are, for the most part, accessible to direct observation. No one cause suffices of itself to produce any of these phenomena ”

“ There are in the world, in fact, two different laws of conduct each valid on its own plane, the rale principally dependent on external status and the rule independent of status and entirely dependent on the thought and conscience. ”

“ The normal is either the usual, the habitual, the customary, or is, at best, an ideal construction of the variations of life more or less successfully adjusted to the conditions of the external environment. ”

“ The numbers present, therefore, in proportion to the demand for men, constituted one of the life conditions. It is a life condition which is subject to constant variation, and one in regard to which the sanctions of wise action are prompt and severe. ”

“ We shall be better able to understand the reason and necessity of this intermediate state, if we consider how much of the external, which we exhibit to each other while in this world, is merely assumed for the sake of appearance. ”

“ Plurality of causes also is a very common circumstance in all the sciences, and especially in concrete phenomena, and in the complex ones of animal life; the arrival of a ship for example at a distant port, is a result of many conditions. Similarly with most of our mental actions, they are compounds of feeling and intellect, and produced by many causes, such as hereditary tendency, acquired habit, internal and external mental excitants, dogmatic belief, knowledge of empirical rules, and occasionally of verified principles. ”

“ In the one class, that of our internal affections, the phenomena depend on the laws which regulate the successive changes of state of the mind itself. In the other class, that of our external affections, they depend on the laws of the mind, indeed, which is susceptible of these peculiar changes of state; but they depend, in an equal degree, on the laws which give to matter its peculiar qualities, and, consequently, its peculiar influence on this mental susceptibility. ”

“ Our going into new scenes and conditions, is just as natural as our coming into the world. 4. Our condition may naturally be a social one. 5. The advantages of it may naturally be bestowed, according to some fixed law, in proportion to one’s degrees in virtue. ”

“ Nevertheless, any realistic world must contain some objects that are outside of any knowing process whatever, since the relations between the various knowing processes and their objects, even in a world of conscious minds, would have to be external relations, in order to save the realistic type of independence. ”

“ For a purpose is the tendency to realize some external action which is useful or indispensable to the life-existence of the particular individual being. The tendency to the maintenance of a definite activity in opposition to the onset of disturbing forces of the environment in order to restore the lost equilibrium, may be considered as the universal formula for purposive life in general. ”

“ In the first place we have the actual condition of the world generally, which is assumed as involved in individual action and its specific character. Secondly, we have the particularity of condition, the determination of which introduces difference and tension within the substantive unity, which is the motive-spring of the action, in other words the situation. ”

“ To suppose that during countless ages, from the sea-weed up to man, the progress of life was achieved through adjustments to external realities, but that then the method was all at once changed, and throughout a vast province of evolution the end was secured through adjustments to external non-realities, is to do sheer violence to logic and common sense. ”

“ Although sufficiently ample grounds are not afforded in the field of politics, for a satisfactory induction by a comparison of the effects, the causes may, in all cases, be made the subject of specific experiment. These causes are, laws of human nature, and external circumstances capable of exciting the human will to action. The desires of man, and the nature of the conduct to which they prompt him, are within the reach of our observation. ”

“ Or, to put the matter in more general terms, the very commonest and simplest faculties are not practically self-existent, except as mere barren potentialities; and as practical forces they exist only in the degree to which they are evoked by external things and circumstances—by some external object, such as food, which excites and will satisfy desire, and by external circumstances which make the object obtainable. ”

“ If, excluding all thought of danger or hinderances from causes external to a society, we set ourselves to specify those conditions under which the life of each person, and therefore of the aggregate, may be the greatest possible, we come upon certain164 simple ones which, as here stated, assume the form of truisms. ”

“ 'Tis from the resemblance of the external actions of animals to those we ourselves perform, that we judge their internal likewise to resemble ours; and the same principle of reasoning, carry'd one step farther, will make us conclude that since our internal actions resemble each other, the causes, from which they are deriv'd, must also be resembling. ”

“ Order of the external World, as revealed by Science—By it the selfish affections are controlled; the unselfish strengthened—Our conception of this External Order has been gradually growing from the earliest times, and is but just complete—Even where not modifiable, its influence on the character is of the greatest value—But in most cases we can modify it ”

“ The more we examine the necessity of the connection of the conditions, one with another, the stronger this difficulty becomes; for if it be said that one condition cannot exist without another; with still more reason we ask why a first condition is not necessary for the collection of the conditions, or the entire series. ”

“ If, therefore, the productions of the externals of life differ so profoundly in a complete society, we must expect and allow equally great differences in all the feelings, instincts, and requirements. ”

“ And in practice, that particular condition is usually styled the cause, whose share in the matter is superficially the most conspicuous, or whose requisiteness to the production of the effect we happen to be insisting on at the moment. So great is the force of this last consideration, that it sometimes induces us to give the name of cause even to one of the negative conditions. ”

