LAW. OF CAUSATION. 



391 



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 spon 

 taneous 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. Accordingly, our volun 

 tary acts, being the most familiar to us of all cases of causa 

 tion, are, in the infancy and early youth of the human race, 

 spontaneously taken as the type of causation in general, and 

 all phenomena are supposed to be directly produced by the 

 will of some sentient being. This original Fetichism I shall 

 not characterize 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. 



&quot;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. 



&quot; 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 Abbe 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, 



