234 



INDUCTION. 



move our bodies would be known to 

 U3 independently of experience. What 

 they have to say on the subject is, 

 that the production of physical events 

 by a will seems to carry its own ex- 

 planation with it, while the action of 

 matter upon matter seems to require 

 something else to explain it ; and is 

 even, according to them, " inconceiv- 

 able" on any other supposition than 

 that some will intervenes between 

 the apparent cause and its apparent 

 effect. They thus rest their case on 

 an appeal to the inherent laws of our 

 conceptive faculty ; mistaking, as I 

 apprehend, for the laws of that faculty 

 its acquired habits, grounded on the 

 spontaneous tendencies of its uncul- 

 tured state. The succession between 

 the will to move a limb and the actual 

 motion is one of the most direct and 

 instantaneous of all sequences which 

 come under our observation, and is 

 familiar to every moment's experi- 

 ence from our earliest infancy ; more 

 familiar than any succession of events 

 exterior to our bodies, and especially 

 more so than any other case of the 

 apparent origination (as distinguished 

 from the mere communication) of mo- 

 tion. Now, it is the natural ten- 

 dency of the mind to be always at- 

 tempting to facilitate its conception 

 of unfamiliar facts by assimilating 

 them to others which are familiar. 

 Accordingly, our voluntary acts, being 

 the most familiar to us of all cases of 

 causation, are, in the infancy and 

 early youth of the human race, spon- 

 taneously taken as the type of causa- 

 tion in general, and all phenomena 

 are supposed to be directly produced 



not in the facts; for we may desire what 

 we do not know to be in our power ; and 

 finding by experience that our bodies move 

 according to our desire, we may then, and 

 only then, pass into the more complicated 

 mental state which is termed will. 



After all, even if we had an instinctive 

 knowledge that our actions would follow 

 our will, this, as Brown remarks, would 

 prove nothing as to the nature of Causa- 

 tion. Our knowing, previous to experi- 

 ence, that an antecedent will be followed 

 by a certain consequent, would not prove 

 the relation between them to be anything 

 more than antecedence and consequence. 



by the will of some sentient being. 

 This original Fetichism I shall not 

 characterise in the words of Hume, 

 or of any follower of Hume, but in 

 those of a religious metaphysician. Dr. 

 Reid, in order more effectually to show 

 the unanimity which exists on the sub- 

 ject among all competent thinkers. 



"When we turn our attention to 

 external objects, and begin to exercise 

 our rational faculties about them, we 

 find that there are some motions and 

 changes in them which we have power 

 to produce, and that there are many 

 which must have some other cause. 

 Either the objects must have life and 

 active power, as we have, or they must 

 be moved or changed by something 

 that has life and active power, as ex- 

 ternal objects are moved by us. 



" Our first thoughts seem to be, that 

 the objects in which we perceive such 

 motion have understanding and active 

 power as we have. 'Savages,' says the 

 Abb^ Raynal, * wherever they see mo- 

 tion which they cannot account for, 

 there they suppose a soul. ' All men 

 may be considered as savages in this 

 respect, until they are capable of in- 

 struction, and of using their faculties in 

 a more perfect manner than savages do. 



" The Ahh6 Raynal's observation is 

 sufficiently confirmed both from fact 

 and from thestructure of all languages. 



"Rude nations do really believe sun, 

 moon, and stars, earth, sea, and air, 

 fountains and lakes, to have under- 

 standing and active power. To pay 

 homage to them, and implore their 

 favour, is a kind of idolatry natural 

 to savages. 



" All languages carry in their struc- 

 ture the marks of their being formed 

 when this belief prevailed. The dis- 

 tinction of verbs and participles into 

 active and passive, which is found in 

 all languages, must have been origin- 

 ally intended to distinguish what is 

 really active from what is merely pas- 

 sive ; and in all languages we find 

 active verbs applied to those objects 

 in which, according to the Abb^ Ray- 

 nal's observations, savages suppose a 

 souL 



