 We turn now from the policy-based tests of proximate causation to those tests based on the view that proximate causation, like cause in fact, has to do with real causal relations in the world. The oldest of these tests is that suggested by Sir Francis Bacon’s coinage “causa proxima” (1630: first maxim). The simple idea behind such a remoteness test is that causation is a scalar relation—a more-or-less sort of thing, not an all-or-nothing sort of thing—and that it peters out over time.