COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



thesis founded upon such an argument, it Is 

 impossible for a scientific philosopher to do so. 

 The attempt to establish the anthropomor- 

 phic hypothesis by means of the volitional the- 

 ory of causation is, from the scientific point of 

 view, equally futile. From first to last, as was 

 fully demonstrated in the chapter on Causation, 

 the argument of the volitionists is made up of 

 pure assumptions. From the unwarranted on- 

 tological postulate that Will is a noumenal or 

 efficient cause of muscular action in animals, it 

 proceeds, by a flagrant non sequitur^ to the equally 

 unwarranted conclusion that Will is the noume- 

 nal or efficient cause of all the dynamic pheno- 

 mena of the universe, and must therefore be the 

 First Cause. Volition being asserted to be the 

 only source whence motion can originate, it is 

 affirmed that, save on the hypothesis of a Su- 

 preme Will, the activity of nature baffles com- 

 prehension. The reply of the scientific critic is 

 that, in an ultimate analysis, the activity of na- 

 ture does, and must ever, baffle comprehension ; 

 and that, upon any hypothesis framable by our 

 intelligence, whether theistic or non-theistic, the 

 origination ^of motion must remain not only 

 incomprehensible but inconceivable. Relatively 

 to our finite power of apprehension, motion is 

 to be regarded, like matter, as eternal.* The un- 



* Or — to state the same thing in another form — the pos- 

 sibilities of thought are limited by experience ; and experience 

 200 



