COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



him the Wind was a superhuman person. We, 

 who have outgrown fetishism, must take the 

 other horn of the dilemma, and admit that 

 whatever may be the force which the wind ex- 

 erts, it cannot be the force which we know as 

 effort. By this alternative difficulty we may 

 recognize the fact that we have here again come 

 face to face with the Unknowable. What the 

 process of causation is in itself we cannot know. 

 We can know it only as it is presented to our 

 consciousness, as the unconditional invariable 

 sequence of events. 



Our account of causation would not be com- 

 plete without some mention of an attempt 

 which has again been made, of late years, to 

 pass beyond the limits of intelligence, and cog- 

 nize the external process in itself This attempt, 

 based upon an imperfect apprehension of the 

 foregoing analysis, starts with the assertion that 

 in our primitive consciousness of Power we 

 have a true cognition of an Efficient Cause. 

 According to this doctrine, the expectation that 

 effort will overcome resistance and cause mo- 

 tion is a bit of a priori knowledge not given in 

 experience. In our consciousness of effort we 

 have direct knowledge of the causal nexus be- 

 tween the antecedent, volition, and the conse- 

 quent, muscular contraction : volition is there- 

 fore known to us as an efficient cause of one 

 kind of actions ; and hence we must infer that 

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