the air and the materials, which is a force. To grind corn, there must be a certain collocation of the parts composing a mill, relatively to one another and to the corn; but there must also be the gravitation of water, or the motion of wind, to supply a force. But as the force in these cases was regarded as a property of the objects in which it is embodied, it seemed tautology to say that there must be the collocation and the force. As the collocation must be a collocation of objects possessing the forcegiving property, the collocation, so understood, included the force. period. But the case is simply one of those we have already considered, in which the efficacy of a cause consists in its investing an object with a property. The force said to be laid up, and merely potential, is no more a really existing thing than any other properties of objects are really existing things. The expression is a mere artifice of language, convenient for describing the phenomena: it is unnecessary to suppose that anything has been in continuous existence except an abstract potentiality. A force suspended in its operation, neither manifesting itself by motion nor by How, then, shall we have to express pressure, is not an existing fact, but these facts, if the theory be finally a name for our conviction that in apsubstantiated that all Force is redu-propriate circumstances a fact would cible to a previous Motion? We shall have to say that one of the conditions of every phenomenon is an antecedent Motion. But it will have to be explained that this needs not be actual motion. The coal which supplies the force exerted in combustion is not shown to have been exerting that force in the form of molecular motion in the pit; it was not even exerting pressure. The stone on the eminence is exerting a pressure, but only equivalent to its weight, not to the additional momentum it would acquire by falling. The antecedent, therefore, is not a force in action; and we can still only call it a property of the objects, by which they would exert a force on the occur rence of a fresh collocation. The collocation, therefore, still includes the force. The force said to be stored up, is simply a particular property which the object has acquired. The cause we are in search of is a collocation of objects possessing that particular property. When indeed we inquire further into the cause from which they derive that property, the new conception introduced by the Conservation theory comes in the property is itself an effect, and its cause, according to the theory, is a former motion of exactly equivalent amount, which has been impressed on the particles of the body, perhaps at some very distant take place. We know that a pound weight, were it to fall from the earth into the sun, would acquire in falling a momentum equal to millions of pounds; but we do not credit the pound weight with more of actually existing force than is equal to the pressure it is now exerting on the earth, and that is exactly a pound. We might as well say that a force of millions of pounds exists in a pound, as that the force which will manifest itself when the coal is burnt is a real thing existing in the coal. What is fixed in the coal is only a certain property: it has become fit to be the antecedent of an effect called combustion, which partly consists in giving out, under certain conditions, a given definite quantity of heat. We thus see that no new general conception of Causation is introduced by the Conservation theory. The indestructibility of Force no more interferes with the theory of Causation than the indestructibility of Matter, meaning by matter the element of resistance in the sensible world. It only enables us to understand better than before the nature and laws of some of the sequences. This better understanding, however, enables us, with Mr. Bain, to admit, as one of the tests for distinguishing causation from mere con comitance, the expenditure or transfer of energy. If the effect, or any part of the effect, to be accounted for, consists in putting matter in motion, then any of the objects present which has lost motion has contributed to the effect; and this is the true meaning of the proposition that the cause is that one of the antecedents which exerts active force. § 11. It is proper in this place to advert to a rather ancient doctrine respecting causation, which has been revived during the last few years in many quarters, and at present gives more signs of life than any other theory of causation at variance with that set forth in the preceding pages. According to the theory in question, Mind, or, to speak more precisely, Will is the only cause of phenomena. The type of Causation, as well as the exclusive source from which we derive the idea, is our own voluntary agency. Here, and here only (it is said) we have direct evidence of causation. We know that we can move our bodies. Respecting the phenomena of inanimate nature, we have no other direct knowledge than that of antecedence and sequence. But in the case of our voluntary actions, it is affirmed that we are conscious of power before we have experience of results. An act of volition, whether followed by an effect or not, is accompanied by a consciousness of effort, "of force exerted, of power in action, which is necessarily causal or causative." This feeling of energy or force inherent in an act of will is knowledge à priori; assurance prior to experience that we have the power of causing effects. Volition, therefore, it is asserted, is something more than an unconditional antecedent; it is a cause in a different sense from that in which physical phenomena are said to cause one another: it is an Efficient Cause. From this the transition is easy to the further doctrine, that Volition is the sole Efficient Cause of all phenomena. "It is inconceivable that dead force could continue unsupported for a moment beyond its creation. We cannot even conceive of change of phenomena without the energy of a mind.” "The word action" itself, says another writer of the same school, "has no real significance except when applied to the doings of an intelligent agent. Let any one conceive, if he can, of any power, energy, or force, inherent in a lump of matter." Phenomena may have the semblance of being produced by physical causes, but they are in reality produced, say these writers, by the immediate agency of mind. All things which do not proceed from a human (or, I suppose, an animal) will, proceed, they say, directly from divine will. The earth is not moved by