COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



corporeal 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 [direct] knowledge ; and, 

 consequently, that we can have no consciousness 

 of any causal connection between 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. Pre- 

 viously to this ultimate 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 consciousness, abso- 

 lutely nothing. A person struck with paraly- 

 sis is conscious of no inability in his limb to 

 fulfil the determinations of his will ; and it is 

 only after having willed, and finding that his 

 limjDS do not obey his volition, that he learns 

 by this experience that the external movement 

 does not follow 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." ^ 



To this crushing refutation it may be added 

 that even if volition were the efficient cause of 



^ Lectures on, Metaphysics y Lecture 39 ; see also Disserta' 

 thns to Reidy pp. 866, 867. 



