Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/429

Rh If matter in motion is power, then all its effects must be such as take place of necessity, it having no power to select or vary them, and, whatever the course of such effects, it cannot change. If, for instance, the moving body is approaching another body, then, as two bodies cannot occupy the same space, some effect must of necessity result from the collision; and all the effects of unintelligent cause or force must be from some like necessity. In this case the material hypothesis has an advantage, there being no apparent connection of necessity between an intelligent effort and its sequences. This, however, as matter cannot put itself in motion, nor, perhaps, even continue any motion imparted to it, may only make it an instrument of other power, and not a power itself.

Some of the considerations in favor of the existence of intelligent power have already incidentally arisen in connection with the question of the existence of material force, and others pertain to that of the will, to which we will now turn.

The question which Prof. Huxley raises is not merely, Does man will freely? but, Does he will at all? If he recognizes any volition in us, it is a volition in which we have no agency, but of which we are only conscious.

Between the two questions, of willing freely or not willing at all, there is perhaps little of practical importance; for, if our actions are controlled by some extrinsic power or force, it is not important whether this control is exerted directly on or in the action, or indirectly through controlled will. It might, perhaps, even be properly urged that, philosophically as well as popularly, a willing which is not free is a willing which is not willing, and this would identify the two questions.

Prof. Huxley, from divers physical experiments, comes to the conclusion that animals, including man, do not will, but that the effort-phenomena, of which we are conscious, are only a series, or the effect of a series, of mechanical changes of matter, over which we have no control. He admits that we have knowledge and feeling, and there is no difficulty in conceiving that these may exist without will, though the existence of either feeling or will without knowledge is impossible.

To most persons the actual making of an effort, or willing, seems to be as fully attested by their consciousness as a sensation is; and there is high philosophical authority for putting it in that category, in regard to which the consciousness is positively and of necessity conclusive. It seems to me, however, that there is room for a distinction between the consciousness of effort, and the effort itself. If the changes, which seem to us to be the consequences of our effort put forth with a preconception of these changes, and for the purpose of producing them, are really caused by some extrinsic power or force acting through us, it is quite conceivable that such a power, especially if intelligent, may impress us with the emotion of making an effort