Cause in History

AQQ

"The cause of an event in history is its intrinsic relation to other events in history, and the causal nexus is not external to them but lies in their very nature."

R. G. Collingwood, Speculum Mentis (1924)

Comment on the Archival Quality Quotation:

There is no "cause and effect" in history, if that means that one thing causes a chain of events. People think of cause and effect in terms of hitting a pool ball, which hitting another, is the cause of the movement on the table. In fact the table, the position of the rest of the balls, the skill of the player, and what is going on in his head, is as much a part of the causal nexus as the movement of the cue ball. In history there is no single cause for any event; people react the way they do to stimuli of various sorts in one way because of the situation they are in, or think they are in, and might have reacted very differently in another situation.