(b) Immaterial antecedents are those which precede a given phenomenon and yet, under the most favorable situations, have no causal connection with said phenomenon. For example, the various antecedents of the heavy rain may have been a south wind, forgetting to take an umbrella, missing the car and having to walk, etc. Clearly these antecedents, with the exception of the first, are immaterial.
(c) The law of agreement demands that _all the material antecedents_ receive consideration, but often the situation is too complex to make this possible; a fair illustration of such would be an attempt to ascertain all of the antecedents of “the high cost of living.”
(d) The law of agreement never precludes the possibility of error; as it is quite impossible to carry the analysis to the point of absolute certainty. Of all the methods, “agreement” is the least reliable. Despite the foregoing objections, however, the method is of positive value because of its suggestiveness; opening the door to plausible hypotheses it gives the investigators a _working basis_.
Says Mill, “If an instance in which the phenomenon under investigation occurs, and an instance in which it does not occur, have every circumstance in common save one, that one occurring only in the former; the circumstance in which alone the two instances differ is the effect or the cause of an indispensable part of the cause, of the phenomenon.”
To put this in simple terms: _Whatever is invariably present when the phenomenon occurs and invariably absent when the phenomenon does not occur, other circumstances remaining the same, is probably the cause or the effect of the phenomenon._
Using the same symbols as were used in “Agreement.”
_Antecedents_ _Consequents_ A B C D P ‒ B C D ‒
In the first instance A is probably the cause of the phenomenon, since it is present when the phenomenon occurs and absent when it does not occur. For a similar reason, A is the effect in the second case.
(A) A wise teacher in ascertaining the cause of John’s tardiness would have suggested at once a change of route. Using as symbols the initial letters of the key-words of the antecedents in the case, the following results:
1. Length of lesson, } 2. Definiteness of lesson, } Work _not_ properly 3. Amount of interest shown, } prepared. 4. Physical condition the same. }