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 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL L 
 
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 —1
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 SEELEY W. MUDD 
 
 and 
 
 GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER 
 
 DR.JOHN R. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD 
 
 JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI 
 
 to the 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SOUTHERN BRANCH 
 
 JOHN FISKE
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 MH 1 8 f929
 
 , f 

 
 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST 
 CAUSE 
 
 €too SDi^cout^c^ 
 
 DELIVERED AT CONCORD, MASS., JULY, 1882 
 
 HY 
 
 ROWLAND G. HAZARD, LL. D. 
 
 AUTHOR OP "language AND OTHEIl PAPERS,'" "TOE ADAPTATION OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSE TO THE CULTIVATION OF THE MIND," "THE PHILOSOPHICAL 
 
 CHARACTER OF CHANNING,'" "FREEDOM OP MIND IN WaLING,'' 
 
 "LETTERS TO JOHN STUART MILL ON CAUSATION," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 New York : 1! East Seventeenth Street 
 
 1884 
 
 879&v>
 
 Copyright, 1883, 
 ROWLAND G. HAZARD 
 
 All riylds reserved. 
 
 I <■ "^ .' 
 
 
 
 r/je Riverside Press, Cambridge: 
 Electrotyped and Printed by II. 0. Houghton and Company.
 
 
 Y7 In printing a second edition of " Man a Creative First 
 
 Cause," the accompanying pages have been added to the 
 Notes at the end of the volume, and they are now sent to 
 those who have received the first edition, that they may 
 
 CL* insert them in their copies. A new title-page is also sup- 
 
 ^ plied, which can be substituted for that now in the volume. 
 
 r". The references to the additional notes are : Note A., p. 
 
 16, end of first paragraph; Note B., p. 108, end of first 
 
 ^ paragraph. 
 02
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 In these discourses I have intended briefly to 
 present the leading residts of previous investiga- 
 tions, most of which had ah-eady 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 DISCOURSE. 
 
 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 
 
 § 1. General Indifference to the Subject. 
 
 Utility of Metapliysics. It may add to intellectual power, 
 and thus improve that whic-h invents or makes all other 
 utility, but its special sphere of utility will be found in 
 our moral nature 1 
 
 § 2. Characteristics of Mind. 
 Knowledge, feeling, and volition. Mind knows, feels, and 
 wills. Tlie 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 th.it we might liave knowledge onl}', but 
 we could not have feeling without knowing it. We 
 might have knowledge and feeling without will, but will 
 without these would bo dormant and merely jjotential. 
 An nnintelligent being cannot be self-active. Our sensa- 
 tions are not dependent on the will, nor is our knowledge. 
 The truth is often apparent witlioiit 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 enal)lcs us to 
 direct our efforts, but is itself passive. By will we pro- 
 duce change and thus act as cause. Our own will is tlie 
 only cause of which we are directly conscious. Weans
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 by which we come to know ourselves, our fellow beings, 
 aud God as causes ...,.., 3 
 
 § 4. Existence of Matter and its Relations to Cause. 
 
 We know matter onl}' 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 
 arc 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, il 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 iustrununt wliich intelligence uses to aid its efforts. 
 Against these arguments it may be said that matter has 
 always existed aud 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 
 uuphilosophical, and the spiritual should have precedence. 
 It is inconceivable that matter, which does not know, 
 should create spirit, which does know ; wliile 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 otlier ])0\ver. Power could not make matter 
 self-active, or the subject of government by law. Quies- 
 cent it could only be acted u])0u 6
 
 CONTENTS. -ni 
 
 § 5. Of Past Events as Cause. 
 
 The theory that of every successive event, " the recal cause 
 is the wliole of the antecedeuts," 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 f utur-e ; and as at every in- 
 stant the whole past is everywhere 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 
 
 § f). Freedom in Willing. 
 This has been a prominent question for ages. It has been 
 obscured by erroneous notions and defective definitions 
 of will and freedom. Defects in Edwards' definitions of 
 these terms and the consecpient 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 j)ower 
 or activity. The will cannot be directly controlled by 
 any extrinsic power. The onlj' 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 wc are not willing. The future is alw.ays 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
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 without interference with the freedom of any, is illus- 
 trated by the game of chess. This equal and perfect 
 freedom iu all does not imi)air the sovereignty of the 
 supreme intelligence 15 
 
 § 7. Instinct, Eeason, 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 wanting, 
 but that the knowledge to direct it is innate. In all cases 
 requiring more than one movement we must have a ])lan. 
 In the instinctive actions, the plan is innate, read ij 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. Tlie 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, iu 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 tlie 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 Argument from Cause and Effect. 
 
