thout, it may not be true that they are thus determined
of necessity: their intrinsic character as themselves first causes,
although not isolating them from any possible contact with other causes,
nevertheless does protect them from being necessarily coerced by these
causes, and therefore from becoming but the mere effects of them. Such
influence, or determination, as is exerted upon the Will by these
external causes is exerted only because any individual mind is not
itself a macrocosm, but a microcosm in relation to a macrocosm. If it
were itself a macrocosm, standing out of relation to all other being,
its prime causation would, of course, be wholly uninfluenced by any
other causation; its volitions would then be concerned only with the
determination of its own thoughts in a constant stream of purely
subjective contemplation, such as that which the Hindoo philosophy
attributes to God. But as the human mind discovers itself as existing in
close and complex relations with an external world of an orderly
character, the human mind finds that it is, as before said, _expedient_
to adapt the course of its own causal activity so as to bring it into
harmony with the external order. For, although its own causal activity
is primal, it by no means follows that on this account it is almighty;
hence, even although it be primal, it is nevertheless under the
necessity of adopting means in order to secure its ends--or, in other
words, of adjusting its volitions (if they are to be practically
efficient) to the conditions which are imposed upon its activity by the
orderly system of the external world. Which is merely another way of
stating the conclusion previously reached--viz. that the only necessity
which can be proved to govern our volitions is the necessity which is
imposed by our own considerations of reason and morality. Although we
find that it is expedient to adapt our own causal activity to that
larger system of causal activity by which we are surrounded--seeing that
we must do so necessarily if we are to act at all--it by no means
follows that we are bound to will what is expedient. In other words, the
necessity laid upon us by the system of external causation is a
necessity to adopt means for the attainment of ends; not a necessity to
will the ends. And although in many cases this distinction may appear to
be practically unmeaning--seeing that no man wills what he knows to be
impossible of execution, and therefore that to say