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Untitled Article
difficult to conceive how any one who is not retained to support ah arbitrary hypothesis can undertake to call it in question . Some writers , however , —among whom we must class the late ingenious Dr . Thomas Brown , —appear to have carried the matter to this extravagant length . It may , perhaps , be possible to convince a
man in the full exercise of his senses and understanding , that the volitions of his mind , and the consequent actions which he is accustomed to regard as standing in the near relation of cause and effect , are merely Concomitant effects of other powers distinct from and independent of himself ; but how he is to be convinced that he has never had , nor ever can have , any other notion of the matter than this , is more than I can conceive .
If , then , it be granted that the mind is early imbued with this conception ( call it erroneous and fallacious if you will ) , which leads it to ascribe its own voluntary actions to a power exercised by itself , the analogy which extends this conception to inanimate objects is abundantly obvious . When our attention is forcibly drawn to phenomena and changes closely analogous to those which we know to arise from our own volitions , —more especially
when these effects are produced to an extent and in a degree surpassing our utmost efforts to counteract or resist them , —when , for example , we contemplate with emotions approaching to awe the movements of a mighty steam-engine , whirling with prodigious velocity massy wheels which our unassisted force could not move , and accom plishing at once , with apparent facility , a multitude of effects any one of which would surpass all the strength which we could exert , —and , above all , when we behold the wonderful
phenomena of nature—the tempest , the earthquake , or the volcano , — can we wonder that the astonished spectator , wholly occupied by second causes , should invest them with an agency which really belongs only to mind , and should ascribe to inanimate impercipient objects a power resembling in kind , but vastly transcending in degree that of which he is conscious in himself ?
The great bulk of mankind , it is probable , never get beyond this ; but continue to ascribe power and agency , and even volition and various passions , to what are called mechanical causes . In their estimation , the raging tempest , the fury of devouring flames , &c , are , it is apprehended , something more than mere metaphors * They who are led to philosophise more deeply , seldom fail to
perceive in some degree , though still imperfectly , the fallacy of these notions , and gradually withdraw the attribute of power from many of those objects to which it had been unwarily extended . The influence of association , however , still continues to such an extent , that perhaps , even when engaged in speculating on the subject , and certainly at all other times , they habitually rest in second causes , and ascribe the phenomena of external nature to real energies residing in matter . And the researches of natural philo-
Untitled Article
Thoughts on Power . 41 &
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1832, page 413, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/53/
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