Sensibility is the condition, Reason is the light, Will is the centre of human consciousness. Consciousness is a threefold phenomenon in which feeling, knowing, and self-determination are reciprocal elements, and in their connection and simultaneousness, and at the same time their differentiation, they compose the entire intellectual life.[25] The finite spirit or will unfolds itself, first, subjectively, in the spontaneous affirmation of self-being or self-potency (IPSËITY); secondly, objectively, in the exertion of power to produce motion, change, phenomena (EFFICIENCY); thirdly, synthetically, in the unity of motive and intention, purpose and act, means and end (PERSONALITY).
Thus does "Will present the middle point, which embraces thought on the one hand and force on the other; and which yet, so far from appearing to us to be a compound arising out of them as an effect, is more easily conceived as the originative prefix (prothesis) of all mental phenomena.... It carries with it, in its very idea, the co-presence of thought as the necessary element within whose sphere it has to manifest itself; its phenomena can not exist alone; it acts on preconceptions, which stand related to it, not however as its source, but as its conditions, and are its co-ordinates in the effect, rather than its generating antecedents."[26]
Psychological analysis leads us inevitably to this conclusion, that all things are issued by Will, whether in the sphere of the finite or the infinite, and therefore we postulate an UNCONDITIONED WILL, A PERFECT MIND, at the source of all becoming. Thus, as Martineau truly remarks, between the FORCE of the physical atheist and the THOUGHT of the metaphysical pantheist, we fix upon WILL as the true balancing-point of a moral theism.
The intelligent reader scarce needs to be reminded that this is the conclusion reached by reflective thought in that best and fullest exhibition of it which is found in Greek philosophy. The great problem of Greek philosophy, as of all philosophy, was, "What is the ἀρχῆ, the First Principle—the ground and cause and reason of all existence?" The final answer of that age is found in Plato, for Platonism was the culmination, the ripened fruit of the ages of earnest thought which preceded Plato. He gathered up, co-ordinated, and grasped into unity the results bequeathed by the mental efforts of his predecessors. The Platonic answer to this great question of philosophy is clear and unequivocal. A perfect MIND is the primal source of all being—a Mind in which Intellect, Efficiency, and Goodness are one and identical. "Mind is the most worthy ἀρχῆ." "God is the most excellent of causes."[27] "Mind is king of heaven and earth."[28] "Motion and life and soul and mind are present with absolute being. We can not imagine being to be devoid of life and mind, remaining in awful unmeaningness and everlasting fixture."[29]
"Whatever begins to be, must necessarily be produced by some cause; for nothing can have its generation without a cause." "The Maker and Father of the universe ... had no beginning of his being." He formed the universe according to the eternal model or archetype which his own reason supplied, and for motives which his own essential goodness proposed. "Let us now tell for what cause the Maker of this creation and this universe made it as it is. He was good; and he who is good grudges no advantage to any creature. Being thus free from envy, He willed that the universe should be good like Himself; and this, the special ground of the creation and the world, which we receive from the wisest philosophers, we must accept."[30]
It would be easy to show that the recognition of intelligent Will, as standing at the fountain-head of all the force which is manifested in the universe, is common to the first Physicists of this age.
Grove concludes his admirable essay on "The Correlation of the Physical Forces" with these words: "In all phenomena the more closely they are investigated the more are we convinced that, humanly speaking, neither matter nor force can be created or annihilated, and that an essential cause is unattainable [by science]—Causation is the WILL, Creation is the act, of God."[31] Sir John Herschel has not hesitated to express his conviction that "it is but reasonable to regard the Force of Gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a consciousness or a WILL existing somewhere."[32] Dr. Carpenter, with his usual sagacity in penetrating to the essential point, remarks that the WILL "is that form of Force which must be taken as the type of all the rest;" "Force must be regarded as the direct expression of WILL."[33] "If," says Wallace, "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 the whole universe is not only dependent on, but actually is the will of higher intelligences or of one Supreme Intelligence."[34] In short, the present attitude of science in relation to this great problem is, I think, fairly represented by the Duke of Argyll: "Science, in the modern doctrine of the Conservation of Energy and the Convertibility of Forces, is already getting hold of the idea that all kinds of Force are but forms and manifestations of some one Central Force issuing from some one Fountain-head of Power." "This one Force, into which all others return again, is itself but a mode of action of the Divine Will."[35] Even Spencer concedes that "the Force by which we ourselves produce changes, and which serves to symbolize the cause of changes in general, is the final disclosure of all analysis ... all other modes of consciousness are derived from our consciousness of exerting Force."[36] "The order of nature is doubtless very imperfect, but its production is far more compatible with the hypothesis of an intelligent will than with that of blind mechanism."[37] Physical science is surely coming into harmony with metaphysical thought. It looks upon nature with the eye of reason as well as the eye of sense. And it reduces the phenomena to unity, not simply by comparative abstraction, which classifies under resemblance, co-existence, and succession, but by that rational integration which operates under the necessary laws of substance, causality, intentionality, and absolute unity. It regards the forces of nature as the product or manifestation of a higher force—a force which is not merely dynamical in its nature—a force which can compass not merely concurrent and antagonistic motions in space, but which is able so to adjust these concurrences and antagonisms as to construct agencies which shall realize designs—a force, therefore, which is thoughtful and percipient: in one word, intelligent—a force, in fine, which is not a mere mechanical dynamism in space and time, but a true Power existing in its type and fullness: in one word—God.[38]
Thus does all reflective thought, whether directed to the phenomena of the human mind or the phenomena of nature, confirm the à priori intuition of an unconditioned Will unfolding itself in Thought and Power, and completing itself in a harmonious Totality, as the First Principle and Originative Cause of all existences and of all relations, of all individual beings, and of that harmonious whole men call the Cosmos.