Page:Calcutta Review (1925) Vol. 16.djvu/259

244 the Self may intensify into full activity. It is feeling of want, idea of good, and impulse to action on the external world to remove the wants. The transition from desire to Volition is (in normal cases) through deliberation in which the Self brings before itself whatever alternative goods there may be until it discerns the superiority and practical realisableness of one; and identifies itself with the realisation of that one.

Here then the points requiring consideration are: the Idea, the Energy which realises the idea, and their relation to the Self. This inquiry involves the old question of—

Causality. Action on the external world supposes causality. The realisation of the Good (in normal cases) involves the production of changes in the external world. This will require causality. The realising power is called cause and the realisation, effect. This introduces here the question of causation, which has been much dicusseddiscussed [sic] in modern times. Can mind possess such causal power or energy? If it possesses energy, does its energy extend to producing changes in physical things? This has often been denied—even of producing changes in its own body. Why? Because causation in the physical world is the transference of motion from one thing to another thing. A cause, therefore, must be a moving thing. But mind is not a moving thing. Therefore mind cannot be the cause of anything in the physical world. When, by volition, the mind seems to produce changes in its own body and other things, it is not really the mind that does it. It is really the physical processes going on in the body and limbs that do it. Mind—the stream of consciousness—is merely a passive accompaniment which does nothing, like the shadow which runs alongside the rushing train. All real work in the universe is motion of particles in space.

But this cannot be maintained seriously (though some psychologists of repute, such as James and latterly Wundt seem