“These principles are quite independent of any theory as to the nature of matter, or the nature of mind. They are as true upon the theory that mind acts on matter — though separate and altogether different from it — as upon the theory of Bishop Berkeley that there is no matter, but only mind; or upon the contrary theory — that there is no mind, but only matter; or upon the yet subtler theory now often held—that both mind and matter are different modifications of some one tertium quid, some hidden thing or force. All these theories admit —indeed they are but various theories to account for—the fact that what we call matter has consequences in what we call mind, and that what we call mind produces results in what we call matter; and the doctrines I quote assume only that. Our mind in some strange way acts on our nerves, and our nerves in some equally strange way store up the consequences, and somehow the result, as a rule and commonly enough, goes down to our descendants; these primitive facts all theories admit, and all of them labor to explain.”

A 2015 Ngram view (Ѻ) of Walter Bagehot, indicating that sidings with religion over that of modern science, when it comes to the specific question of forces, energy, power, the nervous system (mind or brain), and "will", i.e. free (free will) will or forced (forced will), leads to a decrease in mention of that point of view.

“On the contrary, moral causes are the first here. It is the action of the will that causes the unconscious habit; it is the continual effort of the beginning that creates the hoarded energy of the end; it is the silent toil of the first generation that becomes the transmitted aptitude of the next. Here physical causes do not create the moral, but moral create the physical; here the beginning is by the higher energy, the conservation and propagation only by the lower.”

“Bagehot’s Physics and Politics is a work in some respects unfortunately influenced by early Darwinists, by the writings of Herbert Spencer and of contemporary anthropologists, to all of which Bagehot ascribed too much weight or intellectual authority. But after errors of judgment and fact have been deleted, Physics and Politics remains an important and original work. Possibly Bagehot’s bad health while writing this book may explain the defects, for Bagehot had been of all the Victorians one of the freest from the influences of intellectual authority.”

— Lawrence Henderson (1938), “Sociology 23” (pg. 75) [3]

“Condorcet’s and Quetelet’s social physics, as well as Bagehot’s Physics and Politics, provided the outstanding attempts which began with the new-Platonists and culminated with the neo-positivists.”

— Paris Arnopoulos (2005), Sociophysics [2]

“One may incline to hope that the balance of good over evil is in favor of benevolence; one can hardly bear to think that it is not so: but anyhow it is certain that there is a most heavy debit of evil, and that this burden might almost all have been spared us if philanthropists as well as others had not inherited from their barbarous forefathers a wild passion for instant action.”

— Walter Bagehot (1873), Physics and Politics, cited by Henderson in: “Sociology 23” (pg. 75)