BOOK I. $ 57. consciousness on nerve movement. kind of sequence which at present cannot be analysed farther, or into more elementary facts, than those Dependence of assigned or intended here; a kind of sequence also which cannot be explained, but only characterised, by the states of consciousness which it supports. Why not explained as well as characterised? Because the sequence of these states is equally inexplicable and ultimate. Why is the sensation of burning followed by the emotion of dread; why the emotion of dread by the image of means of avoiding burning; why the image of these means by the perception of muscular motion away from the fire? No answer can be given beyond the fact that it is so. If we said that this sequence was a case of final causation, of a desire of self-preservation, or of avoiding pain and procuring pleasure, of motives determining volition, or of volition simply, we should only have characterised the sequence of states of consciousness, not explained it. These sequences of states of consciousness are instances of final causation, just as the corresponding sequences of physical movements are instances of efficient causation; both terms sum up and characterise their phenomena, but do not explain them. It is impossible to understand how efficient causation produces final; it would be equally impossible to understand how final could produce efficient; and if it is impossible to understand how one physical movement causes another, it would be equally impossible to understand how one state of consciousness could cause another. Sequences are all which in either case, or between the two series themselves, we can arrive at. But while there is evidence to show that nerve movements are causes of states of consciousness, there is none, it is here maintained, BOOK I. § 57. consciousness to show that states of consciousness are causes of nerve movements. Our greater familiarity with the sequences of consciousness, our habitual arrangement Dependence of of them in systems of teleology or final causation, must not blind us to the fact, that of causation itself we know no more when it is final, than we do when it is efficient. 7. If it is said, that it is at least wonderful that physical movements should connect themselves into sequences and systems of sequences in such a way as to give rise to teleologic systems of conscious states, without any aid or guidance from these conscious states in so connecting themselves;-it is very wonderful, it may be replied, but not more so than analogy would lead us to expect, in a case where consciousness has been superinduced on an organised body so complex as that of man and of the higher animals; seeing that a similar teleologic system is observable in all organised matter, and especially in the vegetable kingdom. That pleasure should be connected with what is favourable to the health and growth of the organism, and pain with what is the reverse, are facts which are agreable to the analogy between living bodies and living bodies which are sentient and conscious. The addition of consciousness to living bodies, and in greater complexity in proportion to the complexity of their organisation, affords no ground for supposing that consciousness has a causality of its own, or reacts upon the organism in which it appears. Had pain been con nected with what was favourable to the health and growth of the organism, and pleasure with what was the reverse, sentient beings would have been born to misery, and our teleologic systems would have on nerve movement. Book I. CH. III. § 57. consciousness on nerve movement. run counter to the order of nature, supposing nature to have aimed, as before, at health and growth; but Dependence of we should have been without means of giving any efficacy to our desires of pleasure, for the more active and powerful we became the more miserable we should be; happiness would be a constantly receding vision, we should be always losing some even of its broken fragments, instead of, as now, hailing with hope its complete advent. Where in that case would have been the theory that states of consciousness contribute as causes to the production either of nerve movements or of each other? (See the admirable Chapter on Pleasures and Pains, and the connection of their phenomena with the general doctrine of Evolution, in Mr. Herbert Spencer's Principles of Psychology, §§ 122-128, edit. 1869.) 8. The analysis of voluntary redintegration leads us to the same conclusion, when we approach the question from the side of the moment of choice or decision itself. Just as the series of motives can be analysed into representations, and shown to depend on nerve movements, and the series of consequences the same, so also can the moment of will, which stands between these series, be referred to modes of action in the nerve movements which support the series of motives. The phenomenon of consciousness called Willing, or the exercise of volition, is the change of effort for a purpose (which is volition) into the purpose felt without effort, and consequently no longer as purposed but as attained. The moment of Willing is the moment of change, of sequence, occupy ing no duration of time by itself, but only as defined by its two moments, a quo and ad quem. Two or more conflicting representations contain the effort; and the conflict of representations depends on the conflict of nerve movements. The victory of one of these nerve movements over the others is the decision of the conflict, and the cause of one representation remaining in consciousness without the sense of effort. The will is the decision, expressed in terms of consciousness; and when the representation which we call the True Ego, or which possesses the most permanent interest, is the one which is thus victorious, we say that the will is victorious, identifying our will with our interests; when the opposing representation is victorious, we say, identifying as before, that the will has succumbed. This use of language, which is incorrect because, in volition, it is always the will which is victorious, is the cause of a great part of the intricacies in which ethical questions are entangled. Every decision in voluntary redintegration is an exercise of volition, whether it is a decision which is pleasant, wise, praiseworthy, or the reverse. The criminal who mounts the scaffold exercises volition in his movements; he chooses to mount rather than to permit himself to be dragged by the main force of the executioner; yet we do not say that he goes willingly; he yields to representations which make it more desirable to him to mount of himself. In examining volition, therefore, we must take the word in its widest which is also its correct sense, the decision between conflicting representations abstracting from the nature of them; for this sense clearly includes the narrower sense within it; and all cases of volition for a purpose which is pleasureable, interesting, or praiseworthy, all cases, for instance, of a morally good will, are special cases included under volition in the abstract. BOOK I. § 57. Dependence of consciousness on nerve movement. BOOK I. S $ 57. consciousness on nerve movement. 9. The moment of choice or decision between representations is exhaustively described by the analysis Dependence of which has been offered of the course of nerve movements in conflict. There is no feature in it which does not find a corresponding feature in the conflict of nerve movements to which it may be referred. Of course it is not professed that the movements, as they are here described, are the actual ones, but that, from the very generality of their description, such movements must be considered possible. That choice requires two representations, is accounted for by the supposition of two nerve movements, reactive and retentive. That it includes a sense of effort is accounted for by the conflict between these nerve movements; the vividness of the sense of effort by the intensity of nearly equal energies in the nerve movements; the balance and oscillation in choice by similarly named circumstances in the nerve movements; the final victory of one representation by the final victory of one nerve movement; the ceasing or lessening of the sense of effort by the ceasing or lessening of energy in one of the two nerve movements. There seems to be no point in all the process, when we combine it with the analysis of the content, where a state of consciousness, or an unknown cause not included in nerve movement, either can or need be supposed to take the initiative, or step in to determine a change in the series of representations. Between the two hypotheses, that of nerve movements is the simplest, and they are also at least known to be a vera causa. The state or moment of consciousness called Willing, or exercising volition, is according to this view an effect of |