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times as much again, therefore trousers, hoots, stockings, 
&c., &c., are mutually penetrable; and, having nothing of 
the nature of size, can exist in the same space at the same time 
in any quantity ! We accept the fact as to the packing of 
atoms in the potassium as we accept that of the packing of 
clothes in the bag, but the conclusion drawn from the fact — 
that is the only thing in question, and it defies belief. Yet 
this is the reasoning on which we are called to have the 
assurance that “ force is matter/' He must advance some- 
thing very different from this wild creation of the untethered 
fancy, who can rightly claim to set those down as under the 
domain of prejudice who refuse his theory. We come back, 
therefore, to our first statement on the point, and abide by 
the inertia or utter passivity of matter. 
It is at this point in our inquiry that we are prepared for 
the statement that mind alone is cause. Mind is cause in that 
sense that it originates change; mind alone is true cause, 
inasmuch as it alone originates motion or any true change, 
either in itself or in matter. It is, as metaphysicians say, the 
only c( efficient " cause. 
Here we are met with a flat denial of the statement thus 
made. John Stuart Mill says : “ To my apprehension, a voli- 
tion is not an efficient, but simply a physical, cause. Our will 
causes our bodily actions in the same sense, and in no other, 
in which cold causes ice, or a spark causes an explosion of 
gunpowder. The volition, a state of our mind, is the antece- 
dent ; the motion of our limbs in conformity with the volition, 
is the consequent/' * Such is the doctrine in defence of which 
Mr. Mill argues as if the whole thing must turn on what we 
can or cannot find for the present in “ his apprehension." 
The question is to be settled by legitimate inference from the 
facts to which it is related. It may be settled without refer- 
ence to the “ apprehension " of any one, by a careful examina- 
tion of men and things as they stand in what is called the 
external world. First of all, a volition is nothing apart from a 
person whose volition it is. Will is nothing but a mode of 
being in a person who is endowed with will. Will is only a 
capability of volition as explosiveness (to recur to one of our 
illustrations) is a capability of gunpowder. W ill, however, is the 
capability of a person, and explosiveness the capability of a tinny. 
The essential distinction marked by the words “ person " 
and “ thing " is not that merely between the conscious and the 
unconscious, though that is a most important distinction. It 
* Logic , Vol. I., page 390. 
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