LAW OF CAUSATION*. 389 



admit that our consciousness of the volition contains in itself 

 any a priori knowledge that the muscular motion will follow. 

 If our nerves of motion were paralyzed, 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 voli 

 tion as a physical power, or been conscious of any tendency 

 in feelings of our mind to produce motions 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 &quot; consciousness of effort :&quot; 

 I see no reason why we should not ; since that physical feeling 

 is probably a state of nervous sensation beginning and ending 

 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. 



It is well argued by Sir William Hamilton against the 

 theory in question, that it &quot; is refuted by the consideration, 

 that between the overt fact of corporeal movement of which 

 we are cognisant, and the internal act of mental determination 

 of which we are also cognisant, there intervenes a numerous 

 series of intermediate agencies of which we have no know 

 ledge ; and, consequently, that we can have no consciousness 

 of any causal connexion between the extreme links of this 

 chain, the volition to move and the limb moving, as this 

 hypothesis asserts. No one is immediately conscious, for 

 example, of moving his arm through his volition. 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 having willed, and finding that his limbs do not obey his 



