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assemblages of conditions,, which are in one instance followed 
by one volition, are in other cases followed by its opposite. It 
is this which constitutes the incalculable uncertainty of all 
moral influences, as distinguished from all physical influences. 
What is the true explanation ? Simply that material motions 
are strictly mechanical, moral movements are not mechanical ; 
that is, motions pass into one another in matter necessarily , but 
motions do not so pass into one another in mind. The man, in 
that which constitutes his manhood in its most essential ele- 
ment, is capable of arresting all movement when it reaches his 
capability of will, just as he is capable of passing onward, and 
of originating movement both in mind and in matter too. No 
careful reckoning of the facts of human experience and ob- 
servation can miss those in which the man is thus a first cause 
of his own actions. 
We are fully aware that men who are (within a certain limit) 
great in science hold that true causation is found in the will 
of God alone. Grove, from whom we have already quoted 
so much, closes his essay with these words — “ Causation is 
the will, creation the act, of God.” Such language is but the 
eloquent utterance of a mistaken idea. The evil result which 
we trace to a guilty man can no more be traced beyond that 
man's will in true science, than the act of creation itself can be 
traced beyond the will of the Creator. The "will of the 
experimenter,” as Grove himself expresses it, is just as real, 
and just as really the first cause of the succession of changes 
which occur in the experiment, as is the will of God the first 
cause of the succession of changes of which he is the author. 
This is no matter of theory, or of so-called Psychology, but of 
simple induction, in which the facts guide us infallibly to their 
result. Take the man who deliberately raises his arm and 
murders his fellow. You trace all the sad consequences of his 
volition to himself, and you can trace them no further. No 
“assemblage of conditions” that ever occurred in the universe 
will account for that act apart from that first motion of mind 
which we call the volition, or act of will, in that murderer. To 
be a creator of worlds implies powers by which will may be 
carried out into the result, creation, which are not implied in 
the case of the murderer; but powers that are necessary to 
carry out will to its issue are distinct enough from will itself, 
and that will in both cases is the same capability of mind. 
It is not only unphilosophical, but mischievous in the extreme, 
to hide the real responsibility of man behind the error that 
causation belongs to God alone. It would be just as good- 
sense to say that mind belongs to God only, as that efficient 
