188 LESSONS FllOM NATUKE. [CHAP. VI. 



entirely absent from the universe before. All that is supposed to vary 

 in the qualities derived from ancestors is the proportion in which they 

 are mingled, and, so to say, the mode of application to the universe 

 outside. But that a necessary being should give birth to a being with 

 any amount, however limited, of moral freedom is infinitely less con 

 ceivable than that parents of the insect or fish type should give birth 

 to a perfect mammal. An accidental variation only means a variation 

 of which you cannot determine the direction ; but you can determine 

 that the direction of variation will not outrage all the laws of pa 

 rentage If all the lower laws of force and life arc absolutely 



fixed and inviolable, then they cannot revoke their own constitution 

 when they issue out of the region of physiology into that of moral life. 

 If it be the essence of all things to follow fixed laws, if there is nothing 

 but unchangeable force moulding the universe by its gradually con 

 centrating strength, then the conscience of man is a delusion, and his 



sense of responsibility and freedom must be explained away 



The logic of science is consistent, but it does not explain freedom. 

 We know that we are morally free ; and we know that a free person 

 cannot be the issue of helplessly unfolded laws. It is impossible for 

 necessity to emancipate itself. Only if the observed necessity has been 

 the must of a Divine free-will, can that must be withdrawn, and 

 freedom restored wherever the materials for self-determination have 

 been granted. The identity of all the sciences is assumed only at the 

 expense of the falsification of some, and the total abrogation of one. 

 The main facts of man s moral nature all those on which the great 

 interests of mankind centre, all which are the life of reverence and 

 love are swept away into meaningless unreality by the absolute 

 identification of moral science with the natural sciences on the summit 

 of which it stands. It is dangerous enough to scientific reality to 

 confuse intelligence with instinct and to describe memory as a weak 

 form of perception ; but it is the suicide of a science to manufacture a 

 theory of moral obligation out of the materials of physical necessity 

 a theory of vision for the blind.&quot; 



Indeed, man being, as the mind of each man may tell him, 

 a being not only conscious, but conscious of his own con 

 sciousness ; one not only acting on inference, but capable of 

 analysing the process of inference ; a creature not only capable 

 of acting well or ill, but of understanding the ideas &quot; virtue&quot; and 

 &quot; moral obligation,&quot; with their correlatives freedom of choice 

 and responsibility man being all this, it is at once obvious 

 that the principal part of his being is his mental power. 



&quot; In nature there is nothing great but man, 

 In man there is nothing great but mind. 1 