 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, wliether one of the 
 couditions in the thousand cases is tliat of ncrcssiti/ or of 
 freedom does not vary ihc uiiil'onuity of tlie result, and 
 hence the result eanuot 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 sucli action, being self-conformed to the external cou- 
 ditions and our internal desires, is free. Necessitarians 
 have been at much pains to i)rove 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 ngent. 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
 
 X CONTENTS. 
 
 apparent actor would be. So that the free act is more 
 easily foiekuowu than a coerced or iiufree act .... 35 
 
 § 12. A Being with Will, Knowledge, and Feelikg, 
 IS Self-Active. Some Conclusions re-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 objective 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 cliaugo 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 exj)ression of the thoughts 
 and conceptions of its creator, and the only cjuestion is, 
 whether he transfers this thought and imagery dii-ectly 
 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 miiuls 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 ineii)ient creation should become so 
 fixed in our mind that we coidd not change it at will, it 
 would be to us an external reality. This sometimes oc- 
 curs. This suggests that the dilTerence between the 
 creative powers in man and the sujjreme intelligence is 
 mainly iu degree and not in kind, and that the disparity.
 
 CONTENTS. xi 
 
 vast as it is, is not so inromprphensihlc as has been gen- 
 erally supposed. To our uwu iucipieut creations there 
 is no limit in extent or variety 40 
 
 SECOND DISCOURSE. 
 
 MAN, IX THE PPIIKRK OF IIIS OWN MORAL NATURE, A SU- 
 PREME CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 
 
 § 14. A Cognitive Sense inclodes 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 corjnilice sejise. Some of these incre- 
 ments do not and others do require preliminary effort. 
 In this there is no diH'erence ])er se, as to our perceptions 
 of the external and internal. Intuitive perceptions are 
 distinguished from the rational by the preliminary eflfort 
 for tlie hitter. 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. Our Efforts for Internal Change are always 
 to increase ocr 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 of Seeking Knowledge. ThbT 
 Poetic and the Prosaic. 
 
 By observation, we note the plienomena cognized by the 
 senses, and by reflection, we trace the relations among 
 the ideas — the knowledge — we already iiave in store, 
 and thus obtain new ideas. A large portion of our per- 
 ceptions are primarily but imagery — jjictures — in the 
 mind. In tin's furni we will di'signate tiicin as primitive 
 perceptions, or ideals, to distinguish them from those
 
 xii CONTENTS. 
 
 which we have associated with words. In this primitive 
 form we cau thiuk of, and exainiuo them and their rela- 
 tions, aud 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, aud also in the two cardinal 
 modes of seeking truth : the former being the ideal or 
 poetic ; the latter, the logical or prosaic. 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 effi- 
 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 of Increasing the Efficiency 
 OF THE Intellect. 
 It is in the higher and more general cultivation of the po- 
 etic 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. Tlie discovery and propagation of such modes 
 is in the province of the metaphysician, and opens to him 
 an elevated sphere of utility 61 
 
 § 18. Our Creative Power in the Formation of Char- 
 acter AND THE agency OP HaBIT. 
 
 It is in our moral nature that our most ethereal attribute 
 naturally finds its most 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 tlic 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 chanpc in our mental afft-c- 
 tions. The ruciirrence of our spiritual wants is as certain 
 as that of the physical. As a man cannot do moral 
 wronK 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-buildiug we discard the external, and 
 work from <>ur internal resources, and may conceive a 
 material universe or a pure and uolile moral character. 
 
 The persistent effort to actualize these ideals is their final 
 consummation. There can be no failure except the fail- 
 ure to will, and mind is here a Supreme Creative First 
 Cause. 
 
 In the permanent engr.ifting 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. Ix Tin: Moral Nature the Effort is itself the 
 
 CONSUiMMATIOX 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 will be equally so 70 
 
 § 20. The TJigiit or Wrong op Moral Action is all 
 
 CONCENTRATED IN OUR OWN FrEE AcT OF 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 ([\\\.y, 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 uo agency. There is no present moral wrong 
 either iu 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 williug to gratify them, or in the time or manner 
 of doing this. Ilcnce the moral right and wronq is all 
 concentrated in the act of will — our own free act. A 
 man can be good or bad only by his own agenc}' — 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 Fokegoing 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. Our Physical Wants are more imperative but 
 
 ARE limited and TEMPORARY, WHILE THE SPIRIT- 
 ual are boundless and insatiable 81 
 
 § 23. Ideality is the Nearest Approach to Reality, 
 
 AND fulfills THE OfFICE 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 
 iu our i)h} sical. Our first creative efforts are in the ma-
 
 CONTENTS. XV 
 
 terial but early transferred to the spiritual, and there 
 quickened by the inHuence of uuscltish and rumantic pas- 
 sion on the young imagination. But this beneficent en- 
 dowment is liable to be perverted to evil, and especially 
 througli our ])hysical wants, whicli are made less incon- 
 stant by tlie want of! ac(inisition. The power of ideality, 
 thongli less nobly exliibited, is more strongly attested in 
 its degrading than in its elevating influence .... 82 
 
 § 25. Systematic Moral Training in the Formation 
 AND Study of Ideal Constrcctions. 
 
