ANIMALS NOT AUTOMATA. 



413 



If matter in motion is power, then all its effects must be such as 

 take place of necessity, it having no power to select or vary them, 

 and, whatever the course of such effects, it cannot change. If, for in- 

 stance, the moving body is approaching another body, then, as two 

 bodies cannot occupy the same space, some effect must of necessity 

 result from the collision ; and all the effects of unintelligent cause or 

 force must be from some like necessity. In this case the material 

 hypothesis has an advantage, there being no apparent connection of 

 necessity between an intelligent effort and its sequences. This, how- 

 ever, as matter cannot put itself in motion, nor, perhaps, even con- 

 tinue any motion imparted to it, may only make it an instrument of 

 other power, and not a power itself. 



Some of the considerations in favor of the existence of intelligent 

 power have already incidentally arisen in connection with the question 

 of the existence of material force, and others pertain to that of the 

 will, to which we will now turn. 



The question which Prcf. Huxley raises is not merely, Does man 

 will freely? but, Does he will at all? If he recognizes any volition 

 in us, it is a volition in which we have no agency, but of which we 

 are only conscious. 



Between the two questions, of willing freely or not willing at all, 

 there is perhaps little of practical importance ; for, if our actions are 

 controlled by some extrinsic power or foi'ce, it is not important 

 whether this control is exerted directly on or in the action, or indi- 

 rectly through controlled will. It might, perhaps, even be properly 

 urged that, philosophically as well as popularly, a willing which is 

 not free is a willing which is not willing, and this would identify the 

 two questions. 



Prof. Huxley, from divers physical experiments, comes to the con- 

 clusion that animals, including man, do not will, but that the effort- 

 phenomena, of which we are conscious, are only a series, or the effect 

 of a series, of mechanical changes of matter, over which we have no 

 control. He admits that we have knowledge and feeling, and there is 

 no difficulty in conceiving that these may exist without will, though 

 the existence of either feeling or will without knowledge is impossible. 



To most persons the actual making of an effort, or willing, seems 

 to be as fully attested by their consciousness as a sensation is ; and 

 there is high philosophical authority for putting it in that category, 

 in regard to which the consciousness is positively and of necessity 

 conclusive. It seems to me, however, that there is room for a dis- 

 tinction between the consciousness of effort, and the effort itself. If 

 the changes, which seem to us to be the consequences of our effort put 

 forth with a preconception of these changes, and for the purpose of 

 producing them, are really caused by some extrinsic power or force 

 acting through us, it is quite conceivable that such a power, especially 

 if intelligent, may impress us with the emotion of making an effort 



