CH. IT.] ANTHROPOMORPHIC THEISM. 391 



of nature does, and must ever, baffle comprehension ; and 

 that, upon any hypothesis frameable by our intelligence, 

 whether theistic or non-theistlc, the origination of motion 

 must remain not only incomprehensible but inconceivable. 

 Relatively to our finite power of apprehension, motion is to be 

 regarded, like matter, as eternal. 1 The unthinkableness of 

 the creation or destruction of matter or motion is involved 

 in the axiom, that force is persistent, which is the funda 

 mental axiom of all science and of Cosmic Philosophy. 

 Whether motion, considered apart from our power of appre 

 hension, ever had a beginning or not, is a question which 

 cannot concern us as scientific thinkers. To assert that it 

 had, is to put into words a hypothesis that cannot be 

 translated into thought, and to assume Volition as its primal 

 antecedent, is to frame an additional hypothesis that is 

 essentially iinverifiable. Phenomenally we know of Will 

 only as the cause of certain limited and very peculiar kinds 

 of activity displayed by the nerves and muscles of the 

 higher animals. And to argue from this that all other 

 kinds of activity are equally caused by Will, simply be 

 cause the primal origination of motion is otherwise inex 

 plicable, is as monstrous a stretch of assumption as can well 

 be imagined. While to contend as many have done that 

 because human volitions are attended by a sensation of 

 effort, there is therefore effort in each case of causation, is 

 much like identifying gravitative force with the sensation 

 of weight by which the attempt to overcome it is always 

 accompanied. 2 



* Or to state the some tiling in nnother form the possibilities of thought 

 are limited by experience ; and experience furnishes no data for enabling us 

 to conceive a time, either past or future, when the Unknowable would be 

 objectively manifested to consciousness otherwise than in movements of 

 matter. But this, it should be remembered, applies solely to our powers of 

 conception. Thought is not tne measure of things, and where the region of 

 experience is transcended, the test of inconceivability becomes 

 See above, vol. i. p. 11. 



1 fcee above, voL L p. 157. 