 This much needed to counteract a social system based 
 largely on s(dti.->hncss, and to neutralize the materialistic 
 comfort-seeking proclivities of this mechanical and com- 
 mercial age. But ideal constructions liave 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 confitled, is Iw her 
 special endowments so fully equipped for this work . . 86 
 
 § 26. All Sciences first pursued merely for Mental 
 Gratification. 
 
 Metaphysics has bi,en 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 liave 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 of 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 socking truth. — Second, Our freedom in will- 
 ing and the fixing of ninn'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 deterniinin<j the natnre and func- 
 tions of habit, hy 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 Preceding Results 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 
 subliraest efforts, and that the results will be the crowTi- 
 ing glory of all utility 92 
 
 § 29. Argument from 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 be 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 aesthetic 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
 
 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 M/VN A CREATIVE 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 aU 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 such comparatively 
 groveling application to our bodily wants, which 
 philosophy 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 moidding 
 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 all 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 wills. In knowing or in feeling it is 
 not active, but passively perceives and feels. The 
 will 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 judginent, we only mean tliat 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 
 hiowledge., a susceptibility to feeling., and a fac- 
 ility 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 filled 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 j)ower 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 dioose 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 covdd have 
 a potential faculty of action, its tendency to act 
 must be equal in aU directions, and aU tendency 
 to action would be neutralized. An unintelligent 
 being cannot be self active. 
 
 Our sensations and emotions are not dependent 
 upon our will. 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 luiowing. 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 will be- 
 come apparent; but in neither case can we will 
 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 kno^ang, the ad- 
 ditions to our knowledge are always simple inv- 
 mediate mental perceptions.^ separable from the 
 effort, and in its 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 itseK active. 
 
 Knowledge enables us to direct our efforts, but 
 is itself passive. 
 
 Through its only active faculty of will — its
 
 6 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 
 
 effort — the intelligent being strives to produce 
 chcmge, of wliich, 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 
 not made effort. From some of these 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 fellow-beings, and God as cause. 
 
 § 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 vvliich Ave 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 volition, while 
 the other is unintelligent, senseless, and inert. 
 
 The hyjjothesis 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 diu'able and palpable 
 to others.
 
 8 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 
 
 We, however, fiiid no rudiment o£ 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 such imagery 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 itseK, 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 begin motion in itself without being 
 first acted upon, nor can it determine the direction 
 of its own motion. This beginning and determi- 
 nation must 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 all the effects which follow, and matter is 
 only an inert instrument which intelligence uses 
 to produce these effects. 
 
 Even if it coidd be endowed with power to move
 
 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 9 
 
 it coiilcl 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, however, be urged that both the argu- 
 ments thus drawn from the difficulty of conceiving 
 of the creation of matter as a distinct entity, and 
 from the necessity of motion, which it cannot be- 
 gin, to its causal power, 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 
 one is sufficient is unphilosophical ; and that as we 
 are directly conscious of the spiritual phenomena, 
 and only iiifer 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 wliich 
 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 i30wer 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 dej^ends 
 on another question, viz.. Is the tendency of a 
 body in motion to continue to move, or to stop 
 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 baU. If this power was 
 instantaneously annihilated, woidd the ball con- 
 tinue to move or woidd it stop ? 
 
 If in virtue of being in motion it has power, it 
 still 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 
 ibffects 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 until 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, b}^ 
 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. All 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 uniforml}'. In investigating the laws of na- 
 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 all events 
 or successive j^henomena 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 
 
 Ou these and other similar positions of Mill, 
 and the materialistic school generally, I will re- 
 mark that tliey 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 jjroduces from what merely ^jre- 
 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 v)hole 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 
 coidd 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 sec Letters to Mill 
 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. 
 
 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 FIIiST CAUSE. 15 
 
 affinities, is moved, not by the energizing-, but 
 by the energetic will of an Oninipreseut Intelli- 
 gence.^ 
 
 § G. 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 will, and of freedom as applicable to 
 willing. 
 
