Rowland Gibson Hazard

“ We should be degraded from the high and responsible position of independent powers in the universe—co-workers with God in creating the future—to a condition of mere machines and instruments operated by "stimuli" and "molecules;" and, though still with knowledge and sensibility to know and feel our degraded position—"so abject! yet alive"—with no power to apply our knowledge in effort to extricate, and to elevate ourselves. We might still have the knowledge of good and evil ”

“ It seems to me, however, that there is room for a distinction between the consciousness of effort, and the effort itself. If the changes, which seem to us to be the consequences of our effort put forth with a preconception of these changes, and for the purpose of producing them, are really caused by some extrinsic power or force acting through us, it is quite conceivable that such a power, especially if intelligent, may impress us with the emotion of making an effort when we make none, though I see no reason why such a circuitous mode of action should be adopted. ”

“ No mechanical contrivance, no mechanism furnishes any power, but is only a means of applying power; and, even if the term mechanical embraces all the phenomena of matter in motion, we still have the question as to whether the mechanism or the matter moves by its own power, or is moved by the effort of some intelligent being. ”

“ Descending in the scale of intelligence, we may, and probably will, reach a grade of beings which do not invent or form plans to meet new occasions for action, and the efforts of such must be wholly instinctive; but I have seen both dogs and horses draw inferences, and work out ingenious plans of action, adapted to conditions so unusual and so improbable to them, as to preclude the assumption that they had been specially provided by Nature, through hereditary transmission, or otherwise, with the knowledge of the plan suited to the occasion. ”

“ In all our actions, whether instinctive, rational, or habitual, we thus apply our knowledge to direct our efforts to the end desired, and there, is not in the actions themselves, nor in their immediate antecedents, any difference whatever. In all of them it is but an effort suggested by the want, and directed to a given end by means of our knowledge. The difference is not in the action, nor in the knowledge, nor in the application of the knowledge, but one step farther back—in the manner in which we became possessed of the knowledge we apply. ”

“ In regard to our internal perceptions, sensations, and emotions, our consciousness is conclusive evidence that we have them, and that they are what consciousness represents them to be. The consciousness of the sensation of pain is the pain itself; and the consciousness of perceiving that the whole is greater than its part is, itself, the perception of that fact, and there can be no question as to my actually having the sensation of pain, or as to my having the perception of the inequality. ”

“ In order to thus create what, at least to the visual sense, would be an external material creation, the only addition, then, which is required to the powers which we habitually exercise is that of impressing our conceptions upon others. With this addition we could create and give palpable existence to a universe, varying more or less from that now palpable to us. And this power of impressing our conceptions on others we are none of us wholly devoid of. ”

“ Belief is not a matter of will or of choice, but each must believe in conformity to his own consciousness, and retain his existing belief till his consciousness is in some way changed. The denial of this involves a contradiction, and we may assume, as a corollary to it, that it is not only reasonable, but a necessity, that we believe things to be as they appear to be, till we recognize a sufficient reason for believing that the appearances are deceptive. The testimony of consciousness is not equally reliable as to all subjects. ”

“ Let us now look at the very curious and interesting experiments upon which Prof. Huxley relies for his conclusion that animals, including man, are "conscious automata." He says that, if, when a man is so paralyzed that he is wholly unable to move his limbs, and has no sensation in them, "you tickle the soles of his feet with a feather, the limbs will be drawn up just as vigorously, perhaps a little more vigorously, than when he was in full possession of the consciousness of what happened to him." ”

“ I may further observe that, if I am right in supposing that the only difference between our own incipient creations, of a landscape for instance, and the external scenery which we perceive, is that we can change the former at will, while the latter is fixed, it shows how narrow is the space that divides the creative powers of man from those of the Supreme Intelligence, and that the difference is mainly, if not entirely, in degree, and not in kind. ”

“ Corresponding to His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, man has finite power and finite knowledge, and can make all the objects of his knowledge present, which is equivalent to a finite presence, limited, like our other attributes, to the sphere of our knowledge. This hypothesis, then, rounds out our ideas of creative intelligence, relieving us of the anomaly of the creation of matter as a distinct entity, for which, having in ourselves no conscious rudiment of a power to accomplish, we cannot conceive the possibility. ”

“ Even if it could be imbued with motive power, it could have no inducement, no tendency, to move in one direction rather than another; and a tendency which is equal in all directions is no tendency in any direction. If all matter were at this moment quiescent, even the materialists will not assert that it could of itself begin to move. ”

“ Huxley's views, we should be deprived of all the dignity of conscious power, and with it of all the cheering and elevating influences of the performance of duty; for that which has no power can have no duties. ”

“ If when once in motion its tendency is to continue in motion, then it could be used as an instrument by which intelligent power, putting it in motion, could extend the effects of its own action in time and space. ”

“ If this view, which seems to me to account for all the peculiarities of instinctive action, is correct, instinct is not a distinct faculty, capacity, property, or quality, of being, which may be compared with or substituted for reason, but has relation only to the mode in which the knowledge by which we determine some of our actions was originally obtained. Whether the innate knowledge of modes and plans is by transmission, or otherwise, does not affect the theory. It is sufficient that they are thus ready formed in the being without effort of its own. ”

“ If the material universe is regarded as the work of an intelligent Creator, working with design to produce a certain effect, then, upon either hypothesis, it is the expression of a conception of this Creator, existing as thought and imagery in his mind before he gave it palpable, tangible existence in ours, and the only question between the two modes is, whether, in making it palpable to us, he transfers this thought and imagery directly to our minds, or first paints, moulds, or carves them in a distinct material substance. ”

