\\l Cornell University LIbrsry BD 111.H42 Man as a creative first cause; two ^s";"" 3 1924 007 522 505 Q^ntnell IHnioecBity ICtbtatg 3tl;aca. ^tsa $ark Vl..EV/Ulco.)C.. Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924007522505 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE €too SDJiSfcoursfeisf DELIVERED AT CONCOED, MASS., JULY, 1882 EOWLAND G. HAZARD, LL.D. BOSTON HOUGHTON, MIFJFLIN AND COMPANY New York : 11 East Seventeenth Street 1883 Copyriglit, 1883, KOWIAND a. HAZARD. All rights reserved. TAe Riverside Press, Qtmbridge ; Blectrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton and Company. PREFACE. In these discourses I have intended briefly to present the leading results of previous investigar tions, most o£ which had already been published ; but more especially to vindicate metaphysical sci- ence from the charge of being unfruitful, by show- ing that in its proper application to the subject of its investigation, it is susceptible of the highest practical utility. I have endeavored to show that, to say nothing of the invigorating exercise of such study, it may be a means of making the same amount of intel- lectual power more effective, by the invention or discovery of better methods in its application ; and further, that in this its own proper realm, — the realm of the spirit, — it may achieve a yet higher utility, a utility transcending all other, in creat- ing, moulding, and elevating the moral character. I have also pointed out some modes in which the creative powers of mind may be successfully ex- erted for these objects. Peace Dale, Rhode Island, September, 1883. CONTENTS. FIRST DISCOUESE. man a cebative first cause. § 1. Geneeal Indifference to the Subject. Utility of Metaphysics. It may add to intellectual power, and thus improve that which invents or makes all other utility, but its special sphere of utility will be found in our moral nature 1 § 2. Charactekistics of Mind. Knowledge, feeling, and volition. Mind knows, feels, and wills. The will is its only real faculty. An act of will is simply an effort. All intelligent beings are thus con- stituted, and to these attributes there is no conceivable limit 2 § 3. Relations and Functions of Mental Charac- teristics. It is conceivable that we might have knowledge only, but we could not have feeling without knowing it. We might have knowledge and feeling without will, but will without these would be dorinant and merely potential. An unintelligent being cannot be sdf-active. Our sensa- tions are not dependent on the will, nor is onr knowledge. The truth is often apparent without effort. The addi- tions to our knowledge are always simple immediate mental perceptions. Feeling (sensation and emotion) incites to action, but is not itself active. Knowledge enables us to direct our efforts, but is Itself passive. By will we pro- duce change and thus act as cause. Our own will is the only cause of which we are directly conscious. Means vi CONTENTS. by which we come to know ourselves, our fellow beings, and God as causes 3 § 4. Existence or Matter and its Relations to Cause. We know matter only as an inference, from the sensations which we impute to its agency, and these are not conclu- sive as to any such external existence. The phenomena are all as fully accounted for, on the hypothesis that they are the thoughts and imagery of God's mind directly im- pressed upon our own. In either case it is the expression of his thought, and to us equally real. Matter and spirit are still contradistinguished. The ideal hypothesis is the more simple and more nearly in accord with powers we ourselves exert. We can ourselves create such imagery, and to some extent make it durable, and palpable to others. But we find no rudiment of power in these crea- tions of our own, and no reason to suppose that any in- crease of power in the creator of them could imbue them with any. If matter exists, being inert, it can have no power to change itself, and even if endowed with power to move, being unintelligent, it could have no tendency to move in one direction rather than another. Such power of self-movement would be a nullity, and matter can only be an instrument which intelligence uses to aid its efforts. Against these arguments it may be said that matter has always existed and was always in motion, as intelligence, with its activity, is presumed to have had no beginning. To assume the existence of both when one is sufficient is unphilosophical, and the spiritual should have precedence. It is inconceivable that matter, which does not know, should create spirit, which does know ; while it is quite conceivable that spirit should create all we know of mat- ter. But whether matter, even if in motion, can be a cause or power, depends upon this question, — if left to itself and the moving power withdrawn, would it stop or continue to move ? If its tendency is to stop, it could not even be an instrument for conserving or extending the effects of other power. Power could not make matter self-active, or the subject of government by law. Quies- cent it could only be acted upon 6 CONTENTS. vii § 5. Op Past Events as Cause. The theory that of every successive event, " the real cause is the whole of the antecedents," does not distinguish be- tween the passive conditions acted upon and changed, and the active agencies which act upon and change them. And further, the necessary adjunct and corollary to this theory of succession is, that the same causes must produce the same effects. But all cause acts upon a wholly void and therefore homogeneous future ; and as at every in- stant the whole past is evei-ywhere the same, the succes- sive effects must at each instant be everywhere one and the same. On this theory of the whole antecedents, the same causes never could act twice, and there could be no proof from experience that the same causes must produce the same effect. The only cause we can logically recog- nize is that of intelligent effort 12 § 6. Freedom in Willino. This has been a prominent question for ages. It has been obscured by erroneous notions and defective deflnilions of will and freedom. Defects in Edwards' definitions of these terms and the consequent fallacies in his results. Will is the faculty of effort. An act of will is an effort, a trying to do. Freedom as applied to willing is self-con- trol. The object of every effort must be to make the future different from what it otherwise would be. This is the only conceivable motive. A being with a, faculty of effort, want to incite, and knowledge to direct it, is a self-active being ; could act if there were no other power or activity. The will cannot be directly controlled by any extrinsic power. The only way it can be influenced is by changing the knowledge by which the being directs its act of will, and this would not avail if the being did not will freely. The notion of a coerced will, and the expression for it, are self-contradictory. It is willing when we are not witting. The future is always the com- posite creation of the free efforts of all conative beings acting as independent powers in the universe. The ac- tion even by the lowest order may influence the action of the highest. This inter dependence of the action of each A^ii CONTENTS. without interference with the freedom of any, is illus- trated by the game of chess. This equal and perfect freedom in all does not impair the sovereignty of the supreme intelligence 15 § 7. Instinct, Reason, and Habit. Instinctive actions have been generally deemed exceptionaL We perform them so easily, that our agency in them es- capes observation, and hence they have been regarded, not only as not self-controlled, but as necessitated and even as purely mechanical. That all animals at birth, without previous instruction or experience, act instinct- ively, indicates not that the voluntary effort is wailting, but that the knowledge to direct it is innate. In all cases requiring more than one movement we must have a plan. In the instinctive actions, the plan is innate, ready formed in the mind at birth. In the rational actions, we have to devise the plan. When by repetition in act or thought, we come to remember the successive steps of this plan, and apply it by rote, without reference to the rationale, it also becomes a plan ready formed in the mind, and our action becomes habitual. In it the process is the same as in the instinctive, and hence the common adage, habit is second nature. The differences in the three kinds of actions do not lie in the actions themselves, nor in the knowledge, nor in the application of it to direct the actions, but farther back, in the mode in which we obtained the knowledge we thus' apply. The instinctive and habitual and rational actions are all self-directed by knowledge to the end de- sired. The genesis of our actions must be instinctive. Through habit, memory performs the same office for ac- tion that it does for knowledge, retaining the acquisi- tions of the past for future use. The agency of habit, in thus conserving previously considered modes of action, and making them permanent accretions to the moral character, is its most important function 23 § 8. Necessitarian Aegument pkom Cause and EFrECT. Necessitarians assert that if all the circumstances, includ- ing mental conditions in a thousand cases, are the same the action will be the same, and that this uniformity CONTENTS. ix proves necessity. Admitting this, whether one of the conditions in the thousand cases is that of necessity or of freedom does not vary the uniformity of the result, and hence the result cannot indicate either necessity or free- dom 30 § 9. Influence of External and Internal Conditions. We act as freely on one set of conditions as on any other, and such action, being self-conformed to the external con- ditions and our internal desires, is free. Necessitarians have been at much pains to prove that our actions are always in conformity to our choice or desire, inclination, disposition, and moral character. This proves self-con- trol, i. e., freedom. Proof that our willing may run counter to our choice, inclination, etc., would have better subserved their purpose. The moral character is mani- fested in the willing, but our freedom is not affected by it. Nor is it material to the question of freedom, how the being came to be such a being as it is 33 § 10. Could one will the Contrary? It is absurd and contradictory, to suppose that freedom re- quires that one might try to do what he had determined not to try to do. The arguments of the necessitarians that our acts of will are not free, because they must con- form to our own character, desires, and decisions, or judg- ments, virtually assert that one is not free, because he is constrained to be free 34 § 11. Argument from Prescience. Edwards and others hold that prescience of a volition proves necessity. They illogically assume that it must happen by restraint or coercion of the willing agent. If a free act is as easily predicted as one that is not free, the argument wholly fails. In the known character and habits of the actor, we have a means of foreseeing what he will do, provided he acts freely. If his action is con- trolled by extrinsic power, even if we know the power, all the same difficulties exist as to its action in con- trolling the act of another, with the added difficulty of finding what the effect of this extrinsic power on the i: CONTENTS. apparent actor would be. So that the fiee act is more easily foreknown than a coerced or uufree act ... . 35 § 12. A Being with Will, Knowledgb, and Feeling, IS Self-Active. Some Concliisions ee-stated. Within the limits of its power and knowledge, such a being is as free as if it were omnipotent and omniscient. An oyster that can only move its shell, in doing this so far creates the future. For the exercise of his creative pow- ers man has two spheres of effort, the external, and the internal, conveniently designated as olpjective and subjec- tive. The former is known to us as an inference from our sensations. Of the latter we are directly conscious. Our efforts for change in either sphere are always sub- jective. For objective change we always begin by a movement of our muscles 38 § 13. Is Matter a Distinct Entity. Whether we adopt the materialistic or the ideal hypothesis, the sensations by which alone we cognize matter are the same, and on either it is the expression of the thoughts and conceptions of its creator, and the only question is, whether he transfers this thought and imagery directly to our minds, or indirectly, by painting, carving, or moulding them in a distinct substance. The former is the more simple, and equally explains all the phenomena, and has an advantage in making creation more conceiva- ble to us. Any one can conceive a landscape, and vary it at will. This is an incipient creation, which we can very imperfectly, to some extent, represent in durable form and impress on the minds of others, showing that we have within us the rudiments of all the faculties which on the ideal hypothesis are essential to" creating. The landscape we imagine we can change at will, and by this alone we distinguish it from that cognized by sensa- tion. If our own incipient creation should become so fixed in onr mind that we could not change it at will, it would be to us an external reality. This sometimes oc- curs. This suggests that the difference between the creative powers in man and the supreme intelligence is mainly in degree and not in kind, and that the disparity. CONTENTS. xi vast as it is, is not so incomprehensible as has been gen- erally supposed. To our own incipient creations there is no limit in extent or variety 40 SECOND DISCOURSE. MAN, IN THE SPHERE OP HIS OWN MORAL NATURE, A SIT- PKEMB CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. § 14. A Cognitive Sense includes a Moral Sense. That the additions to our knowledge are simple immediate perceptions, not dependent on the will, gives them the character of the phenomena of sensation, and indicates the existence of a cognitive sense. Some of these incre- ments do not and others do require preliminary effort. In this there is no difference per se, as to our perceptions of the external and internal. Intuitive perceptions are distinguished from the rational by the preliminary effort for the latter. We distinguish the perceptions of the cognitive sense as objective, seeing, hearing, etc., and subjective as the sense of beauty, justice, shame. And when right or wrong is the subject of it, it is the moral sense 47 § 15. OuE Effoets foe Internal Change are alwats TO inceease ode Knowledge. We may seek knowledge of the external or internal. Its object is oftenest to enable us to direct our actions wisely in the current affairs of life ; but may be for the pleasure of the pursuit, or in the possession. A higher object may be to permanently increase the intellectual power, or still higher, to improve the moral nature 52 § 16. The Two Modes op Seeking Knowledge. The Poetic and the Prosaic. By observation, we note the phenomena cognized by the senses, and by reflection, we trace the relations among the ideas — the knowledge — we already have in store, and thus obtain new ideas. A large portion of our per- ceptions are primarily but imagery — pictures — in the mind. In this form we will designate them as primitive perceptions, or ideals, tq distinguish them from thpsg XU CONTENTS. ■which we have associated with words. In this primitive form we can think of, and examine them and their rela- tions, and a not uncommon belief, that we can think only in words, is erroneous. Or we may substitute words for these primitive perceptions, and then investigate the rela- tions among the substituted words. In the difference in these two modes we find the fundamental distinction be- tween poetry and prose, and also in the two cardinal modes of seeking truth : the former being the ideal or poetic ; the latter, the logical or proaaic. The material universe, in the imagery of which God has inscribed his thoughts and conceptions, is the pure and perfect type of the poetic ; while the prosaic or logical is very accurately represented in the solution of algebraic equations. The poetic mode has the greater reach, and is the most e£S- cient truth discovering power. It is an essential attribute, but is not limited to men of genius. In its least ethereal forms it is the basis of common sense, and the main ele- ment of practical business ability. It is also the charac- teristic of what has been termed a woman's reason, giv- ing to her quick and clear perceptions 53 § 17. One Method op Increasino the Efficienct OP THE Intellect. It is in the higher and more general cultivation of the po- eti? mode, and a more systematic and intelligent selection from the two cardinal modes of that which is best adapted to the subject in hand, or by a judicious combination of both that we may look for the increase of intellectual ability. The discovery and propagation of such modes is in the province of the metaphysician, and opens to him an elevated sphere of utility 61 § 1 8. Our Creative Power in the Formation op Chab- AOTER AND the AGENCY OP HaBIT. It is in our moral nature that our most ethereal attribute naturally finds its moat congenial sphere of action. State- ment of a mode in which our power of creating and per- fecting imaginary constructions may be made practically available in the construction and elevation of moral char- acter. The ideal constructions supply the place of actual CONTENTS. xiii experience, and in some respects have the advantage of it. We cannot directly will change in our mental affec- tions. The recurrence of our spiritual wants is as certain as that of the physical. As a man cannot do moral wrong in doing what he believes to be right, his knowl- edge though finite is infallible as to what is morally right for him. In castle-building we discard the external, and work from our internal resources, and may conceive a material universe or a pure and noble moral character. The persistent effort to actualize these ideals is their final consummation. There can be no failure except the fail- ure to wUl, and mind is here a Supreme Creative First Cause. In the permanent engrafting of these ideals upon the char- acter, habit performs a very important part. We must distinguish between the mere knowledge of what is de- sirable and the effort to attain it. A man may know that it is best to be pure and noble, and yet not only make no effort, but be unwilling to become so. To become good without one's own effort is an impossibility ... 63 § 19. In the Moral Nature the Effort is itself the Consummation of its Object and Intent. The virtue is all in the effort and the intent, and not in its success or failure. If the efforts are transitory the moral goodness wiU be equally so 70 § 20. The Right or Wrong op Moral Action is all concentrated in our own Free Act op Will. The nature of the effect makes no difference to the moral quality of the effort. The consequences of one's actions may be really pernicious when his intentions are virtu- ous, and may be beneficent when his designs were vicious. A man who is honest for gain will be dishonest if the gain thereby is sufficient. Virtue is not reached till he acts from a sense of right and duty, nor established till he values moral beauty and purity above all other posses- sions and all possible acquisitions. No moral wrong can be charged to a man for an event in which he had and could have no agency. There is no present moral wrong either in the knowledge or in the exciting want now in xiv CONTENTS. his mind, nor in the acquisition of that knowledge which he passively acquired. There is no moral wrong in the recurrence of our natural wants — though there may bo in our willing to gratify them, or in the time or manner of doing this. Hence the moral right and wrong is all concentrated in the act of will — our own free act. A man can be good or bad only by his own agency — his own willing. Through habit memory performs the same office for action that it does for knowledge — retaining what is acquired, and thus leaving the mind at liberty for new acquisitions. We cannot directly will not to think of a thing, but we can discard the thoughts of it by willing to think of something else, and can do the same as to a want. This especially as to moral wants. If any one of these is eradicated, there can be no corresponding voli- tion. By thus giving some of our internal wants a pre- dominance we influence our moral characteristics at their source 72 § 21. Recital of some of the Foregoing Conclusions. From these it follows that man, in the sphere of his own moral nature ; is not only a creative, but a supreme and also a sole creative first cause. In this sphere the finite mind can will any possible change of which it can con- ceive, and the willing in it, being the consummation of the conception, there is no change in it of which we can conceive that we cannot bring about 79 § 22. OnE Physical Wants are more imperative but are limited and temporary, while the spihit- ttal are bocjndiess and insatiable 81 § 23. Ideality is the Nearest Approach to Reality, and fulfills the opfice of experience. The scenic representations acted in the theatre within us are the nearest approach to reality, and have more influ- ence than logical reasoning 82 § 24. Good and Evil Influences of Ideality. Ideality is as potent in our spiritual nature as sensation is in our physical. Oui first creative efforts are in the ma- CONTENTS. XT terial but early transferred to the spiritual, and there quickened by the influence of unselfish and romantic pas- sion on the young imagination. But this beneficent en- dowment is liable to be perverted to evil, and especially through our physical wants, which are made less incon- stant by the want of acquisition. The power of ideality, though less nobly exhibited, is more strongly attested in its degrading than in its elevating influence .... 