It appears to me impossible that any valid exception can be taken to the above reasoning, if once the premiss is granted--namely, that the principle of Causality admits of being regarded as identical with that of Volition. For if Cause is but another name for Will--whether the Will be subjective or ejective--it follows that my will is a first cause, which is determined by other causes only in so far as the executive capacity of my body is so determined. As the whole stress of any objection to the present argument must thus be brought to bear upon the validity of this its fundamental premiss, a few words may now be said to show that the premiss is not wholly gratuitous. Of course the reason why at first sight it is apt to appear, not only gratuitous, but even grotesque, is because in these days of physical science the minds of most of us are dominated by the unthinking persuasion that the principle of causality is the most ultimate principle which our minds can reach. Most of us accept this persuasion as almost of the nature of an axiom, and hence the mere suggestion that our own volitions are really uncaused appears to us of the nature of a self-evident absurdity. A little thought, however, is enough to show that the only ground of reason which this strong prepossession can rest upon, is the assumption that the principle of causality is logically prior to that of mind. Therefore it is the validity of this assumption that we have here to investigate.
In the first place, then, the assumption is _ipso facto_ irrational. For it is evident that in order to make the assumption there must already be a mind to make it. In other words, the very conception of the principle of causality implies a thinking substance wherein that conception arises, and therefore, as a mere matter of formal statement, it is impossible to assign logical priority to this conception over the thing whereby it is conceived.
In the next place, when we carefully analyze the nature of this conception itself, we find that it arises immediately out of our conception of Being as Being. This is shown by the idea of _equivalency_ between cause and effect, which is an essential feature of the conception of causality as such. In other words, the statement of any causal relation is merely a statement of the fact that both the matter and the energy concerned in the event were of a permanent nature and unalterable amount. Therefore, _if_ the ultimate Reality is mental, Causation _must_ be ontologically identical with Volition. And that the ultimate Reality is either mental, or something greater, seems to be proved by the consideration that if it be supposed anything _less_, there must be an end of the conception of equivalency as between cause and effect, and so of the conception of causality itself; for, clearly, if my mind has been caused by anything less than itself, there is an end of any possible equivalency between the activity of that thing as a cause, and the occurrence of my mind as an effect[13].