“ We may sometimes be led to assign much of the development of man's peculiar powers, to the influence of external circumstances. And that the development of those powers is so influenced, we cannot doubt ”

“ The same is true of the Organic and the Inorganic worlds, of the Human and the Non-human worlds, of the Physical and the Moral worlds, of the Cosmical and the Social worlds, of the law of Progress and the law of Order. On all sides we are confronted with a series of Antinomies, Dualisms, and irreducible ultimate conceptions. ”

“ Now what we have characterized as the difference and opposition in which the world-condition, hitherto harmonious with the individuals conditioned by it, is involved, if we consider it from the point of view of universal condition, is the manifestation of the essential content which it carries in itself. ”

“ And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein there is functional activity; while a state, or status, is an incidence determined by environing conditions. But back of each of these--life and its status--there must lie some efficient cause, producing, in the first instance, the environing conditions, and then the functional activity dependent on organization. ”

“ Adaptation of means to an end may be produced in two ways that we at present know of; by processes of natural selection, and by the agency of an intelligence in which an image or idea of the end preceded the use of the means. ”

“ Parenthetically, we agree that “such and such a condition of things” may alter with every instant and we declare ourselves ready to study the matter anew if the conditions change. We demand material, but relative truth. ”

“ Conditions, however, whether positive or negative, are no sooner called into existence than they become causes in their turn and produce further conditions, and so on ad infinitum, thus giving rise to the whole train of secondary causes. ”

“ Whether these organic conditions are the whole of the conditions, and indeed whether they are conditions at all, or mere collateral effects of some common cause, we are quite ignorant: nor are we ever likely to know, unless we could construct an organized body, and try whether it would live. ”

“ And notwithstanding its many real, and many apparent irregularities, there is also a settled order of causes and effects in the human system, as well as in the material world. The foundation of this settled order is, the sameness of human nature in its animal intellectual and moral constitution, of which the anomalies are never so great as to break up all resemblance to the common pattern. Then those conventional modes of thinking and acting which sway the conduct of the mass of mankind, strengthen the tendency to uniformity, and greatly counteract all disturbing causes. ”

“ But whatever the limitations or the opportunities, it is now our chief concern that the social conditions of its rise must greatly intensify the abstraction of science, the treatment of the consciousness of the world, which is but the sphere of action, the totality of the manifested conditions of action, as something to be cultivated wholly for its own sake. ”

“ Organic reasons are those which connect the result with all the universal laws of life, showing that it is no arbitrary enactment, or part of a scheme or plan, but a necessary and inevitable effect of universal and eternal causes. ”

“ Those who dispute the theory are entitled to demand that it shall conform strictly to the general law of cause and effect, which is, that the effect shall occur with the cause, shall not occur without the cause, and shall bear some proportion to the cause. ”

“ The advance of life's main stream in all its variety of operation shows, from the beginning until now, one character and motive-principle. It begins, as we have said, by subduing to its purpose the inveterate habits of material elements, those habits we speak of as physical necessity and law, raising their status that they may be servants in new power to a freedom foreign to themselves. ”

“ He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity, means that, contemplating the events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which could occupy any other place than it does occupy, or act in any other place than it does act. ”

“ We shall next advert to a rather more intricate operation of the same principle, namely, when the cause does not merely continue in action, but undergoes, during the same time, a progressive change in those of its circumstances which contribute to determine the effect. ”

“ As regards the immediate causes of things produced, it makes no difference whether these causes consist in substances, physical properties, freewill, or chance—by freewill I mean that of man—or even in the will of another living being. ”

“ Having treated these conditions broadly, and explained why they are important and even indispensable for life, we next proceed to show how they are fulfilled upon the earth, and how numerous, how complex, and often how exact are the adjustments needed to bring them about, and maintain them almost unchanged throughout the vast æons of time occupied in the development of life. ”

“ The idea of necessity is obtained by our experience of the connection between objects, the uniformity of the operations of nature, the constant conjunction of similar events, and the consequent inference of one from the other. Mankind are therefore agreed in the admission of necessity, if they admit that these two circumstances take place in voluntary action. Motive is to voluntary action in the human mind what cause is to effect in the material universe. ”

“ We feel it to be some sort of a product (if such a product only could be calculated) of his inner virtue and his outer place,—neither singly taken, but both conjoined. If the outer differences had no meaning for life, why indeed should all this immense variety of them exist? They must be significant elements of the world as well. ”

“ When we discover some cause, which, under similar circumstances, always produces a similar result, we need not hesitate to consider such discovery as the revelation of his will, his law touching its action and the effects produced; and by comparing the general tendency of the effect produced with the previously revealed laws and will of God in relation to a particular matter, we are permitted to form some conclusion whether the cause producing the effect exists and acts in conformity with his general providence towards the matter or subject in question. ”

“ When, therefore, we find that like results are produced through the instrumentality of totally dissimilar causes, we must attribute the analogy to some prior and more potent cause, influencing the whole alike. ”