called, not strictly a cause, but an instrument of the cause which impels it to action. The last cause, looking backward from the effect, from which the effect, as they say, necessarily follows, is called, the proximate cause. Every thing intervening between it and the effect is called an instrument, or is viewed as a part of the execution of the act of causation.

Occam,1 in treating of the passage above quoted from Aristotle, says distinctly, "By the remote cause is not meant something which is the cause of a cause, or the cause of several causes."

Duns Scotus2 says, "Dico, quod quicquid est causa causæ est causa causati."

Thomas Aquinas,3 upon the question whether God is the cause of sin, first states the position of his opponents as follows: "Præterea, quidquid est causa causæ est causa effectus." Whatever is the cause of a cause is the cause of the effect. But God is the cause of free-will, which is the cause of sin, therefore God is the cause of sin."

His answer is this: "It is to be said that the effect of a middle cause, proceeding from that cause so far as it follows the order of the first cause, is referred to the first cause. But if it proceeds from the middle cause, so far as this departs from the order of the first cause, it is not referred to the first cause. Thus if an agent does something contrary to the mandate of his master, this is not referred to the master as its cause; and similarly sin, which free-will commits against the precept of God, is not referred to God as its cause."

Bacon agrees with the schoolmen when he says, " Also you may not confound the act with the execution of the act; nor the entire act with the last part, or the consummation of the act."

The division of causes into proximate and remote is therefore a division of the schoolmen, founded upon the doctrine of Aristotle, that true knowledge is knowledge of the proximate cause. Those causes which are plainly and necessarily followed by the effect are proximate. Those causes between which and the effect the connection is uncertain or not necessary are remote causes.

In Bacon's time this was common knowledge, and the terms

1 Summa Totius Logicæ, 2 pt. of 3 pt ch. 20.

2 Quæstiones Subtillissimæ in Metaphysicam, Book 5, Question 1, Opera IV, pp. 595 b, 596 b.

3 Summa Theologica, 1st Part of 2nd Part, Question 79, Art. 1.

proximate and remote were then used in this sense. The logic of Burgersdyk was the text-book both at Oxford and Cambridge at the time of the first publication of Bacon's works.

Burgersdyk says, "Eighthly, and finally. The efficient cause is divided into the proximate and the remote. That is the proximate cause which produces its effect immediately. That is a remote cause which produces the effect by means of a more neighboring cause. An efficient cause is said to be in two ways proximate, either generally or specially. A proximate cause is said generally to be next whenever it is joined to the effect either in existence or (virtute) power. For such (virtus) power being an instrument of the principal cause is considered together with the principal to be but one cause only. And therefore when the principal cause by its power is joined to the effect, it is itself considered as joined to the effect. Neither does it make any difference whether that power be an instrument conjoined or separate. For example, fire is the proximate cause of burning, parents of their children, notwithstanding fire acts by the mediation of heat, and parents of semen. For though heat and semen are instruments, yet they do not prevent, by their intervening, the principal cause from being called the cause proximate to the effect. A cause is said to be remote in this sense, when neither in its existence nor in its power is it joined to the effect. As a grandfather is said to be the remote cause of his grandson." He further says,2 a cause is said to be accidentally subordinated to another. "In the first place, when it indeed depends upon a superior cause, but does not depend upon it at the time it produces the effect. In this way a father depends upon his ancestors in begetting his son, and in this way every proximate cause upon the remote." That is, the remote cause is necessary for the existence of the proximate; but the proximate itself contains the whole causal power, and does not derive it from the remote. Thus if there had been no grandfather, there would have been no grandson; but no power of the grandfather was instrumental in the begetting of the grandson. So, according to Aquinas, if there were no Deity, there would be no sin; but sin is not committed by the agency of the Deity. And, according to Albertus Magnus, the appearance of the comet was ominous of political disturbance; but it did not necessitate the quarrel of princes. The quarrel was not a consequence of it, it was simply foretold by 1 Institutiones logica, Book 1, ch. 17, ax. 34 & 35. 2 Book 1, ch. 15.

it. But from the quarrel war, and from war famine, followed as necessary consequences. Remote causes, then, are those which, as far as the particular effect is concerned, have no causal power.

Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, in his "Summa Philosophiæ Quadripartita,"1 which was a work well known at the time Bacon wrote, says, "The second division of efficient causes is into proximate and remote. Those are called proximate which proximately and immediately produce the effect; but this is to be understood only of principal causes, as a father begetting is the cause of the son begotten. But a remote cause is one between which and the effect there intervenes another principal cause, as a grandfather in relation to the begetting of his grandson." A proximate cause, then, must be a principal cause, and a remote cause must be a cause separated from the effect by a principal cause. But a principal cause is one which contains in itself the whole causation. According to Burgersdyk,2 "A principal cause is one which produces the effect by its own power." Causal necessity, as was before observed, is therefore the chief characteristic of a proximate cause, and the want of it of a remote cause.

