398 INDUCTION. 



to the theory. It is plain that there is no universal law 

 operating here, except the law that each person's conceptions 

 are governed and limited by his individual experience and 

 habits of thought. We are warranted in saying of all three, 

 what each of them already believes of the other two, namely, 

 that they exalt into an original law of the human intellect 

 and of outward nature, one particular sequence of phenomena, 

 which appears to them more natural and more conceivable 

 than other sequences, only because it is more familiar. And 

 from this judgment I am unable to except the theory, that 

 Volition is an Efficient Cause. 



I am unwilling to leave the subject without adverting to 

 the additional fallacy contained in the corollary from this 

 theory ; in the inference that because Volition is an efficient 

 cause, therefore it is the only cause, and the direct agent in 

 producing even what is apparently produced by something 

 else. Volitions are not known to produce anything directly 

 except nervous action, for the will influences even the muscles 

 only through the nerves. Though it were granted, then, that 

 every phenomenon has an efficient, and not merely a pheno- 

 menal cause, and that volition, in the case of the peculiar 

 phenomena which are known to be produced by it, is that 

 efficient cause ; are we therefore to say, with these writers, 

 that since we know of no other efficient cause, and ought not 

 to assume one without evidence, there is no other, and volition 

 is the direct cause of all phenomena ? A more outrageous 

 stretch of inference could hardly be made. Because among 

 the infinite variety of the phenomena of nature there is one, 

 namely, a particular mode of action of certain nerves, which 

 has for its cause, and as we are now supposing for its efficient 

 cause, a state of our mind ; and because this is the only effi- 

 cient cause of which we are conscious, being the only one of 

 which in the nature of the case we can be conscious, since it is 

 the only one which exists, within ourselves; does this justify 

 us in concluding that all other phenomena must have the 

 same kind of efficient cause with that one eminently special, 

 narrow, and peculiarly human or animal, phenomenon ? The 

 nearest parallel to this specimen of generalization is suggested 



