The probability of a common cause, and the possibility of formulating it, being granted, it will be well, before going further, to consider what must be the general characteristics of such cause, and in what direction we ought to look for it.  We can with certainty predict that it has a high degree of generality; seeing that it is common to such infinitely varied phenomena:  just in proportion to the universality of its application must be the abstractness of its character.  We need not expect to see in it an obvious solution of this or that form of Progress; because it equally refers to forms of Progress bearing little apparent resemblance to them:  its association with multiform orders of facts, involves its dissociation from any particular order of facts.  Being that which determines Progress of every kind—­astronomic, geologic, organic, ethnologic, social, economic, artistic, etc.—­it must be concerned with some fundamental attribute possessed in common by these; and must be expressible in terms of this fundamental attribute.  The only obvious respect in which all kinds of Progress are alike, is, that they are modes of change; and hence, in some characteristic of changes in general, the desired solution will probably be found.  We may suspect a priori that in some law of change lies the explanation of this universal transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous.

Thus much premised, we pass at once to the statement of the law, which is this:—­Every active force produces more than one change—­every cause produces more than one effect.

Before this law can be duly comprehended, a few examples must be looked at.  When one body is struck against another, that which we usually regard as the effect, is a change of position or motion in one or both bodies.  But a moment’s thought shows us that this is a careless and very incomplete view of the matter.  Besides the visible mechanical result, sound is produced; or, to speak accurately, a vibration in one or both bodies, and in the surrounding air:  and under some circumstances we call this the effect.  Moreover, the air has not only been made to vibrate, but has had sundry currents caused in it by the transit of the bodies.  Further, there is a disarrangement of the particles of the two bodies in the neighbourhood of their point of collision; amounting in some cases to a visible condensation.  Yet more, this condensation is accompanied by the disengagement of heat.  In some cases a spark—­that is, light—­results, from the incandescence of a portion struck off; and sometimes this incandescence is associated with chemical combination.