use has been abolished as one
which belongs only to that lower level of inquiry with which science, or
sensuous experience, is concerned. Here, no doubt, the question is a
thoroughly real one, and, as shown in previous chapters, can only be
answered in the way of determinism. But so soon as we ascend to the
philosophical theory of Monism, and so transcend the conditions of
sensuous experience, the question whether volitions are caused or
uncaused becomes, as I have said, a meaningless question, or a question
the terms of which are not correctly stated. If it be the case that all
causality is of a nature psychical, volition and causation are one and
the same thing, differing only in relation to our modes of apprehension.
It would therefore be equally meaningless to say that either is the
cause of the other--just as it would be equally meaningless to say that
neurosis is the cause of psychosis, or that psychosis is the cause of
neurosis. Or thus, if volition and causation are one and the same thing,
the only reason why they ever appear diverse is because the one is known
ontologically, while the other is known phenomenally. Were it possible
that the orbit of my own personality could be widened so as to include
within my own subjectivity the whole universe of causality, I should
find--according to Monism--that all causation would become transformed
into volition. Hence, the only reason why there now appears to be so
great an antithesis between these two principles, is because the
volition which is going on outside of my own consciousness can only be
known to me objectively,--or at most ejectively,--on which account the
principle of causality appears to me phenomenally as the most ultimate,
or most unanalyzable, principle in the phenomenal universe.

Upon the whole, then, I conclude that this is the teaching of Monism. If
we view the facts of human volition relatively, or within the four
corners of psychological science, there is no escape from the conclusion
that they are determined with all the rigour which belongs to natural
causation in general. For every sequence of mental changes and every
sequence of cerebral changes, although phenomenally so diverse, are
taken by this theory to be ontologically identical; and therefore the
sequence of mental changes must be determined with the same degree of
'necessity' as is that of the cerebral changes. In short, mental
causation is taken to be but the obverse aspect of physical ca