68 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Aris^ and Letters. 



1. Already intimidated by Locke, that active power is conceiv- 

 able only in a being possessed of will and intelligence. Whence 

 came the ready inferences ; a, that sciences of practice, deal only 

 with a series of consecutive phenomena ; S, that cause, either effi- 

 cient or final, is not an element of those sciences ; c, that in such 

 sciences, force is a mere abstraction, an unknown, undiscoverable ; 

 force necessarily assumed throughout, since we are studying its 

 effects, but left as an unknown quantity without inquiring what 

 more it means than what we see ; and c?, that Prof. Tyndall, has 

 made a mistake when he wandered from heat, sound and glaciers, 

 w^hich he understands, to dabble in philosophy, and will prove 

 himself a true scientist by confining himself to his proper work, 

 where he will have all the honor and success which he so justly 

 deserves. 



2. We have learned through Kant and Eeid, that law or will 

 in nature, is fundamentally different from cause or force ; the one, . 

 which J. S. Mill has so well analj^zed, the invariable sequence of 

 phenomena; the other, a thing incapable of definition, perhaps, 

 as being an ultimate principle, yet, found every where in language, 

 because, in its concrete reality, it is in all men's thoughts anc^ ex- 

 perience. 



8. That free choice is directed to an action willed, being the 

 choice of means to an end, while desire is of an end. 



4. That will, by repeated actions, creates habits, not instinct, 

 which is a name for another unknown x in the sphere of nature, 

 not of consciousness. I mean that a certain series of effects are 

 seen in brutes, and something like them in men. Kot knowing 

 any more, we group them and then call their unknown cause in- 

 stinct. 



5. As the result of all these, that metaphysics, philosophy, 

 has its own sphere, as the sciences have theirs, and we shall do 

 well to separate them. 



Finally, to conclude our historical retrospect, we have Spencer, 

 with his American disciple, Fiske, endeavoring once more to con- 

 struct a philosophy of the phenomenal in aid of contemporary 

 science. That both of these writers fail to give an account of the 

 phenomena of consciousness is a verdict which cannot here be 



