LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 419 



believe, and very few practically feel, that there is nothing in 

 causation but invariable, certain, and unconditional sequence. 

 There are few to whom mere constancy of succession appears a 

 sufficiently stringent bond of union for so peculiar a relation 

 as that of cause and effect. Even if the reason repudiates, the 

 imagination retains, the feeling of some more intimate con- 

 nexion, of some peculiar tie, or mysterious constraint exercised 

 by the antecedent over the consequent. Now this it is which, 

 considered as applying to the human will, conflicts with our 

 consciousness, and revolts our feelings. We are certain that, in 

 the case of our volitions, there is not this mysterious constraint. 

 We know that we are not compelled, as by a magical spell, to 

 obey any particular motive. We feel, that if we wished to 

 prove that we have the power of resisting the motive, we could 

 do so, (that wish being, it needs scarcely be observed, a new 

 antecedent;) and it would be humiliating to our pride, and 

 (what is of more importance) paralysing to our desire of excel- 

 lence if we thought otherwise. But neither is any such mys- 

 terious compulsion now supposed, by the best philosophical 

 authorities, to be exercised by any other cause over its effect. 

 Those who think that causes draw their effects after them by a 

 mystical tie, are right in believing that the relation between 

 volitions and their antecedents is of another nature. But they 

 should go farther, and admit that this is also true of all other 

 effects and their antecedents. If such a tie is considered to 

 be involved in the word necessity, the doctrine is not true of 

 human actions; but neither is it then true of inanimate objects. 

 It would be more correct to say that matter is not bound by 

 necessity than that mind is so. 



That the free-will metaphysicians, being mostly of the 

 school which rejects Hume's and Brown's analysis of Cause 

 and Effect, should miss their way for want of the light which 

 that analysis affords, cannot surprise us. The wonder is, that 

 the necessarians, who usually admit that philosophical theory, 

 should in practice equally lose sight of it. The very same 

 misconception of the doctrine called Philosophical Necessity, 

 which prevents the opposite party from recognising its truth, 

 I believe to exist more or less obscurely in the minds of most 



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