17. THE ANALYSIS OF SUBSTANCE LEADS TO PURE IDEAS OF POWER.

Analysis signifies untying, and the last analysis leaves the bare string without a knot. In analysing the idea of substance, on which all existence is said to depend, we inquire, To what are our sensations owing? and we trace their connection with qualities, substance, and power, and this is the bare string left after untying the successive knots of knowledge; and it will be naturally asked, What is the string itself made of? what is power? Only one answer need be given: Power is efficient reason, and absolute power is all-sufficient reason. When, therefore, we have arrived at a sufficient reason for any fact, phenomena, or existence, we have accounted for it completely, and why should we account for more? And with an all-sufficient reason, we have got something into which every thing can be resolved, and which can be resolved into every thing. Power can turn into every thing, and every thing can return into power; it is the high apex where the circuit of our ideas is completed, in an ascending and descending series. We explain or account for every fact by showing its place in a higher generality towards power, and we explain power by showing how it embodies itself in lower particulars towards facts. Some minds will be dissatisfied with the notion of pure power, because there is no complexity in it, and will make a difficulty in conceiving it, similar to that of conceiving the idea of the infinite without limits, and of the absolute without relations; but there is no insuperable difficulty in construing the idea of a transparent body without colour, and there is no more incompatibility in an idea of power without complexion than there is in the correlative ideas of space and time, which also are without complexion; but as the idea of power is from an action of

reason, and it requires practice to make perfect, I will not affirm that no persons will have a difficulty in forming a conception of it.

18. THERE IS NOTHING ELSE IN SUBSTANCE BUT POWER.

The philosophy like Locke's, that cannot tell whether there be such a thing as substance, is not likely to tell what it is. And yet this philosophy declares we are compelled to assume that there is substance, and by those who thus assume it, it is thought to be the seat and support of power and properties, but by no means to consist of power. When they say their notion of substance possesses power, but it does not consist of it, they use power in a secondary meaning-in the meaning of energy or influence; but I distinguish between the essence and the influence of a substance, and call the former power, and the latter the energy of power; and the question is not as to the propriety of my words, but it is as to the truth of my idea. As the reason can only conceive what a pure simple infinite idea is in itself, without comparing it with any thing more simple and general, we cannot explain any subordinate idea of another kind, because if it does not belong in kind to the simple boundless conceptions, which we only know in themselves originally, we cannot tell what it belongs to, where it comes from, nor what it is; and therefore the persons who cannot conceive of substance on the basis of a transcendent idea, and compare it with it, cannot tell, as they confess, what it is; but as they are compelled to assume it, they are compelled to assume that it can do something-sustain properties and exert power. Now, what can do so much cannot be anything but power, for a thing not power can do nothing; it can neither sustain nor exert itself.

19. WHAT IS POWER?

I repeat the question, What is power? that I may not shrink from any point of this abstruse inquiry, and that I may not seem to substitute merely one hard word for another, without affording distinct ideas. Power, in the present sense, is an infinite possibility of existence, and it is the object of a fundamental and transcendent idea of the reason, determined by the necessities of existence; and being an ultimate idea of the reason, it is as far known in itself as time and space are known in themselves; but as it is known in itself, it is without limits or relations, and, consequently, the idea is pure and simple; and being fundamental and ultimate, it is evidently absurd to ask what there is under it or beyond it, for there is nothing lower than the bottom, nor anything further than the end, and it would be no explanation, but only confusion, to attempt to resolve power into something ulterior when it is the last thing, and it is known in itself, without relation to any thing beyond it. But as we know it in itself absolutely, we have only a pure and simple and boundless idea of it, and we are not content to stop our inquiries in the pure and simple, but still ask, What is there in it? what can it do? We want to know it, not only in itself, but in comparison with something else; but there is nothing else to compare it with but, first, its correlatives, time and space, which are as pure and simple as itself; and then, secondly, with its own subordinate, limited, and conditioned forms. Therefore, when you have conceived what power is in itself by the determination of the necessities that encompass it, you neither need nor can have any further explanation of it by an ascending inquiry, but you can have an infinity of explanation of its nature and capabilities by a descending inquiry. Power cannot be explained by showing what it depends

upon, or is contained in, because it depends upon nothing, and is contained in nothing beyond itself, but all the objects of detailed knowledge are contained in it, and depend upon it.

20. POWER AFFORDS A DEFINITION OF SUBSTANCE.

A given substance is an existing form of power which operates in the determinate manner of its own character; it sustains, gives, and receives energy, and works with it in accordance, and within the limits of its own modes. A simple sul stance has a make and a unity of power in itself; it cannot be divided, because of its unity, and cannot be changed, because of its make; such a substance is an atom, a mind, or a life. A mind is a substance that knows and feels and wills; it is the support of all mental phenomena, qualities, and actions; it occupies time and place, and, in my idea, space; but some exclude space, and confine its existence to a point, but, I think, without reason. An atom is a substance of matter, and is specially adapted to extend and operate in modes of space in which it appears in bodies, resisting, weighing, and moving; and its energy is that of force. Life will not be so readily classed as a substance, but it has already the designation of the vital power; its operation is to lay hold of the polarities of atoms, to control and guide their action in building up the organised bodies which constitute the fauna and flora of the world. Life is classed as a distinct substance, because it cannot be considered as comprehended in the entities of atoms or of minds, and it has a distinct and wonderful action, to which they do not seem competent.

CHAPTER V.

Of Cause and Effect.

21. CAUSE IS SOMETHING MORE THAN AN ANTECEDENT.

Those philosophers who have fancied substance to be something else than a form of existing power, and yet have held it to be a cause, have been fain to invest it with some inherent power, distinct from itself, that enables it to work its effects. Dr. Thomas Browne and others were able to show that this investment of substance with power distinct from itself was an illusion similar to the ancient investment of bodies with forms distinct from themselves; and, divesting substances of their distinct power, and having no clear idea that substances were altogether made of power, they deprived them of their causality, and left them nothing but a position of antecedence to events and changes; accordingly, Browne and others have taken upon themselves to change the language of mankind upon this subject as soon as they exploded their ideas. Maintaining that there is nothing in the old relation of efficiency which was wont to be expressed in the terms of cause and effect but a position of sequence, they have changed the old expressions into the terms of antecedent and consequent; and they would reconcile us to this alteration of language by showing us plainly that if we knew that a given consequent would invariably follow a given antecedent in all parts of nature, we should have as