Rob didnt waste any precious minutes on Linda’s empty apartment, but took a taxicab to the courthouse in Londonwood, the county seat. He hunted up the clerk’s office and said, I want to look up the probate record in an estate. Robs head shot back on his neck. He saw a shooting procession of stars and staggered back against the wall. A red rage enveloped him. He went charging blindly at the blurred image of the man’s naked torso, and a straight left snapped his head back. In this uncertainty, the conclusion we may draw from the concomitant variations ofa and A, to the existence of an invariable and exclusive connection between them, or to the permanency of the same numerical relation between their variations when the quantities are much greater or smaller than those which we have had the means of observing, can not be considered to rest on a complete induction. All that in such a case can be regarded as proved on the subject of causation is, that there is some connection between the two phenomena; that A, or something which can influence A, must be one of the causes which collectively determine a. We may, however, feel assured that the relation which we have observed to exist between the variations of A and a, will hold true in all cases which fall between the same extreme limits; that is, wherever the utmost increase or diminution in which the result has been found by observation to coincide with the law, is not exceeded. § 8. It is a matter of more than curiosity to consider, to what peculiarity of the physical truths which are the subject of geometry, it is owing that they can all be deduced from so small a number of original premises; why it is that we can set out from only one characteristic property of each kind of phenomenon, and with that and two or three general truths relating to equality, can travel from mark to mark until we obtain a vast body of derivative truths, to all appearance extremely unlike those elementary ones. Those who have contended for a radical distinction between agent and patient, have generally conceived the agent as that which causes some state of, or some change in the state of, another object which is called the patient. But a little reflection will show that the license we assume of speaking of phenomena asstates of the various objects which take part in them (an artifice of which so much use has been made by some philosophers, Brown in particular, for the apparent explanation of phenomena), is simply a sort of logical fiction, useful sometimes as one among several modes of expression, but which should never be supposed to be the enunciation of a scientific truth. Even those attributes of an object which might seem with greatest propriety to be called states of the object itself, its sensible qualities, its color, hardness, shape, and the like, are in reality (as no one has pointed out more clearly than Brown himself) phenomena of causation, in which the substance is distinctly the agent, or producing cause, the patient being our own organs, and those of other sentient beings. What we call states of objects, are always sequences into which the objects enter, generally as antecedents or causes;and things are never more active than in the production of those phenomena in which they are said to be acted upon. Thus, in the example of a stone falling to the earth, according to the theory of gravitation the stone is as much an agent as the earth, which not only attracts, but is itself attracted by, the stone. In the case of a sensation produced in our organs, the laws of our organization, and even those of our minds, are as directly operative in determining the effect produced, as the laws of the outward object. Though we call prussic acid the agent of a persons death, the whole of the vital and organic properties of the patient are as actively instrumental as the poison, in the chain of effects which so rapidly terminates his sentient existence. In the process of education, we may call the teacher the agent, and the scholar only the material acted upon; yet in truth all the facts which pre-existed in the scholar’s mind exert either co-operating or counteracting agencies in relation to the teacher’s efforts. It is not light alone which is the agent in vision, but light coupled with the active properties of the eye and brain, and with those of the visible object. The distinction between agent and patient is merely verbal: patients are always agents; in a great proportion, indeed, of all natural phenomena, they are so to such a degree as to react forcibly on the causes which acted upon them: and even when this is not the case, they contribute, in the same manner as any of the other conditions, to the production of the effect of which they are vulgarly treated as the mere theatre. All the positive conditions of a phenomenon are alike agents, alike active; and in any expression of the cause which professes to be complete, none of them can with reason be excluded, except such as have already been implied in the words used for describing the effect; nor by including even these would there be incurred any but a merely verbal impropriety. Now lets think carefully, Dr. Dixon went on. When you shoot a gun there’s a split second between the sound of the explosion and the sound of the hitting of the bullet, particularly with a relatively low velocity hand gun, and if the distance is great enough to allow such an appreciable interval. There were three things you might have struck with those bullets. One was the figure of the man, the other one was wood, such as the hull of the boat or the pier, and the other one was water. Now did you hear any thud that would indicate the bullet had struck wood — either of the bullets? Annie, I say. Take my hand again, okay? The steaks were perfectly cooked and delicious— and the chips were amazing. They were followed by more of the wonderful cheeses theyd had earlier, that Madame said were all local. Then a dessert to die for — meringues swimming in a pool of warm, thin, creamy custard. Îles flottantes!’ Madame said proudly. The dog hesitated a moment, growling ominously, then lay down, his head within an inch or two of Robs leg, fangs still bared. Wedging his back against the wall, he lifted his feet off the ground, one at a time, and pressed them against the belly of the solid animal. Its weight supported him. But his back was starting to slip down the wall. He couldnt stay here for long.But he had to stay long enough. For distinctions sake, every fact which is solely composed of feelings or states of consciousness considered as such, is often called a Psychological or Subjective fact; while every fact which is composed, either wholly or in part, of something different from these, that is, of substances and attributes, is called an Objective fact. We may say, then, that every objective fact is grounded on a corresponding subjective one; and has no meaning to us (apart from the subjective fact which corresponds to it), except as a name for the unknown and inscrutable process by which that subjective or psychological fact is brought to pass. He sat down on the edge of the bed, still holding his foot, and this time he managed to say it. Just:Did you see the Chief, Shean? If, says Laplace, there were one thousand tickets in a box, and one only has been drawn out, then if an eye-witness affirms that the number drawn was 79, this, though the chances were 999 in 1000 against it, is not on that account the less credible; its credibility is equal to the antecedent probability of the witnesss veracity. But if there were in the box 999 black balls and only one white, and the witness affirms that the white ball was drawn, the case according to Laplace is very different: the credibility of his assertion is but a small fraction of what it was in the former case; the reason of the difference being as follows: § 1. To complete the general notion of causation on which the rules of experimental inquiry into the laws of nature must be founded, one distinction still remains to be pointed out: a distinction so radical, and of so much importance, as to require a chapter to itself. Go away or I phone a cop..