The results of the schoolmen's labors will live and exert an influence while speech is necessary to man. They have marked large portions of their philosophy into the modern European languages so deeply, that they can never be eradicated from the human mind while those languages are spoken upon earth. They acquired the subtlety for which they are famous by separating and defining ideas, by making those ideas clear and distinct which had before dwelt in formless confusion in the human mind. To those ideas thus won from confusion they gave names. They thus left them a permanent inheritance for succeeding times. Thanks to their labors a child now in learning to talk becomes possessed, without trouble or effort, of ideas clear and unconfused, the imperfect conception of which once puzzled philosophers. A large proportion of the abstract terms in the English language are derived from the scholastic Latin. The clearness of meaning which they possess is due to the subtleties, the distinctions, and the refinements which the schoolmen have crystallized within them. Without their use, Bacon, who, while professing small value for the schoolmen, helped himself from their riches with a liberal hand, could not have written.

1 Part 3, p. 39.

2 Ch. 17, Ax. 18.

They have sent down to us their philosophy upon the question we have been considering, the distinction between a proximate and a remote cause, in a single word. The word cause, in its causal sense, we owe to the schoolmen. From them we derive also the compound word Because, which is a contraction of the phrase By the cause. Whenever the schoolmen used the simple word cause without qualification from the context, it signified the proximate cause. When now the word Because is used correctly to express a logical reason, it points out with much exactness the scholastic proximate cause. Thus we have concentrated into what was formerly a little phrase and what is now a single word, Aristotle's famous distinction of knowledge into the out and the diori, tegether with the schoolmen's labor in the same direction.

In this manner this division of causes is traced from Aristotle through the schoolmen to Bacon's time. The maxim containing it can mean but this, that if the law is to be perfected as a science, as Bacon hoped it would be, its expounders must deal with what is certain. They must not attempt to draw inferences from inconclusive premises. They must not wander from the point into misty generalities. Thus understood, it is a caution much needed. It is a caution for which, if it were only followed, the practitioners of the law could not be too grateful.

After the publication of the works of Bacon and Descartes, scholastic logic, the credit of which had been much shaken by the revival of learning, and (as the schoolmen generally were the champions of the Romish Church) had been still more shaken by the Reformation, fell rapidly and deeply into disrepute. Its doctrines were not only forgotten, but its name became a byword.

Duns Scotus achieved a fame bounded only by the limits of the civilized world. He died in his thirty-fourth year, the intellectual giant of the time. His works in bulk are equal to those of some of the law writers of the present day, although he does not appear to have written any thing for the sole purpose of swelling their size. They are extant in twelve folio volumes. His clearness, depth, and power of mind would put to the blush the bold ignorance of those who speak patronizingly of scholastic subtlety, if, happening to possess the capacity to understand logical statement and close reasoning, they should perchance read a page of his writing. He was the greatest of the British schoolmen.

As the followers of Descartes are called Cartesians, and the followers of Kant, Kantians; so, from the name of Duns Scotus, the scholastic logicians were called Dunces. The contempt which came to be entertained for scholastic philosophy is seen in the present meaning of the word.

The oblivion into which scholastic nomenclature sunk is shown by the perplexity of the commentators over Shakespeare's use of the phrase "discourse of reason" in the passage where Hamlet says, "A beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourn'd longer." "1 This, the true scholastic use of the term, was common language in Shakespeare's time. It so appears from the works of Milton, Fuller, Chapman, and a host of the old dramatists. But Gifford thinks Shakespeare could never have written "so poor and perplexed a phrase."

Bearing in mind the disrepute into which the schoolmen fell, it is not perhaps surprising that when several generations after Bacon's time this maxim began to be gradually quoted in the courts, its true meaning, as the enunciation of a general truth, should have been lost sight of. Confusion has resulted from regarding it, not as a general caution, but as a precept susceptible of a special application. It has been used in this manner more frequently in this country than in England. Some American courts seem to have regarded it as particularly applicable to cases of negligence, and in actions of that description have looked upon it as a rule placed in their hands for the purpose of measuring the facts, and saving the jury from trouble.

If the schoolmen took an incomplete view of causation, so also did Bacon. If the incomplete view which they did take was, in fact, erroneous, that error was common to both. They differed not so much as to what causation is, as they did as to the manner of its investigation. The schoolmen assumed their causes. The theologians at the present day, writing upon the same subjects, do the same. Bacon searched for his causes by a system of enumeration of instances and exclusion of foreign causes. Neither method is of practical use. It is impossible to find the art of making gold by blind experiment. It is equally impossible to find it by an enumeration of instances of yellowness, of weight and of ductility. When Bacon gave it as his opinion that it was easier to make silver than to make gold, because silver was the simpler metal, he 1 See Gifford's edition of Massinger's Plays, Vol. I. p. 148.