assume that the Will is an agent. Such a challenge physiology has now
given, and even declared that any assumption of volitional agency is, in
the presence of adequate physiological knowledge, impossible.

The two problems which I thus state separately are often, and indeed
generally, confused together; but for the purpose of clear analysis it
is of the first importance that they should be kept apart. In order to
show the wide distinction between them, we may best begin with a brief
consideration of what it is that the two problems severally involve; and
to do this we may best take the problems in what I have called their
logical order.

First, then, as regards the question whether the Will is an agent, the
rival theories of Materialism and Spiritualism stand to one another in a
relation of contradiction. For it is of the essence of Spiritualism to
regard the Will as an agent, or as an original cause of bodily movement,
and therefore as a true cause in Nature. On the other hand, it is of the
essence of Materialism to deny that the Will is an agent. Hitherto,
indeed, materialists as a body have not expressly recognized this
implication as necessarily belonging to their theory; but that this
implication does necessarily belong to their theory--or rather, I should
say, really constitutes its most distinctive feature--admits of being
easily shown. For the theory that material changes are the causes of
mental changes necessarily terminates in the so-called theory of
conscious automatism--or the theory that so far as the conditions to
bodily action are concerned, consciousness is adventitious, bearing the
same ineffectual relation to the activity of the brain as the striking
of a clock bears to the time-keeping adjustments of the clock-work. From
this conclusion there is no possibility of escape, if once we accept the
premises of Materialism; and therefore I say it belongs to the essence
of Materialism to deny the agency of Will.

Just as necessarily does it belong to the essence of Monism to affirm
the agency of Will. For, according to this theory, while motion is
producing nothing but motion, mind-change nothing but mind-change, both
are producing both simultaneously; neither could be what it is without
the other, for each is to the other a necessary counterpart or
supplement, in the absence of which the whole causation (whether
regarded from the physical or mental side) would not be complete.

Now, in my opinion the i