260 INDUCTION. 



from which it might have been known or presumed previous to trial that 

 it would be followed by the other: just what the writer, who has so clear- 

 ly pointed out their error, thinks that he perceives in the nature of the 

 phenomenon Volition. And to complete the statement of the case, he 

 should have added that these early speculators not only made this their 

 aim, but were quite satisfied with their success in it ; not only sought for 

 causes which should carry in their mere statement evidence of their effi- 

 ciency, but fully believed that they had found such causes. The reviewer 

 can see plainly that this was an error, because he does not believe that 

 there exist any relations between material phenomena which can account 

 for their producing one another ; but the very fact of the persistency of 

 the Greeks in this error, shows that their minds were in a very different 

 state : they were able to derive from the assimilation of physical facts to 

 other physical facts, the kind of mental satisfaction which we connect with 

 the word explanation, and which the reviewer would have us think can 

 only be found in referring phenomena to a will. When Thales and Hippo 

 held that moisture was the universal cause, and external element, of which 

 all other things were but the infinitely various sensible manifestations; 

 when Anaximenes predicated the same thing of air, Pythagoras of numbers, 

 and the like, they all thought that they had found a real explanation ; and 

 were content to rest in this explanation as ultimate. The ordinary se- 

 quences of the external universe appeared to them, no less than to their 

 critic, to be inconceivable without the supposition of some universal agen- 

 cy to connect the antecedents with the consequents; but they did not 

 think that Volition, exerted by minds, was the only agency which fulfilled 

 this requirement. Moisture, or air, or numbers, carried to their minds a 

 precisely similar impression of making intelligible what was otherwise in- 

 conceivable, and gave the same full satisfaction to the demands of their 

 conceptive faculty. 



It was not the Greeks alone, who " wanted to see some reason why the 

 physical antecedent should produce this particular consequent," some con- 

 nection "which would joer se carry some presumption to their own mind." 

 Among modern philosophers, Leibnitz laid it down as a self-evident prin- 

 ciple that all physical causes without exception must contain in their own 

 nature something which makes it intelligible that they should be able to 

 produce the effects which they do produce. Far from admitting Volition 

 as the only kind of cause which carried internal evidence of its own pow- 

 er, and as the real bond of connection between physical .antecedents and 

 their consequents, he demanded some naturally and ji:>er se efficient physic- 

 al antecedent as the bond of connection between Volition itself and its ef- 

 fects. He distinctly refused to admit the will of God as a sufficient ex- 

 planation of any thing except miracles ; and insisted upon finding some- 

 thing that would account better for the phenomena of nature than a mere 

 reference to divine volition.* 



Again, and conversely, the action of mind upon matter (which, we are 

 now told, not only needs no explanation itself, but is the explanation of all 

 other effects), has appeared to some thinkers to be itself the grand incon- 

 ceivability. It was to get over this very difficulty that the Cartesians in- 

 vented the system of Occasional Causes. They could not conceive that 

 thoughts in a mind could produce movements in a body, or that bodily 

 movements could produce thoughts. They could see no necessary connec- 



* Vide supra, p. 178, note. 



