The latter concept (together with the cognate one of dependence) is, as we have seen, fundamentally that of a relation between objective facts, or if we prefer, of a characteristic of the objective world (that events arise out of others and give rise to further ones; that agencies introduced or applied in specific fields start characteristic changes in those fields ; that the continuance of a certain feature of a state of affairs is bound up with the presence and continuance of certain other features, etc.).