82 § 25. Systematic Moral Training in the Formation AND Study of Ideal Constructions. This much needed to counteract m, social system based largely on selfishness, and to neutralize the materialistic comfort-seeking proclivities of this mechanical and com- mercial age. But ideal constructions have been discour- aged and stigmatized as idle imaginings, leading to groundless hopes and illusive views of life. Relieving these processes from such obstruction would be an im- portant gain, and might be supplemented by education making ideal constructions a subject of study. For this there is encouragement in the fact that woman, to whose care the infant intelligence is first confided, is by her special endowments so fully equipped for this work . . 86 § 26. All Sciences eirst pursued merely for Mental Gratification. Metaphysics has bien thus pursued to the present time. In it the progress from abstract speculation to practical utility has not differed from that of the other sciences. All have been first pursued from a love of truth, and a curiosity stimulated by opposing mysteries, without ref- erence to ulterior benefit. Metaphysics has thus been wrought upon for ages 88 § 27. Solution op Three Problems essential to the Practical Utility of Metaphysics. First, The analysis of the fundamental distinction be- tween poetry and prose, and in it that of the two cardinal modes of seeking truth. — Second, Our freedom in will- ing and the fixing of man's status as an independent cre- ative power in the universe. — Third, the inquiry as to XVI CONTENTS. the difference between instinctive and rational actions, and in this incidentally determining the nature and func- tions of habit, by which our subjective constructions may be made permanent formations of moral character and incorporated into our being as a second nature. The forming of habits is under our control, but requires vig- ilance 89 § 28. Synopsis of Peeceding Eesdlts and Deductions from them. Man's supremacy in the domain of his own moral nature indicates it as his especial sphere of action. Ages of successful effort in the material sphere has prepared the way for the occupation of the spiritual, and we may ex- pect that the advance into it will be marked by the sublimest efEorts, and that the results will be the crown- ing glory of all utility ..." 92 § 29. Akgument feom Final Causes. I have faith that all progress in truth will conduce to the happiness and elevation of man, and that whatever tends to diminish our happiness and degrade us will be found to he not true. Influences of the materialistic doctrines for which I see in them no compensation 95 § 30. Concluding Remarks. By a constitutional provision our wants, physical and spirit- ual, recur without preliminary effort. Our sesthetic tastes are continually touched by the beauty and grandeur of God's visible creations. Man is thus reminded that there is within his own being an inchoate universe equally boundless, and which is his especial sphere for the exer- cise of his creative powers, requiring his effort to reduce it to order and to cultivate it into beauty. Constructing this universe within is the principal if not the sole end of life 97 DISCOUKSE I. MAN A CEBATIVE FIRST CAUSE.^ § 1. In the preface to " Freedom of Mind in Willing " I have spoken of the general indiffer- ence to metaphysical pursuits ; attributing it, in part, to the more easily appreciated discoveries in physical science, and their immediate contribu- tions to our material comforts. The inventions, by means of which these comforts have been so largely increased, are the result of the applica- tion of the intellect to the study of matter. But if, as I have suggested, the study of the mind may elicit practical modes of increasing the efficiency of the intellect, then this study, which thus im- proves that which achieves all other improvement — which invents inventive power — may, even in its relation to the most materialistic utility, be- come the first and most important factor. This, however, is merely incidental to the higher purpose of increasing the mind's power for the discovery, of truth generally, to which it should be subordinated and made subservient. ' 1 See Note 1. 2 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. But beyond and above all sueb comparatively groveling application to our bodily wants, wHch philosopliy once disdained, — beyond and above even the increase of intellectual power, — I hope, in furtherance of what I have heretofore sug- gested, to show more fully that the special field of metaphysical utility is in our moral nature; that every one has within himself a domain, as il- limitable as that of the external, in which to exert his energies in the construction of a moral uni- verse ; and that within this domain, the finite in- telligence is not only a creative, but a supreme creative power, and that therein, by the exercise of its faculties upon itself, it may devise or discover and impart new modes of forming and moulding the moral character, and thus supply a demand which, always important, has now, by our prog- ress in other directions, become the prominent and urgent necessity of our time. § 2. The mind, like aU other objects of its knowledge, is itself known only by its properties. These, as directly revealed in consciousness, are Knowledge, Feeling, and Volition. It knows, feels, and wiUs. In knowing or in feeling it is not active, but passively perceives and feels. The wiU is its only real faculty. By this alone it acts. An act of will is simply an effort of the mind — an effort of the intelligent being — to do. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 3 When we speak of an effort of memory, or imagination, or judgment, we only mean that we make effort to remember, to imagine, or to judge. We distinguish the particular effort by its object or design. But the effort is by the intelligent be- ing, and the whole intelligent being acting as a unit; and when we speak of bodily effort we do not mean an effort made by the body, but the mind's effort to move the body ; and by mental effort the mind's effort as to its own movement or action. The characteristics, then, of which we are conscious in our own minds, are a capacity for knowledge, a susceptibility to feeling, and a fac- ulty of effort or will. And such seems to be the constitution of every intelligent being of which we are cognizant. They all know, feel, and make effort. To these attributes there is, as to each in itself, no conceivable limit. Having the want, and the knowledge or idea of a possible mode, the effort — the trying to do — is always possible. Nor can we conceive of there being in the nature of the phenomena any limit to our susceptibility to an additional sensation or emotion, or that our capacity for knowledge should be so fiUed that there would be no room for more. The internal capacity is as unlimited as external space. § 3. It is conceivable that a being might have 4 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. knowledge only; but it could not have feeling without knowing it. It might with knowledge have feeling, and enjoy or suffer without will — without any faculty or power by which it could change, or even try to change, its states of enjoy- ment or suffering, however well it might know that such change would be beneficial, or however decidedly it might choose or ardently desire such change. It may seem to be conceivable that a being might have wiU without knowledge or feeling, that it might have the faculty and ability to try to do, and even the power to do ; but such faculty would be dormant, and such power would be merely potential. Without feeling there would be no occasion, no inducement, no purpose, or mo- tive for its exercise, and without knowledge no means of knowing or of directing its effort to an object. If it be conceivable that such being could have a potential faculty of action, its tendency to act must be etjual in all directions, and all tendency to action would be neutralized. An unintelligent being cannot be self active. Our sensations and emotions are not dependent upon our wiU. We can neither hear nor avoid hearing the sound of cannon by an act of will. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 5 By effort, we may bring about the conditions pre- cedent to a particular sensation or emotion ; but whether they are brought about by our own act or by other cause makes no difference to the effect. Nor is our knowledge subject to our will. We may, by effort, bring about the conditions essen- tial to our knowing. We can remove an external obstruction to sight, so as to see what was hidden by it. And we can also by effort call up and ar- range our ideas so that some new truth wiU be- come apparent; but in neither case can we wUl what we shall perceive. But the truth may be, and often is, apparent without any prior effort, by merely observing things as they happen to be. But whatever pre- liminary efforts we may make to bring about the prerequisite conditions to our knowing, the ad- ditions to our knowledge are always simple im- mediate mental perceptions, separable from the effort, and in jM essence as independent of it as the smell of musk or brimstone is of the move- ment of the hand which brings it to the nose. Feeling (i. e., sensation and emotion) is an in- centive to action, but is not itself active. Knowledge enables us to direct our efforts, but is itself passive. Through its only active faculty of wiU — its 6 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. effort — the intelligent being strives to produce change, of which, when effected, it is the cause?- Our own individual effort is the only cause of which we are directly conscious, but we are di- rectly conscious of changes in our own sensations, for some of which we have and others we have jiot made effort. From some of thes^sensations we infer objective material changes, some of which we have and others we have not caused. From some of these we also infer the existence of other intelligent beings, like ourselves, to whose action we attribute many of these changes in our sensa- tional or in objective phenomena, which we have not ourselves produced. But as some of these changes require a power beyond any indicated in ourselves or in our fellow-beings, we infer the ex- istence of a superior intelligent power adequate to their production. We thus come to know our- selves, our feUow-beings, and God as cavse. § 4. Of the existence of matter or of its prop- erties we are not directly conscious. We know nothing of it except by the sensations which we impute to its agency, and as these sensations can exist in the mind in the absence of the external material forms or forces to which we impute them, e. g., in dreams, the sensations are not con- 1 See Note 2. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 7 elusive evidence of any such external existence. All our sensations which we attribute to matter are as fully accounted for by the hypothesis that they are the thought, the imagery of the mind of God directly imparted or made palpable to our finite minds, as by that of a distinct external substance in which He has embodied this thought and imagery. In either case matter is but the expression of his thoughts and conceptions. In either case, too, it is to us equally real, the sensations by which alone we apprehend these to us external phenom- ena being the same. In either case, too, spirit and matter are still antithetically distinguished, as that which sees and that which is seen : the one having the prop- erties of knowledge, feeling, and volitionj while the other is unintelligent, senseless, and inert. The hypothesis that the material phenomena are but the thoughts and imagery of the mind of God immediately impressed upon us is the more simple of the two, and makes creative attributes more nearly accord with powers which we are ourselves conscious of exercising. We can ourselves by effort create such imagery, and to some extent make it durable and palpable to others. 8 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. We, however, find no rudiment of force or caus- ative energy in these creations of our own. We can no more attribute inherent power to them than we can to an image in a mirror, and there seems no reason to suppose that any increase of power in the creator of fiuoh imngnry could imbue it with causative energy. On the other hand, if the existence of matter as a distinct, independent, objective entity is con- ceded, it may still be urged that it can, within itself, have no causative power. If wholly quies- cent it could exert no power to change itself, for all change in matter is by its motion in masses or in atoms ; and matter cannot move itself. But it does not appear to be claimed that mat- ter except when in motion can be regarded as a power. It is inert and has no self-active power by which it can begiu motion in itself without being first acted upon, nor can it determine the direction of its own motion. This beginning and determi- nation^ust therefore be by the only other possible cause — by intelligent being — and that which thus begins and directs the motion is properly the cause of aU the effects which follow, and matter is only an inert instrument which intelligence uses to produce these effects. Even if k could be endowed with power to move MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 9 it could have no inducement, no tendency, or means to determine its motion in one direction rather than another; and a tendency or power of self- movement which is equal in all directions is a nullity. Its quiescent existence might be a fact perceived by intelligent beings as among the conditions for them to act upon, but any change thus wrought in such being is the result of its own perception, or its own action on the quiescent matter. Clay may be moulded ; it cannot mould. , It may, howeve^ be urged that both the argu- ments thus drawn'*f rom the difficulty of conceiving of the creation of matter as a distinct entity, and "from the necessit^rof motion, which it cannot be- giQ,;to its causal powe^ may be met by the hypoth- esis that matter never was created, but has always existed, and that its condition has ever been that of motion; and that this involves no more diffi- culty than the hypothesis that intelligence with its activity has had no beginning. On this we would observe, as germane to the whole question of intelligent or material causa- tion, that to assume the existence of both when j one is sufficient is unphUosophical ; and that as we I are directly conscious of the spiritual phenomena, and only infer the material from our sensations, 10 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. those who set up the material against or to the exclusion of the spiritual are impeaching testi- mony by testimony less reliable than that which they impeach. And, further, it seems inconceiv- able that matter should be the cause of intelli- gence and its phenomena — that what does not itself know should create a power to know — while, as already shown, it is quite conceivable that intelligence may create all that we know of matter and its phenomena. These considerations seem to furnish sufficient reason for discarding the hypothesis of causal power in matter. But whether matter, if it exist, can, even if in motion, be a force, power, or cause, still depends on another question, viz., Is the tendency of a body in motion to continue to move, or to step when the moving power ceases to act upon it? In other words, is the application of extrinsic power required to keep it in motion, or is such applica- tion required to stop it ? The problem may be thus stated. Suppose all existence was comprised in one power and one ball, and that this power was directly moving that ball. If this power was instantaneously annihilated, wotdd the ball con- tinue to move or would it stop ? If in virtue of being in motion it has power, it stiU could not select or vary its action or its conse- MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 11 quences, and all its effects must be of necessity. For instance, in the collision of one body with another, as both cannot occupy the same space, some effect must result. All the effects of unin- telligent cause must be from some like necessity. In this respect the material hypothesis would have the advantage, there being no apparent connection of necessity between intelligent effort and its ob- jective sequences. If matter has such tendency to continue its motion, then it could be used by in- telligent power as an instrument to extend the effects of its own action in time and space. But if its tendency is to stop, then it can have in itself no power or force whatever, and could not even be an instrument for thus extending the effects of the power that put it in motion. I confess myself unable to make or find any solution to this radical question, but imtil it is settled I do not see how matter, though in motion, can properly be re- garded as a force, or even as a conserver of force imparted to it by other power. Nor could intelligent power make matter a self- active cause, capable of beginning to move, of di- recting its movements, and so conforming them to varying circumstances and conditions as to pro- duce a particular effect at a particular time, by impressing upon or imbuing it with laws for its 12 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. * own government : for to be thus governed by law presupposes intelligence on the part of the gov- erned; such government of that which has no intelligence involves a contradiction which power cannot reconcile.' AH that can properly be im- plied when we refer an event to " the nature of things," or to the " laws of nature," as its cause is that the intelligence which causes these events acts uniformly. In investigating the laws of nOr- ture we but seek to learn the uniform modes of God's action. § 5. A very popular notion of cause, adopted by many eminent philosophers, is that aU. events or successive phenomena are connected in a chain of which each successive link is the effect of all that preceded it. These also hold, as an essential adjunct to their theory, that the same causes nec- essarily produce the same effect, and hence that each of these successive events is necessitated by those which precede it. J. Stuart Mill, one of the able advocates of these views, says : ^ — " The real cause is the whole of these antece- dents ; " and again, " The cause ... is the sum total of the conditions positive and negative taken together ; the whole of the contingencies, which being realized the consequent invariably follows." 1 System of Logic, Book 3d, Chap. 5, § 3. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 13 On these and other similar positions of Mill, and the materialistic school generally, I will re- mark that they do not distinguish between those antecedents which are merely passive conditions to be acted upon and changed and the active agents which act upon and change them ; do not distinguish what ^rot^Mces from what merely pr"©- cedes change. Life is a prerequisite to death, but cannot properly be regarded as a cause of it. Again, any cause always acts upon a wholly void and therefore homogeneous future, and if the cause is the whole of the antecedents, then, as at each instant the whole of the antecedents is everywhere the same, the effect would everywhere be the same; and throughout the universe there could be only one and the same effect at the same time.^ It is also obvious that on this theory of the "whole antecedents." there can be no possible application of the law of uniformity, that "the same causes produce the same effects ; " for the moment the cause — the whole of the antece- dents — has once acted, its action and its effect are added to and permanently change it, and the 1 For a fuller statement of this argument see Letters to Mitt on Causation and Freedom in Willing, p. 56; and the first of these letters as to cause generally. 14 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. same cause can never act a second time. The advocates of this theory, that " the whole antece- dents are the cause," and of the asserted law that " the same causes must produce the same effects," also very generally hold that we get all our knowl- edge from experience. But it is clear that if the theory is true there can be no experience as to the law, and hence, on their theory, no knowledge to justify them in asserting it. J The foregoing results warrant the assertion that in the present condition of our knowledge the only causative power which we can be said to know, or which we can properly recognize, is that of intelligent being in action, and that all the effects, and especially all the uniform changes in matter, which begin to be, must be attributed to such action, and of course such of them as are not caused by the inferior must be referred to the action of the Supreme Intelligence ; that, how- ever difficult the conception, there seems to be no way to avoid the necessity of this constant exer- cise of creative energy to begin change, and pro- duce uniformity in the results, or to escape the conclusion that every particle that floats in the breeze or undulates in the wave, every atom that changes its position in the uniform modes of elec- trical attraction and repulsion or of chemical MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 15 affinities, is moved, not by the energizing, but by the energetic will of an Omnipresent Intelli- gence.^ § 6. The question of our freedom in willing has for ages been a prominent subject of philosophical inquiry and discussion, in which much of the di- versity in opinions and results seems to have arisen from erroneous notions and defective defi- nitions of wiU, and of freedom as applicable to willing. Effort is wholly imique. Through the whole range of our ideas there is nothing resembling it — nothing with which there would seem to be any danger of confounding it, or of mistaking it. And yet, as to the noun, will, which I regard as merely a name for our faculty to make effort — to try to do — there is much confusion, ambiguity, and error. In the first place, the will has sometimes been treated as a distiact entity. This finds expression in the phrase, freedom of the wiU, and opens the way for the argument that if this distinct entity can be controlled by some power extraneous to it, even though by the being of which it is an attrib- ute, then the will is not free. Such reasoning is wholly precluded when we 1 See Note 3. 