mposed by the
internal system of causation; but this does not influence in any degree
those mental processes which do not express themselves in bodily action.
Hence, it may be perfectly true that my bodily action in the past might
have been different from what it actually was; for as this action was
the outcome of my mentation at the time (according to the spiritual
index, which is now our guide), and as this mentation was not coerced
from without, it might very well have been different from what it was.
Each of the mental sequences at that time was a result of those
preceding and a cause of those succeeding; but behind all this play of
mental causation there all the while stood that Self, which was at once
the condition of its occurrence, and the _First Cause_ of its action. It
is not true that that Self was nothing more than the result of all this
play of mental causation; it can only have been the First Cause of it.
For, otherwise, the mental causation must have been the cause of that
causation, which is absurd. Who or What it was that originally caused
this First Cause is, of course, another question, which I shall
presently hope to show is not merely unanswerable, but unmeaning. As a
matter of fact, however, we know that this Self is here, and that it can
thus be proved to be a substance, _standing under_ the whole of that
more superficial display of mental causation which it is able to look
upon introspectively--and this almost as _impersonally_ as if it were
regarding the display as narrated by another mind. I say, then, that
the theory of Monism entitles us to regard this Self as the _fons et
origo_ of our mental causation, and thus restores to us the doctrine of
Liberty with its attendant consequence of Moral Responsibility.

It may help to elucidate this matter if we regard it from another point
of view. According to Hobbes, 'Liberty is the absence of all impediments
to action that are not contained in the nature and intrinsical qualities
of the agent.' Now, if we accept this definition, it is easy to show
that the theory of Monism is really at one with the doctrine of Liberty.
For, in the first place, according to the theory of Monism, the neurosis
of the brain could not be what it is without the psychosis of the mind.
Consequently, as above shown, it would be equally incorrect to say that
the neurosis governs the psychosis, as it would be to say that the
psychosis governs the neurosis. But, if so, the Will is