186 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt I 



is un verifiable and, as such, science cannot admit it, nor can 

 our Cosmic Philosophy admit it. 



Nevertheless the belief that causation implies something 

 more than mere invariability of sequence, has been a persist- 

 ent belief; and as such, it is a fact which philosophy is 

 required to account for. Its explanation will not be dillicult 

 if we look to the source from which our notion of Power is 

 derived. That source is the peculiar class of states of con- 

 sciousness which accompany our voluntary actions. Part of 

 our notion of Power consists in our consciousness of an 

 ability to generate certain muscular sequences by means of 

 an act of volition ; and this amounts to no more than an 

 expectation that the antecedent, volition, will be followed by 

 the consequent, muscular movement. But the other part of 

 our notion of Power is derived from the sense of effort which 

 invariably accompanies our muscular actions. Every such 

 action " has to contend against resistance, either that of an 

 outward object or the mere friction and weight of the moving 

 organ ; every voluntary motion is consequently attended by 

 the muscular sensation of fatigue. Effort, considered as an 

 accompaniment of action upon the outward world, means 

 nothing to us but those muscular sensations." 1 Here, then, 

 is the shape of our primitive conception of Power ; the con- 

 sciousness of volition, accompanied by the conscious sensa- 

 tion of effort overcoming resistance, and the conscious expec- 

 tation of a consequent muscular movement. Now, by the 

 very relativity of our thinking, as will be shown more fully 

 in the next chapter, we are compelled to formulate our con- 

 ception of the Power which is manifested in the sequence of 

 external phenomena, in terms of that Power which is alone 

 directly known to us in consciousness. Hence, when we see 

 one object moved by another, we conceive the impelling 

 object as putting forth effort and overcoming the inertia of 

 the impelled object. Though we no longer, like some cb.il- 

 1 Mill, Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 47. 