16 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. regard the will as simply the faculty or ability of the mind to make effort, and an act of will as simply an effort of the mind to do, and in accord with this view, speak of the freedom of the mind in willing, instead of the freedom of the will. Edwards, in his celebrated argument for neces- sity, defines WILL to be " that hy which the mind chooses anything" and says " an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice." In my view the will is that by which the mind does any and every thing that it does at all, or in the accomplishing of which it has any active agency. /Limiting its function to the phenomena of choice seems to me peculiarly unfortunate. I Our choice is merely the knowledge that one of two or more things suits us best ; and, as we have just shown, knowledge cannot be determined by the win. We may, as in other cases, by effort — by comparing the respective advantages of the several objects of choice — bring about the con- ditions essential to our knowing which suits us best. The object of the comparative act is to get this knowledge; but the knowledge as to what suits us best — the choice — is itself a fact found, not made or done by us. It is an immediate per- ception to which the previous efforts, comparative or otherwise, may have been necessary. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 17 Edwards also says, " The obvious meaning of the word freedom, in common speech, is power or opportunity of doing as one wills." But as applied to willing — the willing being then the doing — this is merely saying that freedom is the power to do as one does, or to will as one wills, or, if the doing (as we wUl) applies to the reali- zation of the object of our effort, then it makes our freedom in making the effort depend on the subsequent event, which is absurd. It makes our freedom to try to do, dependent on our power to do. But we may freely make effort — try — to do, what the event proves we have not power to do. In this popular use of the word freedom, it ap- plies only to the doing, which comes after the willing, and is but a synonym for power. Free- dom in its more comprehensive sense, and as ap- plied to intelligent being, is simply self-con- TKOL. Freedom in willing does not imply that the mind's effort is not controlled and directed, but that it is controlled and directed by the being that makes the effort, and is not controlled or coerced by extraneous power. The consequences of these defective definitions of will and freedom upon the argument are obvi- ous ; e. g., Edwards makes choice and preference 2 18 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. identical, and also says, " to will and to choose are the same thing." It will be generally admitted that our choice as mere preference is not a matter which we can control, that we cannot, per se, pre- fer pain to pleasure, and hence are not free in choosing ; and then on Edward's assumption that choosing is the same as willing, he logically infers that we are not free in willing. If we may properly define will as but a faculty to make effort, and an act of will as simply an effort, and discard the assumption that will and choice are the same, these arguments for necessity are eliminated. Leaving for the present the con- sideration of other arguments for necessity, we win tm-n to some of the sequences of the fore- going premises. And first, it is evident that no power can change the past, and that the object of every in- telligent effort must be to make the future differ- ent from what but for such effort it would be. This is the only conceivable motive to effort. Now, intelligent being, constituted as before stated, has through its feelings an inducement to make efforts to] so mould the future as to obtain an increase of those feelings which are pleasura- ble and avoid or lessen those which are painful ; and by means of its knowledge it can distinguish MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 19 and judge, more or less wisely, between these feel- ings, and also determine by what efforts it will seek to]thus mould the future. Such a being is in itself self-active, requiring no extrinsic agency to put it in action, or to sus- tain or direct its activity. How such a being came to be, whether in some inconceivable way it sprang into existence from nothing, or in some manner equally mysterious has been evolved from matter or other preexisting substance or essence, the genesis of which is no less inscrutable, is not material. A being so constituted has all the ele- ments of self-activity. Supposing it to have just come into existence, with no other coexisting power in action, it could, on feeling some want and knowing some mode of effort by which to gratify its want, immediately make the effort; e. g., in the midst of a universal passivity, a being thus constituted could relieve its hunger by plucking and eating the fruit at hand, and such effort, in the absence of all other power, would of necessity be self-controUed and directed, and therefore the free effort or willing of the being that put ^ it forth. In the passive and inert conditions the intelligent being per- ceives a reason for acting, and for acting in a particular way ; but such acting suggested by and 20 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. conformed to its own perception, which is wholly in itself, is very different from an action coerced by or directed by an extrinsic power, and this dif- ference gives to the former the distinguishing characteristic of freedom, i. e., self-control. In- telligent effort, then, and there is no other, thus springs directly from an internal perception of a reason. In this reason it has its genesis, and is not dependent on the prior action of any extrinsic power or cause. But further, if there were other coexisting con- ative beings or powers, we know of no mode in which the willing of one being can be directly changed by the willing of another or by any other extrinsic power whatever. The willing so controlled would be the willing of this other being or power, and not that of the being in which it is manifested. But a constrained or coerced willing, a willing which is not free, is not even conceivable. The idea is so incongruous, that any attempt to ex- press it results in the solecism of our willing when we are not willing. In conformity with these views we find the fact to be, that whenever we would influence the will- ing of another, we always try to do it by changing his knowledge. "We may seek to do this by sim- MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 21 pie presentation of existing facts, or by argument upon them ; or we may exert ourselves to change the facts, — the conditions upon which he is to act; e. g., we may interpose insuperable obstar cles to his intended action, or we may directly produce or change the feelings which prompt his action. But as any such actual change of the conditions is wholly ineffective till it makes a part of his knowledge, these apparently two modes aro really only one, and it comes to this, that our only mode of influencing the willing of another is to change the knowledge by which he controls and directs his own willing; and it is evident that this mode is effective only upon the condition that this other does direct and control his own willing and conforms it to his own knowledge. It would be absurd to suppose that the conform- ing of the act of will to the knowledge of the be- ing that wills is by an extrinsic power. It comes, then, to this, that the only conceiva- ble mode of influencing the will of another is by changing his knowledge, and that this mode is whoUy unavailing if this other does not direct his own action by means of his own knowledge, i. e., if he does not will freely. From these premises it follows that our willing not only may be, but must be free. From these, 22 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. too, it follows that every being that wills is a crea- tive first cause, an independent power in the uni- verse, freely exerting its individual energies to make the future different from what it otherwise would be. The creation of this future, for each successive moment, is the composite result of the efforts of every being that wills. Whatever its grade of intelligence, if it makes successful effort to pro- duce change, it so far acts as an originating crear tive cause in producing the future. Again, as every intelligent being will conform its action to the existing conditions to be acted upon, the change in these, conditions which is ef- fected even by the lowest order may affect the ac- tion of the highest. Each individual acts in ref- erence to his prophetic anticipations of what the future wUl be without his action, and what the effects of his action upon it will be, including in these effects the consequent changes in the knowledge and action of others. This mterdependence of the action of each upon that of others without interference with the freedom of any may be illustrated by the game of chess, in which each of the players alternately makes new conditions, new combinations, for the free action of the other, and this each in turn does MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 23 with reference to the moves which may follow. They could so play if there were no other power in existence, and each was wholly passive while the other was determining his move, which in such case must be wholly determined and controlled by the party moving, and hence would be his free act. This equal and perfect freedom of all does not impair the sovereignty of the Supreme Intelli- gence. Edwards argues that if the Supreme Intelli- gence did not foreknow human volitions he woidd be continually liable to be frustrated in his plans. But Omniscience could at once perceive what ac- tion was most wise, or, even if prevision was es- sential, could search out and be prepared for every possible contingency. It is conceivable that a man could do this in the game of chess, and there are games which, though inexplicable to the uniniti- ated, may practically be so investigated that the best move in every possible contingency will be ascertained, and, in which, with the advantage as to the first move, success will be certain to one having this superior knowledge, though he may not foreknow a single move of his opponent. § 7. The phenomena of instinct have been very generally deemed exceptional. Our own conscious 24 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. agency in them is so slight that it escapes ordi- nary observation.^ The well ascertained fact that animals at their birth perform instinctive actions, without previous instruction or experience, furnishes a clue to the solution which brings these phenomena into har- mony with all other voluntary actions. It indi- cates not that the will, the voluntary effort is absent, but that the knowledge by which we di- rect it is innate. In every intelligent conative being the knowl- edge that by effort it can move its muscles must be innate. There is no conceivable way in which the being could itself acquire this knowledge. No movement of its own muscles, without self effort, could suggest the idea, and it would never dis- cover any connection between the movement of the muscles of another and effort. No such ex- perience or observation of the phenomena of mus- cular movement has any tendency to elicit or sug- gest the idea of effort. But, so far as our observation goes, every ani- mal, man included, is bom with this and some ad- ditional knowledge which is essential to the pres- ervation of its life. The kid the moment it is born can rise upon its feet and go directly to 1 See Note 4. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 25 the source of food wMch its mother supplies, and it or the human infant would die of hunger before it could empirically learn the complicated muscular movements and the order of their suc- cession which are required to avail itself of its food. If there is any self activity prior to birth, it stUl more strongly indicates that the knowledge of some of the modes by which we subsequently act is innate. In all cases requiring more than one muscular movement, we must will such movements in a certain order. It would be in vain to make the muscular movements by which we swallow, before the food was in the mouth. There must be a plan of action. If no such plan is already a part of our knowledge, we must devise one. Having such plan in our mind, we at once proceed to execute it by the appropriate efforts. In the rational action we ourselves devise the plan. In the instinctive we work by a plan we found ready formed, innate in the mind. When we have devised the plan of rational ac- tion, and can remember the successive steps, and apply it by rote without reference to the rar tionale, it becomes a plan ready formed in the mind, and the action becomes habitual. In such 26 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. action the process is precisely the same as in the instinctive. The popular consciousness of this similarity finds expression in the common adage, " Habit is second nature." In both cases we act from a plan ready formed in the mind which we apply without any pres- ent labor in constructing it ; and without the premeditation and deliberation required in this process. The rational, the instinctive, and the habitual actions, then, ail come tmder our general formula, and are aU efforts of a conative being, incited by its want and directed by its knowledge to the end sought. In our rational actions we have obtained the knowledge of the mode or plan of action by our own efforts. In the instinctive, we found it ready made in the mind without effort of our own. In the habitual, the plan, though we may have originally formed it ourselves, has become so fixed in the memory that for all subsequent action it be- comes a plan ready formed in the mind, requiring no new effort to reconstruct it. In all this it is the being directing its effort to the end desired by means of its knowledge. In the execution of this plan, it is obvious that the mode in which we get the knowledge of it MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 27 can make no difference as to the process by which we execute it ; and hence the difference between instinctive and rational actions has been vainly sought ia the actions themselves. There is no difference in the actions, nor ia the knowledge itself, nor in the application of the knowledge to direct our efforts, but the distinc- tion is a step farther back, in the mode in which we become possessed of the knowledge we thus apply. As, in the rational actions, the main labor and difficulty, that which tasks our ability, is the form- ing of the plan of action, the fact that in the in- stinctive action this plan is ready formed in the mind accounts for the spontaneity, the absence of deliberation, which is one of the most marked fea- tures of instinctive actions, and the very little which is left for us to do causes us to overlook our own agency and to refer such actions to an extrin- sic power, and hence to regard them as not self- controlled and not free. This mistake in ignoring our own agency also opens the way for the further error that instinctive actions are purely mechan- ical, which many philosophers of great reputation have asserted. But mechanism is not in itself power. It is only a means by which power is ap- plied. 28 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. In regard to those habitual actions which we do by memory of plans of rational actions, if we should forget that the plans for them were origi- nally formed by our own efforts we should know no difference between them and the instinctive actions. These views seem to account for aU the pecul- iarities of instinctive actions, and, if they are cor- rect, instinct is not a distinct faculty, property, or quality of being that may be put in the same category and compared with or distiiiguished from reason, but has relation only to the mode in which we became possessed of the knowledge by which we determine our actions. In regard to the instinctive, this knowledge being innate, we have no occasion to use our reason to obtain it. Hence instinct is often regarded as fulfilling the func- tion of reason. Whether the innate knowledge of modes and plans is by transmission or otherwise does not affect our theory. The fact that they are thus ready formed in the being without effort of its own seems to be assured by actual observation, and to be sufficient to explain all the peculiar phenomena of instinctive action. The genesis of our action must be instinctive, founded on innate knowledge, there being no pos- MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 29 sible way in which, through experience or reflec- tion, we could ever learn by efEort to put either our muscular or mental powers in action. The instinctive actions are of the same char- acter in all grades of being; and in regard to rational actions I see no distinction in kind, but only in degree, between those of man and the lower animals. Descending in the scale of intel- ligence we will probably reach a grade of beings which do not seek to add to their innate knowl- edge, nor invent or form new plans to meet new occasions for efEort. The actions of such must be whoUy instinctive, but I have seen dogs and horses draw inferences and work out ingenious plans of action adapted to conditions so unnatural and improbable to them as to preclude the assumption that they had been specially provided by nature, through hereditary transmission or otherwise, with the knowledge of the plan they adopted for such exigency.^ In regard to habit I would further state that it Is but a substitution of former results of investi- gation and experience for present examination and trial. Through it memory performs the same office for action that it does for knowledge, retain- ing the acquisitions of the past for permanent use. 1 See Note 5. 30 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. If on every occasion for their application we had to re-learn the letters of the alphabet, there could be very little progress in general knowledge, and so if on every occasion for action we had to devise or examine and decide as to the best plan, we should make very little progress in acquiring modes of action or facility in their application. By these conserving agencies the mind garners what is matured, and is ready for new acquisi- tions. The agency of habit in retaining previously considered modes of action, right or wrong, and making them permanent accretions to the moral character is its most important function. Having now shown that these apparently excep- tional cases of instinctive and habitual actions are really embraced in our general formula, that all our actions are efforts, self-directed by means of our knowledge to the gratification of a want, and consequently are free, I wiU note some of the con- flicting views of the advocates of necessity. I have already alluded to the fallacies which grow out of regarding the will as a distinct entity, and from the erroneous definitions of it, and of freedom, and also from identifying the latter with choice. § 8. But the argument from cause and effect seems to be most relied upon by necessarians. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 31 I adopt a statement of this argument which has the assent o£ one of its most distinguished advo- cates, viz. : If all the circumstances in a thousand cases are alike, and the conditions of the mind also the same, then the willing will be the same, and this uniformity indicates necessity. This assumes as the basis of the argument that the same causes must produce the same effects. In the first place I would remark tha^Bn intelli- gent self-active cause is under no necessity upon a recurrence of the same circumstances to repeat its action, but having in the first case increased its knowledge, it may act differently in the sec- ond. It may with reason be said that with this in- crease of knowledge the conditions of the mind are different, but if this difference is not tacitly excepted, the hypothesis of a thousand like cases is inconceivable, inasmuch as there could not even be two such. But giving the argument all that is intended by those who urge it, and granting their assumption, that the same causes do of necessity produce the same effects, let us suppose the circumstances in one thousand cases to be alike, and the conditions of the mind at each recurrence of them to be the same, and that one of these conditions of the 32 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. mind is that of necessity, then the same causes of necessity producing the same effects, the same action follows. Again, suppose the circumstances in another thousand cases to be alike, and the conditions of the mind again the same in each case, but that in these, one of the conditions of the mind, instead of being necessity, is freedom, then the same causes of necessity producing the same effects, the same action follows. Now, as the result is in both cases the same, it cannot possibly indicate whether it is necessity or freedom that is among the conditions, and it proves nothing. One phase of this argument from cause and effect is that all the present events, including vo- litions, are necessary consequences of their ante- cedents. I have already treated of this asserted dependence of the present on the past, and will now only add thai/ intelligent action is always wholly upon the present conditions, and has refer- ence solely to an effect in the future, and it is not material to such action how or when either the active being, as he is, or the conditions for him to act upon, came to be, or how connected with the past, nor whether they had any past. If, however, by the force of past events themselves, or by MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 33 any causes whatever, there is established a certain flow of events ha-ving a tendency to extend into the future, such flow in its effect upon our freedom in willing does not differ from that flow which is the composite result of conative efforts, which I have already considered. Our individual action is always to interrupt or modify such flow. We decide as to our own actions by our pre-concep- tions, our prescience — more or less reliable — of what the future will be with, and what without, our own efforts. § 9. The influence of present external condi- tions is also much relied upon by the advocates of necessity, but I trust it is already obvious that we may vary our free action with the circumstances, that we act as freely upon one set of them as upon any other, and that such action being self- conformed is perfectly free. The influence of internal phenomena, as the moral character, knowledge, disposition, inclina- tion, desires, wants, habits, etc., which make up the attributes and conditions of the mind that wills, is also much relied upon, and necessarians have been at much pains to show that the willing is always in conformity to these. But in view of the fact that freedom, in the act of willing, con- sists in the action being self-controlled and 34 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. directed, it would have served the purposes of their argiunent much better to have proved that the action was counter to or diverse from the character. They seem to have been especially unfortunate in making successful efforts to prove that our actions are always in agreement with our prevailing choice, or, which with them is very nearly the same thing, with our strongest motive. The moral character of the being is indicated and represented by its efforts, but this manifestation through the efforts does not affect its freedom in making them. A demon is as free as an angeL Nor is it material to the question of freedom how the being came to be as he is ; whether his own character has been the result of his own efforts or of other power or circumstances; or whether his own knowledge, by which he directs his actions, has been acquired with or without ex- trinsic aid. The fact that his willing will vary with and conform to his character — his dispo- sition and his knowledge — indicates that he con- trols his action. If he does not, then there is no reason -to expect that his action will so conform. § 10. yhe advocates of necessity often ask if a man could will the contrary of what he does wiU. I would say that he could if he so decided ; but it would be a contradictory and absurd idea of free- MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 35 dom, which for its realization would require that one might try to do what he had determined not to try to do. In short, all these arguments of the necessarians, that our acts of will are not free be- cause they must conform to our own character, our own views and decisions, virtually assert that one is not free because he must be free ; or, in other words, being of necessity free, he is constrained to be free, and hence is not free. § 11. Edwards and other theologians agreeing with him have regarded the argument from pre- science of volitions, which they hold to be perfect in deity, as very conclusive. They assume not \ only that a volition which is infallibly foreknown j must of necessity happen, but that it must hap- / pen by restraint or coercion of the willing ag ent. J This is not a logical inference. Whether a free volition ever can be infallibly foreknown may be doubted. I think I have already shown that such foreknowledge is not requisite to the supreme sov- ereignty of the universe. But some philosophers, who in their inquiries exclude theology and reve- lation, also argue that the imperfect prescience, which must be an element in the decision of all our efforts to influence the future, also indicates necessity. Both hold thar|he possibility of pre- diction involves necessity as to the volition. But 36 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. if, as I hope to demonstrate, a free act is as easily foreknown and predicted as one that is not free, this argument is wholly unavailing. If some being by its power controls a future event, it of course can foreknow and predict it, but such control of the volition of another, for reasons al- ready stated, I hold to be impossible, involving a contradiction which power cannot reconcile. Aside from this conclusion, the difference be- tween a volition which is free and one which is not free is that the former is controlled and di- rected by the being in which it is manifested, and the latter by some extrinsic power. Our prin- cipal means of foreknowing what the self-di- rected, the free, act of an intelligent being will be is its conformity to the known character, habits, etc., of the actor; and if it is admitted that the external power which controls and di- rects the action which is not self-directed always conforms the act to the character of the be- ing in which the action is manifested, then the probabilities of forming a correct judgment of what the action or effort will be are in this respect exactly equal. But the admission that this conforming of the action to the character of the actor is by an extrinsic power, and not by the actor himself, is an unwarrantable, I might per- MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 37 haps say an absurd, assumption. In stating it one can hardly avoid a solecism, for the char- acter which is thus presented to us by the actions is not that of the being apparently acting, but of the power or powers which determine the ac- tions. The actions in such case might repre- sent as consistent character, for to the outside observer the actions make the character; but it would be the character, not of the being ap- parently acting, which we perceive or know, but of the being or power extrinsic to it which we may not know. All our knowledge of beings as individuals, and even of species, would thus be annihilated. The hypothesis of such extrinsic agency in conforming the action to the character of the actor is in various aspects of it a gratui- tous and inadmissible assumption. If it still be urged that the act may be con- trolled by an extrinsic power that does not conform the action to the character of the apparent actor, then if we do not know this extrinsic power we wholly lose our principal means of predicting what the action will be ; and if we do know it, and know it without any effort, we still have to meet the same difficulties, somewhat more complicated by this extrinsic agency, to ascertain what this extrinsic power would determine this unfree act 38 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. of another to be, as we would to solve the ques- tion as to what the more direct and simple, self- determined free act of this other would be ; so that on any admissible hypothesis the free act of will is (to all except an intelligent controlling power) more easily foreknown and predicted than one that is not free, and if this argument from the susceptibility to prediction has any weight, it is in favor of freedom and not of necessity.^ § 12. I will now recur to the position be- fore reached, that every being endowed with the faculty of wiU, a capacity for knowledge and a susceptibility to feeling, has within itself all the essentials of a self-active being, and can begin action, and, so far as it has knowledge of a mode, can make effort to produce any effects, and so far as it has power can actually produce them, with- out any extrinsic aid. Every such being is thus a creative first cause, an independent power in the universe, in a sphere commensurate with its knowledge, freely putting forth its efforts to change existing conditions. The power and knowledge of such a being may be very limited; but within the limits of these attributes its action is as free as if it were omniscient and omnipotent. Its effort must al- 1 See Note 6. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 39 ways be to make the future different from what but for such effort, it would be. Such being is thus a co-worker with God, and with all other conative beings, in creating the future which is always the composite result of the action of all such beings. If we suppose an oyster with no other efficient power than that of moving its shell, and with knowledge of only one mode of doing this, and this instinctive, stiU, when by its own effort, di- rected by its own knowledge, it effects this moving, it so far makes the future different from what it woidd have been, and so far performs a part in the creation of that future. But I shaU deal mainly with our own more in- telligent order of beings, which not only knows, but devises modes of actions suited to the varying occasions of life, and in which the creative powers of effort, incited by feeling and directed by knowl- edge, are more abundantly manifested. For the exercise of these creative powers we have two distinct spheres of effort, the one with- out and the other within us ; that without us em- bracing all material phenomena, and so much of the spiritual as we attribute to other intelligent beings. All this sphere is known to us through our sensations and as an inference from them. 40 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. Of the ptenomena of our own spiritual nature we are directly conscious. The phenomena with- out us are conveniently called objective, and those within us subjective. Our efforts to effect change in either sphere are always subjective. In efforts for objective change we always begin by a move- ment of our own muscles. We thus directly change the material status without us, and, as already shown, we may by such change in the external material conditions to be acted upon indirectly influence the free action of others. We can thus by our own efforts make objective phenomena, including the mental action and voli- tions of others, different from what they otherwise would be. § 13. I have already alluded to the two differ- ent hypotheses, the one regarding material phe- nomena as forms of a distinct entity, called mat- ter; the other regarding it as but the thought and imagery of the mind of God immediately impressed upon and made palpable to our finite minds, without any intermediate vehicle in the process. In either case the sensations, by which alone we know, or which perhaps are all there is, of the phenomena, are equally real, and are in fact identically the same on the one hypothesis as MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 41 upon the other. If as a result or corollary of our arguments in regard to cause, or otherwise, the material universe is regarded as the work of an intelligent Creator, working with design to produce a certain effect, then, upon either of the^e hypotheses, it is the presentation and ex- pression of a conception existing as thought and imagery in his mind before he gave it palpable tangible existence in ours, and the only question as between the two hypotheses is, whether, in making it palpable to us, he transfers this thought and imagery directly to our minds, or does this by painting, carving, or moulding, in a distinct material substance. I have already intimated my leaning to the ideal hypothesis as being more simple and equally competent to embrace and explain aU material phenomena. I will here remark that the adopting of one or the other of these two hypotheses has very little, if any, bearing upon the views which I am pre- senting : whether the Supreme Intelligence found the matter, in which he expresses and makes his thoughts permanent and tangible ready made, or made it himself, either as a distinct entity, or as mere imagery of his mind, has in most respects no more significance than the question whether 42 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. Milton and Shakespeare and Bacon found exist- ing materials for expressing and making their thoughts palpable and permanent, or contrived and made the pen, ink, and paper, which they used for this purpose. In either case we get the thoughts of the author, and can use the same means to express our own, including even in some measure the visible creations in which the Author of all has communicated his thoughts. Another consideration in favor of the ideal hypothesis is, that by means of it creating be- comes more conceivable to us : we can any of us conceive or imagine a landscape and vary its features at will; this is an incipient creation, which by effort we may make more or less per- fect. Such creations of our own we for the time be- ing locate outside of ourselves, and while we are wholly absorbed in contemplating them, they are to us perfect external material creations. To make them such to others requires that we should in some way impress our conceptions upon their minds, and make the imagery of our own palpable to theirs. Though our faculty of doing this, as compared with that of creating the im- agery, seems to be very limited, we are none of us wholly devoid of it. Landscape gardeners, ar- MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 43 chitects, sculptors, painters, and more especially poets, have it in marked degree. In all these it is effected by slow, tentative processes, though in the latter it often appears as a genuine spontaneity, a fiat of creative genius. We then already have and habitually exercise all the faculties essential to material creation, and with the requisite increase in that of impressing others we could design and give palpable persis- tent existence to a universe varying to any extent from that which now environs us, which would be objectively as real and material to the vision, even, of others, as the heavens and the earth they now look out upon. Though these creations of our own are mostly evanescent, and the, persistent reaUty which with great labor and pains we give to some of them is very limited, and the presentation even of these very imperfect, still they show that we have within us the rudiments of all the faculties which on the ideal hypothesis are essential to creating. This hypothesis is further commended to us by the consideration that man having in a finite de- gree aU the other powers usually attributed to the Supreme Intelligence, lacks under the material theory that of creating matter. Corresponding to the Divine omnipotence, omniscience, and omni- 44 MAN A CREATIVR FIRST CAUSE. presence, man has finite power and finite knowl- edge,, and can make all the ideas and objects of his knowledge palpably present, which is equiv- alent to, and under the ideal hypothesis is iden- tical with, a finite presence, limited like our other attributes to the sphere of our knowledge. The ideal hypothesis then rounds out our ideas of cre- ative intelligence, relieving us of the anomaly of the creation of matter as a distinct entity, for which we have in ourselves no conscious rudiment of power and of which we cannot conceive, and we find little if any relief in the alternative that matter has always existed without having been created. A legitimate inference from the foregoing prem- ises seems to be that if from any cause one's own incipient creation of objective phenomena should become so fixed in his mind that he could not change it at will, it would become to him a per- manent external reality. This inference is em- pirically confirmed by the fact that this some- times happens in abnormal conditions of the mind. However conscious we may be of our own agency in the formative process, as to the forma- tions themselves, their subjection to our own will seems to be the only element by which we distin- guish our own ideal creations from objective phe- nomena. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 45 This strongly suggests that the difference be- tween the creative powers of man and those of the Supreme Intelligence is mainly if not wholly in degree and not in kind, and that even in this the disparity, vast as it is, is stiU not so incomprehen- sible as has been generally supposed. This gives warrant to the logic in which by short steps we attribute all creations and all changes, which we regard as beyond our own power and beyond that of other embodied intelligences known to us, to a superior intelligence with the same powers which we possess and use to create and change, in- creased, we need not say infinitely, but to a degree corresponding to the effects which we cognize and ascribe to them. I wiU further remark that so long as these cre- ations even of the objective are purely subjective, there is no limit to the interest or the variety of our combinations. We are not confined to any ex- perience of the actual nor constrained by any no- tion of propriety or harmony, but can make roses bloom in regions of perpetual snow, or locate a sun in the zenith of a nocturnal sky. Nor can we any more conceive of a limit to the extension of these incipient creations than we can of a limit to space. In such formations, and even as to those which we locate in the external, our creative fiat is ab- 46 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. solute as to their aoeomplishment and unlimited as to their extension. But when we seek to make these creations permanent to ourselves and pal- pable to others, we find our ability to do this is in striking contrast with the power by which we produce them. The paltry changes on a few feet of canvas, or a few roods of earth, or a few de- scriptive pages, is all that remains of the most magnificent ideal constructions of the most gifted. In this external sphere, the common domain of all, there can be no appreciable monopoly by any. DISCOURSE II. MAN EST THE SPHERE OP HIS OWN MORAL NA- TURE A SUPREME CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. In my former discourse I argued that man is a self active and self directed agent, with creative powers which he freely and successfully exerts to change the existing conditions and mould the fu- ture. Having, then, treated of the exercise of this creative power in the external, which is the common arena of all intelligent activity, I pro- pose now to speak more especially of its manifes- tations in the internal, in which each individual has his own special sphere of creative effort, bounded only by his knowledge. § 14. I have already argued that some^ of our knowledge must be innate, and that some of what we acquire is obtained without our seeking, — without our effort.^ External phenomena come into the mind unbidden, and cannot always be excluded. So, too, the facts and ideas which are already stored in the memory often come into 1 See page jl. ^i^ ;;-■ 48 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. view, and witli them the perception of new rela- tions, without any preliminary effort, and these cannot be discarded by any direct effort. This independence of the will gives to these intuitions the distinguishing characteristic of the phenomena of a sense, and, with the observed facts, indicates the existence of a cognitive sense. As before stated, our acquisitions of knowledge are always by simple immediate perception, and hence in the final assimilation these are all the subjects of the cognitive sense ; but some of our cognitions do, and others do not, require prelim- inary effort to bring them within the range of this immediate mental vision. -^ In this there is no difference, per se, as to our perceptions of external and internal objects. In 'the^external'we may have to remove obstacles to our seeing or hearing, and though our i ntomnal cognitions^are the mmd s more direct perception of what is already within itself, we still often need, by effort, to change the combination or ar- rangement of the ideas before the resulting rela- tion or truth becomes manifest. In both cases the intuitive perceptions of the sense are distinguished from the results of the rational faculty by the effort required for the latter. The phenomena of the external are brought MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 49 within range of our immediate niental percep- tions by means of the external organs of sense. T^ , . , ""^r^ t^*v^*.-iy *uUSv.