only arrange that things shall move each
other, and can determine by suitably preconceived plans the kind and
direction of the motion that shall ensue at a given time and place.
Provided always that we include in this category of "things" our
undoubtedly material bodies, muscles and nerves.
But here is just the puzzle: at what point does will or determination
enter into the scheme? Contemplate a brain cell, whence originates a
certain nerve-process whereby energy is liberated with some resultant
effect; what pulled the detent in that cell which started the impulse?
No \doubt some chemical process: combination or dissociation, something
atomic, occurred; but what made it occur just then and in that way?
I answer, not anything that we as yet understand, but apparently the
same sort of pre-arrangement that determined whether the stone from the
cliff should fall on point A or point B--the same sort of process that
guided the pen to make legible and effective writing instead of
illegible and ineffective scrawls--the same kind of control that
determines when and where a trigger shall be pulled so as to secure the
anticipated slaughter of a bird. So far as energy is concerned, the
explosion and the trigger-pulling are the same identical operations
whether the aim be exact or random. It is intelligence which directs;
it is physical energy which is directed and controlled and produces the
result in time and space.
It will be said _some_ energy is needed to pull a hair-trigger, to open
the throttle-valve of an engine, to press the button which shall
shatter a rock. Granted: but the work-concomitants of that energy are
all familiar, and equally present whether it be arranged so as to
produce any predetermined effect or not. The opening of the
throttle-valve for instance demands just the same exertion, and results
in just the same imperceptible transformation of fully-accounted-for
energy, whether it be used to start a train in accordance with a
time-table and the guard's whistle, or whether it be pushed over, as if
by the wind, at random. The shouting of an order to a troop demands
vocal energy and produces its due equivalent of sound; but the
intelligibility of the order is something superadded, and its result
may be to make not sound or heat alone, but History.
Energy must be _available_ for the performance of any physical
operation, but the energy is independent of the determination or
arrangement. Guidance and control
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