nery that executes the
marvellous work, while the mind catches here and there some glimpse of
the operation, now with delight and adhesion, now with impotent
rebellion? When impulses work themselves out unimpeded we say we act;
when they are thwarted we say we are acted upon; but in neither case do
we in the least understand the natural history of what is occurring. The
mind at best vaguely forecasts the result of action: a schematic verbal
sense of the end to be accomplished possibly hovers in consciousness
while the act is being performed; but this premonition is itself the
sense of a process already present and betrays the tendency at work; it
can obviously give no aid or direction to the unknown mechanical process
that produced it and that must realise its own prophecy, if that
prophecy is to be realised at all.

That such an unknown mechanism exists, and is adequate to explain every
so-called decision, is indeed a hypothesis far outrunning detailed
verification, although conceived by legitimate analogy with whatever is
known about natural processes; but that the mind is not the source of
itself or its own transformations is a matter of present experience; for
the world is an unaccountable datum, in its existence, in its laws, and
in its incidents. The highest hopes of science and morality look only to
discovering those laws and bringing one set of incidents--facts of
perception--into harmony with another set--facts of preference. This
hoped-for issue, if it comes, must come about in the mind; but the mind
cannot be its cause since, by hypothesis, it does not possess the ideas
it seeks nor has power to realise the harmonies it desiderates. These
have to be waited for and begged of destiny; human will, not controlling
its basis, cannot possibly control its effects. Its existence and its
efforts have at best the value of a good omen. They show in what
direction natural forces are moving in so far as they are embodied in
given men.

[Sidenote: Thought's march automatic and thereby implicated in events.]

Men, like all things else in the world, are products and vehicles of
natural energy, and their operation counts. But their conscious will, in
its moral assertiveness, is merely a sign of that energy and of that
will's eventual fortunes. Dramatic terror and dramatic humour both
depend on contrasting the natural pregnancy of a passion with its
conscious intent. Everything in human life is ominous, even the
voluntary a