ANTHROPOMORPHIC THEISM 



thinkableness of the creation or destruction of 

 matter or motion is involved in the axiom that 

 force is persistent, which is the fundamental 

 axiom of all science and of Cosmic Philosophy. 

 Whether motion, considered apart from our 

 power of apprehension, ever had a beginning or 

 not, is a question which cannot concern us as 

 scientific thinkers. To assert that it had is to 

 put into words a hypothesis that cannot be trans- 

 lated into thought, and to assume Volition as 

 its primal antecedent is to frame an additional 

 hypothesis that is essentially unverifiable. Phe- 

 nomenally we know of Will only as the cause 

 of certain limited and very peculiar kinds of 

 activity displayed by the nerves and muscles of 

 the higher animals. And to argue from this 

 that all other kinds of activity are equally caused 

 by Will, simply because the primal origination 

 of motion is otherwise inexplicable, is as mon- 

 strous a stretch of assumption as can well be 

 imagined. While to contend — as many have 

 done — that because human volitions are at- 

 tended by a sensation of effort, there is there- 

 furnishes no data for enabling us to conceive a time, either past 

 or future, when the Unknowable would be objectively mani- 

 fested to consciousness otherwise than in movements of matter. 

 But this, it should be remembered, applies solely to our pow- 

 ers of conception. Thought is not the measure of things, and 

 where the region of experience is transcended, the test of in- 

 conceivability becomes inapplicable. See above, vol. i. p. 14. 

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