And as we are thus utterly unable to perceive any power that the mind has over the body, so are we equally unconscious of any power of the mind over itself. We know as little of its internal nature and constitution as we do of its mode of connection with the body. We know by experience that at the bidding of the will ideas are continually brought forward; but by what means they are brought forward we are absolutely ignorant, as we are also of the reasons of the fluctuation of mental activity, and why mental operations are more vigorous in health than in sickness, before breakfast than after a heavy dinner or deep carouse. Such, on the issue immediately before us, is Hume's reasoning, to which--though necessarily very greatly condensing it--I shall, I am sure, be acknowledged to have conscientiously striven to do full justice, by bringing all its points into the strongest light, and arranging them in the most effective order. Still, with its utmost strength thus displayed before us, we are fully warranted in asserting _a priori_ that its whole utmost strength is weakness. If, by following a leader who has engaged to conduct us to a certain spot, we find ourselves at our journey's end in a quite different place, no appeal that the guide can make to maps or finger-posts will persuade us that he has not mistaken the way. Nor need our judgment be otherwise, even though our guide be Hume, if, having started with him in pursuit of truth, we are finally landed in a patent absurdity. With all due respect for logic, we protest with Tony Lumpkin against being argufied out of our senses, as we plainly should be if we allowed ourselves to be persuaded that whenever we use the words _power_ or _connection_ we have no idea thereto correspondent. Since, then, Hume tells us this, we may be quite sure that he has been deluded by some fallacy which may be detected by adequate search; and being, moreover, sensible that we really have the idea our possession of which is denied by him, we may be equally sure that the original of which the idea is a copy is similarly discoverable. In sooth, neither the one nor the other is far to seek. The fallacy consists simply in confusion of the definite with the indefinite article. The original of our idea of power Hume himself indicates even while rejecting it. Although constrained by Hume's demonstration to confess that we cannot even conjecture of what kind is _the_ authority which the will exercises over the limbs, we are not the less sensible that it does exercise _an_ authority of some sort or other, which they are unable to disobey. We know that in ordinary circumstances our limbs will move when we wish them to move, and will remain quiet when we wish them not to move. Nor this only. We moreover know, or at any rate fancy we know, that they would not have moved unless we had wished them. In examples like these of volitions followed, as the case may be, by _premeditated_ motion or rest, we have something