DEDUCTION TO DEITY.

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as an effect, we are compelled, by the necessary laws of thought, to recognize also intelligence. I do not refer here to the character of the effect, but simply to the fact that the world is an effect. I shall show, hereafter, that the composition of the cosmical effect reveals an infinite realm of intentionality, and explains why the human mind, in all ages, has felt forced to recognize the existence of Supreme Intelligence as the correlative of the world. The steps by which the universal reason has ascended from the phenomena of nature to the creative efficiency have been seldom noted. The common mind, which is as richly furnished with intuitive judgments as the cultivated mind, seems to reach supreme causation by a leap. I have already expressed my belief in a direct intuition of Deity; but here is another path by which the common mind, as well as the philosophic mind, ascends to the very presence of the light which had been seen shining from without into the chambers of the soul. Intuition of Deity is the diffused light. Deduction to Deity is the discovery of the certain path to a bettercomprehended existence. But yet this path is so short, the steps are so easily and so dexterously taken, that the common reason seems, even here, to leap, by one intuition, to God. Philosophy, instead of discovering and pointing out this way to God, plods and flounders in the very attempt to travel where common sense skips along with more than the agility of a kid. Philosophy has its use, however, in disclosing the fact that the path is a real one, on solid ground, and that the common mind, in rising habitually to God, is not winged by imagination to a bright cloud which floats merely in the air.

FINALLY, the consummation of the causal act implies the exertion of will. There must be an executive determination of conscious efficiency toward the contemplated effect which has awakened desire and purpose. All the other causative steps converge here. Will is the last condition of effect. Being the last condition, Will always implies Intelligence and Sensibility.

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WILL AS SOLE CAUSE.

"Will is the synthesis of Reason and Power."() In strict language, "intelligent will" is a tautological phrase.

Will is the only force in existence. Our earliest volitions disclose the transformations of will into efficiency. We have no revelation of any other source of efficiency. From will proceeds all intermediation; and back to will must be traced every thing which can be cognized as an effect. As the results of human volition are our earliest intimations of the nature of force, so back to will we return after the most discriminating analysis. Search the world through; consider the fall of an apple moved by terrestrial gravitation; the rush of the chemical atoms marshaled by their affinities; the quiver of the needle upon its pivot, struggling to maintain its fidelity to the pole; the reaction of the pent-up spring, actuating the mechanism of the watch; none of these energies find their explanation in themselves, nor in the matter which is moved by them. Think of the reaction of the spring as a phenomenon of inherent force, and you can not fail to inquire, “Where are the evidences of volition, of choice, of discernment, of desire, of purpose which the very act of original causation implies?" That energy is transmitted through the spring, and impinges upon an object, is apparent enough; but this still is but a sluice-way of force, and not a repository of force. Elasticity, magnetism, affinity-these are modes of intermediation by which cause reaches its ends. To this subject I intend to return.(3)

(1) Cocker, "Theistic Conception of the World," p. 197.

(2) "In the only case in which we are admitted into any personal knowledge of the origin of force, we find it connected (possibly by intermediate links untraceable by our faculties, but yet indisputably connected) with volition, and, by inevitable consequence, with motive, with intellect, and with all those attributes of mind in which—and not in the possession of arms, legs, brains, and viscera-personality consists" (Sir John Herschel, "Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects," Amer. ed., p. 462).

"We can not predicate of any physical agency that it is abstractedly the

CAUSATION IMPLIES PERSONALITY.

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Will, then, closes the circuit of causation. Will completes and implies the exercise of the three classes of psychic activities which characterize personality. Intellect, Sensibility, Will -these are the prime factors of a personal differentiation from the objective datum of causality. Once before we reached the principle of duality. Now we perceive that one term of the duality must be a personality. It is impossible to interpret truly an effect without discovering Intellect, Sensibility, and Will; and it is impossible to think of these except as the attributes of a personal existence.

