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316 THE WILL IN NATURE.
stimulus too does not augment in proportion with the en
hancement of that stimulus ; in fact just the contrary often
takes place. Finally, when we come to the sphere of beings
which have knowledge, there is no longer any sort of re
semblance or relation between the action performed and
the object which, as representation, evokes it. Animals,
however, as they are restricted to perceptible representa
tions, still need the presence of the object acting as a
motive, which action is then immediate and infallible (if
we leave training, i.e. habit enforced by fear, out of the
question). For animals are unable to carry about with
them conceptions that might render them independent
of present impressions, enable them to reflect, and qualify
them for deliberate action. Man can do this. There
fore when at last we come to rational beings, the motive is
even no longer a present, perceptible, actually existing, real
thing, but a mere conception having its present existence
only in the brain of the person who acts, but which is
extracted from many multifarious perceptions, from the
experience of former years, or has been handed down in
words. Here the separation between cause and effect is so
wide, the effect has grown so much stronger as compared
with the cause, that the vulgar mind no longer perceives
the existence of a cause at all, and the acts of the will
appear to it to be unconditioned, causeless : that is to say,
free. This is just why, when we reflect upon them from
outside, the movements of our own body present them
selves as if they took place without cause, or to speak more
properly, by a miracle. Experience and reflection alone
teach us that these movements, like all others, are only
possible as the effects of causes, here called motives, and that,
on this ascending scale, it is only as to material reality that
the cause has failed to keep pace with the effect ; whereas it
has kept pace with it as to dynamical reality, energy. At
this degree of the scale therefore the highest in Nature