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but an a priori bias of mind, is this antecedent reluctance to admit the possibility of regulative ideas?

What then is the fact? Which statement best conforms to the universal conviction, that of fixed antecedence, or of present underlying power? There can be no doubt on this point. The case is a plain, almost an admitted one, against empirical philosophy. Language is full of this notion of inherent, sub-phenomenal connections between events. The word force distinctly expresses this causal link, and few words are more familiar, or play a more important part in speech. Of the same kind, are the words power, influence, energy, strength, and more or less markedly most of the words which express physical action. Pull, push, press, pry, lift, lug, labor, the entire vocabulary of effort are saturated with this causal notion of an invisible efficiency, which expends itself in all forms of activity. Behold any striking display of force, the blasting of rocks, and every mind is impressed with the power of the invisible agent. To look upon the lifting of detached masses, the seaming of the solid bed, as a mere sequence of disconnected events, is impossible to any mind, in its spontaneous action. No descriptive language was ever applied to such events, that regarded them simply as a sequence. The popular and the universal conviction is unmistakable, that here is force, invisible power.

Equally present is the idea to all science. Gravitation, cohesion, chemical affinity, the correlation of forces, the various theories of physical facts, like Darwin's theory of gemmules, or Spencer's of physiological units, involve the notion of inherent power, working the results under consideration. Science could not carry forward its investigations without this recognition of force. To discover the traces of its presence, and the lines of its action, is the constant triumph of knowledge. To confound fixed antecedents