The term personality, however, is unfortunate and misleading. It is weakly anthropomorphic. Adopted as the antithesis of monism and pantheism, its associations carry the mind. irresistibly into a narrow field of view. We must banish all thoughts of figure and locality; we must not think of motion, nor of body. Personality is not the alternative of divine immanence, as has been generally believed; but is compatible with the recognition of divine agency in all the phenomena of the natural world. This view, as we shall see, while it reproduces the simple theism of the primeval world, and those aweinspiring conceptions of nature which characterize our Jewish Scriptures, promises to be the ultimate, but not distant, conclusion of the most advanced science and philosophy.

cause of another; and if, for the sake of convenience, the language of secondary causation be permissible, it should be only with reference to the special phenomena referred ́to, as it can never be generalized” (Grove, "Correlation of Physical Forces," Youmans's ed., p. 15). "An essential cause is unattainable [in the study of phenomena]. Causation is the will, Creation the act, of God" (ib., p. 199). See, for numerous other citations, Cocker, "Theistic Conception of the World," p. 235-243; and the references already made in the present paper.

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THE DOCTRINE OF CAUSALITY-CONTINUED.

2. Causal Intermediation.

CAUSE is a word which I have used in a sense somewhat restricted. I have not admitted as real cause any agency supposed to be exerted, in the natural world, by what we call matter. The energy, however, which emerges from matter, and impinges upon matter, has generally been taken as the type of efficient causation. It has been assumed that energy may be pocketed in portions of matter, to be let loose on certain occasions, and produce effects. Not denying, for the moment, the possibility that matter may become the repository of force, it is impossible for me to conceive of matter as a fountain of force. A thing which is itself an effect must be an effect in all its parts and in all its attributes. All energy emanating from an effect must be itself an effect; and all results of its efficiency must be results of the first or original cause. we may attach the term cause to that form of matter which immediately precedes a given effect;(1) we may attach it to the energy which proceeds from that form; but it must be apparent that the word cause, thus employed, means a very different thing from that implied when we speak of the ultimate efficiency which can not be viewed as an effect. It is a common phraseology, in speaking of a succession of serially dependent

Now,

(1) This is all that is meant by "cause" in the generality of discussions. J. S. Mill expressly shuts out all consideration of "efficiency" in connection with causes, holding the attainment of knowledge respecting efficient causes to transcend the powers of the human mind ("Logic,” book ii., chap. v., §§ 2, 9).

PHYSICAL ANTECEDENTS NOT CAUSAL.

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events, to say that each is the effect of its predecessor, and, at the same time, the cause of its successor. To my mind, however, the difference of meaning between cause in this case and cause in the case of voluntary agency, is so great that different terms should be employed. The meanings are, indeed, antipodal. In the one case, we have intelligence and will; in the other, neither. In the one case, the energy is primitive; in the other, derivative. In the one case, the efficiency is self-moving; in the other, it is moved. In the one case we have that which is exclusively cause; in the other, that which is primarily effect.

The only escape from this antithesis is self-destruction. It is the admission that matter itself is sentient, cognitive, and voluntary. Heraclitus, it is true, conceived all matter to be animated; and Thales and other Hylozoists thought the world to be an immense animal. Leibnitz, also, conceived all existence to be composed of sentient monads. God, with him, is a monad; the soul is a monad; minerals are composed of monads. But Leibnitz is not a monist; there are spiritual monads as well as material; and between these all gradations of substance. But none of these philosophers clothed matter with absolute freedom of will. The Hylozoists recognized a supreme principle-be it water, or air, or fire, or chaos, or mind, as Anaxagoras suggested; and this principle introduced control, subordination, harmony, rhythm. The monads of Leibnitz, too, while capable of various degrees of thought, were controlled in their movements by mechanical laws; and the consonance between the psychical and bodily motions was effected only by a divine prearrangement or pre-established harmony. Thus the assumption of independent, originative volition in matter would be a new thing in philosophy-a theory sounding a dissonance with the tenor of human thought; and awaking in antagonism the historical instincts of humanity. Moreover, the investiture of matter with thinking and voluntary attributes would summon us to the funeral of God and the soul.