Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

j g Examination q/ the CHAP. "
have been reversed. The motion which one ball set in
motion communicates to another, might or might not have
taken place prior
to I see
experience. nothing in the first
motion to produce
the second, and can conceive no motion
upon impact with as little contradiction as motion. Again,
I look into myself, and observe my own motions, actions,
I
thoughts.
find that by a certain exertion of the will, I
can move my limbs, raise ideas, excite or suppress affec
tions and emotions but the nature of that ;
power by which
the will does this, is absolutely hidden from me. When I
exert all my force to lift some weight or remove some bar
rier, I may seem at first to myself to have an inward
perception of that force, and the manner in which it
operates ; but on examination, I find that I have only the
idea of a motion of the will, and of a strain of the muscles
which succeeds, not of any connection between the two. 1
I have looked around and within me then, and I do not see
a cause anywhere. My reason, as surely as it leads me up
to the truth, that there is a cause of things, stops at that
point, and leaves me in utter perplexity and amazement as
to what a cause is. It is a wonder, a mystery, an incom
prehensible truth. My reason forces me towards the idea
of something, of which I can give no more account to
myself than I can of the most inexplicable article in a
creed. What can be more astonishing than a power by
which anything in nature is. Do all the mysteries of
revelation do even the wildest dreams of superstition ex-
1
It may be pretended that the its command over ideas and limbs,
resistance which we meet with in ... Secondly, this sentiment of an
bodies, obliging us frequently to endeavour to overcome resistance
exert all our force, and call up all has no known connection with any
our power, thus gives us the idea of event what follows ; it, we know by
force and power. It is this nisus or
experience, but would not know it a
strong endeavour of which we are priori. It must, however, be conconscious,
that is the original irn- fessed that the animal nisus which
pression from which this idea is we experience, though it can afford
copied. But, first, we attribute no accurate or precise idea of power,
power to a vast number of objects enters very much into that vulgar
where we can never suppose this inaccurate idea which is formed of
resistance or force to take place ; to it. Hume, Enquiry concerning the
the bupreme Being, who never meets Human Understanding, sect. 7.
with any resistance ;
to the mind in