 Effort is wholly unique. 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, ambigaiity, 
 and error. 
 
 In the first place, the will has sometimes been 
 treated as a distinct entity. This finds expression 
 in the phrase, freedom of the will, 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 rinll 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 \dew, speak of the freedom of the mind 
 in willing, instead of the freedom of the vnll. 
 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. 
 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 will. 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 loills." 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 will) 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- 
 TROL. 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 loill 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, j;er 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 simjily 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 
 will turn 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 tlie 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 sclf-aetive, 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-controlled and 
 directed, and therefore the free effort or willino; 
 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, wliicli 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 coexistins: 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 Avilling 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 \aews we find the fact 
 to be, that whenever v/e 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 interjiose insuperable obsta- 
 cles to his intended action, or we may directly 
 produce or change the feelings which prompt Ms 
 action. But as any such actual change of the 
 conditions is wholly ineffective till it makes a part 
 of his laiowledge, these apparently two modes arc 
 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 willino- 
 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 j)ower. 
 
 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 
 wdiolly 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 ifc makes successful effort to pro- 
 duce change, it so far acts as an originating crea- 
 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 will 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 i7iterde])endenGe 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 j^layers 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 
 imj)air the sovereignty of the Supreme Intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 Edwards argues that if the Supreme Intelli- 
 gence did not foreknow human volitions he would 
 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 wall be 
 ascertained, and, in which, with the advantage as 
 to the first move, success will be cei^tain to one 
 having this superior knowledge, though he may 
 not foreknow a single move of his opponent. 
 
 § 7. Tlie phenomena of instinct have been very 
 generally deemed exceptional. Oui' own conscious
 
 24 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 
 
 agency in them is so slight that it escapes ordi- 
 nary observation. 1 
 
 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 loill, 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 born 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. 2." 
 
 SO 
 
 the source of food which 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 itseK of its 
 food. 
 
 If there is any self activity prior to birth, it 
 still 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 muscidar 
 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 ^?/fm 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 I'ational ac- 
 tion, and can remember the successive steps, and 
 apply it by rote without reference to the ra- 
 tionale, it becomes a jjlan ready formed in the 
 mind^ and the action becomes habitual. In such
 
 26 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 
 
 action tlie process is precisely the same as in tlie 
 instinctive. Tlie popular consciousness of this 
 similarity finds exj^ression 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 delil)eration required in this 
 process. 
 
 The rational, the instinctive, and the habitual 
 actions, then, aJ come under our general formula, 
 and are all efforts of a conative being, incited hy 
 its want and directed hy 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 wliieli 
 ■\ve execute it ; and lience the difference between 
 instinctive and rational actions has been vainly 
 sought in the actions themselves. 
 
 There is no difference in the actions, nor in the 
 knowledge itself, nor in the application of tlie 
 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 oiu' 
 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 i>lans 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 all 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 comjjared with or distinguished 
 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 effort 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 effort. 
 
 The actions of such must be wholly 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 
 conld 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 will 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 stateiuent of this argiunent whicli has 
 the assent of 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 woidd remark that an intelli- 
 gent self-active cause is under no necessity u])on 
 a recurrence of the same circumstances to repeat 
 its action, but having in the first case increased 
 its laiowledge, 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 hj^pothesis of a thousand like cases 
 is inconceivable, inasmuch as there coidd 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 that 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 having a tendency to extend into 
 the future, such flow in its effect upon oui* freedom 
 in willino; does not differ from that flow which is 
 the composite residt of conative efforts, which I 
 have ah-eady 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 bemg 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 
 
 3
 
 34 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 
 
 directed, it would have served the purposes of 
 their argument 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. Tlie advocates of necessity often ask if a 
 man could will the contrary of what he does will. 
 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 
 wath 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 
 must of necessity happen, but that it must hap- 
 pen by restraint or coercion of the willing agent. 
 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 pliilosophers, 
 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 that the possibility of pre- 
 diction involves necessity as to the volition. But
 
 36 31 AN 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 seK-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 luiow. All our knowledge of beings as 
 individuals, and even of species, would thus be 
 annihilated. The hypothesis of such extrinsic 
 ao'ency 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 woidd determine this unfree act 
 
 8795;)
 
 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 sim])le, 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 jjredicted 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 will, 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 hnowledge 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 indei^endent 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 foee 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 futui-e 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 oj^ster with no other efficient 
 'power than that of moving its shell, and with 
 knowledge of only one mode of doing this, and 
 this instinctive, still, 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 
 would have been, and so far performs a part in 
 the creation of that future. 
 
