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inquiry as to ccnise. Here, for example, is a timepiece, and we 
may begin with the pointers, which at this moment have 
reached the position in which they mark the hour of noon and 
indicate accordingly. We follow back the motion which has 
so placed them from wheel to pinion, and from pinion to spring 
or weight, as the case may be. But, if we follow on, we 
at length reach the person who wound up the machine. So far 
as the first fact in the clock's motions is concerned, we reach the 
mind of that person, but can go no further. The volition, or 
act of will, on the part of that person is the first fact, and never 
in any case does a movement of matter occupy that first place 
in such a chain of motions. If we meant nothing more than 
the first substance to move in every chain of such movements, 
when we speak of efficient cause we should be compelled in 
true science to assert that mind alone is that cause. To speak 
of an “ assemblage of conditions " as the cause of any effect, 
may suit for an explanation of language, which has been ex- 
cessively loosely used and greatly needs explanation ; but when 
we are not in search of an explanation of loosely employed 
language, but are seeking for the truth itself, we must fix the 
mind on that which begins the series of changes whose cause 
we are desirous to know ; and as we do so, we find that in 
every case in which we can reach the first motion in the chain, 
we land in mind, and are therefore compelled to believe that 
mincl was the first mover in the chain, and that mind alone 
is cause. 
It is no doubt denied that we have any positive evidence to 
prove that mind possesses causative energy. It is not easy to 
know what is understood by such “positive evidence." If a rifle- 
bullet is seen to pass through a good-sized plank, we imagine 
that most minds in a state of sanity would accept that fact as 
positive evidence that there is force or causative energy some- 
where in connection with the occurrence. But, if we trace 
back the chain of motions from which we are able to know 
that this motion through the plank originally sprang, and if we 
find that the whole chain would have been non-existent but 
for the mind that willed to draw the trigger, we should think 
we have something very like “ positive evidence " that causative 
energy is a property of that mind. You may call that some- 
thing by which the impulse is originated any sort of name you 
choose, but it is there in reality as something utterly different 
from all that merely proves the medium of transmission to the 
impulse, or movement. It is that which moves, or, at 
least, is the first to move, as distinguished from that which is 
moved, or only follows in the wake of the first mover, and it 
is invariably mind — never matter . 
t 2 