the combination of a centripetal and a projectile force; this is but a mode of speaking, which serves to facilitate our conceptions. It is moved by the direct volition of an Omnipotent Being, in a path coinciding with that which we deduce from the hypothesis of these two forces. As I have so often observed, the general question of the existence of Efficient Causes does not fall within the limits of our subject: but a theory which represents them as capable of being subjects of human knowledge, and which passes off as efficient causes what are only physical or phenomenal causes, belongs as much to Logic as to Metaphysics, and is a fit subject for discussion here. To my apprehension, a volition is not an efficient, but simply a physical cause. Our will causes our bodily actions in the same sense, and in no other, in which cold causes ice, or a spark causes an explosion of gunpowder. The volition, a state of our mind, is the antecedent; the motion of our limbs in conformity to the volition is the consequent. This sequence I conceive to be not a subject of direct consciousness, in the sense intended by the theory. The antecedent, indeed, and the consequent, are subjects of consciousness. But the connection Previously to this ultimate movement, muscles, nerves, a multitude of solid and fluid parts, must be set in motion by the will, but of this motion we know, from consciousness, absolutely nothing. A person struck with paralysis is conscious of no inability in his limb to fulfil the determinations of his will; and it is only after hav ing willed, and finding that his limbs do not obey his volition, that he learns by this experience that the external movement does not follow the inter after the volition that his limbs do not obey his mind, so it is only after volition that the man in health learns that his limbs do obey the mandates of his will." * between them is a subject of experi- | ence. I cannot admit that our consciousness of the volition contains in itself any à priori knowledge that the muscular motion will follow. If our nerves of motion were paralysed, or our muscles stiff and inflexible, and had been so all our lives, I do not see the slightest ground for supposing that we should ever (unless by information from other people) have known anything of volition as a physical power, or been conscious of any tendency in feelings of our mind to produce mo-nal act. But as the paralytic learns tions of our body, or of other bodies. I will not undertake to say whether we should in that case have had the physical feeling which I suppose is meant when these writers speak of "consciousness of effort:" I see no Those against whom I am contendreason why we should not; since that ing have never produced, and do not physical feeling is probably a state of pretend to produce, any positive evinervous sensation beginning and end-dence + that the power of our will to ing in the brain, without involving the motory apparatus: but we certainly should not have designated it by any term equivalent to effort, since effort implies consciously aiming at an end, which we should not only in that case have had no reason to do, but could not even have had the idea of doing. If conscious at all of this peculiar sensation, we should have been conscious of it, I conceive, only as a kind of uneasiness, accompanying our feelings of desire. a * Lectures on Metaphysics, vol. ii. Lect. xxxix. pp. 391-392. I regret that I cannot invoke the authority of Sir William Hamilton in favour of my own opinions on Causation, as I can against the particular theory which I am now combating. But that acute thinker has a theory of Causation peculiar to himself, which has never yet, as far as I know, venture to think, admits of as complete been analytically examined, but which, refutation as any one of the false or insufficient psychological theories which strew the ground in such numbers under his potent metaphysical scythe. (Since examined and controverted in the sixteenth chapter of An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.) Unless we are to consider as such the It is well argued by Sir William Hamilton against the theory in question, that it "is refuted by the con- following statement by one of the writers sideration that between the overt fact quoted in the text: "In the case of mental of corporeal movement of which we exertion, the result to be accomplished is are cognisant, and the internal act of preconsidered or meditated, and is therefore mental determination of which we Bowen's Lowell Lectures on the Application known à priori, or before experience." are also cognisant, there intervenes of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the numerous series of intermediate Evidence of Religion, Boston, 1849. This agencies of which we have no know. is merely saying that when we will a thing ledge; and, consequently, that we of what we wish to happen does not imply can have no consciousness of any a prophetic knowledge that it will happen. casual connection between the ex- Perhaps it will be said that the first time treme links of this chain, the volition we exerted our will, when we had of course no experience of any of the powers residto move and the limb moving, as this ing in us, we nevertheless must already hypothesis asserts. No one is im- have known that we possessed them, since mediately conscious, for example, of we cannot will that which we do not believe to be in our power. But the imposmoving his arm through his volition.sibility is perhaps in the words only, and we have an idea of it. But to have an idea by the will of some sentient being. This original Fetichism I shall not characterise in the words of Hume, or of any follower of Hume, but in those of a religious metaphysician, Dr. Reid, in order more effectually to show the unanimity which exists on the subject among all competent thinkers. "When we turn our attention to external objects, and begin to exercise our rational faculties about them, we find that there are some motions and changes in them which we have power to produce, and that there are many which must have some other cause. Either the objects must have life and active power, as we have, or they must be moved or changed by something that has life and active power, as external objects are moved by us. move our bodies would be known to us independently of experience. What they have to say on the subject is, that the production of physical events by a will seems to carry its own explanation with it, while the action of matter upon matter