COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



and material facts " as mere Occasions on which 

 the real agent, God, thought fit to exert his 

 power as a Cause." So that, when you will to 

 raise your arm, God interposes and lifts the 

 arm for you ; and he does this, not as a Being 

 endowed with volition, but as an omnipotent 

 Being, capable of working a miracle. To Leib- 

 nitz this seemed an unworthy view of divine 

 action. He preferred to regard the entire se- 

 ries of volitions and the entire series of appar- 

 ently consequent muscular motions as independ- 

 ent series, preestablished in harmony with each 

 other by the contrivance of the Deity from a 

 time preceding the commencement of the world. 

 So that, when you will to raise your arm, the 

 arm moves, because God in the past eternity 

 constructed the series of your volitions and the 

 series of your motions like two clocks which ac- 

 curately correspond to each other in their rates 

 of ticking. 



Such theories as these can, of course, be 

 neither proved nor disproved. They are cited 

 as interesting specimens of the manner in which 

 human speculation attempts to grapple with re- 

 alities which lie beyond its reach ; but, as being 

 unverifiable, our philosophy cannot recognize 

 them as legitimate hypotheses. Coupling them 

 with the Volitional Theory, the result is mutual 

 destruction. In point of fact, we are no more 

 directly cognizant of the action of mind upon 

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