 But I shall deal mainly with our own more in- 
 telligent order of beings, which not only laiows, 
 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 wdthin 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. 
 
 0£ the plienomena of our own spiritual nature 
 we are directly conscious. Tlie 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 b}^ our own efforts make objective 
 phenomena, including the mental action and voli- 
 tions of others, different from what they otherwise 
 wordd 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 perliaps are all there is, of 
 the phenomena, are equally real, and are in fact 
 identically the same on the one hyijothesis 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 
 these hypotheses, it is the presentation and ex- 
 pression of a conception existing as thought and 
 miagery 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 all 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 fonnd 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 conununicated 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 contemj)lating 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 ujson 
 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 imiverse 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 reality which wdtli 
 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 hj^DOthesis are essential to creating. 
 This hypothesis is further commended to us by 
 the consideration that man having in a finite de- 
 gree all 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 omui-
 
 44 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 
 
 presence, man has finite power and finite knowl- 
 edge, and can make all the ideas and objects of 
 his knowledge pal2:)ably 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 consciovis 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 tlie 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 still not so incomprehen- 
 sible as has been generally supposed. This gives 
 warrant to the logic in w'hich by short steps we 
 attribute all creations and all cliangcs, 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 will fiu'ther 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 accomplishment 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. Tlie 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 IN THE SPHERE OF 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 moidd the fu- 
 ture. Having, then, treated of the exercise of 
 this creative power in the external, which is the 
 connnon arena of all intelligent activity, I pro- 
 pose now to sjieak 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, — 
 withoiit 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 4.
 
 48 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 
 
 view, and with tliem tlie perception of new rela- 
 tions, withont 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 shnjjle 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, ^jcr 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 internal 
 cognitions are tlie mind'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 tlie 
 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 mental percep- 
 tions by means of the external organs of sense. 
 For the internal cognitive spontaneity, the main, 
 if not the only, immediate instrumentalities seem 
 to be the operations of memory and association, 
 singly and in combination ; but its genesis is 
 often, perhaps always, by suggestion from the 
 bodily organs, through the senses, or the appetites 
 which nuieh resemble and are closely allied to the 
 senses. The somid of a cannon may call uj) 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 only be aroused 
 and rescued from annihilation by some extrinsic 
 agency. Our spontaneous cognitions of external 
 objects and contemporaneous changes may be pre- 
 sented by the bodily 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-
 
 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 order ^a^, 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 circum- 
 stances and the perception may thus come under 
 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 subject 
 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 wi'ong', 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 till 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 indigna- 
 tion; and in ourselves the triumph of the right 
 inspires us witli the pleasurable and elevating 
 emotion of victory, while the yielding to the 
 temptation to ^vrong 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.
 
 62 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 efPeeted by effort is a 
 necessity, but, in view of the foregoing premises, 
 there seems to be no analogous necessity that we 
 slioidd have any such knowledge of absolute right 
 and wrong, or even any faculty or sense by wdiich 
 we can, intuitively or otherwise, acquire such 
 knowledge. 
 
 The design of conscience seems primarily not to 
 punish transgression, but to warn us against doing 
 wdiat 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 j)ain 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 primitive 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.
 
 54 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 our 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 fidly 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 fu-st place, we may 
 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 pi-imi- 
 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 and 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, npon 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 iy^Q 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. Assuming that simple obser-
 
 56 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 om- 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 wath 
 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. 57 
 
 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 formiilas 
 applicable to all 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- 
 ticidars 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 wliich we jJCfceive the equality 
 
 1 See Note 8.
 
 68 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 ^jrocesses 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 uj)on 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 quiclaiess with which we examine 
 particular cases by the poetic process to some 
 extent compensates for the greater number of 
 instances, which may be embraced in one gener- 
 alization of the prosaic. 
 
 Persons who adopt the quicker mode are often 
 notably discreet, wise, and able in the actual con- 
 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 aesthetically 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 pliilos- 
 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 effliience 
 of soul which with a glance unlocks 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 on 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 shoidd 
 expect to find this power most potent, and our 
 efforts, always mental, most successfid. And it 
 is in a better knowledge of the character, the re- 
 lations, and the modes of the poetic and the log- 
 ical processes with a more general cultivation of
 
 62 31 AN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 
 
 the former, and by a more systematic and intelli- 
 gent selection from these two cardinal modes of 
 investigation of that which is best suited to the 
 subject in hand, or oftener by a judicious applica- 
 tion of both to the same subject, so that each may 
 supplement and supply the deficiencies, or correct 
 the errors, of the other, that 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. G3 
 
 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 tlie concerns of real life. It is in 
 meditating on tliese that we nurture the innate 
 feelings, sentiments, and passions, which not only- 
 give impTilse 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 a^t from the impulses of immediate and 
 pressing circumstances. 
 
