It is not necessary for us to explain how a cause acts. If the will produce effects in external nature by its acts, it is impossible to connect with this as a sequence, established either by experience or logic, that in being received as the cause of its own acts, it becomes such only by willing its own acts. It is clearly an assumption unsupported, and incapable of being supported. Besides, in denying will to be the cause of its own acts, and in supplying another cause, namely, the motive, Edwards does not escape the very difficulty which he creates; for I have already shown, that the same difficulty appertains to motive, and to every possible cause. Every cause produces effects by exertion or acting; but what is the cause of its acting? To suppose it the cause of its own acts, involves all the absurdities which Edwards attributes to self-determination. But, _In the second place_,--let us look at the connexion of cause and phenomena a little more particularly. What is cause? It is that which is the ground of the possible, and actual existence of phenomena. How is cause known? By the phenomena. Is cause visible? No: whatever is seen is phenomenal. We observe phenomena, and by the law of our intelligence we assign them to cause. But how do we conceive of cause as producing phenomena? By a _nisus_, an effort, or energy. Is this _nisus_ itself a phenomenon? It is when it is observed. Is it always observed? It is not. The _nisus_ of gravitation we do not observe; we observe merely the facts of gravitation. The _nisus_ of heat to consume we do not observe; we observe merely the facts of combustion. Where then do we observe this _nisus?_ Only in will. Really, volition is the _nisus_ or effort of that cause which we call will. I do not wish to anticipate subsequent investigations, but I am constrained here to ask every one to examine his consciousness in relation to this point. When I wish to do anything I make an effort--a _nisus_ to do it; I make an effort to raise my arm, and I raise it. This effort is simply the volition. I make an effort to lift a weight with my hand,--this effort is simply the volition to lift it,--and immediately antecedent to this effort, I recognise only my will, or really only myself. This effort--this _nisus_--this volition--whatever we call it,--is in the will itself, and it becomes a phenomenon to us, because we are causes that know ourselves. Every _nisus_, or effort, or volition, which we may make, is in our consciousness: causes, which are not self-conscious, of course do not reveal this _nisus_ to themselves, and they cannot reveal it to us because it is in the very bosom of the cause itself. What we observe in relation to all causes--not ourselves, whether they be self-conscious or not, is not the _nisus_, but the sequents of the _nisus_. Thus in men we do not observe the volition or _nisus_ in their wills, but the phenomena which form the sequents of the _nisus_. And in