|~-*t. ^gfc^„,^ h or the Mitopaal oognitivo spontaneit;^the m^m, if not the only, immediate instrumentalities seem to be the operations of memory and association, singly and in combination ; but ite genesis^is *" often, perhaps always, by suggestion from the bodily organs, through the senses, or the appetites which much resemble and are closely allied to the senses. The sound of a cannon may call up our knowledge of the battle of Waterloo. The con- tinual flow of ideas through the mind, singly or in trains or groups, is to it an exhaustless source of knowledge. If the mind ever became wholly inactive and oblivious, it could jonly be aroused and rescued from annihUationjJby some extrinsic agency. Our spontaneous cognitions of external objects and contemporaneous changes may be pre- sented by the bodUy organs of sense in any pos- sible order or combination, and the internal phe- nomena may come into notice in a like manner, though in the latter the combinations and the order of succession seem to be more subordinated to the associations of experience. The cognitive sense seems then to be, as it were, the common terminus of the arrangement, organ- ism, or means by which both objective and subjec- 4 50 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. tive phenomena are immediately presented to the mind. These presentations become the subjects of our judgments, which may also be with or without preliminary effort : e. g., we perceive at once the difference in the size of a pea and an orange, but do not thus perceive the equality of the sum of the angles of a triangle to two right angles. To illustrate these processes, suppose the four letters y, t, i, .a, are put before me to form into a word. It may so happen that I shall see them at first glance in the ovAevfiat, and the thing is done, or I may have to proceed tentatively through few or many of the combinations which the letters admit of. So, too, the internal may accidentally come into view in such order that some new rela- tion is immediately apparent, and seems like a sudden flash illuminating the mind from without, without any agency of its own. The circxzm- stances and the perception may thus come imder our observation without even an effort to direct attention to them. We distinguish the various perceptions of the one cognitive sense, first as objective and subjec - tive, and then classify the former as senses of see- ing, hearing, etc. ; and, in regard to the latter, we speak of the sense of beauty, of order, of justice, honor, shame, etc. When the subject of these MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 51 cognitions, and of the judgments upon them, spontaneous or otherwise, is that of moral right and wrong, they constitute the genetic elements of the moral sense. But the mere perception or judgment as to right and wrong has of itself no more effect upon the sensibilities, than has the cognition that twice five are ten. It is not tiU we regard it as practically applied in action that it produces any emotion. Such action in others, when it is right, elicits our approval or admira- tion, and, when wrong, our censure or indigqa- tion; and in ourselves the triumph of the right inspires us with the pleasurable and elevating emotion of victory, while the yielding to the temptation to wrong brings with it the painful feelings of debility, self-debasement, and dishonor. It is in these emotions of glory and of shame thus excited that we find the manifestation or develop- ment of conscience , which is properly the moral sense, to the sensations of which the cognition of right and wrong is only a prerequisite. Nor is it material to the quality of our action whether these cognitions are true or false, for the moral virtue of our action all lies in our conforming them to our convictions of duty ; and hence, though false convictions may cause our actions to be unwise, they do not affect their morality. 52 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. In regard to our action in the objective, I have argued that an innate knowledge that the move- ment of the muscles is effected by effort is a necessity, but, in view of the foregoing premises, there seems to be no analogous necessity that we should have any such knowledge of absolute right and wrong, or even any faculty or sense by which we can, intuitively or otherwise, acquire such knowledge. The design of conscience seems primarily not to punish transgression, but to warn us against doing what is injurious to our moral nature. The moni- tion comes in the contemplation of the act, and prior to its consummation, as in case one thrusts his hand into the fire, he feels the pain before he is seriously injured; and as by frequent repeti- tion the tissues become callous and less sensitive to pain, so, too, the more frequent and the more flagrant a man's iniquities, the less the pain which conscience inflicts upon him. This is the reverse of what it should be if punishment were the ob- ject. With this warning knowledge of the effect, we are left to our own self-control, our own free- dom in action. § 15. Our efforts for change in the sphere within us, excepting, perhaps, those for moral con- struction, are always to increase our knowledge. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 53 The knowledge sought may be of either sphere. Its immediate object often, perhaps oftenest, is to enable us to decide more wisely as to our action in reference to the actual current events of life ; or it may be for the pleasure we derive from the mental activity in the process, and the success which is almost certain to reward our search for truth. We can hardly fail to learn something, if not what we sought. A higher object may be to permanently increase the intellectual power, or, yet higher, to improve our moral nature. § 16. For the acquisition of knowledge by ef- fort, mind has two distinct modes, — observation and reflection. By the former, we note the phe- nomena which are cognized by the senses, and by the latter we trace out the relations among the ideas — the knowledge — we already have in store, and thus obtain new perceptions, new ideas. A large portion of our perceptions, however ac- quired, are primarily but imagery of the mind, — pictures, as it were, of what we have perceived or imagined. In this form we will, for conven- ience, designate them as primitwe perceptions or ideals. By these terms I especially seek to dis- tinguish these perceptions from those which we have associated with words or other signs or rep- resentatives of things and ideas. 64 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. There is a somewhat prevalent notion that we can think only in words ; but it is obvious that we can cognize things for which we have no name, and can also perceive their relations before we have found any words to describe them ; and in fact such knowledge or perception generally pre- cedes oiu- attempts to describe them.^ These primitive perceptions, or ideals, are thus independent of the words which we use to repre- sent them, and to which they may have a separate and prior existence. Even when in a strictly logical verbal process we reach a result in words, it is not fully available till, by a reflex action, we get a mental perception of that which those words signify or stand in place of. Much of our acquired knowledge is of the re- lations in and between our primitive perceptions. In the pursuit of truth by reflective effort we also have two modes. In the first place, wmnwbjt through our immediate primitive perceptions of things which are present, or,^the mental imagery of things remembered^directly note the existing relations among them or their parts without the use of words in the process ; or, we may substi- tute words as signs or definitions of these primi- tive perceptions, and then investigate the relations among the words so substituted. 1 See Note 7. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 55 In the difference of these two modes we find the fundamental distinction between poetry ajid prose , the former being the ideal or poetic, and the lat- ter the logical or prosaic, method. The poet uses words to present his thoughts, but his charm lies in so using them that the primitive perceptions — the imagery of his mind — shall be so transferred and pictured in that of the recipient as to absorb his attention to the exclusion of the verbal me- dium. We see the painting without thinking of the pigments and the shading by which it is im- pressed upon us. Every reader may experiment- ally test this distinction. If it is well founded, he will find that when any portion of a poem, in- stead of thus picturing the thought on his mind, requires him to get at it by means of the relations of the terms in which it is presented, there is a cessation or revulsion of all poetic emotion. The material universe, which, upon either the ideal or materialistic hypothesis, is the thought and imagery of the mind of God directly im- pressed on our minds, is the perfect, and perhaps the only perfect type of the poetic mode. Poetry, thus depending on this prominence of the primitive perceptions, is the nearest possible approach which language can make to the reality which it represents. Assiuning that simple obser- 66 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. vation is common to both, these two modes of investigation — the one carried on by means of a direct examination of the realities themselves, or mental images of them, the other by means of words or other signs substituted for them — also present the fundamental and most important, if not the only, distinction in our methods of phil- osophic research and discovery. Each has its peculiar advantages, and both are essential to our progress in knowledge. Like the external senses of sight and feeling, they mutually confirm or correct each other. The prosaic has the advantage of condensing and generalizing, but is applicable only in a very contracted sphere, extending little, if any, beyond that in which a scientific language has been con- structed; while the poetic, dealing directly with the things or their images, is coextensive with thought, perception, and imagination. The prosaic can do little more than aid us to find and condense what is, and this only in the limited domain in which a language has already been constructed ; while the poetic is prophetic and creative in a sphere as boundless as its fancy. Syllogistic reasoning furnishes good examples of the prosaic mode, but the purest form of it is manifested in our dealings with algebraic equa- MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 67 tions. In these we use letters, as signs of quan- tities (known and unknown), and other signs to express their relations to each other, and then by an examination of these signs and their defined relations, without any reference to any actual quantities, we logically deduce general formulas applicable to aU quantities.^ All general propositions must be expressed in the prosaic mode, and the progress of knowledge usually being from particulars to generals, little advancement can be made without it. The par- ticulars become too numerous and cumbersome for the mind to deal with separately. But the poetic mode dealing directly with the things as observed, recollected, or imagined, we are by it enabled to advance beyond the limits of language and of the senses. It has a telescopic reach by which it penetrates the future and per- ceives the earliest dawn of truth. It is thus the most efficient truth-discovering power, and at the same time furnishes the means of communicating the discoveries it makes in ad- vance of the logical processes. The greater facility and rapidity of the poetic over the logical process is illustrated by the ease and quickness with which we perceive the equality 1 See Note 8. 58 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. of two figures when one is applied directly to the other, as compared with our ascertaining this equality by means of a geometrical demonstration. This greater reach and quickness makes the poetic power the essential attribute of genius in all its varieties. But this poetic power, this power of dealing directly with things, or our immediate perceptions of them, though prominent in the more gifted, is not restricted to them, but pervades the whole domain of our intellectual activity. In its least ethereal and most common form, it is the basis of that common sense which, look- ing directly at things, events, and their relations, enables us spontaneously to form just opinions, or probable conjectures, of immediate consequences, and to determine as to the appropriate action. From this low estate, when aided by elevated moral sentiments, combined with intellectual power, and invigorated with warm feelings, pure passion, and fervid enthusiasm, it rises to the dig- nity of inspiration and the sublimity of prophecy. The facility of application to the current affairs of life which pertains to the ideal processes makes the poetic attribute the main element of prac- tical business ability. The current events of life are too complicated, variable, and heterogeneous MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 59 for the application of verbal logic. In the mis- takes to which even careful and skillful logicians are liable from too hasty generalizations, faulty definitions, and fallacious inferences, we see the danger which would arise if the uninitiated, who are immersed in business, and whose decisions must often be hasty, should rely upon processes of reasoning in which an error in the signification, or in the application, of a term might vitiate their conclusions and lead to disastrous action. To such the processes of ideality are much safer. In these, without the intervention of words, the mind, at a glance, takes in the actual conditions, and reaches its conclusions in incom- parably less time than would be required to sub- stitute the terms, test their precision, examine their relations, and arrange them in the requisite logical order. The greater quickness with which we examine particular cases by the poetic process to some extent compensates for the greater niunber of instances, which may be embraced in one gener- alization oi the prosaic. Persons who adopt the quicker mode are often notably discreet, wise, and able in the actual c,on- duct of affairs, but from the exclusion of words in the process, and its flash-like quickness, they can- 60 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. not state the grounds of their conclusions, nor assign a reason for their consequent action. The poetic processes are also the characteris- tic feature of what has been termed a woman's reason, which is thus contradistinguished from verbal logic. And the practical application of these processes is illustrated in the quick and clear perception of the circumstances, and sound judgment upon them, with which woman is prop- erly accredited. This feature also leads us intui- tively to regard woman as of finer mould, and to expect from her sesthetically and morally more than from the sterner sex. And it is to her command of these more direct and more ethereal modes of thought and expression that we must at- tribute her superior influence in softening the as- perities of our nature, and refining and elevating the sentiments of our race. Hence, too, it is that while the finest and strongest reasoning of philos- ophy has in this respect accomplished so little, woman has accomplished so much. The refined subtleties of an Aristotle, or the glowing sublimi- ties of a Plato, though presented to us with all the fascinations of a high-toned morality, with all the accessories of graceful diction and persuasive eloquence, are dim and powerless to that effluence of soul which with a glance imlocks the portals to MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 61 our tenderness, which chides our error with a tear, or winning us to virtue with the omnipotence of a charm, irradiates the path of duty with the beaming eye, and cheers it with the approving smile of loveliness. As compared with such in- fluences, the results of logic or any prosaic form of words are weak. It is, then, through the poetic processes that we mainly get the perceptions, the knowledge, by which we direct our actions in the varying events and multifarious combinations of every-day life. Though it is in a subdued form that the poetic power is thus practically available, it still seems a desecration to put such high endowments to such common uses ; but we have tamed the lightning and made it run 80 our errands and drudge in our workshops. § 17. I have already touched upon the exercise of our creative power in the sphere without us, in which we act with all other conative beings. But it is in the isolated sphere within us, in the seclu- sion of our own spiritual nature, that we should expect to find this power most potent, and our efforts, always mental, most successful. A^d it I Is in a better knowledge of the character, ike re- 1 lations, and the modoo of the poetic and the log- ical processes to^ a more general cultivation of I 62 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. tlie former, and iy a more systematic and intelli- gent selection from those two cardinnl modeo o f iBvoctigajtion of t hat wnioB ia best suited to the subject in hand, or oftener by a judicious applica- tion of both to the same subject, s» that each may Dupplcmcnt ami supply the deficiencies, or correct the errors, of the other, t££ I look for increased efficiency, reach, and accuracy in the mind's intel- lectual ability. The discovery of improved modes for such cul- tivation, selection, and single or combined appli- cation of these two cardinal methods of seeking truth, and the means of making these discoveries accessible and available to the popular mind, are both within the province of the metaphysician, and they open to him an elevated sphere of util- ity. The benefits which may be anticipated from • exploring this field are not merely those which, metaphysical studies confer as a strengthening ex- ercise to the mental powers. They also include the making of the same strength more effective by the invention or discovery of improved modes in their application. It is true that both these modes of thought must always have been in practical use, but with little or no conscious attention as to the selection MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 63 or application of them, singly or combined. The neglect or unconsciousness of any such aids is manifested in the not uncommon belief that we always think in words — a belief which is shared even by men of deep philosophic thought. § 18. But it is in the sphere of our moral nature that I look for beneficial results far more important than even the increase of intellectual power, and in this more especially through the agency of the poetic element. It is in this realm that we would naturally look for the most congen- ial sphere of action for our most ethereal attri- bute. Conformably to these anticipations, I hope to show that, in the formation of character, this power of creating imaginary constructions, and of contemplating and perfecting them, exerts an in- fluence of the highest importance, which, by cul- tivation, may be enhanced without conceivable limit. This is the mode in which our conceptions of mental or material phenomena most nearly sup- ply the place of actual experience, and in some respects with decided advantages. The occasions for actual experience, too, are casual and uncer- tain, while the ideal processes are always avail- able. From these supposable events, which are constantly flowing through the mind, we form rules of conduct, or receive impressions, which 64 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. govern us in the concerns of real life. It Is in meditating on these that we nurture the innate feelings, sentiments, and passions, which not only give impulse to transitory action, but become the main elements of the fixed character. He who accustoms himself to this discipline, who, with- drawn from the bustle of the world, tranquilly contemplates imaginary cases, and determines how he ought to act under them, frames for himself a system of government with less liability to error than is possible in the tumultuous scenes of active life. He is not swayed by those interests and pas- sions which so often distort or confuse our vision when we a3t from the impulses of immediate and pressing circumstances. The ideal formations may not be accurately fitted to the occasions which actually arise, but the contingency can hardly occur in which some of the vast number of them that may be con- structed, even by those most engrossed with the realities of life, wiU not in some degree be appli- cable. They will at least furnish suggestive analogies, and in the processes lead to habits of disinterested thought, which are so essential to the successful pursuit of truth, and especially of moral truths, which often conflict with the desires of the active moment. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 65 We cannot directly mil a change in our men- tal affections any more than in what are termed bodily sensations. We cannot directly will the emotions of hope or fear, or to be pure and noble, or even to want to become pure and noble, any more than we can directly will to be hungry, or to want to be hungry. If we want to take food we are already hungry, and if we want to perform pure and noble actions, and to avoid the impure and ignoble, while this want or disposition pre- vails we are already intrinsically pure and noble. If we want to be hungry, i. e., want to want food, and know that by exercise, or by the use of certain stimulants, or by other means, we may become hungry, we may by effort induce this, in such case, a cultivated want ; and if we want to want to be pure and noble and know the means, we may, in like manner, by effort gratify the ex- citing want, and induce the want, the cultivated want, to become pure and noble. If, from seeing the pleasure which admiring a beautiful flower affords to others, or from any other cause, we want to admire it, we will readily ■perceive that some additional knowledge is essen- tial to that end ; and that the first step is to find, by examination, what in it is admirable. To ex- amine then becomes a secondary want, and we 66 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. will to examine. The result of this examination may be that its before unknown beauties excite our admiration, and make it, or the gazing upon it, an object of want ; so we may also will to ex- amine what is pure and noble till its developed loveliness excites in us, or increases, the want to be pure and noble, and induces a correlative aver- sion to what is gross and base. The occurrence and recurrence of our spiritual wants are as certain as those of hunger. We are continually reminded of them by our own thoughts and acts, by comparison with those of others, and by the external manifestations of God's thought and action ; and he has placed within us the moral sense, as a sentinel, with its intuitions awakening the conscience, and warning us of what, in wants or means, is noxious to our moral nature with more certainty than the senses of taste and smeU tell us of what is injurious to our physical well-being.^ It thus appears that want, constitutional, ac- quired, or cultivated, is the source of effort for internal as well as external change. The desire to effect some change in the existing or anticipated conditions is the only conceivable motive for the action of any rational being. 1 See page 50 and 51. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 67 As a man cannot do any moral wrong in doing what he believes to be right, his knowledge, though finite, is infallible as to what it is morally right for him to do ; and his fallibility in morals must consist in his liability to act at variance with his knowledge or conviction of right, and never in deficiency of knowledge, or even in belief. In this view his knowledge in the sphere of his moral nature is infallible, and were he infinitely wise or certain to act in conformity to his knowledge of the right, he would be infallible in his morals. It is also evident that the mind must direct its efforts for internal change by means of its knowl- edge, including its preconceptions of the charac- ter it would therein buUd up. Now such preconceptions are imaginary con- structions, incipient creations, in the future. In its constructions in the external, the mind does not of necessity even consider or recognize the already existing external circumstances. In " castle - building," it often voluntarily discards them, and forms a construction entirely from its own internal resources. Retaining its knowledge . of the past, and having the power of abstraction, it could just as well conceive an external creation if all external existences, facts, and circumstances were annihilated. A man thus isolated might 68 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. imagine a material universe in which all is in his view beautiful and good. He may not make, nor even intend to make, the additional effort to actu- alize these combinations and make them palpable to others, or permanent within himself. He has merely exercised himself in constructive effort. So, too, if moved by the aspirations of his spiritual being, he may conceive a moral char- acter, pure and noble, resisting all temptation to evil, and conforming with energetic and persever- ing effort to all virtuous impulses and suggestions. Though he may make no effort, and not even in- tend to make any, to realize such ideal concep- tions, they are not without their influence. The constructions thus sportively made add to our knowledge of the materials of character, and to our s kill in combining them. Poetry and fiction in other forms present us with such constructions ready formed by others. The making of such constructions as harmonize with our conceptions of moral excellence is in it- self improving ; a determination in advance by per- severing effort to conform our conduct to them is a greater step, and the persistent effort to actualize them when the occasion for their practical applica- tion has arisen is, so far as the moral nature is concerned, really their final consummation ; for MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 69 whether the proximate object of the effort is or is not attained makes no difference to its moral quality. The intent or motive is not affected by the success or failure of the effort. The external effect is but the tangible evidence to others of the internal effort which, with the intent, is the real manifestation of the moral element. If a man wills to do an act which is good and noble, it does not concern his virtue whether his effort be successful or otherwise, the effort is itself the tri- timph in him of the good and noble over the bad and base, and the persevering effort to be good and noble is itself being good and noble. It follows from these positions that, as regards the moral nature, there can be no failure except the failure to wiU, or to make the proper effort. . The human mind with its want, knowledge, and faculty of effort, having the power within and from itself to form its creative preconceptions, and to will their actual realization independently of any other cause or power, up to the point of willing is, in its own sphere, an independent cre- ative first cause. Exterior to itself it may not have the power to execute what it wills, it may be frustrated by other external forces. Hence, in the external the ideal incipient creation may not be consummated by finite effort. But as in our moral 70 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. nature the willing, the persevering, effort is itself the consummation, there can ia it be no such fail- ure ; and the mind in it is therefore not only a creative, but a Sxjpeeme Creative First Cause. We have, then, between effort in the sphere of the moral nature and in that sphere which is ex- ternal to it this marked difference ; while in the external there must be something beyond the ef- fort, i. e., there must be that subsequent change which is the object of the effort before the crea- tion is consummated, in the sphere of the moral nature the effort for the time being is itself the consummation ; and this, if by repetition, ideal or actual, made habitual becomes a permanent con- stituent of the character which, through habitual action, will be obvious to others ; wiU be a perma- nent palpable creation. In his internal sphere, then, man has to the full- est extent the powers in which he is so deficient in the external. In it he can make his incipient creations palpable and permanent constituents of his own moral character. § 19. In this permanent incorporation of them with his moral nature habit has a very important agency. This may be cultivated and its eificiency increased by intelligent attention, and through it MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 71 the ideals, the scenic representations which are continually being acted in the theatre within us, may be made available in advance of actual expe- rience, for which, as already suggested, they serve as a substitute, and with some decided advantages in their favor. In the sphere of its own moral nature, then, whatever the finite mind really wiUs is as immedi- ately and as certainly executed as is the will of Omnipotence in its sphere of action, for the will- ing in such case is itself the final accomplishment, the terminal effect, of the creative effort. We must here be careful to distinguish between that mere abstract judgment, or knowledge of what is desirable in our moral nature, and the want and the effort to attain it. A man may know that it is best for him to be pure and noble, and yet, in view of some expected or habitual gratification, not only not want to be now pure and noble, but be absolutely opposed to being made so, even if some external power could and would effect it for him. We may, however, re- mark that, as the moral quality of the action lies wholly in the wiU, and no other being can will for him, to be morally good without his own effort is an impossibility ; all that any other being can do for him in this respect is to increase his knowl- 72 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. edge and excite Ms wafits, and thus induce him to put forth his own efforts. Even Omnipotence can do no more than this, for to make a man vir- tuous without his own volimtary cooperation in- volves a contradiction. The increasie of virtuous efforts indicates an improvement in the character of the cultivated wants and an increase of the knowledge by which right action is incited and directed. The influence of such knowledge and wants, becoming persistent and fixed by habit, forms, as it were, the substance of virtuous char- acter. In the sphere of the internal as well as in the external, the last we know of our agency in pro- ducing change is our effort. But in our moral nature the effort is itself the consummation. The effort of a man to be pure and noble is actually being pure and noble. The virtue in the time of that effort all lies in, or in and - within , the effort and ^ intent, and not in its success or failure. It is for the time being just as perfect if no ex- ternal or no permanent results follow the effort. If the good efforts are transitory, the moral good- ness will be equally so, and may be 9* mere flashes of Ught upon the gloom of a settled moral de- pravity. § 20. Nor does the nature of the stetmai romlt- MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 73 iag effect make any difference to the moral qual- ity of the effort. A man's intentions may be most virtuous, and yet the actual consequences of his efforts be most pernicious. On the other hand, a man may be as selfish in doing acts in themselves beneficent — may do good to others with as nar- row calculations of personal benefit — as in doing those acts which he knows will be most injurious to his fellow-men ; and doing such good for self- ish ends manifests no virtue, whether that end be making money or reaching heaven, and brings with it neither the self-approval nor the elevat- ing influences of generous self-forgetting or seK- sacrificing action. A man who is honest only because it is the more gainful would be dishonest if the gains thereby were sufficiently increased. Such honesty may indicate that he is intelligent and discreet, but virtue is not reached till he acts not from sordid and selfish calculations, but from a sense of right and duty. And virtue is not consummated and established in him tUl he feels the wrong doing as a wound,' leaving a b l omich on the boauty and a stain on the purity of the moral character, the preservation and improvement of which has be- come his hi^ absorbing interest, and the construc- tion and ideal contemplation of which he has 74 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. come to appreciate and iw value above all other possessions and all possible acquisitions. The consequences of a volition may prove that it was miwise, but cannot affect its moral status. If at the time of the effort one neither did nor omitted to do anything in violation of his own perceptions or sense of duty, he did no moral wrong, and any subsequent consequences cannot change the moral nature of the past action. No blame or wrong can be imputed to one who did the best he knew. Again, no moral wrong can pertain to a man for any event in which he bas had and could have no agency, which he coidd neither promote nor obstruct. Until he has put forth effort against his knowledge of duty, or omitted to put it forth in conformity with this knowledge, there can be no moral wrongs There is no present moral wrong, either in the knowledge now in his mind or in the exciting want which he now feels. There may have been moral wrong in the acquisi- tion of any knowledge, or in the omission to ac- quire any, which required an effort. Such acqui- sition or omission may have then been counter to his conviction of right. There can be no moral wrong in the acquisition of that knowledge which he unintentionally ac- MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 75 quires. That a man involuntarily knows tliat the sun shines, or that a drum is beating, cannot be morally wrong in itself. So, likewise, that any knowledge now actually has place in his mind, can, of itself, involve no present moral wrong doing, though the fact that it is there may be evidence of a previous moral wrong committed ia its acquisition. This he cannot now prevent. Such knowledge may have so polluted his moral nature, that it will require an effort to purify it. The polluting arose from the previous effort to acquire, or, negatively from not making the effort to prevent acquiring, and not from the mere fact of possessing the knowledge, which is now beyond his control, and does not, of itself, alter the moral condition from that state in which the wrong of acquisition left it, though every wrong application of it may do so. So, also, in regard to the natural wants. There is no moral wrong in the mere fact of their recur- rence. There may be moral wrong in our willing to gratify a want which should not be gratified, or in entertaining or cultivating one which should be discarded or eradicated, or ia the time or i« tke- mode of the gratification. That such want exists at all, or that it should recur at such time, may be proof of a previous wrong effort in culti- 76 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. vating the want, or of an omission to control or eradicate it, or to cultivate some conflicting want ; but if its present recurrence is not by our own effort, such recurrence, of itself, can involve no present moral wrong, and merely furnishes the occasion for virtuous effort to resist what is wrong, or to foster and strengthen what is right. The want may indicate the present condition of the moral nature, while it also supplies the opportuni- ties which make both improvement and degen- eracy possible. Though that condition may be comparatively low in the scale, yet an effort to advance from it may be as truly and purely virtu- ous as a like effort at any higher point. In the present moment, then, the knowledge and the want, which exist prior to effort, involve no present moral right and wrong ; and as we have already shown that the sequence of the effort does not, it follows that the moral right and wrong are all concentrated in the effort, or act of will, which is our own free act. This and some preceding results are perhaps sufficiently attested by the consideration that the goodness or badness in which one has no agency, or of which he is not the cause, is not his good- ness or badness, and he can have such agency or be such cause only by his act of will. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 77 Efforts to be pure and noble, and for cor- responding external action, may become habitual, and hence comparatively easy. Through habit, memory performs the same office for our acquire- ments in acting that it does for our acquisitions of knowledge, retaining or holding fast what is acquired, and thus leaying the mind at liberty to employ itself in new acquisitions, new progress in knowledge, including modes of action. We may further observe, in this connection, that our moral wants are more under the control of the mind's acts of will than the physical con- ditions of bodily wants ; and though we cannot directly will not to think of a thing, yet, by willing to think of something else, we may dis- place and banish other thought; so, too, though we cannot directly will the removal of a want, yet we can put it away by directing our attention to something else, or by inducing another want in its place. And though this is especially true of the moral wants, it partially applies also to the phys- ical. We know, for instance, that by exercise and fasting we can induce hunger ; and we may find means of inducing any moral want, and by the use of these means, some of which I have already suggested, may give one moral want a preponder- ance over another, which, by repetition becoming 78 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. habitual, will go far to eradicate it and to modify the influence even of a physical want. If entirely eradicated, there can be no corre- sponding volition, and a man habitually holy, who has eradicated the conflicting wants, has annihi- lated the conditions requisite to his willing what is unholy ; and as he cannot be unholy except by his own voluntary act, he has then no power to be imholy. This is, perhaps, a condition to which a finite moral being may forever approximate but never actually reach, never attain that condition in which it is absolutely unable to wLU what is impure and ignoble. But by these creative efforts fresh elements of moral character have been produced, which by the assimilating and solidifying forces of habit may become permanent accretions to the moral nature, a second nature, not less secure against the ordi- nary vicissitudes and temptations of life than the innate or earlier acquired principles or modes of action. Through the linowledge of the means of giving to some of our internal wants a predominance over others, we are enabled by effort to influence our moral characteristics at their very source. Even under circumstances least favorable to the recognition of our spiritual condition, amid the MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 79 engrossments of sense, the excitements of passion, or the turmoil of absorbing business, external events will often suggest our moral wants, while in calm and thoughtful moments they present themselves as spontaneously as thirst in a sum- mer's day. § 21. HaAring now shown that we can cultivate our wants, and give one or the other of conflicting wants the ascendency, and promote one to the at least partial exclusion of others ; that the knowl- edge of each individual as to what is morally right for him is infallible ; that the mind can form an ideal construction or preconception within itself without reference to any external existence ; that it can freely make efforts to realize such con- struction ; and that nothing beyond the effort has any influence upon the moral quality of the effort, or of the agent making it, we may more confi- dently than before deduce the conclusion, that the mind in the sphere of its own moral nature, applying an infallible knowledge which it pos- sesses to material purely its own, may conceive an ideal moral creation, and then realize this ideal in an actual creation by and in its own act of will ; and hence, when willing in the sphere of his own moral nature, man is not only a creative first cause, but a supreme creative first cause ; and, 80 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. as his moral nature can be affected only by his own act of will, and no other power can wiU, or produce his own act of will, he is also, in the sphere of Ms moral nature, a sole creative first cause, though still a finite cause. Other intelligences may aid him by imparting knowledge ; may by word or action instruct him in the architecture ; but the application of this knowledge, the actual building, must be by himself alone. Though finite, his efficiency as cause, in this sphere, is lim- ited only by that limit of all creative power, the incompatible, or contradictory ; and by his con- ceptions of change in his moral nature, which are dependent upon the extent of his knowledge ; and, in this view, the will itself having no bounds of its own, may be regarded as infinite, though the range for its action is finite ; or, in other words, within the sphere of its moral nature, the finite mind can will any possible change of which it can conceive, or of which it can form a preconcep- tion ; and as the willing it is the consummation of this preconception, there is no change in our moral being, which we can conceive of, that we have not the ability to consummate by effort; and as, so far as we know, our power to conceive of new progress — to form new conceptions of change — enlarges with every consummation of MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 81 a previous conception, there is no reason to sup- pose that there is any absdlute limit to our moral sphere of effort ; but that it is only relatively and temporarily circumscribed by our finite percep- tions, which, having a finite rate of increase, may forever continue to expand in it without pressing on its outermost bound ; and, if all these positions are true, every intelligent moral being capable of conceiving of higher ethical conditions than he has yet attained, has in his own moral nature, for the exercise of his creative powers, an infinite sphere, within which, with knowledge there infallible, he is the supreme disposer ; and in which, without his free wiU, nothing is made, but all the creations in it are as singly and solely his as if no other power or cause existed ; and for which he is, of course, as singly and solely responsible as God is for the creations in that sphere in which he manifests his creative power, though, as a finite created being, man, even in this his own allotted realm, may still be properly accountable for the use of his creative powers to him who gave them. § 22. The gratification of some of our physical wants being essential to our present existence, they are most imperative and have precedence, but they are in their nature limited and tempo- rary, and, when gratified, cease to demand our 6 82 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. effort. In this their function seems to be to train the mind to habits of persevering effort, and thus fit it for the exercise of its powers in the gratification of the nobler wants of its moral being. In contrast with our physical, our spiritual wants are boundless and insatiable. In oux want for progress — for something better than we have yet attained — our activity finds an illimitable sphere, and in our want for activity, exhaustless sources of gratification. § 23. The examination of past experience and of supposed cases may in some sort be performed in the prosaic faode of verbal representation or logical reasoning ; but, from the time required, it is impossible that this method should be generally resorted to, and when it is, though it may establish gieneral principles, it is less moving and has a less direct influence on the conduct than those scenic representations which are so faithfully acted upon the secluded theatre within us. Ideality is in this^ respect the nearest approach to reality. § 24. There is peculiar consolation and encour- agement in the fact that mind possesses in these ideal processes an inherent power of modifying material and other extrinsic influences ; that it has an incentive which is as potent in our spir- itual nature as sensation is in our physical. