390 FALLACIES. 



man ;" the proof being that " what is a strong motive to one 

 man is no motive at all to another." The premise is true, but 

 only amounts to this, that different persons have different 

 degrees of susceptibility to the same motive ; as they have also 

 to the same intoxicating liquid, which however does not prove 

 that they are free to be drunk or not drunk, whatever quantity 

 of the fluid they may drink. What is proved is, that certain 

 mental conditions in the person himself, must co-operate, in 

 the production of the act, with the external inducement : but 

 those mental conditions also are the effect of causes ; and 

 there is nothing in the argument to prove that they can arise 

 without a cause that a spontaneous determination of the will, 

 without any cause at all, ever takes place, as the free-will 

 doctrine supposes. 



The double use, in the free-will controversy, of the word 

 Necessity, which sometimes stands only for Certainty, at other 

 times for Compulsion ; sometimes for what cannot be prevented, 

 at other times only for what we have reason to be assured will 

 not ; we shall have occasion hereafter to pursue to some of its 

 ulterior consequences. 



A most important ambiguity, both in common and in 

 metaphysical language, is thus pointed out by Archbishop 

 Whately in the Appendix to his Logic: "Same (as well as 

 One, Identical, and other words derived from them,) is used 

 frequently in a sense very different from its primary one, as 

 applicable to a single object ; being employed to denote great 

 similarity. When several objects are undistinguishably alike, 

 one single description will apply equally to any of them ; and 

 thence they are said to be all of one and the same nature, 

 appearance, &c. As, e. g. when we say ' this house is built of 

 the same stone with such another,' we only mean that the 

 stones are undistinguishable in their qualities ; not that the 

 one building was pulled down, and the other constructed with 

 the materials. Whereas sameness, in the primary sense, does 

 not even necessarily imply similarity ; for if we say of any 

 man that he is greatly altered since such a time, we under- 

 stand, and indeed imply by the very expression, that he is 

 one person, though different in several qualities. It is worth 



