ibres of the brain, to set in
motion the nerve currents which loosen or excite the pent up forces of
certain muscles, _some force_ must be required to effect those changes.
If it is said, "those changes are automatic, and are set in motion by
external causes," then one essential part of our consciousness, a
certain amount of freedom in willing, is annihilated; and it is
inconceivable how or why there should have arisen any consciousness or
any apparent will, in such purely automatic organisms. If this were so,
our apparent WILL would be a delusion, and Professor Huxley's
belief--"that our volition counts for something as a condition of the
course of events," would be fallacious, since our volition would then be
but one link in the chain of events, counting for neither more nor less
than any other link whatever.

If, therefore, we have traced one force, however minute, to an origin in
our own WILL, while we have no knowledge of any other primary cause of
force, it does not seem an improbable conclusion that all force may be
will-force; and thus, that the whole universe, is not merely dependent
on, but actually _is_, the WILL of higher intelligences or of one
Supreme Intelligence. It has been often said that the true poet is a
seer; and in the noble verse of an American poetess, we find expressed,
what may prove to be the highest fact of science, the noblest truth of
philosophy:

God of the Granite and the Rose!
Soul of the Sparrow and the Bee!
The mighty tide of Being flows
Through countless channels, Lord, from thee.
It leaps to life in grass and flowers,
Through every grade of being runs,
While from Creation's radiant towers
Its glory flames in Stars and Suns.

_Conclusion._

These speculations are usually held to be far beyond the bounds of
science; but they appear to me to be more legitimate deductions from the
facts of science, than those which consist in reducing the whole
universe, not merely to matter, but to matter conceived and defined so
as to be philosophically inconceivable. It is surely a great step in
advance, to get rid of the notion that _matter_ is a thing of itself,
which can exist _per se_, and must have been eternal, since it is
supposed to be indestructible and uncreated,--that force, or the forces
of nature, are another thing, given or added to matter, or else its
necessary properties,--and that mind is yet another thing, either a
product of this ma