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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. Milks 
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 blame 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. Milks 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 William Hamilton had, of what 
he called “an absolute commencement/'’ Nor need we place 
such an idea, as he did, among “ inconceivablesA Sir William 
held that such a thing as free will must be believed, though it 
could not be conceived ! I am 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 
u 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. 