 The ideal formations may not be accurately 
 fitted to the occasions wliich 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, will 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. G5 
 
 We cannot directly will 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 hungTy, 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 Imow 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 beautifid 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 
 5
 
 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 onr 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 smell 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 eifort 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 aud 51.
 
 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 67 
 
 As a man cannot do any moral wrong in doing 
 what he believes to he right, his knowledge, 
 thongli 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 riuht, 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, mcluding its preconceptions of the charac- 
 ter it would therein build 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 whicli 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 skill 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 consimimation ; for
 
 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. GO 
 
 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 itseK the tri- 
 umph 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 will, or to make the proper effort. 
 The human mind with its want, knowledge, and 
 facvdty 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, tlie persevering, effort is itself 
 the consummation, there can in it be no such fail- 
 ure ; and the mind in it is therefore not only 
 a creative, but a Supreme 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 ; will be a perma- 
 nent palpahle 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 efficiency 
 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 wills is as immedi- 
 ately and as certainly executed as is the will of 
 Onniipotence in its sphere of action, for the will- 
 ing in such case is itseK 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 will, 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 FTEST CAUSE. 
 
 edge and excite his wants, and thus induce him 
 to jmt 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 increase 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 
 w^ants, 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 the intent, and not in its success or faihn^e. 
 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 as mere flashes 
 of light upon the gloom of a settled moral de- 
 pravity. 
 
 § 20. Nor does the nature of the actual result-
 
 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 73 
 
 ing effect make any difference to tlie 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 seK-forgetting or self- 
 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 till he feels the wrong doing 
 as a wound, leaving a blemish on the beauty and 
 a stain on the purity of the moral character, the 
 preservation and improvement of which has be- 
 come his high absorbing interest, and the construc- 
 tion and ideal contemplation of which he has
 
 74 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 
 
 come to appreciate and to value above all other 
 possessions and all possible acquisitions. 
 
 The consequences of a volition may prove that 
 it was unwise, 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 has had and could have 
 no agency, which he could 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 wrong. 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 coimter to 
 his conviction of right. 
 
 There can be no moral wrong in the acquisition 
 of that knowledge which he unintentionally ae-
 
 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 75 
 
 quires. That a man involuntarily knows that 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 wi-ong 
 doing, though the fact that it is there may be 
 evidence of a previous moral wrong committed 
 in 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 in the time or in 
 the mode of the gratification. That such w'ant 
 exists at all, or that it should recur at such time, 
 may be proof of a previous wrong effort in cidti-
 
 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 WTong, 
 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 imj)rovement 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 wi'ong ; 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 loill, 
 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. 11 
 
 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 liolding fast what is 
 acquired., and thus lea\dng the mind at liberty to 
 employ itself in new acquisitions, new progress 
 in laiowledge, 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 inducmg another want in its 
 place. And though this is especially true of the 
 moral wants, it partially applies also to the phys- 
 ical. We laiow, 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 
 unlioly. 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 will 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 hahit 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 knowledge 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 om- spiritual condition, amid the
 
 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 79 
 
 engrossments of sense, tlie excitements of passion, 
 or tlie 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. Having 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 Ills moral nature can be affected only by bis 
 own act of will, and no other power can will, or 
 produce his own act of wiU, he is also, in the sphere 
 of bis 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 liis 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, 
 wdthiu 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 absolute 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 
 conceivino- of higher ethical conditions than he has 
 yet attained, has in his own moral nature, for the 
 exercise of his creative powers, an infinite sj)here, 
 within which, with knowledge there infallible, he 
 is the supreme disposer ; and in which, without his 
 free will, 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 our want 
 for progress — for something better than we have 
 3'et attained — our activity fuids 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 mode 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 
 general 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 om- 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 j^roper coarse 
 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 would 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 beauty 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 still 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 jiermanently 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 \dew 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 impidses may 
 have occasioned. The avaricious miser looks 
 upon a liberal man as one too weak to subdue the 
 liberal impulses or resist the pleasure of yielding 
 to them. He knows the pain and labor which his 
 own prudence has cost him, and congratidates 
 himself on his exemj)tion 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 fidly equipped for this important 
 work. 
 
