ations of
co-existence and succession among phenomena, he would have stated an
important truth, but certainly not a new truth. It had already been
announced by distinguished mental philosophers, as, for example, M. de
Biran and Victor Cousin.[248] The senses give us only the succession of
one phenomenon to another. I hold a piece of wax to the fire and it
melts. Here my senses inform me of two successive phenomena--the
proximity of fire and the melting of wax. It is now agreed among all
schools of philosophy that this is all the knowledge the senses can
possibly supply. The observation of a great number of like cases assures
us that this relation is uniform. The highest scientific generalization
does not carry us one step beyond this fact. Induction, therefore, gives
us no access to causes beyond phenomena. Still, this does not justify
Comte in the assertion that causes are to us absolutely _unknown_. The
question would still arise whether we have not some faculty of
knowledge, distinct from sensation, which is adequate to furnish a valid
cognition of cause. It does not by any means follow that, because the
idea of causation is not given as a "physical quaesitum" at the end of a
process of scientific generalization, it should not be a "metaphysical
datum" posited at the very beginning of scientific inquiry, as the
indispensable condition of our being able to cognize phenomena at all,
and as the law under which all thought, and all conception of the system
of nature, is alone possible.

[Footnote 248: "It is now universally admitted that we have no
perception of the causal nexus in the material world."--Hamilton,
"Discussions," p. 522.]

Now we affirm that the human mind has just as direct, immediate, and
positive knowledge of _cause_ as it has of _effect._ The idea of cause,
the intuition _power_, is given in the immediate consciousness of _mind
as determining its own_ operations. Our first, and, in fact, our only
presentation of power or cause, is that of _self as willing_. In every
act of volition I am fully conscious that it is in my power to form a
resolution or to refrain from it, to determine on this course of action
or that; and this constitutes the immediate presentative knowledge of
power.[249] The will is a power, a power in action, a productive power,
and, consequently, a cause. This doctrine is stated with remarkable
clearness and accuracy by Cousin: "If we seek the notion of cause in the
action of one bal