usation,
and, as previously remarked, it is impossible that the doctrine of
determinism could be taught in a manner more emphatic. But, on the other
hand, the theory of Monism is bound to go further than this. From the
very fact of its having gone so far as to identify all physical
processes with psychical processes, it cannot refuse to take the further
and final step of identifying the most ultimate known principle of the
one with the most ultimate known principle of the other; it is bound to
recognize in natural causation the phenomenal aspect of that which is
known ontologically as volition. But if these two principles are thus
regarded as identical, it clearly becomes as unmeaning to ask whether
the one is the cause of the other, as it would be to ask whether the one
wills the other. For, _ex hypothesi_, the two things being one thing,
or but different modes of viewing the same thing, it becomes mere
nonsense to speak of either determining the other; they are both but
different expressions of the same ultimate fact, namely the fact of
Being as Being.

If this result should be deemed unsatisfactory on account of its
vagueness, let it be remembered that nothing is gained on the side of
clearness by the converse supposition--viz. that priority should be
assigned to the principle of causality. For, if we say it is
inconceivable that anything should come into existence without a
cause--not even excepting the principle of mind itself--then the
question immediately arises--If all volition is caused, what is the
cause of volition? What caused this cause? And so on till we arrive at
the question, What caused the principle of causality? which is absurd.
So that whether we regard mind as prior to cause, or cause as prior to
mind, or neither as prior to the other, we arrive at precisely the same
difficulty. And the difficulty is a hopeless one, because it concerns
the ultimate question of Being as Being, or the final mystery of things.

Or, to state the matter in another way. An explanation means the
reference of observed effects to known causes, or the inclusion of
previously unknown causes among causes better known. Hence it is
obvious, from the very meaning of what we call an explanation, that at
the base of all possible explanations there must lie a great
Inexplicable, which, just because more ultimate than any of our
possible explanations, does not itself require to be explained. To
suppose that it does require to be exp