A young friend or, as he was pleased to describe himself, _a pupil of mine, who is beginning to learn to think_, asked me to explain by an instance what is meant by "_originating_ an act or state." My answer was--This morning I awoke with a dull pain, which I knew from experience the getting up would remove; and yet by adding to the drowsiness and by weakening or depressing the _volition (voluntas sensorialis seu mechanica_) the very pain seemed to _hold me back_, to fix me (as it were) to the bed. After a peevish ineffectual quarrel with this painful disinclination, I said to myself: Let me count twenty, and the moment I come to nineteen I will leap out of bed. So said, and so done. Now should you ever find yourself in the same or in a similar state, and should attend to _the goings-on_ within you, you will learn what I mean by _originating_ an act. At the same time you will see that it belongs _exclusively_ to the Will (_arbitrium_); that there is nothing analogous to it in outward experiences; and that I had, therefore, no way of explaining it but by referring you to an _act_ of your own, and to the peculiar self-consciousness preceding and accompanying it. As we know what Life is by _Being_, so we know what Will is by _Acting_. That in _willing_ (replied my young friend) we _appear_ to ourselves to constitute an actual _Beginning_ and that this seems _unique_, and without any example in our _sensible_ experience, or in the phænomena of nature, is an undeniable _fact_. But may it not be an illusion arising from our ignorance of the antecedent causes? You _may_ suppose this (I rejoined):--that the soul of every man should impose a _Lie_ on itself; and that this Lie, and the acting on the faith of its being the most important of all truths and the most real of all realities, should form the main contra-distinctive character of Humanity, and the only basis of that distinction between Things and Persons on which our whole moral and criminal Law is grounded;--you may suppose this; I cannot, as I could in the case of an arithmetical or geometrical proposition, render it _impossible_ for you to suppose it. Whether you can reconcile such a supposition with the belief of an all-wise Creator, is another question. But, taken singly, it is doubtless in your power to suppose this. Were it not, the belief of the contrary would be no subject of a _command_, no part of a moral or religious _duty_. You would not, however, suppose it _without a reason_. But all the pretexts that ever have been or ever can be offered for this supposition, are built on certain _notions_ of the Understanding that have been generalized from _conceptions_; which conceptions, again, are themselves generalized or abstracted from objects of sense. Neither the one nor the other, therefore, have any force except in application to objects of sense and within the sphere of sensible Experience. What but absurdity can follow, if you decide on Spirit by the laws of Matter? if you judge that which, if it be at all, must be _super_-sensual, by that faculty of your mind, the very definition of which is "the faculty judging _according_ to sense"? These then are unworthy the name of _reasons_: they are only pretexts. But _without_ reason to contradict your own consciousness in defiance of your own conscience, is _contrary_ to reason. Such and such writers, you say, have made a great _sensation_. If so, I am sorry for it; but the fact I take to be this. From a variety of causes the more austere Sciences have fallen into discredit, and impostors have taken advantage of the general ignorance to give a sort of mysterious and terrific importance to a parcel of trashy sophistry, the authors of which would not have employed themselves more irrationally in submitting the works of Raffaelle or Titian to canons of criticism deduced from the sense of smell. Nay, less so. For here the objects and the organs are only disparate: while in the other case they are absolutely diverse. I conclude this note by reminding the reader, that my first object is to make myself _understood_. When he is in full possession of my _meaning_, then let him consider whether it deserves to be received as _the truth_. Had it been my immediate purpose to make him _believe_ me as well as _understand_ me, I should have thought it necessary to warn him that a _finite_ Will does indeed originate an _act_, and may originate a _state_ of being; but yet only _in_ and _for_ the Agent himself.