Page:Biographia literaria; or, Biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions (IA biographialitera04cole).pdf/125



We will pass by the utter incompatibility of such a law (if law it may be called, which would itself be a slave of chances) with even that appearance of rationality forced upon us by the outward phænomena of human conduct, abstracted from our own consciousness. We will agree to forget this for the moment, in order to fix our attention on that subordination of final to efficient causes in the human being, which flows of necessity from the assumption, that the will, and with the will all acts of thought and attention, are parts and products of this blind mechanism, instead of being distinct powers, whose function it is to controul, determine, and modify the phantasma chaos of association. The soul becomes a mere ens logicum; for, as a real separable being, it would be more worthless and ludicrous than the Grimalkins in the Cat-harpsichord, described in the Spectator. For these did form a part of the process; but, to Hartley's scheme the soul is present only to be pinched or stroked, while the very squeals