H6 On the Relations between Mind and Muscle. 



eflort whether in the organic or in the inorganic world, will always be found 

 to express the relation of an event to a series of which it is, or has been 

 formerly experienced to be, initial or antecedent. The chemist having 

 discovered at the bottom of his crucible an amorphous matter, which he 

 remembers in former experiments to have been the commencement of a 

 number of changes which terminated in the formation of crystals, declares 

 that there has been an attempt at crystallization. The anatomist, when a 

 mal-formed organ is submitted to him, knowing that the animal, to which 

 the organ belongs, traverses in its embryonic development a series of 

 organic forms permanent in the lower tribes, scarcely hesitates to say, that 

 nature has made her usual efforts to form a more complex organization, 

 but that they have failed j or the zoologist, if he be as loose a reasoner as 

 Lamarck, may pronounce all the inferior species to be so many attempts at 

 the production of more perfect ones, like the imperfect crystallizations of 

 the chemist. The pathologist having observed certain phsenomena in the 

 course of a fatal disease, may assert that they were the endeavours of 

 nature to effect a cure, because on former occasions he has noticed such 

 events to have been followed by a series of others, which ended in recovery. 

 But not to multiply examples, we may conclude by remarking, that in all 

 of them the word effort is applied to an event or to events which bear the 

 same relation to other events, as the desire of certain actions, to the occur- 

 rence of those actions. 



Our inquiry into the nature of activity and effort, having failed to pro- 

 duce any evidence of the separateness of desire and volition, let us examine 

 another kind of proof. 



Mr. Locke observes, that " Desire may have a contrary tendency to that 

 which our will sets us upon." Dr. Reid takes the same position; and 

 recently it has been maintained with great earnestness by Dr. Chalmers, 

 in his Bridgewater Treatise. From the illustrations adduced by these 

 authors, it appears to be their opinion, that those muscular movements 

 which take place to achieve objects that are disagreeable to us, cannot be 

 the products of desire. But in order that we may desire a thing, is it 

 necessary that this should be of an agreeable nature ? When two events 

 or actions, each productive of pain, are presented to our consideration, 

 does not that which is less painful immediately become an object of our 

 desire ? Do we not daily observe that persons eagerly long for the inflic- 

 tion of certain surgical operations, in order that they may avoid the con- 

 tinuance of severer suffering ? The nauseous draught of medicine, which, 

 according to Dr. Chalmers, is taken by virtue of an act of volition in 

 opposition to desire, appears to us to be itself an object of desire, because 

 viewed as the mean of preventing or removing indisposition. The cases 

 brought forward by Dr. Reid, as exemplifications of an opposition between 

 will and desire, have been fully analysed by Dr. Brown, in his Treatise on 

 Cause and Effect, and proved to shew notliing but the opposition of one 



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