te amount of heat, which may properly be said to be its
equivalent; the same pound weight falling through a foot on a man's hand
gives rise to a definite amount of feeling, which might with equal
propriety be said to be its equivalent in consciousness.[77] And as we
already know that there is a certain parity between the intensity of a
pain and the strength of one's desire to get rid of that pain; and
secondly, that there is a certain correspondence between the intensity
of the heat, or mechanical violence, which gives rise to the pain, and
the pain itself; the possibility of the establishment of a correlation
between mechanical force and volition becomes apparent. And the same
conclusion is suggested by the fact that, within certain limits, the
intensity of the mechanical force we exert is proportioned to the
intensity of our desire to exert it.

Thus I am prepared to go with the Materialists wherever the true pursuit
of the path of Descartes may lead them; and I am glad, on all occasions,
to declare my belief that their fearless development of the
materialistic aspect of these matters has had an immense, and a most
beneficial, influence upon physiology and psychology. Nay more, when
they go farther than I think they are entitled to do--when they
introduce Calvinism into science and declare that man is nothing but a
machine, I do not see any particular harm in their doctrines, so long as
they admit that which is a matter of experimental fact--namely, that it
is a machine capable of adjusting itself within certain limits.

I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think
what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a
sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I
should instantly close with the offer. The only freedom I care about is
the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with
on the cheapest terms to any one who will take it of me. But when the
Materialists stray beyond the borders of their path and begin to talk
about there being nothing else in the universe but Matter and Force and
Necessary Laws, and all the rest of _their_ "grenadiers," I decline to
follow them. I go back to the point from which we started, and to the
other path of Descartes. I remind you that we have already seen clearly
and distinctly, and in a manner which admits of no doubt, that all our
knowledge is a knowledge of states of consciousness. "Matter" a