seems to require something else to explain it; and is even, according to them, "inconceivable on any other supposition than that some will intervenes between the apparent cause and its apparent effect. They thus rest their case on an appeal to the inherent laws of our conceptive faculty; mistaking, as I apprehend, for the laws of that faculty its acquired habits, grounded on the spontaneous tendencies of its uncultured state. The succession between the will to move a limb and the actual motion is one of the most direct and instantaneous of all sequences which come under our observation, and is familiar to every moment's experience from our earliest infancy; more familiar than any succession of events exterior to our bodies, and especially more so than any other case of the apparent origination (as distinguished from the mere communication) of motion. Now, it is the natural tendency of the mind to be always attempting to facilitate its conception of unfamiliar facts by assimilating them to others which are familiar. "Rude nations do really believe sun, Accordingly, our voluntary acts, being moon, and stars, earth, sea, and air, the most familiar to us of all cases of fountains and lakes, to have undercausation, are, in the infancy and standing and active power. To pay early youth of the human race, spon-homage to them, and implore their taneously taken as the type of causa- favour, is a kind of idolatry natural tion in general, and all phenomena to savages. are supposed to be directly produced not in the facts; for we may desire what we do not know to be in our power; and finding by experience that our bodies move according to our desire, we may then, and only then, pass into the more complicated mental state which is termed will. After all, even if we had an instinctive knowledge that our actions would follow our will, this, as Brown remarks, would prove nothing as to the nature of Causation. Our knowing, previous to experience, that an antecedent will be followed by a certain consequent, would not prove the relation between them to be anything more than antecedence and consequence. "Our first thoughts seem to be, that the objects in which we perceive such motion have understanding and active power as we have. 'Savages,' says the Abbé Raynal, 'wherever they see motion which they cannot account for, there they suppose a soul.' All men may be considered as savages in this respect, until they are capable of instruction, and of using their faculties in a more perfect manner than savages do. "The Abbé Raynal's observation is sufficiently confirmed both from fact and from the structure of all languages. "All languages carry in their structure the marks of their being formed when this belief prevailed. The distinction of verbs and participles into active and passive, which is found in all languages, must have been originally intended to distinguish what is really active from what is merely passive; and in all languages we find active verbs applied to those objects in which, according to the Abbé Raynal's observations, savages suppose a soul. "Thus we say the sun rises and sets, and comes to the meridian, the moon changes, the sea ebbs and flows, the winds blow. Languages were formed by men who believed these objects to have life and active power in themselves. It was therefore proper and natural to express their motions and changes by active verbs. "There is no surer way of tracing the sentiments of nations before they have records than by the structure of their language, which, notwith standing the changes produced in it by time, will always retain some signatures of the thoughts of those by whom it was invented. When we find the same sentiments indicated in the structure of all languages, those sentiments must have been common to the human species when languages were invented. "When a few, of superior intellectual abilities, find leisure for speculation, they begin to philosophise, and soon discover that many of those objects which at first they believed to be intelligent and active are really lifeless and passive. This is a very important discovery. It elevates the nind, emancipates from many vulgar superstitions, and invites to further discoveries of the same kind. “As philosophy advances, life and activity in natural objects retires, and leaves them dead and inactive. Instead of moving voluntarily, we find them to be moved necessarily; instead of acting, we find them to be acted upon; and Nature appears as one great machine, where one wheel is turned by another, that by a third; and how far this necessary succession may reach, the philosopher does not know." before it has become familiar with any other invariable sequences than those between its own volitions or those of other human beings and their voluntary acts. As the notion of fixed laws of succession among external phenomena gradually establishes itself, the propensity to refer all phenomena to voluntary_agency slowly gives way before it. The sug gestions, however, of daily life continuing to be more powerful than those of scientific thought, the original instinctive philosophy maintains its ground in the mind, underneath the growths obtained by cultivation, and keeps up a constant resistance to their throwing their roots deep into the soil. The theory against which I am contending derives its nourishment from that substratum. Its strength does not lie in argument, but in its affinity to an obstinate tendency of the infancy of the human mind. That this tendency, however, is not the result of an inherent mental law, is proved by superabundant evidence. The history of science, from its earliest dawn, shows that mankind have not been unanimous in thinking either that the action of matter upon matter was not conceivable, or that the action of mind upon matter was. To some thinkers, and some schools of thinkers, both in ancient and in modern times, this last has appeared much more inconceivable than the former. Sequences entirely physical and material, as soon as they had become sufficiently familiar to the human mind, came to be thought perfectly natural, and were regarded not only as needing no explanation themselves, but as being capable of affording it to others, and even of serving as the ultimate explanation of things in general. One of the ablest recent supporters of the Volitional theory has furnished an explanation, at once historically true and philosophically acute, of the failure of the Greek philosophers in physical inquiry, in which, as I conceive, he unconsciously depicts his |