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.
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