LAW OF CAUSATION. 257 



that it " is refuted by the consideration that between the overt fact of cor- 

 poreal movement of which we are cognizant, and the internal act of mental 

 determination of which we are also cognizant, there intervenes a numerous 

 series of intermediate agencies of which we have no knowledge ; and, con- 

 sequently, that we can have no consciousness of any causal connection be- 

 tween the extreme links of this chain, the volition to move and the limb 

 moving, as this hypothesis asserts. No one is immediately conscious, for 

 example, of moving his arm through his volition. Previously to this ulti- 

 mate movement, muscles, nerves, a multitude of solid and fluid parts, must 

 be set in motion by the will, but of this motion we know, from conscious- 

 ness, absolutely nothing. A person struck with paralysis is conscious of 

 no inability in his limb to fulfill the determinations of his will ; and it is 

 only after having willed, and finding that his limbs do not obey his volition, 

 that he learns by this experience, that the external movement does not fol- 

 low the internal act. But as the paralytic learns after the volition that his 

 limbs do not obey his mind; so it is only after volition that the man in 

 health learns, that his limbs do obey the mandates of his will."* 



Those against whom I am contending have never produced, and do not 

 pretend to produce, any positive evidencef that the power of our will to 

 move our bodies would be known to us independently of experience. What 

 they have to say on the subject is, that the production of physical events 

 by a will seems to carry its own explanation with it, while the action of 

 matter upon matter seems to require something else to explain it ; and is 

 even, according to them, " inconceivable " 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 con- 

 ceptive faculty ; mistaking, as I apprehend, for the laws of that faculty its 

 acquired habits, grounded on the spontaneous tendencies of its uncultured 

 state. The succession between the will to move a limb and the actual mo- 

 tion 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 ex- 



* Lectures on Metaphysics, vol. ii., Lect. xxxix., pp. 391-2. 



I regret that I can not invoke the authority of Sir William Hamilton in favor of my own 

 opinions on Causation, as I can against the particular theoiy which I am now combating. 

 But that acute thinker has a theory of Causation peculiar to himself, which has never yet, as 

 far as I know, been analytically examined, but which, I venture to think, admits of as com- 

 plete refutation as any one of the false or insuiRcient psychological theories which sti-ew the 

 ground in such numbers under his potent metaphysical scythe. (Since examined and contro- 

 verted in the sixteenth chapter oi An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy. ) 



t Unless we are to consider as such the following statement, by one of the writers quoted 

 in the text : "In the case of mental exertion, the result to be accomplished is preconsidered 

 or meditated, and is therefore known a priori, or before' experience." — (Bowen's Lowell Lec- 

 tures on the Application of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the Evidence of Religion. 

 Boston, 1849.) This is merely saying that when we will a thing we have an idea of it. But 

 :o have an idea of what we wish to happen, does not imply a prophetic knowledge that it will 

 lappen. Perhaps it will be said that the first time we exerted our will, when we had of 

 ;ourse no experience of any of the powers residing in us, we nevertheless must already have 

 ;nown that we possessed them, since we can not will that which we do not believe to be in 

 )ur powei'. But the impossibility is perhaps in the words only, and not in the facts ; for we 

 nay desire what we do not know to be in our power ; and finding by experience that our 

 )odies move according to our desire, we may then, and only then, pass into the more compli- 

 •ated mental state which is termed will. 



After all, even if we had an instinctive knowledge that our actions would follow our will, 

 his, as Brown remarks, would prove nothing as to the nature of Causation. Our knowing, 

 irevious to experience, that an antecedent will be followed by a certain consequent, would 

 lot prove the lelaiion between them to be any thing more than antecedence and consequence. 



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