 I deem it but a reasonable anticipation that 
 whenever this means of moral cidture shall 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 
 still, when from their celestial lieigiits its votaries 
 look down upon the enduring and beneficent 
 achievement of their predecessors, upon the solid 
 foundation in physical science upon wliich they 
 are themselves building their more ethereal super- 
 structure, we may trust that they will at least 
 concede to them the merit of having faithfuUy, 
 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 wdiich w^as, 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 in its nature and ministering to 
 liioher 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 liis 
 purpose, of a cargo of molasses. 
 
 So, too, metaphj'^sics has been wrought upon for 
 affes 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 froia whist or chess. 
 
 § 27. It will 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 this 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 
 indejDendent 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 
 wills. 
 
 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 habit 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 wliieh, if he coukl 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 coidd be no exhibi- 
 tion of it in beneficent action touching liimself 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 wth 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 
 which is commensurate with its knowledge a cre- 
 ative first cause therein, freely exerting its powers 
 to modify the futui'e 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 and perfect freedom, 
 though each one, by its power 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 all 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 will, i. e., make effort, which is self-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 2kfree^ 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- 
 insT 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 to in some way 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 tlie efforts of 
 others. In it man is a co-worker with God and 
 with all other conative beings, 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 hiowingly willing what is wi'ong, his knowl- 
 edge as to this is infallible, and as his wnlling 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 will is 
 here as infallible as that of omniscience, and his
 
 MAN A CREATIVE FIRST CAUSE. 95 
 
 power to will witliin the limits of his knowledge 
 bciii"" 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 wronof. 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 will 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 climinisli 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 t^^^e, — and in his yet 
 hidier 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 beautifid creations, would 
 no more awaken our admiration or incite us to 
 lofty effort. We shoidd 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 instruments operated by " stimuli" and 
 " molecules ; " and though still with knowledge aud 
 sensibility to know and feel our degraded position, 
 — " so abject, yet alive " — with no power to ap- 
 ply our knowledge in effort to extricate aud to 
 elevate ourselves. We might still have the knowl- 
 edge of good and evil ; but haviug no powei- to 
 foster the one, or to resist the other, tliis 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 %\ith 
 effort alone makes possible, would be lost. And 
 this dreary debasement woidd be unrelieved by 
 that last hope which now mitigates our worst de- 
 spair, — the hope that death will 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 
 as'ain 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 all 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. 
 
 throngli a moral sense, or other constitutional pro- 
 vision, tlie 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 bemg, 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 thoug-hts, 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 lights 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 tliis 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 wliich 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 loould 
 
 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 tlie change desired. That the knowledge 
 essential to such direction of the effort is innate, or exists 
 from the moment of birtla, 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 feeluig 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. Baai, 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 " movement" from which re- 
 sults the pleasure of exercise which responds by sustaining and 
 increasing it, and thus feeds itself? 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 generalization by which I have identified these genetic 
 instinctive movements with our subsecjuent 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 comiecting 
 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 macliinery 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. Tliis main shaft, extending 
 through a large portion of the room, and having upon it 
 other lesser pidleys, from which other motion is comnmui- 
 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, ^vith its large driving wheel 
 at the head of the main shaft with other pulleys on the 
 same, with the belts leadmg 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 learu what it could 
 do. He could not even tell 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 appai\atus of the mill. 
 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 tee 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 
 passmg 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 miglit 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, 2il 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 knoidedge 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 little 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 oppoi'tunity, in 
 slipping out as some one entered the back door. In- 
 creased vigilance 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 froni 
 driving him out, and he, against all law and precedent, 
 ■witli 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 " Quentin Durward," ascribes to the 
 Bohemian Ilayraddin, who by persistent indecorous conduct 
 contrived to get himself turned out of the convent of Namur.
 
 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 tlie 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 colikh 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 
 timiing and running in a frolicsome way in front of them. 
 In this he was not wholly unsuccessful. 
 
 He would untie iiis halter. I do not tliiidc 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 
 wliicli he cannot trace; /. e., he shook it, and pidled 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 
 liim 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 liis 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 my 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 
 aromid. I called out Charlie, and he immediately tui-ned 
 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 significance of my 
 calling are in the province of instuict. 
 
 On another occasion, in driving Charlie, I took an apple 
 from my pocket, bit it, and not fuiding it to my taste, cast 
 it aside. Just then Charlie came to a liill, 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, Cliarlie," 
 when he tiu-ned 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 liis 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 (piarter 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 brotlier 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 eases 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 distiu- 
 gnished 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 mo, e very slowly and oidy walk, or be con- 
 fused and stumble. The difficulty would increase with the 
 number of feet. 
 
