404 INDUCTION. 



incredible. If Malebranche had not believed in an omnipotent being, be -would 

 have beld all action of mind on body to be a demonstrated impossibility.* 



A doctrine more precisely the reverse of the Volitional tbeory of causation 

 cannot well be imaged. The volitional tbeory is. that we know by intuiti&amp;lt; 

 or by direct experience tbe action of our own mental volitions on matter : that 

 we may hence infer all other action upon matter to be that of volition, and 

 might thus know, without any other evidence, that matter is Tinder the govern 

 ment of a divine mind, Leibnitz and the Cartesians, on the contrary, maintain 

 that our volitions do not and cannot act upon matter, and that it is only tbe 

 existence of an all-governing Being, and that Being omnipotent, which can 

 acconnt for tbe sequence between our volitions and our bodily actions. When 

 we consider that each of these two theories, which, as theories of causation, 

 stand at the opposite extremes of possible divergence from one another, invokes 

 not only as its evidence, but as its sole evidence, tbe absolute inconceivability 

 of any theory but itself, we are enabled to measure tbe worth of this kind of 

 evidence : and when we find the Volitional theory entirely built upon tbe asser 

 tion that by our mental constitution we are compelled to recognise our volitions 

 as efficient causes, and then find other thinkers maintaining that we know that 

 they are not, and cannot be such causes, and cannot conceive them to be so, 

 1 think we hnve a right to say, that this supposed law of our mental constitu 

 tion does not exist. 



Dr. Tulloch (pp. 4?-7) thinks it a snfficient answer to this, that Leibnitz 

 and the Cartesians were Theists, and believed the will of God to be an efficient 

 cause. Doubtless they did, and the Cartesians even believed ^though Leibnitz 

 did not that it is the only such cause, Dr. TnDooh mistakes the nature of the 

 question. I was not writing on Theism, as Dr. Tulloch is, but against a par- 

 t.cular theory of causation, which if it be unfounded, can give no effective sup 

 port to Theism or to anything else. I found it asserted that volition is the 

 only efficient cause., on tbe ground that no other efficient cause is conceivable. 

 To&quot; this assertion I oppose the instances of Leibnitz and of the Cartesians, who 

 affirmed with equal positiveness that volition as an efficient cause is itself not 

 conceivable, and that omnipotence, which renders all things conceivable, can 

 alone take away the impossibility. This I taught and think, a conclusive 

 answer to the arenment on which this theory of causation avowedly depends. 

 But I certainly did not imagine that Theism was bound up with that theory ; 

 nor expected to be charged with denying Leibnitz and the Cartesians to be 

 Theists because I denied that they held the theory. 



* In the words of Fontenelle, another celebrated Cartesian, u tes philosophes 

 anssi bien que le peuple avaient cm qne lame et le corps agissaient reellement 

 M physiquement Tun sur 1 autre, Descartes vint qui pronva qne leur nature 

 ne permettait point cette sorte de communication veritable, et qu ik nWf 

 vaient avoir qn une apparente, dont Dieu etait k Mediateur.&quot; CEwam 

 Font.cneUc. ed. 1767, torn, T. p. 5S4. 



