There can be no objection to the use of the expression, “the laws of mind,” when care is taken to use language which clearly distinguishes between them and unintelligent and necessary sequences of material nature. But when the term “law” is without any qualification applied to both sets of phenomena alike, it is certain either to lead to fallacious reasoning, or to involve the assumption of the point at issue. Whatever may be the origin of the moral and spiritual in man, it is certain that as they at present exist in him, they stand out in the strongest contrast with the forces which act upon material things, and with the laws of their action. Nothing can be more entirely different in character than the force of gravitation and the principles of volition and self‐consciousness, or than the unconscious forces of material nature and those principles which constitute our rationality. If we affirm that the forces of mind act in conformity with law, it ought to be clearly understood that they act in conformity with a law of their own, which affords free action to the principle of volition. Otherwise there is the greatest danger that the expression will involve the covert assumption of the truth of the doctrine of philosophical necessity, or in other words, that all mental and material forces are of the same character, that is to say, that they are both equally necessary. This involves the assumption of the very point on which the entire controversy turns, for if moral and material forces and laws are all alike, it destroys the conception of a God, and the significance of a miracle. This brings us to the conception of force, what is it? Various definitions of it have been given sufficiently accurate for practical purposes. It should be observed however that physical science can know nothing of it except as a phenomenon. The determination of its nature, and its ultimate cause lie entirely beyond its limits. Many facts respecting it, have been ascertained and tabulated. Many of its manifestations, which bear a different phenomenal aspect, it has ascertained to be capable of transmutation into one another. But it must never be forgotten that it is able to affirm nothing respecting the source in which the forces of the universe originate. All that it can affirm is, that they do exist. The original conception of force is one, however, which we derive, not from the material universe, but from the action of our own minds. We are conscious that we are efficient agents, and that definite results follow the action of our wills. This gives us the conception of force. We apply it in a metaphorical sense to certain things which we observe in the material universe and call them forces, having abstracted from our primary idea of force the conception of volition. But all that we really know about force tends to prove that its origin is mental and not material.