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 83 Fortunately, too, the occasions of life which have a tendency to warp the disposition, though frequent, are transient, have their intervals, and in some degree neutralize each other. The ideal conceptions may always be brought to mind, and if we habitually encourage the presence of those only which are pure and elevated, we shall as a consequence become more and more refined and ennobled. Without this countervailing element our moral nature would seem to be largely the sport of chance, liable to be driven from its proper course by every current of feeling and every storm of passion. Character would then chiefly depend on accidental extrinsic circumstances. These ideal processes early give a pleasurable exercise to the mind, and, like other sports of youth, are a preparation for sterner work, when from the inflexible material of permanent princi- ples we woidd construct an enduring moral char- acter. We enact these scenic representations as an alluring gratification, and naturally find pleas- ure in perfecting our ideal creations. Our first creative efforts are probably in the ma- terial. The child early forms ideal constructions, and seeks with clay or blocks to give them a tangible objective existence. It thus makes its 84 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. first essays in creative effort. Its efforts, however, are early transferred to the spiritual, and ideas" of moral heauty and grandeur, and of glory, honor, and renown, as the results of lofty character and noble action, find place in the young imagina- tion, and furnish the materials and the incentive to such ideal constructions. These may be eva- nescent, but in vanishing they will stUl leave visions of grace, beauty, and purity. We are thus at an early period of life intro- duced into the domain of constructive moral effort, and the quickening influence which the soul receives in this direction, when the first rev- elations of unselfish and romantic passion fill it with ideals of loveliness, grace, and elevation, and inspire it with pure and lofty sentiment and ener- getic virtue, attests the beneficent provision for our early moral culture. But these benign endowments, so potent for good, are liable to be perverted to evil. We have alluded to our physical wants as the more impera- tive, but as temporary, leaving us much interven- ing time to attend to the spiritual. The influence of these temporal wants is, however, made less in- constant by the secondary want of acquisition • the want to provide in advance the means of grat- ifying the primary wants when they recur. To MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 85 this acquisitiveness, even when gratification of the physical wants is its sole object, there seems to be no limit, and this may permanently become the habitual object of effort to the exclusion of the spiritual. To restrain the influence of the processes of ideality within such narrow limits is unnatural. By doing so the individual voluntarily foregoes the pleasures which arise from the generous emotions, cuts off their connection with the springs of ac- tion, and substitutes narrow prudential calcula^ tions, low cunning, and artifice, which cramp and degrade the moral nature, and exclude its finer feeling and nobler aspirations. The power which through ideality we exert over our moral nature, though less nobly exhibited, is as strongly attested in its degrading as in its ele- vating influences ; in the aggravation of selfish- ness, for instance, no less than in the development of the generous virtues. In the latter case, it seems to advance freely, allured by the delights which attend its progress. In the former it is forced back against the current of its affections and the repulsion of conscious self-debasement. It seems strange that a labor thus painful in its performance and baneful in its results should ever be accomplished. It is probably in most 86 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. cases hastily done, in view of some immediate gratification, without considering its permanent pernicious influence, and finally effected and con- firmed by magnifying the advantages of selfish- ness, or the sacrifices of immediate personal inter- ests, which a yielding to generous impulses may have occasioned. The avaricious miser looks upon a liberal man as one too weak to subdue the liberal impidses or resist the pleasure of yielding to them. He knows the pain and labor which his own prudence has cost him, and congratulates himself on his exemption from such benevolent frailties. § 25. The elevating influences of ideality are needed to counteract the tendencies of a social system based largely on selfishness, and to neu- tralize the utilitarian, materialistic, comfort-seek- ing proclivities of this mechanical and commer- cial age. But ideal constructions have been discouraged and repressed as a waste of time, stigmatized as mere spray, or vapors, idle imaginings leading to groundless hopes and illusive views of life. Re- lieving these processes from obstruction and per- version, and leaving them to their natural course in forming the moral character, would be a very important gain on present conditions. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 87 And this might be affirmatively supplemented by systematic education in this mode of moral cul- ture, making the ideal constructions a subject of study, as an artist now studies his models and pencil sketches with a view to their reproduction in more perfect and permanent forms. There is at once confirmation of our theory and encouragement as to its practical application in the fact that woman, to whose guiding care the infant intelligence is naturally confided, is by her special endowment of poetic modes of thought and expression so fully equipped for this important work. I deem it but a reasonable anticipation that whenever this means of moral culture shaU begin to be appreciated, and even moderately developed, the effects upon the advancement, upon the eleva- tion and happiness, of mankind will be such as not only to relieve metaphysics from the reproach of being unfruitful, but to show that as it em- braces the largest and grandest realm of human thought, it is productive of the most important and elevated utility, a utility far transcending all that has been realized in the domain of the ma- terial. When philosophy shall have fairly entered upon this higher sphere of mental effort for men- 88 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. tal progress, it may again disdain its application to any less elevated or less elevating pursuit. But stiU, when from their celestial heights its votaries look down upon the enduring and beneficent achievement of their predecessors, upon the solid foundation in physical science upon which they are themselves building their more ethereal super- structure, we may trust that they wiU at least concede to them the merit of having faithfully, intelligently, and vigorously performed their part in the more humble sphere of physical research, and will accord something even of grandeur and of glory to an age which from the chaotic sense perceptions evolved a material universe of order and beauty, and, taming the wild forces of nature, made them subservient to the enjoyment and progress of man ; enabling him without excessive labor to make that ample provision for his phys- ical comforts which was, perhaps, a prerequisite condition to effort for a higher spiritual culture. § 26. In metaphysics the progress from abstract speculation to practical utility has not differed from that of the other sciences. All appear to have been at first pursued from a natural love of truth, an inherent curiosity stimulated by oppos- ing mysteries without reference to ulterior benefit. Is this pursuit but the manifestation in us of an MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 89 instinct nobler ui its nature and ministering to higher purposes than those which are essential to our physical existence ? Or may not it and the love of approbation and the desire for fame be properly regarded as blind appetites of an ele- vated character ? The Greek geometricians when patiently inves- tigating the conic sections had no thought of the use which a Newton would make of their discover- ies, and when Huyghens discovered the polarity of light he had no idea that the sugar refiner would eventually use it to test the value, for his purpose, of a cargo of molasses. So, too, metaphysics has been wrought upon for ages for no other reason than that it furnished a pleasurable and invigorating exercise to the intel- lect, a utility no higher or more direct than might be derived from whist or chess. § 27. It win be observed, too, that the solutions of the three problems which, with a very dim vision of their consequences, I have investigated, and to which I have in this paper invited atten- tion, were, if not essential prerequisites, very im- portant aids in reaching the particular practical utility I have herein suggested. The first of these was the analysis of the funda- mental distinction between poetry and prose, and 90 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. the finding tliat tliis distinction is the same as that between the two cardinal modes by which we seek for truth. The second was our investigation as to man's freedom in willing and the fixing his status as an independent creative power in the universe; the exercise of these powers in the external being very limited and liable to be frustrated by other independent powers, while in the sphere of his own internal being he is supreme, and can there at will consummate his ideal constructions and make them palpable and persistent while he so wiUs. The third was the inquiry as to the difference between instinctive and rational actions, and in this incidentally determining the nature and func- tions of hahit by which these subjective construc- tions may be made permanent formations of the moral character and incorporated into our being as a second nature. The first was essential to the discovery and comprehension of the creative powers which in- here in the poetic element, and to the apprecia- tion of its capabilities in its especially appropriate realm of the spiritual, and its important agency in there forming and elevating the moral char- acter. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 91 The second presents the proof of man's free agency, without which, if he could be said to have a moral nature, he could have no agency in its formation or improvement, and no responsibility for its character. If he could be said to have any virtue, he could have no means or opportunity to manifest it in action. There could be no exhibi- tion of it in beneficent action touching himself or others, and he could not use his creative powers for self-improvement or for any other purpose. And third, without the agency of habit, our ac- quisitions in moral action would all be evanescent, and there could no more be progress in moral character than there could be in knowledge with- out memory. But by this conservative function of habit all of these acquisitions which we sanc- tion by repetition in action, or by harboring in thought, are incorporated into and become perma- nent accretions to our moral character, and veri- table exponents of it. That our own action is thus required in the formation of habits brings them in their incipiency within our own control ; but from the greater ease with which we perform actions for which we have the plan ready formed, it requires energy and vigilance to prevent fall- ing into habits which our judgment does not ap- prove. To eradicate them at a later period re- quires much more labor and increased vigUance. 92 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. § 28. We have now endeavored to show that the only efficient cause of which we have any- real knowledge is mind in action, and that there cannot be any unintelligent cause whatever. That every being endowed with knowledge, feel- ing, and volition is, in virtue of these attributes, a self active independent power, and in a sphere Ti'hifill T) commensurate with its knowledge a cre- ative first cause thaitia, freely exerting its powers to modify the future and make it different from what it otherwise would be ; and that the future is always the composite result of the action of all such intelligent creative beings. That in this process of creating the future every such conative being, from the highest to the lowest, acts with equal ani perfect freedom, though each one, by its powe^to change the con- ditions to be acted upon, or rather, by such change of the conditions, or otherwise, to change the knowledge of all others, may influence the free action of any or aU of them, and thus cause such free action of others to be different from what but for his own action it would have been. That every such being has innately the ability to win, i. e., make effort, which is seK-acting ; and also the knowledge that by effort it can put in action the powers by which it produces changes within or without itself. MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 93 That the only conceivable inducement or mo- tive of such being to effort is a desire — a want — to modify the future for the gratification of which it directs its effort, by means of its knowl- edge. That when such being so directs its effort by means of its innate knowlege, it is what is called an instinctive effort, but is still a self-directed, and consequently ajree, effort. That when the mode or plan of action is de- vised by itself, by its own preliminary effort, it is a rational action. That when, instead of devising a plan for the occasion, we through memory adopt one which we have previously formed, we have the distinguish- ing characteristic of habitual action. In the instinctive and habitual we act promptly from a plan ready formed in the mind, requiring no premeditation as to the mode or plan of ac- tion. But in all cases our effort is incited by our want, and directed by means of our knowledge, to the desired end, which, whatever the particular exciting want, is always (|of Tn^me wayj^affect the future. In our efforts to do this in the sphere external to us, which is the common arena of all intelligent activity, we are liable to be more or 94 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. less counteracted or frustrated by the efforts of others. In it man is a co-worker with God and with all other conative beiags, and in it can influ- ence the actual flow of events only in a degree somewhat proportioned to his limited power and knowledge. But that in the sphere of man's own moral na^ ture the effort is itself the consummation of his creative conceptions, and hence in this sphere man is a 'supreme creative first cause, limited in the effects he may then produce only by that limit of his knowledge by which his creative pre- conceptions are circumscribed. And further, that as a man directs his act by means of his knowledge, and can morally err only by knowingly willing what is wrong, his knowl- edge as to this is infallible, and as his willing is his own free act, an act which no other being or power can do for him, he is in the sphere of his moral nature a sole creative cause solely responsi- ble for his action in it. His only possible moral wrong is in his freely willing counter to his knowledge of right. He must have known the wrong at the time he willed or it would not be a moral wrong. Hence the knowledge by which he directs his acts of wiU is here as infallible as that of omniscience, and his MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 95 power to will within the limits of his knowledge being unlimited, he cannot excuse himself on the ground of his own fallible nature, but is fully and solely responsible for all the wrong he in- tended, or which he foresaw and might by right action have prevented. Conversely, a rightful action indicates no virtue beyond the knowledge and intent of the actor. The failure to make an effort demanded by the convictions of right is in itself a wrong. That in the domain of his own moral nature man is thus supreme indicates it as his especial sphere of activity. Ages of success- ful effort in the material has been the preparation for its successful occupation, and we may reason- ably expect that the advance into the more ethe- real realm of the spiritual will be marked by the sublimest efforts of pure and lofty thought, and that the results in it wiU be the crowning glory of all utility. § 29. In favor of these conclusions and against the doctrines of necessity and of sole material cau- sation, I would here suggest an additional argu- ment from final causes. I cannot demonstrate, but I have a confiding faith that all progress in truth will increase the happiness and conduce to the elevation of man, and also in the converse of this, that whatever 96 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. tends to diminisli our happiness and degrade our position will be found to be erroneous. It is clear that, by adopting the materialistic views, we should be deprived of all the dignity of conscious power, and with it of all the cheering and elevating influences of the performance of duty, for that which has no power can have no duties. Instead of a companionship with a superior intel- ligence, communicating his thoughts to us In the grandeur and beauty of the material universe, — the poetic imagery, the poetic language, of which it is the pure and perfect type, — and in his yet higher and more immediate manifestations in the soul, we should be doomed to an inglorious fellow- ship with insensate matter, and subjected to its blind forces. That sublime power, that gran- deur of effort, by which the gifted logician, with resistless demonstration, permeates and subdues realms which it tasks the imagination to traverse, and that yet more God-like power by which the poet commands light to be, and light breaks through chaos upon his beautiful creations, would no more awaken our admiration or incite us to lofty effort. We should be degraded from the high and responsible position of independent powers in the universe, co-workers with God in creating the future, to a condition of mere ma- MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 97 chines and instnunents operated by " stimuli " and " molecules ; " and though still with knowledge and sensibility to know and feel our degraded position, — " so abject, yet alive " — with no power to ap- ply our knowledge in efEort to extricate and to elevate ourselves. We might still have the knowl- edge of good and evil ; but ha\lng no power to foster the one, or to resist the other, this knowl- edge, with all its inestimable consequences, all the aspirations which it awakens, and all the incen- tives to noble deeds which it in combination with effort alone makes possible, would be lost. And this dreary debasement would be unrelieved by that last hope which now mitigates our worst de- spair, — the hope that death wiU bring relief. For all mutation now being but changes in the indestructible atoms of matter, by means of its motion which is also indestructible and eternal, there would be little left to die, as there would again be little left for which to live. For all this I see no compensation in the materialistic doc- trines now so predominant. § 30. We have observed that aU our efforts are incited by our wants, that in our physical nature there is an innate constitutional provision by which they recur without any agency of our own, and there seems to be good reason to believe that 7 98 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. tkrough a moral sense, or other constitutional pro- vision, the wants of our spiritual nature also re- cur without our bidding. And we can hardly fail to see a portion of this provision in our constantly recurring aspirations for something higher and better than we have yet attained ; and in all our aesthetic tastes, the delicate sensibilities of which are continually touched by the significant and suggestive beauty, harmony, and grandeur of God's visible creations, with their ever varying expression appealing directly to the soul in that poetic language of imagery and analogy which is comprehended by all, and exerts on all a persua- sive and elevating influence. We are thus con- tinually reminded of the wants and the capacities of our spiritual being, for no one capable of reflec- tion can look upon the exquisite models, the vast, the grand, the beautiful, the perfect, thus pre- sented to us, and not see that to all this there is a counterpart; that there is something which per- ceives and appreciates, as well as something which is perceived and appreciated; that within his own being there is an inchoate universe, to him as boundless, and which is his especial sphere of cre- ative action. Here is opened to his efforts an in- finity of space in which, as already shown, he is a supreme creative power, a sphere already canopied MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 99 with twinkling thoughts, dimly revealing the cha- otic elements requiring his efforts to reduce to order and cultivate into beauty, and making visi- ble a darkness which continually demands from him the fiat, " Let there he light." Constructing this universe within is the great object of exist- ence, the principal if not the sole end of life. Happy he who, faithfully working in the seclu- sion of this his own allotted space, so constructs this internal universe, that when from the genetic void it breaks upon the gaze of superior intelli- gences, all the sons of God will shout for joy, and the great Architect shall himself pronounce it GOOD. NOTES. Note. I. The phrase "First Cause" is used not in relation to time, but to indicate an independent, originating cause. Note II. I have elsewhere defined cause to be " that which pro- duces change." Cause always implies the exercise of power, with which it is often very nearly identical. When this exercise of power is wholly insufficient and produces no effect, it will perhaps be most convenient not to regard it as cause, and it is excluded by the definition, " that which produces change." But when one power in action is directly counteracted by another, so that neither produces any change, but only prevents the change which the other alone would produce, each of the powers is still effective, and perhaps should be regarded as cause, — the cause of things remaining un- changed, — and a better definition of cause may be, that which makes the future different from what it otherwise would he. "" Note III. I have argued, from the admitted qualities and properties of mind and matter, that mind — intelligence — in action is the only real cause, and especially that this alone can begin change. That in virtue of its distinguishing charac- teristics of feeling, knowledge, and volition, it is within itself a self-acting cause, capable of acting without being first acted upon, and being thus endowed at its birth, its earliest 102 NOTES. actions — the instinctive — are, like all its subsequent ones, voluntary efforts suggested by its feelings and directed by its knowledge to the change desired. That the knowledge essential to such direction of the efEort is innate, or exists from the moment of birth, is a legitimate inference, because the most simple that the observed facts admit of, and at the same time most in harmony with all our subsequent ob- servation and experience. These genetic instinctive actions are thus found to be subject to the same conditions as our subsequent rational actions, all being voluntary actions, suggested by feeling and directed by knowledge to the end wanted. The advocates of materialistic causation in the outset, as might have been anticipated, encounter serious difficulty as to the genesis of action or change. For the inaugura^ tion of change, a self-active power, or cause, is essential. We do not differ materially as to the problem presented for solution. Bain, one of the most able and thorough ex- pounders of the materialistic doctrine says, "the link be- tween action and feeling for the end of promoting the pleas- ure of exercise is the precise link that must exist from the commencement ; the pleasure results from the movement, and responds by sustaining and increasing it. The delight thus feeds itself." ^ Passing over some of the many assumptions of this statement, I would inquire how began, or whence came, this " commencement " of this " mx)vement" from which re- sults the pleasure of exercise which responds by sustaining and increasing it, and thus feeds itself f In the same paragraph, in connection with such muscular exercise, he speaks of " spon- taneous movements being commenced," and after it says, " We must suppose the rise of an accidental movement," and again of " the random tentatives arising through sponta^ neity." From all this the legitimate inference seems to be that he regards these movements as commencing without any cause or reason whatever. The materialistic theory could reach no further than this, and here stops far short of 1 The Emotions and the Will. Will, chap. ii. p. 315. NOTES. 