of gunpowder be placed in a house, and a train laid from it, and if I voluntarily take hold of a lighted match and apply it to the end of the train, with the intention of blowing up the house, then I am conscious that I was the cause of the explosion that ensued. If the general of an army sign and deliver an order that a district of country be laid waste with fire and sword, then he is conscious that he was the cause of the conflagrations and bloodshed that ensued; while, at the same time, every inferior agent, in executing the order, is conscious of being the cause of the effects produced directly by the movements of his own body, or by the movements of others acting under his orders.

This is the first and original class of phenomena from which we derive the notion of cause and effect. But there are other classes of phenomena to which this notion is extended when once we get possession of it.

A second class of phenomena with which we connect the notion of cause and effect is that in which the mind is passively affected by external objects. Our acquaintance with the external world enables us to discover that certain objects produce certain sensations; or, at least, that certain sensations always accompany the presence of certain objects. The ringing of a bell, or the beating of a drum, produces certain sensations of sound; the appearance of the sun is always accompanied with certain sensations of sight and feeling, and we ascribe our sensations to these outward objects as the causes of them. This, however, we apprehend to be only an extension of our notion of cause and effect derived from that class of phenomena in which the mind is the active and conscious cause of the effects; and we greatly doubt whether, even after the mind had discovered the existence of outward objects, and their connection with our sensations, it could ever have formed from that discovery any other notion than that of a constant connection which it would intuitively expect to be uniformly

preserved. But having once obtained the notion of causation from our own consciousness, we naturally extend the notion of effects to those cases in which our mind is passive, and of causes to the antecedents of our passive sensations. Children are prone to be pleased or displeased with external inanimate objects that affect them pleasantly or painfully. They are vexed and angry with the pin that pricks them, and hug the little book that delights them with its brilliant pictures.

A third class of phenomena with which we connect the notion of cause and effect, consists of that in which the mind is not regarded as the cause, or its sensations as the effects; but in which it is a mere spectator of constant and regular connection of phenomena, or successions of antecedents and consequents among external objects. This, however, is merely another case in which we extend, by analogy, to mere successions the notion of cause and effect, derived from our own consciousness of being the cause of certain effects. Our expectation of similar consequents from similar antecedents is the operation of that law which we have found to be intuitive, or at least to be born with us. The notion that the consequent follows the antecedent, as the effect of a cause, is not intuitive or born with us, but is easily and naturally derived from those cases in which we are conscious that our minds are the causes of effects on our bodies and on other objects external to I strike a ball lying on the floor with my hand or foot, and it rolls away from me; another ball strikes it, and produces the same effect, and as I regarded my hand or foot as the cause of the motion in the one case, I am easily led to regard the second ball as the cause in the other. I strike a bell with a hammer, and it sounds; and I am conscious that I am the immediate cause of the sound, and the hammer the mediate cause. The bell is swung, and the tongue strikes it and produces the same effect; and what more natural than to view the

us.

tongue as the cause of the sound? In both cases, the real causes were my wielding the hammer, and the person who swung the bell; but the transfer of the notion of cause to the passive instruments employed in producing the effects, is so easy and natural, that very young children make it spontaneously. We ask, “What hurt you?" and, as soon as they can speak, they say the table, or the chair, or the spoon, as if these objects were the active causes of their hurt.

The theory, therefore, that has been adopted by many able men after Hume, that our notion of cause and effect is derived from our observing that the same consequents always follow the same antecedents, and consequently that nothing more is known to us of cause and effect than a mere regular succession without any connecting principle, is a manifest fallacy. For our observation of a regular succession of antecedents and consequents, so far from being the origin of our notion of cause and effect, is only an analogical extension of that notion previously obtained from our own consciousness to these regular successions. For, on the one hand, no mere regular succession of events however long continued, would have given rise to the notion of cause and effect in our minds; and, on the other hand, it requires no regular succession of antecedents and consequents to give origin to that notion; but on the very first occasion on which the mind is conscious of producing a voluntary movement of any member of the body, it is conscious that itself is the cause, and that the movement is the effect.

The reader will observe that we have not been discussing the nature of cause and effect, but simply the mode in which we form the conception of cause and effect. The qualities of objects which produce effects on other objects may be necessary causes, for aught we know to the contrary; but we know nothing more than that they are regular antecedents to consequents. In

regard to the assertion that we cannot conceive of any change without a cause for it, see Book I., ch. 3, p. 44.

LET us now suppose the mind with its new acquisitions-its power over the body, its perception of the external material world, its will, and its conceptions of cause and effect-introduced upon the theatre of the world, among the multiplicity of animate and inanimate objects with which it is filled, and the various influences to which it is subjected, and let us look back upon those powers and operations which we have contemplated in their embryo state, observing what modifications its new circumstances may make upon them, and what new faculties or operations they may develop. We confine

ourselves in this division of our work to the mind's perceptions of the material world, regarding, for the present, the inferior animals, and even man himself, but as material machines. We shall reserve the recognition of other minds, with the effects of that recognition, to a future division.

CHAPTER V.

SENSATION, AS MODIFIED BY PERCEPTION.

THE modifications of sensation occasioned by the new circumstances into which we have introduced the mind, are chiefly the two following.

1. By the mind's power over the motions of the body, combined with its knowledge of external objects, it has acquired a certain power over its sensations. It cannot prevent any external object which comes within the range of its organs of sense, from exciting the sensation which the qualities of the object are fitted to excite ; nor can it excite any sensation in itself independently of the presence of the object fitted to excite it. But

it has obtained a certain power, chiefly by the use of the hands, to bring objects within the range of its organs of sense, or to remove them from it; and, by the use of the lower limbs, to bring the organs of sense within the range of the effects of external objects, or to remove them from those effects. It can bring a rose to the nostril, or remove it out of the way, or it can go forth to the garden and smell it there; or go where its odour cannot reach. By means of that beautiful mechanism, also, by which the head is attached to the body, it can turn those organs which are situated in the head into the most favourable positions for being affected by their respective objects of sense. Besides the motions of the head, the eye-which requires more rapidity and more precision in its movements than the power of motion in the head furnishes-is provided with a mechanism of its own for turning it towards any object from which the mind desires to receive sensations, with the utmost conceivable promptitude and exactness, and also for closing it against any object from which the mind desires to avoid receiving sensations. The mind has thus some choice, although very limited, in the succession of its sensations.

2. The other modification of sensation occasioned by its altered circumstances is, that its sensations come to be regarded almost exclusively as the signs of the presence, the positions, and the qualities of external objects. Those laws which we found to regulate our attention to sensations continue still to operate; but in a vast majority of cases the attention does not rest on the sensation itself, but is carried forward to the external object that causes it. This follows of necessity from its discovery that sensations are caused by external objects, and also from the power which it has acquired of choosing its sensations-obtaining those that are pleasant, and avoiding those that are painful. Its general history, therefore, in regard to sensation, comes to be that its attention