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tion of certain inducements to volition^ as he can know that in 

 physical changes certain things^ so far as he remembers, follow 

 certain other things ; but that no one else even in England, 

 or in London, or within a dozen yards of him, has observed 

 otherwise, is what he assuredly cannot know. Mr. MilFs 

 language is absurd, if volitions are as certain and invariable 

 as physical effects. Bring a red-hot wire into contact with 

 gunpowder, and the powder will explode. If a certain 

 motive to will has its result in a volition as certainly and 

 invariably, and as much of necessity as is the case with the 

 explosion of this gunpowder from contact with the wire, why 

 call the one thing ^' moral'' and the other '^physical'' ? The 

 distinction is without a difference. Above all we should say, 

 why hlame the volition and not the explosion ? 



Mr. Mill says, I am told that, whether I decide to do or 

 to abstain, I feel that I could have decided the other way. I 

 ask my consciousness what I do feel, and I find indeed that I 

 feel (or am convinced) that I could have chosen the other 

 course if I had 'preferred it ; but not that I could have chosen 

 one course while I preferred another '' This is surely lame 

 philosophy. To prefer a course is, all the world over, to 

 choose it ; and Mr. MilFs consciousness tells him only this, — 

 that he cannot choose to act in two opposite ways at the same 

 time or in the same volition ! We shall lack manhood among 

 us soon, if we have not a more vigorous style of thinking than 

 this. 



Man, in having true will, possesses true cause as an element 

 of his mental constitution. He is capable of being the first 

 cause — the uncaused cause of his own actions. In believing this, 

 we need have no dread, as Sir WilHam Hamilton had, of what 

 he called an absolute commencement."'^ Nor need we place 

 such an idea, as he did, among ^' inconceivables.^^ Sir William 

 held that such a thing as free will must be believed, though it 

 could not be conceived ! lam not philosopher enough to see that 

 he meant anything when he said so; but, as to the conception of 

 an absolute beginning, so far as that is found in an act of free 

 will, no one need have any difficulty in its conception. Take 

 an instance as an illustration. A stack-yard is burning : what 



absolutely commenced the fire ? A volition in the mind 

 of an incendiary, or, more correctly, the incendiary himself, 

 by an act of free will. You say that there was a process in 

 the mind of that incendiary before that volition. No doubt 

 there was ; but no part of that process would have fired the 

 stacks, and all that process has passed in other minds without 



* Ex. Sir W. H. Phil, p. 504. 



