consciousness of every man. We know, as certainly as we know anything, that we are free agents, and that free agency is the power of self-determination, or of originating our own acts. It contradicts not only our self-consciousness, but the laws of belief which God has impressed upon our nature. It is one of those laws that we should believe in the reality of the objects of our senses ; and that belief involves the conviction not only that they really are, but also that they are the causes of the impressions which they make on our sensibility. It is to put philosophy in conflict with common sense, and with the universal convictions of men, to teach that all this is a delusion ; that when we see a tree we are mis- taken, that God immediately creates that impression in our mind ; or that when we will to move the power is not in us, that it is not we that move, but God that moves us ; or when we think, that it is God creates the thought. (3.) As has been before remarked, this system naturally leads, and has led to idealism and pantheisni, and therefore is utterly inconsistent with all liberty and responsibility, and destroys the possibility of moral distinctions.
C. The Doctrine that there is no Efficiency except in Mind. According to this view, there are no such things as physical forces. The mind of man is endowed with the power of producing effects ; but apart from mind, divine or created, there is no efficiency in the universe. This doctrine finds its way into many theological, as well a-s philosophical disquisitions. ■ Thus Principal Tulloch says, a cause is " coincident with an agent." It " therefore imphes mind. More definitely, and in its full conception, it implies a rational will." ^ Physical causes are therefore regarded as the ever operating will of God. " The idea of causation," he says, " we found to resolve itself into that of the operation of a rational mind or will in nature." ^ Providence is nothing else than a "continued forth-putting of that [originally creative] efficiency." ^ Dr. Tulloch very correctly assumes that a cause is that which has power to produce effects ; and that we get our idea of power, and therefore of the nature of causation, from our own consciousness of efficiency. He hence infers that, as mind is the only cause of which we have immediate knowledge, therefore it is the only one that exists. But this is a non-sequitur. That mind is a cause, is no proof that elec- tricity may not be a cause. The facts, as understood by the mass
1 TJieism; The Witness of Reason and Nature to an All-Wise and Beneficent Creator, By the Rev. John Tulloch, D. D., Principal and Primarius Professor of Theology. St. Mary*f College, St. Andrews, edit. New York, 1855, p. 43.
3 Ibid. p. 47. ^ ibid. p. 93.
596 PART I.— THEOLOGY. [Ch. XI. — Providenck.
of men are, First, we are conscious of efficiency, or the power to produce effects. Second, the exercise of this power awakens, or gives occasion to the intuition of the universal and necessary- truth that every effect must have an appropriate cause. Thirdly, as we see around us effects of different kinds, it is a law of reason that they should be referred to causes of different kinds. The evidence that this is a law of reason, is the fact that men every where assume physical causes to account for physical effects, as uniformly as they assume mind for intelligent effects. The theory, however, which resolves all forces into the everywhere operative j will of God has great attractions. It makes a way of escape from / many of the difficulties which beset the question of God's relation to the world. Even men devoted to the study of nature get so puzzled by such questions, as. What is matter? or What is force? that they are disposed, in many cases, to merge all things into God. The Duke of Argyle says, " Science, in the modern doc- trine of Conservation of Energy and the Convertibility of Forces, is already getting something like a firm hold of the idea that all kinds of Force are but foi-ms or manifestations of some one Central Force issuing from some one Fountain-head of Power. Sir John Herschel has not hesitated to say, that ' it is but reasonable to regard the Force of Gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a conscious- ness or a will existing somewhere.' And even if we cannot cer- tainly identify Force in all its forms with the direct energies of the One Omnipresent and all-pervading Will, it is at least in the high- est degree unphilosophical to assume the contrary, — to speak or to thiAk as if the Forces of Nature were either independent of, or even separate from, the Creator's Power." ^
It was remarked on a previous page that Wallace still more decidedly adopts the same view. In his book on " Natural Selec- tion," after he had defended Darwin's theory on the origin of spe- cies (except in its application to man), he comes in the end to start the question. What is matter? This question he answers by saying, " Matter is essentially force, and nothing but force. Mat- ter, as popularly understood, does not exist, and is, in fact, philo- sophically inconceivable." ^ The next question is. What is force ? The ultimate answer to this, is, that it is the will of God. " If," says Mr. Wallace, " we have traced one force, however minute, to an origin in our own Will, while we have no knowledge of any other primary cause of force, it does not seem an improbable con-
I 1 Reign of Law, 5th ed. London, 18G7, p. 123.
i 2 Natural Selection, pp. 365, 366.