He took the passport and thumbed through the pages. There was no question that this was the passport of Linda Carroll of Falthaven, and that it had not been tampered with. The photograph in the front of the passport was undoubtedly that of the woman who was standing in front of him and could not, by any possibility, have been the photograph of the woman whom he had known as Linda Carroll. Abruptly he heard a spatter of applause and looked up. Theyre crazy, Roy, be careful, be careful. It’s you they want.’ Whats that sound, Annie? Who was that? Maybe she wanted the girl as a witness and kept her along on that account. That holds water, doesnt it? There are thus two different modes of the conjunct action of causes; from which arise two modes of conflict, or mutual interference, between laws of nature. Suppose, at a given point of time and space, two or more causes, which, if they acted separately, would produce effects contrary, or at least conflicting with each other; one of them tending to undo, wholly or partially, what the other tends to do. Thus the expansive force of the gases generated by the ignition of gunpowder tends to project a bullet toward the sky, while its gravity tends to make it fall to the ground. Astream running into a reservoir at one end tends to fill it higher and higher, while a drain at the other extremity tends to empty it. Now, in such cases as these, even if the two causes which are in joint action exactly annul one another, still the laws of both are fulfilled; the effect is the same as if the drain had been open for half an hour first,[132] and the stream had flowed in for as long afterward. Each agent produces the same amount of effect as if it had acted separately, though the contrary effect which was taking place during the same time obliterated it as fast as it was produced. Here, then, are two causes, producing by their joint operations an effect which at first seems quite dissimilar to those which they produce separately, but which on examination proves to be really the sum of those separate effects. It will be noticed that we here enlarge the idea of the sum of two effects, so as to include what is commonly called theirdifference, but which is in reality the result of the addition of opposites; a conception to which mankind are indebted for that admirable extension of the algebraical calculus, which has so vastly increased its powers as an instrument of discovery, by introducing into its reasonings (with the signof subtraction prefixed, and under the name of Negative Quantities) every description whatever of positive phenomena, provided they are of such a quality in reference to those previously introduced, that to add the one is equivalent to subtracting an equal quantity of the other. The applicability of these remarks to the special case under consideration can not admit of question. The science of the formation of character is a science of causes. The subject is one to which those among the canons of induction, by which laws of causation are ascertained, can be rigorously applied. It is, therefore, both natural and advisable to ascertain the simplest, which are necessarily the most general, laws of causation first, and to deduce the middle principles from them. In other words, Ethology, the deductive science, is a system of corollaries from Psychology, the experimental science. Okay, Freddie said. I didnt lie to you, I... I swapped words with you. I didn’t tell youall I knew and I didn’t have to. I told you that I hadn’t been abroad and that no one had been using my passport and that no other Linda Carroll was living here, andthat’s the honest truth— even if I did embellish it a little. Its funny you should mention socializing. The application of so improper a term as Necessity to the doctrine of cause and effect in the matter of human character, seems to me one of the most signal instances in philosophy of the abuse of terms, and its practical consequences one of the most striking examples of the power of language over our associations. The subject will never be generally understood until that objectionable term is dropped. The free-will doctrine, by keeping in view precisely that portion of the truth which the word Necessity puts out of sight, namely the power of the mind to co-operate in the formation of its own character, has given to its adherents a practical feeling much nearer to the truth than has generally (I believe) existed in the minds of necessitarians. The latter may have had a stronger sense of the importance of what human beings can do to shape the characters of one another; but the free-will doctrine has, I believe, fostered in its supporters a much stronger spirit of self-culture. I laughed and said:And I suppose the wife would keep the gal on her payroll, knowing her old man was having an affair with her? That wont hold up. She’d fire her the second she knew it. Was Mac working prohibition then? I went on with:Thats swell. That’s a break. I want Wendel here when the blow-off comes. I don’t want him chased away. If it has to be done, to keep Kirby and Crandall apart, and Crandall still foxed, let Kirby run him out and you go with him and see he’s brought back. No, I dont. Tell me, Annie. I’ll come get you. We’ll go have a cappuccino together. He started waving his hands and saying it was all a mistake. I calmed down and so did he. Finally he said: If the same casual coincidence never occurred a second time, we should have an easy test for distinguishing such from the coincidences which are the results of a law. As long as the phenomena had been found together only once, so long, unless we knew some more general laws from which the coincidence might have resulted, we could not distinguish it from a casual one; but if it occurred twice, we should know that the phenomena so conjoined must be in some way connected through their causes. The other way, youd have disappeared and your car would have disappeared and everyone would have figured you’d taken a powder. Of course, they tied you up pretty well, but you could easily have hooked your heels up on the table and jiggled until that knife fell out of your pants pocket. Then you could have twisted around and got your fingers on it and cut the ropes, without anyone knowing about it..