Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which precedes it, is due to the fact that when the event has taken place, and out of thousands of others those few commands which were consistent with that event have been executed, we forget about the others that were not executed because they could not be. Apart from that, the chief source of our error in this matter is due to the fact that in the historical accounts a whole series of innumerable, diverse, and petty events, such as all those which led the French armies to Russia, for instance, is generalized into one event in accord
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