Nature and Freedom. 75 



tal existence, while in every word, he is declring his own spir- 

 itual activity and freedom? 



Consciousness may not tell us how we pass from subject to 

 spirit ; from mind to matter, though it may clearly reveal the fact ; 

 but to make the ego convertible with a nervous shock or any 

 part, or the whole sum of sensible or conceivably sensible phe- 

 nomena is spanning the gulf by ignoring one side of it. Spencer 

 and Fiske try to translate the force, the active, into the passive, 

 the externally necessitated ; ihe proportion, I act, I am acted, 

 upon ; and so thought becomes confusion, language, empty bab- 

 ble. We know not how to argue with certain thinkers; for we 

 find'ourselves carried back to the premises which we, with the 

 rest of mankind, have assumed as not needing proof. Premises 

 are treated as assumptions, till finally nothing remains admissible 

 except individual impressions, " psychical shocks," and we do not 

 know why we should admit these, since there is nothing left to be 

 shocked, or what to infer from them, since we ourselves, the ob- 

 server and the reasoner, are only a series of these shocks. 



In summing up then, I find the position of Eeid, for the scient- 

 ist, a sufficient and practical foundation. In nature, causes so 

 called, J. S. Mill, has well enough analyzed, as invariable se- 

 quences. I see no occasion for controversey, if we understand 

 our terms. But the constant use of such words as " causes," 

 "force," in different sense, seems to me to aid the old logomachy. 

 Causes, in the sense of efficient and productive power, or purposes 

 intelligently aimed at i. e., final causes we see not in nature. But 

 consciousness goes along with our observations ; consciousness of 

 voluntary attending, generalizing, inferring ; ego a mirror reflect- 

 ing the objective, but arriving at results in another sphere than 

 that of images, and attaining ends which we aim at or produce. 

 From language we cannot elminate this side of the truth; "I 

 make," "I produce," "I cause." Something sensible, indeed 

 may follow, but "I will this volition " is an ultimate fact, admit- 

 ting of no further analysis, except it be that of Des cartes' '•'• cogiioy 

 If it be itself, an effect, no consciousness declares it to be so, 

 therefore we have no object of scientific inductions, the subject- 

 matter belongs to philosophy. Motions are not causes; neither 



