A Candid Examination of Theism | Page 7

only sense in which experience supports, in any
shape, the doctrine of a First Cause, viz., as the primæval and universal
element of all causes, the First Cause can be no other than Force."
Still, however, it may be maintained that "all force is will-force." But
"if there be any truth in the doctrine of Conservation of Force, ... this
doctrine does not change from true to false when it reaches the field of
voluntary agency. The will does not, any more than other agencies,
create Force: granting that it originates motion, it has no means of
doing so but by converting into that particular manifestation, a portion
of Force which already existed in other forms. It is known that the
source from which this portion of Force is derived, is chiefly, or
entirely, the force evolved in the processes of chemical composition
and decomposition which constitute the body of nutrition: the force so
liberated becomes a fund upon which every muscular and every
nervous action, as of a train of thought, is a draft. It is in this sense only
that, according to the best lights of science, volition is an originating
cause. Volition, therefore, does not answer to the idea of a First Cause;
since Force must, in every instance, be assumed as prior to it; and there
is not the slightest colour, derived from experience, for supposing
Force itself to have been created by a volition. As far as anything can
be concluded from human experience, Force has all the attributes of a
thing eternal and uncreated....
"All that can be affirmed (even) by the strongest assertion of the
Freedom of the Will, is that volitions are themselves uncaused and are,
therefore, alone fit to be the first or universal cause. But, even assuming
volitions to be uncaused, the properties of matter, so far as experience
discloses, are uncaused also, and have the advantage over any
particular volition, in being, so far as experience can show, eternal.
Theism, therefore, in so far as it rests on the necessity of a First Cause,
has no support from experience."
Such may be taken as a sufficient refutation of the argument that, as
human volition is apparently a cause in nature, and moreover
constitutes the basis of our conception of all causation, therefore all

causation is probably volitional in character. But as this is a favourite
argument with some theists, I shall introduce another quotation from
Mr. Mill, which is taken from a different work.
"Volitions are not known to produce anything directly except nervous
action, for the will influences even the muscles only through the nerves.
Though it were granted, then, that every phenomenon has an efficient
and not merely a phenomenal cause, and that volition, in the case of the
particular phenomena which are known to be produced by it, is that
cause; are we therefore to say with these writers that since we know of
no other efficient cause, and ought not to assume one without evidence,
there is no other, and volition is the direct cause of all phenomena? A
more outrageous stretch of inference could hardly be made. Because
among the infinite variety of the phenomena of nature there is one,
namely, a particular mode of action of certain nerves which has for its
cause and, as we are now supposing, for its efficient cause, a state of
our mind; and because this is the only efficient cause of "which we are
conscious, being the only one of which, in the nature of the case, we
can be conscious, since it is the only one which exists within ourselves;
does this justify us in concluding that all other phenomena must have
the same kind of efficient cause with that one eminently special, narrow,
and peculiarly human or animal phenomenon?" It is then shown that a
logical parallel to this mode of inference is that of generalising from the
one known instance of the earth being inhabited, to the conclusion that
"every heavenly body without exception, sun, planet, satellite, comet,
fixed star, or nebula, is inhabited, and must be so from the inherent
constitution of things." After which the passage continues, "It is true
there are cases in which, with acknowledged propriety, we generalise
from a single instance to a multitude of instances. But they must be
instances which resemble the one known instance, and not such as have
no circumstance in common with it except that of being instances....
But the supporters of the volition theory ask us to infer that volition
causes everything, for no other reason except that it causes one
particular thing; although that one phenomenon, far from being a type
of all natural phenomena, is eminently peculiar; its laws bearing
scarcely any resemblance to those of any other phenomenon, whether
of inorganic