This, however, is not the conception of Dr. Tyndall. The power which he sees in nature is a force which is inherent and essential to matter, and "in that matter he sees the promise and the potency of all _terrestrial_ life," but not of all life, for "religion is life." The Power which is revealed as the object of the "religious emotions" is a Power which works for "righteousness," and is "intelligent" as well as "ethical." This Power he seems to regard as distinct from the force which produces the necessary phenomena of nature. But whence does he obtain this conception of force? He writes as though he had seen force, or cognized force, by some one of the senses. We claim that force is "a subtile mental conception, and not a sensuous perception or phenomenon;"[483] it is a metaphysical idea, "a postulate of reason applied to nature." We venture the assertion that the physicist has not the remotest conception of force except as a datum of consciousness. The senses give us only phenomena. All we perceive is motion, change, succession. "All we know or see is the effect; we do not see force."[484] So say all physicists as well as all metaphysicians. "Experiences of force are not derived from any thing else,... and the force by which we ourselves produce changes, and which serves to symbolize the cause of changes in general, is the final disclosure of all analysis."[485] Whenever, therefore, Dr. Tyndall attempts to account for motion and change in external nature by assuming the existence of invisible, imponderable forces, he is interpreting nature in terms of consciousness--we mean that consciousness of personal causation which we have when we put forth _effort_ with an _intention_ thereby to accomplish an end. Force is known to us by immediate consciousness as a function of our own mind--that is, mind acting in will is conscious of itself as a force. We are able to conceive of force in no other way. "Force dissociated from personality and will must be forever incomprehensible by us, because it would be something contradictory to our consciousness."[486] If we may not regard will-force as "the type of all the force in nature," then the physicist knows nothing about it, does not know there is any force, and the only consistent course is to unite with Comte in eradicating the word from the vocabulary of science. In the only case in which we are admitted into any immediate personal knowledge of the origin of force, we find it connected with volition, with will, with motion, with intellect, and with all the attributes of mind in which personality consists.[487] We must, therefore, conclude that all force is mind-force, is spirit-force, and that the forces which animate nature are spiritual. Either the force manifested in the universe is the force of a self-existent and self-determining Intelligent Will, or we can form no conception of it whatever.