“ If, for instance, the moving body is approaching another body, then, as two bodies cannot occupy the same space, some effect must of necessity result from the collision; and all the effects of unintelligent cause or force must be from some like necessity. In this case the material hypothesis has an advantage, there being no apparent connection of necessity between an intelligent effort and its sequences. This, however, as matter cannot put itself in motion, nor, perhaps, even continue any motion imparted to it, may only make it an instrument of other power, and not a power itself. ”

“ Huxley asserts that matter is a cause, a power not only in what is generally regarded as its own sphere, but that it also produces all mental phenomena. At the same time, while admitting the consciousness—the intelligence—of man and brutes, he denies to them the faculty of will, thus virtually denying to them any power. ”

“ It may, however, be urged that both the arguments thus drawn from the difficulty of conceiving the creation of matter, and the necessity of motion to its causal power, may be met by the hypothesis that matter was not created, but has existed through a past eternity, and that its original condition was that of motion, and that there is no more difficulty in conceiving this than in conceiving that intelligence, with its activities, has had no beginning. ”

“ I think, however, I may properly say that, viewing the problem on the spiritual side, and carefully excluding popular prepossessions and theological dogmas, I have carried the opposite doctrine of "freedom" to its legitimate logical consequences in the conclusion that every being that wills is a creative first cause, having, in virtue of its attributes of knowledge, feeling, and volition, a power of itself to begin action. ”

“ But the consciousness is not conclusive as to the conformity of the perception with the existing fact, nor as to any inference which I may draw from the sensation. One may have as full and decided perception of what is not, as of what is; and the liability to erroneous inferences from our sensations is a matter of daily experience. ”

“ But, though the consciousness of making an effort is not conclusive as to the actual making, still, as it is of internal phenomena, it is evidence of a higher order than that which consciousness of a sensation gives as to the existence or character of the external phenomena. ”

“ If the existence of matter be admitted, it may still be urged that, being unintelligent, it can have no causative power, and can produce no change, for all changes in matter must be, by its motion, massive or atomic, and matter cannot move itself. ”

“ In investigating the laws of Nature, the one is observing and generalizing the uniform mode of God's voluntary action, the other is finding the necessary consequences of the action of material forces. Each attributes any phenomena which he cannot class with any of his generalizations to some inscrutable exercise of power—the one to intelligent effort, the other to unintelligent material movements; so that, in the mechanical, we have still the question as to the two forms of power—intelligence in effort, and matter in motion ”

“ But, when we have once formed the plan, and acted upon it often enough to remember its successive steps, so that we can repeat them in action by rote without any reference to the rationale, it becomes a plan ready formed in the mind, and the acting upon it becomes habitual. ”

“ That these creations of our own are mostly evanescent, and those to which, with great labor, we give a persistent reality are very limited and imperfect, does not disprove the position that creation is more conceivable to us upon the ideal hypothesis than upon the material. The ideal hypothesis is also commended by the consideration that man, having, in a finite degree, all the other powers usually attributed to the Supreme Intelligence, lacks, under the material theory, the power of creating matter. ”

“ Huxley, in still another case, says of a frog deprived of the most anterior portion of the brain, that "it will sit forever in the same spot. It sees nothing, it hears nothing," yet placed on the hand would, on the turning of the hand, make all the movements necessary to prevent its falling off, and that "these movements are performed with the utmost steadiness and precision, and you may vary the position of your hand, and the frog, so long as you are reasonably slow in your movements, will work backward and forward like a clock." ”

“ That we are not conscious of the movement of the molecules indicates (though far from conclusively) that we do not ourselves move them, but this does not indicate that the muscular movement is not the result of our own effort working through other agencies. That he who throws the stone which kills a bird does not know what curve the stone will describe, nor by what power its motion is continued after it leaves his hand, does not show that he is not the cause of the killing. ”

“ Between the sensation of making the effort, and the antecedent and subsequent knowledge of the subject of this sensation, there is a harmony which it seems hardly conceivable should be produced by any power not having this particular knowledge, and much less by a power incapable of knowing any thing. ”

“ To most persons the actual making of an effort, or willing, seems to be as fully attested by their consciousness as a sensation is; and there is high philosophical authority for putting it in that category, in regard to which the consciousness is positively and of necessity conclusive. ”

“ He who views the perfect crystal as the direct creation of an intelligent designing power, and he who sees in it only the orderly effect of natural forces, will alike class it with the mechanical; so, too, both would speak of the celestial mechanism. ”

“ It is certainly very remarkable that the frog, with no sense at all, avoids leaping against the obstruction, while the man, with a delicate sense of touch, and other conditions parallel or very nearly the same as the frog, knocks against it. It must be a very curious mechanism which can make such discrimination in the effects of its action. ”

“ If there are three or thirty ivory balls in a right line, and the first of them is put in motion causing each one successively to impinge on the next, the final effect of motion in the last is caused by the power applied to the first. We may by our own efforts put the alleged power of matter in action, or may thus act through the uniform modes of God's action. ”

“ In other words, is the application of extrinsic power required to keep it in motion, or is such application required to stop it? Having no power to move itself when once at rest, it could have no power to act, but could only be acted upon, and, if it has inertia, it would be a means of exhausting other force. ”

“ But, granting that matter has always existed, and originally had motion, and consequent power, still, if the tendency is to expend and exhaust this power in producing effects, by collision or otherwise, or, admitting the conservation of force, if its tendency is to become merely potential, then the force which it originally had, in virtue of being in motion, must, in the infinite period of its existence, have been either wholly exhausted or reduced to an infinitesimal, requiring the intervention of some active power to again give it any practical force. ”