SECT. 14.] Origin, or Process of Causation of the Series. 67 



the result of voluntary agency, but it is not an immediate 

 result. That particular face was not chosen, though the fact 

 of its being chosen was the remote consequence of an act of 

 choice. There has been an intermediate chaos of conflicting 

 agencies, which no one can calculate before or distinguish 

 afterwards. These agencies seem to show a uniformity in 

 the long run, and thence to produce a similar uniformity in 

 the result. The drawing of a card from a pack is indeed 

 more directly volitional, as in cutting for partners in a game 

 of whist. But no one continues to do this long without 

 having the pack well shuffled in the interval, whereby a host 

 of involuntary influences are let in. 



13. The once startling but now familiar uniformities 

 exhibited in the cases of suicides and misdirected letters, do 

 not belong to the same class. The final resolution, or want 

 of it, which leads to these results, is in each case indeed an 

 important ingredient in the individual s action or omission; 

 but, in so far as volition has anything to do with the results 

 as a whole, it instantly disturbs them. If the voice of the 

 Legislature speaks out, or any great preacher or moralist 

 succeeds in deterring, or any impressive example in in 

 fluencing, our moral statistics are instantly tampered with. 

 Some further discussion will be devoted to this subject in a 

 future chapter; it need only be remarked here that (always 

 excluding such common or general influence as those just 

 mentioned) the average volition, potent as it is in each 

 separate case, is on the whole swayed by non-voluntary con 

 ditions, such as those of health, the casualties of employ 

 ment, &c., in fact the various circumstances which influence 

 the length of a man s life. 



14. Such distinctions as those just insisted on may 

 seem to some persons to be needless, but serious errors have 

 occasionally arisen from the neglect of them. The imme- 



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