He reasons not from the observed, but from the assumed, nature of a volition. It must be an effect, says he, and though I do not see "the effectual power by which it is produced;" yet there must be such a power. Yes, it is just as absurd to suppose that it can exist, without being produced by the effectual power of something operating upon the mind, as it is to suppose that a world can create itself! But as we appeal to consciousness, let us pay some little attention to its teaching. We find ourselves, then, possessed of a volition; we find our minds in a state of acting. This is all we discover by the light of consciousness. We see "not the effectual power of any cause" operating to produce it. What shall we conclude then? Shall we conclude that there _must_ be some cause to produce it? This were not to study nature, as "the humble servants and interpreters thereof;" but to approach it in the attitude of dictators. If we draw such an inference at all, it must be from the fact, it seems, that volition is a produced effect. But is it such an effect? What says consciousness upon this point? We have already repeatedly seen, what every man may see, that a volition is not the passive result of any prior action; it is action itself. It is not a produced effect; it is a producing cause. It is not _determined_ at all; it is simply a _determination_. As it stands out in the light of consciousness, it is as perfectly distinct from the idea of an effect, as any one thing can possibly be from another; and if it has not so appeared to every reflecting mind, it is because it has not been simply looked at, and beheld as it is in itself, but has been viewed through the medium of a certain fixed notion, a certain preconceived form of thought, a certain grand illusion, by which the witchery of the senses has blinded the eye of consciousness. Every change in the external world requires a producing cause; who then can possibly conceive of a volition as existing upon any other terms or conditions! It is this fallacy, this begging of the question, this perpetual declaration that it is self-evident, that has, through a natural illusion of the senses, spread the scheme of necessity far and wide over the minds of men. It is this grand illusion of the senses, or, if you please, of the mind, that has brought "the dictates of reason," as they have been called, into conflict with the testimony of consciousness.