103 the geneTalization by which I have identified these genetic instinctive movements with our subsequent voluntary, ra- tional actions, with no generic difference in the actions themselves, which are only distinguished by the different manner in which we become possessed of the knowledge by means of which we direct our efforts to produce such movements. The advocates of material causation rely much upon physiology to support their views, and think they find em- pirical confirmation of them in the phenomena of the nervous system — its material structure of brain, spinal column, ganglions and nerve centres, with its connecting and permeating nerve fibres, with nerve currents, similar to the electric, flowing through them. This is a very inter- esting and a very useful branch of physiological research, but I fail to see its bearing upon the question as to what is the efficient cause, and what its nature and properties. Suppose a man is looking at the machinery in a mill, the propelling power of which is, as is common, in a separate room. The observer, in tracing the source of motion, finds first the main shaft or axis coming through the division wall which limits his sight, and upon it a very large main or driving wheel, or pulley. This main shaft, extending through a large portion of the room, and having upon it other lesser pulleys, f rom^ which other motion is communi- cated by belts to other shafts on either side, and from these, and in some cases directly from the main shaft, the motion is communicated by smaller belts to the various machines, and in some of these by small cords to each portion of them. In this arrangement, with its large driving wheel at the head of the main shaft with other pulleys on the same, with the belts leading from them and putting other shafts on each side in motion, and the smaller belts and cords giving motion to each separate machine, and finally, in some, to each minute individual part — each particular spindle — we have an apparatus very analogous to that of the brain, spinal axis, ganglia, or nervous centres, and 104 NOTES. connecting and permeating fibres of the nervous system ; but no one, by any examination of the phenomena, would, in this application and distribution of the power to the ma- chinery, learn anything as to the nature or kind of power in the adjoining room. He could only learn what it could do. He could not even teU whether it was a steam-engine, or a water-wheel. In view of the results of physical science its votaries would not hesitate to assert that, be it what it may, the solar heat is one of the intermediate agencies of its efficacy, and, if my views are correct, it is at least equally certain that in regard to both the mill and the nervous system the genesis of the power is intelligence in action. Many of Bain's statements as to the spinal axis, the ganglia, the nerves with their nerve currents and counter currents passing to and fro in the transmission and distri- bution of power, would require very little change in the phraseology to make them pertinent to the shafts, pulleys, and belts which constitute the motor apparatus of the null. He says, " When the mind is in exercise of its functions, the physical accompaniment is the passing and repassing of innumerable streams of nervous influence," and as an inference from this, says, " It seems as if we might say, no currents, no mind." ^ So, too, when the steam-engine, or other motive power, of the mill is performing its functions, there is a constant passing and repassing of the belts through which its power or influence is distributed and communicated to the ma- chinery ; but the logical inference in both cases seems to be, not that in the absence of these movements there would be no power or cause, but simply that when there is no action of the power or cause there is no effect. If the apparatus ceased to move, we could not thence conclude that the unseen power had ceased to exist. It might be merely detached, and with undiminished vigor still be performing its functions, and even with its activity increased, by being rid of the attach- ments which had encumbered and retarded it. 1 The Senses and the Intellect, 2d edition, § 25, p. 66. NOTES. 105 The conclusion of Bain assumes that the "passing and repassing" — the movement — is itself the genetic cause to which there is no antecedent cause. He thus consistently puts it in the same category with those " accidental move- ments" and "random tentatives" of which he has before spoken. Note IV. If we call the knowledge by which we direct our instinct- ive actions innate, and all that we subsequently acquire with- out effort intuitive, the only application of the term instinct- ive will be to actions ; or to ideas, or knowledge horn in us, after our own birth, without our agency. Of this there are some indications in our subsequent experience. Note V. In my father's house we had a large black Newfound- land dog, named Gelert, with which my youngest sister and two other Kttle girls had much amusement. They had a little carriage in which they harnessed him, he seeming to take a lively interest in all their sports, and a full share of the enjoyment. He was a favorite of all our large house- hold. At one time, by his absence at night, he subjected himself to suspicion, and it was resolved to restrain his nocturnal wanderings, but for several successive evenings thereafter he succeeded, by watching his opportunity, in slipping out as some one entered the back door. In- creased vigUanoe at last prevented this, and after all the household were in, Gelert found a bone, he had himself probably left in an outer room, which he took into the kitchen and there began to gnaw it. The cook did not usually permit this, but on this occasion refrained from driving him out, and he, against all law and precedent, with the bone in his mouth, made his way into the parlor, and there went round holding it up to each person in turn. Gelert had evidently devised a plan similar to that which Walter Scott, in his " Quentiu Durward," ascribes to the Bohemian Hayraddin, who by persistent indecorous conduct contrived to get himself turned out of the convent of Namur. ■ O 106 NOTES. My sisters had a vigorous and very intelligent horse that they drove for many years. He was much petted and al- lowed, in their rambles, to largely exercise his own discre- tion. If he saw one of his favorite thistles by the road-side he would turn . aside to crop it. He was usually very dis- creet, but after he got into his dotage and was retired from service on his rations, he became somewhat coltish and mis- chievous. In good weather he was generally at large, and on several occasions tried to entice the factory team to run away, by going near them as they stood in harness and turning and running in a frolicsome way in front of them. In this he was not wholly unsuccessful. He would untie his halter. I do not think he compre- hended the intricacies of the knot, but that he dealt with it as a man does with a tangled skein, the convolutions of which he cannot trace; i. e., he shook it, and pulled at it in divers ways, till he found a part that would yield and draw out. Tom would thus often get out of the stable, and when some one attempted to catch him, he would playfully let him get near and then spring away and repeat the opera^ tion. On one occasion he was near being caught, in conse- quence of treading on his loose halter, but he presently seized the farther end of it in his teeth, threw up his head with a triumphant air, and trotted off. I had a horse (Charlie) of the Morgan breed, which is noted for intelligence. I very frequently drove him to one of ray mills, about twelve miles from my home, generally going over a long and very steep hill, but sometimes going around it. On one occasion, I had, as was my custom, got out of the carriage at the foot of the hill to walk up it, but lingered behind to pluck some wild grapes. Charlie had got some distance ahead, when he came to the fork where the road around the liill diverged. I saw he hesitated a moment, and then with a very decided step took the road around. I called out Charlie, and he immediately turned and went through the intervening bushes to the direct road, though in doing so, he had now to go up a very steep ascent. NOTES. 107 with no path, and up -which he had never before been. He not only rationally interpreted my calling to him, but cor- rectly estimated the relative positions of the two roads, and the mode of getting from one to the other, in which he had no experience, and neither this nor the siguifloance of my calling are in the province of instinct. On another occasion, in driving Charlie, I took an apple from my pocket, bit it, and not finding it to my taste, east it aside. Just then Charlie came to a hUl, slackened his pace and stopped, as he often did, to see if I would get out and walk up it. The ascent was so gradual that I deemed his suggestion unreasonable, and said " Go on, Charlie," when he turned his face toward me, and made such an un- mistakable movement of his lips, that I got out and went back a few steps to get the apple for him. My youngest brother, Joseph, had a short-haired New- foundland dog, named Argus, which he trained with care, and it became an excellent retriever. I sometimes got him to take the bridle in his mouth and lead a saddle-horse from the mill to my father's house, nearly a mile distant. In the course of his training, my brother, walking by a brook, directed the dog to bring a speckled turtle that he saw in the grass. This was so repulsive that my brother was obliged to place it in the dog's mouth, but he soon dropped it, and this process was repeated with similar re- sult, until Argus swam across the stream and dropped the turtle on the other side, out of my brother's reach. On one occasion my brother dropped his knife in a large pasture, and after walking on about a quarter of a mile, sent Argus back to find it. He soon returned, but brought nothing, and was again sent back with the same result. In a third effort he was gone a long time; but at last returning in high glee, my brother felt sure he had been successful, and was much surprised when the dog laid a mass of earth at his feet, in which was a cigar stump my brother had cast aside on the way. The dog had enveloped the cigar stump with earth, and so protected brought it in his mouth. 108 NOTES. In these cases, and especially in the cases of Gelert with his bone, and of Argus with the tobacco, there was a marked devising of a plan of action adapted to new condi- tions, to meet new exigencies, and this, if my analysis is correct, is the especial characteristic of rational, as distin- guished from instinctive, action. I have spoken of the impossibility of our learning to move our muscles by effort; and actions which we readily perform instinctively might bother or puzzle' us to do by the logical or ideal processes. A fast trotting horse, if he attempted to move his four feet by premeditation of the successive movements of them, would probably move very slowly and only walk, or be con- fused and stumble. The difficulty would increase with the number of feet. " The centipede was happy quite, Until a toad, in fun, Said, pray which leg mast follow which? That work'd her mind to such a pitch, She lay distracted in a ditch, Consid'ring how to run.' ' Most men, I think, if they attempted to make some of' the muscular movements, e. g., of the eye, by rational inves- tigation of the mode, would find themselves in a similar predicament. The same thing occurs in regard to our habitual actions, and especially as to those for which we have acquired the mode by mere memory, without the aid of the reasoning faculties. We can, e. g., often write a word off hand cor- rectly, when, if we deliberate, we are bothered, and some other way of spelling it seems just as reasonable and as Ukely to be right. Note VI. There are cases in which, knowing the circumstances, we may be morally certain what a man's volition will be. A starving man will eat if he can. A man wiU try to escape NOTES. 109 from a burning house in which he is about to be enveloped in the flames. It is said that horses will not do this, hut, when in danger of being burned, persistently resist being taken from their stalls, and will even run back to them af- ter having been gotten out of danger. An incident of my childhood may illustrate this action of the horse, which cannot be classed with the instinctive. Before I was five years old I had crossed the street from my father's house with a cousin, a little girl of my own age, and seeing a horse and carriage coming very rapidly to- wards us, I impulsively ran back towards our house, and called to my cousin to do so. The result was that I got over safely, but my cousin was knocked down by the horse, and that she escaped instant death and without even serious injury, was deemed miraculous. The incident made a deep impression upon me, and I have always remembered, that I thus acted because I thought we would be safe only on the side of the street on which we Kved. On former similar occasions, I had found that I was there in no danger, but had no experience as to the other side. The horse, prob- ably by association, feels safest in his stall. Note VII. That in a strictly logical process we do not always per- ceive a result in advance of the expression for it, is illus- trated by an incident of my boyhood, and which, at the time (Spring of 1819), I had no idea had any metaphysical sig- nificance. I knew that the top of a carriage wheel moved faster than the bottom, and it occurred to me to ascertain the ratio. My thoughts almost immediately took this form. Suppose the carriage is going at the rate of ten mUes per hour, then the velocity of the periphery of the wheel round its axis is ten mUes per hour, and the bottom point, moving in the direction of the tangent, is (by this motion round its axis) moving backward at the rate of ten miles an hour, while at same time, by the moving of the whole carriage, it is carried forward ten nules per hour. Here are two mo- 110 NOTES. tions equal and opposite, and of course there is no motion at all. I was astonished. There was obviously no mistake in the reasoning, and yet the result seemed as obviously false. My confidence in such reasoning was not less than in the stability of the law of gravitation, and if I had seen the rocks about me suddenly move upward, I could not have been more confounded. The relations among the terms had forced me to a conclusion, which I not only had not perceived in advance, but did not believe when I reached it. A Uttle further investigation, however, satisfied me that the conclusion was correct, and enabled me to prove and illustrate it in various ways. I have had much amuse- ment in discussing this problem, having very generally found other persons as much astonished at the result as I had been. It is a curious fact that people equally confident that the bottom point does move, difEer as to whether it moves back- ward or forward. One evening an acquaintance of mine, then recently converted, got into a warm discussion with some passengers in a Southwestern steamer. They all as- serted that the bottom point did move, and some of them, in terms more forcible than urbane, expressed the opinion that only a fool would think it did not. I was veithin hearing, and being called upon by my friend went to his aid, and said to his excited opponents, " You say the bottom does move ? " They promptly answered yes, but some of them added, " or how could it go round on the axle ? " while others said, " or how could it keep up with the carriage ? " This indicated diversity in their views. I then said, " Pray tell me which way it moves, backward or forward ? " This di- vided them into two very nearly equal parties, each finally insisting that the others were bigger fools than those who said it did not move at all. My friend and myself soon left them, but the next morning we found some of them stiU wrangling, and that they had several times during the night examined some of the wheels of the engine, the movement of wliich, each party claimed, practically sustained their po- NOTES. Ill sition. Though not germane to the present inquiry, I -will add that the simple fact is, that the whoh wheel is revolv- ing about its bottom point as a centre. The velocity of each point and its direction are easily ascertained. The centre or axis of the wheel, of course, goes forward just as fast as the carriage; the bottom not moving at all, the top of the wheel moves just twice as fast as the carriage. Every point in the ascending side of the periphery moves directly towards what at the instant is the top of the wheel, and every point on the descending side directly from it. The first tendency to motion of the bottom point is directly up, i. e., its direction at its start from the bottom point is perpendicular ; though like every other point its velocity and direction are not the same for any time, still the first infinitesimal motion of the bottom point is inflmtesimally near to the perpendicular. Note VIII. The important function of language as the instnmient of logic indicates the importance of a thorough knowledge and mastery of all its resources to enable one nicely to dis- criminate and adapt it as nearly as possible to the finer dis- tinctions and shades of thought which exist in the primitive perceptions of things and ideas, and the delicately varied relations among them, for which, in the logical processes, verbal symbols are substituted. This consideration gives additional significance to the much mooted question as to the value of linguistic studies, and contributes an additional argument in their favor. In regard to a composite language, formed as ours has been, it seems obvious that without a liberal acquaintance with those languages from wliich it has been largely derived and in which it has its roots, the knowledge of our own tongue must be very imperfect. Such acquaintance with the sources of our language must have its advantages not only in the all- important respects of greater accuracy in the meaning of the terms, and nicer precision, discrimination, and clearness 112 NOTES. in their use, upon which the soundness of our lo^cal con- clusions is so dependent, but also in the greater facility and celerity in the mental processes by the aid thus afforded to the memory, the knowledge of a single root or trunk im- mediately suggesting the numerous branches which spring from it. The want of such knowledge is perhaps even more felt in stating the results of the logical processes than in their acquisition. In thinking, if at a loss for the proper word, we can for the moment use the mental perception instead ; and if in writing we adopted the analogous plan, we should insert a picture of the thing instead of the name of it, as is often done in children's books. The writer is unable to supplement these a priori conclu- sions with any affirmative experience, and can only say that in using language as an instrument of thought, or for ex- pressing its results, he has felt that he was under disadvan- tages both as to precision and facility which a fuller knowl- edge of languages, and especially of their genetic elements, would have obviated. I have spoken of the resolution of algebraic equations as furnishing the purest type of verbal reasoning. For these a special language has been devised, so flexible that it can be readily and accurately fitted to each particular case. But the relative advantages of different systems of language, or of other symbols for ideas, is more conspicuous in the greater ease with which we deal even with simple arithmetical problems by means of the Arabic system of notation as compared with the Boman. More extended and intricate calculations, easily accomplished with the former, seem almost impracticable with the latter. Those who insist most strongly on the supremacy of the logical processes seem most prone to question the utility of the linguistic studies wliich, in the views I have presented, appear to be most important aids to these same processes.