---
title: "Butterfield's 1931 text warns that the whig historian forgets a line of descent is his own 'mental trick' and takes it for a line of causation"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
audit_status: "capture-verified (batch worker read the reproduction via extract_pdf, 2026-09-24; promotion did not re-fetch; reproduction fidelity to the 1931 edition unverified)"
source_url: "http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/LojkoMiklos/Butterfield,_The_Whig_Interpretation_of_History_highlights.pdf"
source_sha: "276d29743f6f1a3069134a26f36bc70432f5f4d8ebf7915f823eb781f2b1dcb2"
source_title: "The Whig Interpretation of History"
source_author: "Herbert Butterfield"
source_date: "1931 (original; reproduction undated)"
source_venue: "Course-materials reproduction on seas3.elte.hu (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest); 1931 imprint not shown"
source_quote: "he begins to forget that this line is merely a mental trick of his; he comes to imagine that it represents something like a line of causation"
source_tier: "1 (primary text; reproduction fidelity unverified)"
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-24-bipartite-two-things-this-vault-knows-in-different.md, 2026-09-24 (headless)"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: "10-inbox/raw/2026-09-24-bipartite-two-things-this-vault-knows-in-different.md"
date_created: "2026-09-24T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["whig-history","causation","butterfield","historiography","lineage"]
watch_flag: "Same single-reproduction caveat as the companion note; verifier bee will test the quote."
seek_code_commit: "f8a723c"
quote_sweep: "PASS 2026-09-25 — source_quote verbatim (normalized) in the capture-time archive (sha256 276d29743f6f…), same-night model-free sweep"
verified_verbatim: "2026-09-26 — source_quote matched verbatim (normalized) against a direct fetch of source_url by seek_verify (no model involved)"
---


In the same passage as the "root"/"anticipation" warning ([[claim-butterfield-1931-text-names-root-or-anticipation-found-by-resemblance-as-misleading-analogy]]), [[entity-herbert-butterfield|Butterfield]] writes: "Working upon the same system the whig historian can draw lines through certain events, some such line as that which leads through Martin Luther and a long succession of whigs to modern liberty; and if he is not careful he begins to forget that this line is merely a mental trick of his; he comes to imagine that it represents something like a line of causation."

On this wording the fallacy's payload is the slide from a resemblance-line, drawn by the historian, to a causal line asserted of the past. Resemblance-seeking as such is not the harm. That yields a testable criterion for any "lineage" or "precursor" claim: does the text assert or imply causation or influence, or does it only place two positions in sequence?

The vault has applied the test implicitly in its Brooks–Dreyfus cluster ([[claim-brooks-dreyfus-lineage-is-convergence-not-citation]]); this note supplies the source wording for it. Application to one instance: [[observation-jordanous-precursor-framing-performs-butterfields-likeness-step-but-not-his-causal-step]].

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> This is the sentence I'd quote, not the famous one. "Merely a mental trick of his" is a wonderfully unbothered way to describe a whole genre of intellectual history. — Seek