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There is in those of his class a continual and most noticeable tendency to what may best be described as the post ergo propter dispensation. With them, the eye is fixed on the immediate manifestation. Because one event preceded another, the first event is obviously and indisputably the cause of the later event.

The feudal man lived as a free man; he was master in his own house; he sought his end in himself; he was and this is a scholastic expression, propter seipsum existens: all feudal obligations were founded upon respect for personality and the given word."

In an hour or so a friend came in with a root of rare virtue and persuaded the man to swallow some preparation of it. Post hoc, whether propter hoc I dare not say, he became unconscious and sank. Before night he was buried. All this did not happen in some obscure village in a remote jungle.

Philip ruined Greece; the advice of Demosthenes, had it been followed, would have saved her. Superficially considered, all this seems clever reasoning; but it is in fact a stupendous fallacy. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Philip conquered and subsequently things went ill with Greece. A man looked at Mars and subsequently had the cholera. Let us no longer argue so childishly.

It is recorded, for instance, of Julius Caesar, surely the most eminent adventurer of all history, that he hesitated to attempt an expedition against one of the tribes of Gaul "propter inopiam pecuniae," which may very well be translated "on account of a shortage of provisions." But Julius Caesar, at the period of his greatest conquests, was a middle-aged man.

Surely the Church exists, in an especial way, for the sake of the faith committed to her keeping. But our practical men forget there may be remedies worse than the disease; that latent heresy may be worse than a contest of "party;" and, in their treatment of the Church, they fulfil the satirist's well-known line: "Propter vitam vivendi perdere causas."

A Complex action is one in which the change is accompanied by such Reversal, or by Recognition, or by both. These last should arise from the internal structure of the plot, so that what follows should be the necessary or probable result of the preceding action. It makes all the difference whether any given event is a case of propter hoc or post hoc.

As to the relationship betwixt us and beasts, I do not much admit of it; nor of that which several nations, and those among the most ancient and most noble, have practised, who have not only received brutes into their society and companionship, but have given them a rank infinitely above themselves, esteeming them one while familiars and favourites of the gods, and having them in more than human reverence and respect; others acknowledged no other god or divinity than they: "Bellux a barbaris propter beneficium consecratae."

They owe their independence to the nature of their country; for the missionaries, in spite of their zeal, have not been tempted to follow them to the tree-tops. Cardinal Bembo described them at the beginning of the 16th century, "quibusdam in locis propter paludes incolae domus in arboribus aedificant."

But one thing I did not grant, that the forgiveness of sins could not be acquired unless it was purchased with money, above all by the poor. On this account I was wonderfully well pleased with the little clause at the end of the Pope's letter, 'Pauperibus gratis dentur propter Deum.