th categories of thought, while it gives us no power {38} or
opportunity of using them. It would be like holding, for instance, that
we have indeed been endowed with the idea of number in general, but that
we cannot discover within our experience any numerable things; that we
have got the idea of 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., but have no capacity whatever for
actually counting--for saying that here are three apples, and there four
marbles. And, psychologically, it would be difficult to find any
parallel to anything of the kind. Nature does not first supply us with
clearly defined categories of thought, and then give us a material to
exercise them upon. In general we discover these abstract categories by
using them in our actual thinking. We count beads or men or horses
before we evolve an abstract idea of number, or an abstract
multiplication table. It is very difficult to see how this idea of Cause
could possibly have got into our heads if we had never in the whole
course of our experience come into any sort of contact with any actual
concrete cause. Where then, within our experience, if not in the
succession of external events, shall we look for a cause--for something
to which we can apply this category or abstract notion of causality? I
answer 'We must look within: it is in our experience of volition that we
actually find something answering to our idea of causal connexion.' And
here, I would invite you not to think so much of our consciousness of
actually {39} moving our limbs. Here it is possible to argue plausibly
that the experience of exercising causality is a delusion. I imagine
that, if I will to do so, I can move my arm; but I will to stretch out my
arm, and lo! it remains glued to my side, for I have suddenly been
paralysed. Or I may be told that the consciousness of exerting power is
a mere experience of muscular contraction, and the like. I would ask you
to think rather of your power of directing the succession of your own
thoughts. I am directly conscious, for instance, that the reason why I
am now thinking of Causality, and not (say) of Tariff Reform, is the fact
that I have conceived the design of delivering a course of lectures on
this subject; the succession of ideas which flow through my mind as I
write or speak is only explicable by reference to an end--an end which I
am striving to bring into actual being. In such voluntarily concentrated
purposeful successions of thought I am immediately exercisin