LAW OF CAUSATION. 



233 



between them ia a subject of experi- 

 ence. I cannot admit that our con- 

 sciousness of the volition contains in 

 itself any d priori knowledge that the 

 muscular motion will foUow. If our 

 nerves of motion were paralysed, or 

 our muscles stiff and inflexible, and 

 had been so all our lives, I do not see 

 the slightest ground for supposing that 

 we should ever (unless by information 

 from other people) have known any- 

 thing of volition as a physical power, 

 or been conscious of any tendency in 

 feelings of our mind to produce mo- 

 tions of our body, or of other bodies. 

 I will not undertake to say whether 

 we should in that case have had the 

 physical feeling which I suppose is 

 meant when these writers speak of 

 " consciousness of effort : " I see no 

 reason why we should not ; since that 

 physical feeling is probably a state of 

 nervous sensation beginning and end- 

 ing in the brain, without involving the 

 motory apparatus : but we certainly 

 should not have designated it by any 

 term equivalent to effort, since effort 

 implies consciously aiming at an end, 

 which we should not only in that case 

 have had no reason to do, but could 

 not even have had the idea of doing. 

 If conscious at all of this peculiar 

 sensation, we should have been con- 

 scious of it, I conceive, only as a kind 

 of uneasiness, accompanying our feel- 

 ings of desire. 



It is well ai^ed by Sir William 

 Hamilton against the theory in ques- 

 tion, that it " is refuted by the con- 

 sideration that between the overt fact 

 of corporeal movement of which we 

 are cognisant, and the internal act of 

 mental determination of which we 

 are also cognisant, there intervenes 

 a numerous series of intermediate 

 agencies of which we have no know- 

 ledge ; and, consequently, that we 

 can have no consciousness of any 

 casual connection between the ex- 

 treme links of this chain, the volition 

 to move and the limb moving, as this 

 hypothesis asserts. No one is im- 

 mediately conscious, for example, of 

 moving his arm through his volition. 



Previously 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, absolutely 

 nothing. A person struck with para- 

 lysis is conscious of no inability in 

 his limb to fulfil the determinations 

 of his will ; and it is only after hav. 

 ing willed, and finding that his linibs 

 do not obey his volition, that he learns 

 by this experience that the external 

 movement does not follow the inter- 

 nal 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. " * 



Those against whom I am contend- 

 ing have never produced, and do not 

 pretend to produce, any positive evi- 

 dence f that the power of our will to 



* Lectures on Metaphysics, vol. ii. Lect. 

 xxxix. pp. ^91-392. 



I regret that I cannot invoke the autho- 

 rity of Sir William Hamilton in favour of 

 my own opinions ou Causation, as I can 

 against the particular theory which I am 

 now combating. But that acute thinker 

 has a theory of Causation peculiar to him- 

 self, which has never yet, as far as I know, 

 been analytically examined, but which, I 

 venture to think, admits of as complete 

 refutation as any one of the false or insuf- 

 ficient psychological theories which strew 

 the ground in such numbers under his 

 potent metaphysical scythe. (Since exa- 

 mined and controverted in the sixteenth 

 chapter of An Examination of Sir William 

 Hamilton's Philosophy.) 



t Unless we are to consider as such the 

 following statement by one of the writers 

 quoted in the text : " In the case of mental 

 exertion, the result to be accompHshed is 

 preconsidered or meditated, and is therefore 

 known a priori, or before experience." — 

 Bowen's Lowell Lectures on the Application 

 of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the 

 Evidence of Religion, Boston, 1849. This 

 is merely saying that when we will a thing 

 we have an idea of it. But to have an idea 

 of what we wish to happen does not imply 

 a prophetic knowledge that it will happen. 

 Perhaps it will be said that the first time 

 we exerted our will, when we had of course 

 no experience of any of the powers resid- 

 ing in us, we nevertheless must already 

 have known that we possessed them, since 

 we cannot will that which we do not be- 

 lieve to be in our power. But the impos- 

 sibility is perhaps in the words only, and 



