at 'myths are a disease of
language.' Then there is great waste of ingenuity in reconciling such
propositions with the recalcitrant facts. A scientific method recognises
that there may be other causes of effects thus vaguely conceived, and
then proceeds to distinguish in each class of effects the peculiarities
due to different causes.

Sec. 5. The understanding of the complex nature of Causes and Effects helps
us to overcome some other difficulties that perplex the use of these
words. We have seen that the true cause is an _immediate_ antecedent;
but if the cause is confounded with _one_ of its constituent conditions,
it may seem to have long preceded the event which is regarded as its
effect. Thus, if one man's death is ascribed to another's desire of
revenge, this desire may have been entertained for years before the
assassination occurred: similarly, if a shipwreck is ascribed to a
sunken reef, the rock was waiting for ages before the ship sailed that
way. But, of course, neither the desire of revenge nor the sunken rock
was 'the sum of the conditions' on which the one or the other event
depended: as soon as this is complete the effect appears.

We have also seen the true effect of any state and process of things is
the immediate consequence; but if the effect be confounded with _one_ of
its constituent factors, it may seem to long outlive the cessation of
the cause. Thus, in nearly every process of human industry and art, one
factor of the effect--a road, a house, a tool, a picture--may, and
generally does, remain long after the work has ceased: but such a
result is not the whole effect of the operations that produce it. The
other factors may be, and some always are, evanescent. In most of such
works some heat is produced by hammering or friction, and the labourers
are fatigued; but these consequences soon pass off. Hence the effect as
a whole only momentarily survives the cause. Consider a pendulum which,
having been once set agoing, swings to and fro in an arc, under the
joint control of the shaft, gravitation and its own inertia: at every
moment its speed and direction change; and each change may be considered
as an effect, of which the antecedent change was one condition. In such
a case as this, which, though a very simple, is a perfectly fair example
of all causation, the duration of either cause or effect is quite
insensible: so that, as Dr. Venn says, an Effect, rigorously conceived,
is only "the initial ten