CONDITION. – A very vague term, usually employed cause (v.). Whereas the cause positively influences the production of the effect, the condition, instead, represents what is required so that the cause may exercise its influence or so that the effect may receive II. Percussion bombs must strike something hard in order to explode: the percussion of a resistant hard surface is only the condition of the explosion, whose true cause is the ignition that the percussion provokes in the explosive material; if this ignition is provoked by another means (e.g., an increase in temperature), the explosion occurs equally. It is called a “sine qua non” condition when its presence is “indispensable”: then its distinction from the cause as such is not always easy to make in concreto.
The term “condition” is used in every process of becoming, whether natural, artificial, or supernatural: the alteration of qualities is the condition of every corruption; preparation is the condition of every work of art; multiple conditions, on the part of the matter, the subject, and the minister, are required in the administration of the Sacraments. Thus, “condition” often approaches the meaning of “disposition.” According to phenomenists, the condition is not distinguished from the cause except as the part from the whole, the cause being the complex of antecedents required for the emergence of the new phenomenon (W. Schuppe, *Grundriss der Erkenntnistheorie und Logik*, Berlin 1894, p. 73).
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**Cornelio Fabro**
**In Rome, printed by Antonio Blado**
**Chamberlain M. D. LIII.**
**All. XVI of July.**
**CONDIVI, ASCANIO – Vita di M. Buonarroti, Rome 1553.**
**Rome, copy from the National Library.**