To explain why causal-empirical thinking is rare, Marshall sketches 1000+ years of how people explained events. Rome fell gradually, not by any single dramatic blow. The "soft technologies" of command, training, and unit cohesion diffused to the Germans, and Europeans, unable to see the slow pattern, concluded, "Well, it's God's will." This was the age of **Providence**: the belief that everything was divinely foreordained. When the Black Death killed around 100 million people in 1346–1353 with no rhyme or reason in who lived and who died, the default consolation was that God's Will determined it and one could only be a good person. (Rhode Island's capital was named Providence in 1636.) > *Source caveat (2026-07-01, web fact-check): the ~100M figure fits only high-end global tolls; the standard European estimate for 1346–1353 is ~25–50M, roughly a third to half of the population. If the number is Marshall's, it reads as worldwide, not European.* Two contemporaries cracked this open. **Machiavelli** (*The Prince*, 1532) argued that a logical cause-and-effect determines who gains and keeps power. **Luther** argued people should read the Bible and reach God directly. "The Pope is just a guy." By the 1600s every European leader had absorbed some version of both. Marshall's pattern: across history, the younger, poorer, and less-educated lean toward fate, moral mode, and idealism; greater learning and exposure let you "make greater sense of the chaos of the world." --- *Source: [[Book Inventory/Progression|Progression]] (Sebastian Marshall, 2016) — Uncommon Virtues #4 — Causal / Empirical* Fact-checked 2026-07-01: Black Death European toll ~25–50M, not 100M (https://www.britannica.com/event/Black-Death); The Prince published posthumously 1532 (https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Prince); Providence RI founded 1636 by Roger Williams (https://www.nps.gov/people/roger-williams.htm).