ERROR OF ASSUMING OCCULT CAUSES. 127 



belief the existence and action of an occult cause in a 

 particular case without possessing adequate evidence of 

 its existence and operation, especially when evidence 

 bearing upon the question is easily obtainable. Both 

 science and religion teach us that our consciousness is 

 continually acted upon through the medium of matter 

 and its forces, by an infinite, unceasing, omnipresent, and 

 resistless First Cause ; and a general knowledge of science 

 supports the hypothesis that occult powers may exist 

 which we have not yet discovered, but both it and 

 morality are opposed to the assumption and promulgation 

 of fixed beliefs of the existence of such forces in par- 

 ticular cases, until sufficient evidence of such existence 

 has been obtained. 



Many persons seem to forget that * the laws of nature 

 are the thoughts of God,' l and that a denial of the opera- 

 tion of the great principles of nature in mental phenomena 

 is a denial of the regularity and consistency of natural 

 laws, and of the authority of the Creator. The human 

 will, for example, is as truly a natural mental act as that 

 of perception, comparison, judgment, or inference, and 

 may be defined as a conscious mental effort to effect an 

 object, the idea of which is already in the mind. Ac- 

 cording to Carpenter, it is 'a determinate effort to carry 

 out a purpose previously conceived.' 2 And before we 

 affirm it to be 'a supernatural power,' we ought to prove 

 by sufficient scientific evidence that it ' is independent of 

 natural law.' 



The mind, like other forms of energy, is a power 

 ready to be excited into action, and to be directed in its 

 course by the slightest causes, and probably no more 

 starts into action without an antecedent condition which 

 excites or releases it than any one of the physical powers. 

 1 Oersted. 2 Mental Physiology, p. 376. 



