Hitherto we have been considering the action of the Will upon external Nature; but now what as to the action of our Will upon our own Nature, upon the machinery of our own body? Is that to be called a Law of Nature or a suspension of a Law of Nature?
It is to be called neither. Our definition of “Law of Nature” was “a metaphorical name given to the ordinary course of things _apart from the intervention of human will_:” consequently the action of human will (about which we are now speaking) is expressly excluded from the province of Nature, in this sense, and can neither be called “a Law of Nature,” nor a “suspension of a Law of Nature.” The action of the Will falls under the head of “human Nature;” and, discussing it under that head, we may call it by any metaphor we please, a custom, habit, law of human Nature.
This distinction between the name given to the course of non-human Nature and the name given to the action of the human Will on the bodily framework, is based on our distinction between the regular and (if I may use the word) the anticipable sequences of the former, as contrasted with the irregular and unanticipable sequences of the latter. When the Will is undeveloped or enfeebled; when the human being is a baby, or one of an excited and undisciplined crowd, or mad, or drunk, or narcoticized, or mesmerized, or reduced to the bestial level by some overpowering instinct; we can occasionally prophesy his actions or movements with something of the certainty and accuracy with which we predict the motions of a machine; but we cannot thus calculate the actions of a mature, healthy, and reasonable man. Hence it has been usual to contrast with the “Laws of Nature” the “freedom of the human Will.” We cannot demonstrate the freedom of the Will any more than the fixity of the Laws of Nature: the belief in both is suggested by Imagination, tested and approved by Experience and Reason, and finally retained by Faith. Of course, when I speak thus, you will not suppose that I assume that my mind, or being, is divided into distinct parts (as the body consists of distinct limbs) called Will, Reason, &c.: you will understand that I merely use the ordinary brief and convenient phraseology which says “The Will does so-and-so,” meaning “I do so-and-so with a certain consciousness which appears to me to result from a faculty inherent in me of choosing between two or more courses of action, which faculty I call Will.” With this precaution, I assert that the action of the Will is natural as regards human Nature, but outside Nature or “extra-natural” as regards non-human Nature, and that it does not involve the suspension of what are technically called “the Laws of Nature.”