a cause which has no relation to the event. Here is another
example, from a letter to _The Nation:_[40]

In the last volume of the Shakespeare controversy, the argument
presented "To the Reader" seems fairly to be summarized as follows: The
plays are recognized as wonderful; scholars are amazed at the knowledge
of the classes in them, lawyers at the law, travelers at the minute
accuracy of the descriptions of foreign cities; they show a keen critic
of court etiquette and French soldiery; the only possible man of the
time with this encyclopedic outlook was Francis Bacon. Both in the
original and in the summary there seems a _casual_ connection implied,
namely, that the plays are wonderful because of the knowledge, and
because of the knowledge Bacon is the author. But, stated thus baldly,
the fallacy is obvious. It is not because the author "had by study
obtained nearly all the learning that could be gained from books" that
the Elizabethans went to see the plays, or that we to-day read them; but
it is because there is to be found in them wonderful characterization
expressed dramatically, namely, before an audience. And this audience is
what the scholars seem to forget. For by it is the dramatist limited,
since profundity of thought or skill in allusion is good or bad,
artistically, exactly in proportion as the thought is comprehended or
the allusion understood.

Sometimes this fallacy is caused by assuming that because a certain
result followed an event in the only case known, therefore there was a
causal connection. In a hearing before a committee of the Massachusetts
legislature on a bill to establish closer relations between Boston and
its suburbs, the question was asked of a witness whether he believed
that in the case of London "the London police would have been as
efficient as they are now if there had been no annexation" of the
surrounding towns; he very properly replied: "That's a hard question to
answer, because we have only the existing side to look at. We don't know
what it would have been as separate communities." Wherever multiple
causes are possible for a phenomenon it is unsafe to argue from a single
case.

Another form of error in reasoning to a cause is to assume that a fact
is simple, when it is really complex, as in the following example:

I do not think I am overstepping the bounds when I say that the headship
of no corporation, or state, or even the headship of the United States,
requires greater