15 



Mind the frowning cliffs rising high on each side, needing 

 the vision of an archangel to survey them, confronting each 

 other in solemn isolation, and this one frail link alone binding 

 them ! the idea well-nigh becomes incredible. If separated, 

 as Mr. Spencer assures us, they are completely separated, they 

 must be logical contradictories with no bond of union. 



This Philosophical Doctrine of the Freedom of the Will 

 does not seem to me to be defended by the upholders of 

 Revelation and of the Moral Law with anything approaching 

 the zeal and fidelity that the magnitude of the matter demands. 

 Kant may be said to have put forth the undivided energy of 

 his keen and powerful intellect in order to establish the thesis 

 of the Freedom or Autocraty of man's will, and to show that 

 the whole Moral Law must stand or fall with it. He in effect 

 binds up the two doctrines into one, and not unfrequently 

 makes them synonymous. Thus he says, "We have now 

 reduced the Idea of Morality to that of Freedom of Will."* 

 Again, he says, <c Autonomy of Will is the alone foundation 

 of Morality. "f and many other distinct statements, as well 

 as the whole structure of the "Metaphysic of Ethics," go to 

 show that, in his judgment, to deny Freedom to the Will was 

 to make the idea of Morality impossible. He seems to me 

 and it is a growing opinion in our day to have been one of 

 those rare prophetic minds, ranking amongst the great men 

 of all time who stand forth as the champions of eternal truth, 

 whose glance sweeps down the centuries, and whose judgments 

 express the thought of the All-wise God. Doubtless in his 

 critical Philosophy Kant was mainly destructive, but in those 

 of his works which are thrown up as bulwarks of the Moral 

 Law, he seems to me to display a penetration and a power far 

 beyond any mind of later times. No modest man can, I 

 think, pit his judgment against Kant. Hamilton followed in 

 his footsteps largely as his disciple, and he makes the same 

 impressive declaration that Moral Liberty and Moral Obliga- 

 tion must stand or fall together. He says, ' ( Virtue involves 

 Liberty ;"J he says, " The possibility of Morality depends on 

 the possibility of Liberty ; for if man be not a free agent he 

 is not the author of his actions, and has, therefore, no respon- 

 sibility, no moral personality at all." In addition to these 

 solemn and weighty statements it is clear that he determined 

 to found his whole metaphysical system on the moral canons, 



* Metfiphysic of Ethics, Calderwood's Ed., p. 59. 



f Ibid. p. 99. 



j Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics, vol. i. p. 27, 4th Ed. 



Ibid. p. 33. 



