248 



Thoughts on Causality. 



sense, however, heat and light are no longer energies; and 

 exact science should desist from discoursing about them as 

 such. 



Now, it seems to me that, by a defensible process of rea- 

 soning, the conclusion has been reached that the ultimate 

 ground of physical force is voluntary intelligence. This 

 ground may be reached from another datum. The only 

 mode of causation of which we have any knowledge is that 

 of which we are conscious — the exercise of free will sug- 

 gested by motive, prompted by desire and directed by 

 intelligence. By a compulsion of the reason, we feel our- 

 selves under the necessity, when thinking of cause, to think 

 of it as we know it. This mandate of the universal reason 

 possesses the same authority as any other ; and, if we re- 

 cognize, at all, the validity of our necessary intuitions, or 

 the authority ot the common consent of humanity, we are 

 bound to recognize the truth of this indication of the nature 

 of causation. 



Again, it is a datum of the universal consciousness that 

 relations of order, fitness, adaptation, utility, imply intelli- 

 gence. Now, the universe abounds in relations which, 

 within the sphere of human affairs, would be pronounced 

 such relations ; and hence, by a necessary law of reason, 

 we affirm that the cause of the universe is intelligent; and 

 this attribute, by the necessary law of substance, we posit 

 in real being. 1 



If then a voluntary Intelligence is the ultimate ground 

 of all causation, and this Intelligence chooses to act accord- 

 ing to methods so uniform that, as in the movements of a 

 piece of mechanism, sequences can be predicated on given 

 relations of things, it only remains to make two further 



1 It may be observed that Kant's opinion of the insufficiency of the cosmo- 

 logical and teleological arguments for the existence of God is determined 

 by his neglect of the " law of substance " or the ontological intuition which 

 carries the reason across the chasm which separates the world of phenomena 

 from the realm of real being. 



