The predisposing causes of the Donatist schism were the belief, early introduced into the African church, that the validity of all sacerdotal acts depended upon the personal character of the agent, and the question, arising out of that belief, as to the eligibility for sacerdotal office of the traditores, or those who had delivered up their copies of the Scriptures under the compulsion of the Diocletian persecution; the exciting cause was the election of a successor to Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, who died in 311.
Chills are recognized as predisposing both to primary infection and to relapses, and malnutrition is also believed to increase susceptibility; both should therefore be avoided.
Apart from the two functions of discerning between right and wrong, and actively predisposing the agent to moral action, conscience has further a retrospective action whereby remorse falls upon the man who recognizes that he has broken a moral law.
But very often refreshment is undoubtedly obtained from such narcotic sleep. It may be supposed that in the latter case the effect of the drug has been to ensure occurrence of that second predisposing factor mentioned above, of that withdrawal of sense impulses from the nerve centres that serves to usher in the state of sleep. In certain conditions it may be well worth while by means of narcotic drugs to close the portals of the senses for the sake of thus obtaining stillness in the chambers of the mind; their enforced quietude may induce a period in which natural rest and repair continue long after the initial unnatural arrest of vitality due to the drug itself has passed away.
Faulty DNA can also be inherited, predisposing an individual to develop cancer, although fewer than 10 percent of cancers are purely hereditary.
