ion 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
infi