 " The centipede was happj' quite, 
 Until a toad, in fun, 
 Said, pra}' whicli leg must 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 spellmg it seems just as reasonable and as 
 likely 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 will 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, but, 
 when in danger of beuig 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 j^ears 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 mcident made a deep 
 impression upon me, and I have ahvaj's remembered, that I 
 thus acted because I thought we would be safe only on the 
 side of the street on which we lived. 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. 
 Tliat in a stiictly 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 miles per 
 hour, then the velocity of the periphery of the wheel round 
 its axis is ten miles 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, 
 wliile at same time, by the moving of the whole carriage, it 
 is carried forward ten miles per hour. Here are two mo-
 
 110 NOTES. 
 
 tious 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 suddeidy 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 little 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, differ 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 within 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 coidd it go round on the axle ? " while others 
 said, " or how could it keep up witli 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 mto 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 mornuig we fouud some of them still 
 wrangling, and that they had several times during the night 
 examined some of the wheels of the engine, the movement 
 of which, each party claimed, practically sustamed their po-
 
 NOTES. Ill 
 
 sition. Though not germane to the present inquiry, I will 
 add that the simple fact is, that the lohole wheel is revolv- 
 ing about its bottom point as a centre. The velocity of 
 each point and its dii'cction are easily asceitamed. 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 
 perpendicidar ; though lilce every other point its velocity 
 and direction are not the same for any time, still the first 
 infinitesimal nu)tion of the bottom pomt is iufinitesimally 
 near to the perpendicular. 
 
 Note VIII. 
 
 The important function of language as the instrument 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 priniitive 
 perceptions of things and ideas, and the delicately varied 
 relations among them, for which, in the logical processes, 
 verbal symbols are substituted. 
 
 Tliis 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 which it has been largely derived and 
 in which it has its roots, the knowledge of our o\vn 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 meanuig of 
 the terms, and nicer precision, discrimination, and clearness
 
 112 NOTES. 
 
 in their use, upon which the soundness of cur logical 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 umuerous br-anches 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 exjjerience, and can only say that 
 in using language as an instrument of thought, or for ex- 
 pressmg its results, he has felt that he was under disadvan- 
 tages both as to precision and facility wliich 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 reasonmg. 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 
 aritlunetical problems by means of the Arabic system of 
 notation as compared with the Roman. 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 which, in the views I have presented, 
 appear to be most important aids to these same processes.
 
 NOTES. 113 
 
 Note A. 
 
 By this definition Edwards makes tlie will an instrument 
 of the mind, and then speaks of the freedom of the icill. 
 Under such a definition one might as well speak of the 
 freedom of the hammer which he is using to drive a nail, 
 as of the " freedom of the will." The definition virtually 
 begs tlie question. 
 
 An instrument must bo controlled and directed by that 
 whicih uses it, and hence, if I liave rightly defined freedom, 
 cannot be free ; but the intelligent power, the mind, that 
 controls and directs it, may be. 
 
 Note B. 
 
 There is, then, in the attributes of instinct and reason, no 
 generic difference between man and brutes. They are com- 
 mon to both, varying only in degree. The ratio of the in- 
 stinctive to the rational is so much greater in brutes, that 
 it is generally regarded as surpassing that of man. The 
 three fundamental elements of mind, knowledge, feelin<r. 
 and volition, are also common to both. Brutes have less 
 knowledge, and hence the sphere of their voluntary action 
 is more limited, but I see no reason to suppose that within 
 this sphere there is any limit in the will itself — any bound 
 to their volitional ability to make effort. The limit in 
 them, as in the higher orders of intelligent being, is always 
 in the knowledge of a mode of action to reach the end de- 
 sired, and not in the will. Nor is there any reason to sup- 
 pose that the bodily senses are not the same in kind in man 
 and brutes, and, in fact, each of these may be found more 
 acute and perfect in some one or more of the latter. The 
 reverse seems to be generally true of the mcMital (Muotions. 
 To this fear seems a notable exception, and perhaps sur- 
 prise, though it is less marked. But brutes also evince 
 affection, hatred, revenge ; they arc elated by successful 
 achievement, and depressed by failure ; they have emula- 
 tion, and manifest priile in victory and shame in defeat. 
 There is warrant for asserting that they conte mplate beauty
 
 114 NOTES. 
 
 and deformity with different emotions ; but this is in ' 
 very limited sphere, and it is doubtful if they recognize 
 the antithesis, or even the difference, between the sublime 
 and the ridiculous. If this is the limit of their most ele- 
 vated thought, we may reasonably assume that they never 
 rise to the contemplation or the conception of the grandeur 
 of action from an internal personal conviction of duly, and 
 that it is the addition of the moral sense that makes the 
 generic distinction, and elevates man above the rest of the 
 animal creation.
 
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