[mod. f. on L. type *causālitās, f. causāl-is CAUSAL + -ITY.]
1. Causal quality, character, efficiency or agency; fact or state of being or acting as a cause.
1603. Sir C. Heydon, Jud. Astrol., ii. 69. When they are called signes, their causalitie is not excluded.
1649. Jer. Taylor, Life Christ, II. X. vii. ¶ 6. Faith is the beginning grace, and hath influence and causality in the production of the other.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., 750. A Power or Causality, whereby that which was Not before, was afterwards Made to Be.
1748. Hartley, Observ. Man, II. i. ¶ 16. 67. To ascribe a real Causality to Free-will.
1875. Grindon, Life, ii. 14. Nature has no independent activity, no causality of its own.
2. The operation or relation of cause and effect; ‘the law of mind which makes it necessary to recognise power adequate to account for every occurrence’ (Fleming’s Vocab. Philos., 1887).
1642. O. Sedgwicke, England’s Preserv., 10. By way of order only, and not by causality.
1817. Coleridge, Biog. Lit., 62. The law of causality holds only between homogeneous things.
1836–7. Sir W. Hamilton, Metaph., xxxix. (1859), II. 376. The nature and genealogy of the notion of Causality.
1860. Emerson, Cond. Life, ii. (1861), 34. A belief in causality, or strict connection between every trifle and the principle of being … characterizes all valuable minds.
1870. Bowen, Logic, x. 333. Whatever is known as an event or change, is governed by the necessary laws of Causality and Time.
3. Phrenology. The mental faculty of tracing effects to causes.
1874. Blackie, Self-Cult., 6. The quality of mind, which … phrenologists call causality.
¶ 4. An excuse. (? Not Eng.)
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Causality, Causation, an excuse, essoyning or pretence.
