420 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



necessarians, however they may in words disavow it. I am 

 much mistaken if they habitually feel that the necessity which 

 they recognise in actions is hut uniformity of order, and capa- 

 bility of being predicted. They have a feeling as if there were 

 at bottom a stronger tie between the volitions and their causes: 

 as if, when they asserted that the will is governed by the 

 balance of motives, they meant something more cogent than if 

 they had only said, that whoever knew the motives, and our 

 habitual susceptibilities to them, could predict how we should 

 will to act. They commit, in opposition to their own scientific 

 system, the very same mistake which their adversaries commit 

 in obedience to theirs ; and in consequence do really in some 

 instances suffer those depressing consequences, which their 

 opponents erroneously impute to the doctrine itself. 



3. I am inclined to think that this error is almost 

 wholly an effect of the associations with a word ; and that it 

 would be prevented, by forbearing to employ, for the expres- 

 sion of the simple fact of causation, so extremely inappropriate 

 a term as Necessity. That word, in its other acceptations, 

 involves much more than mere uniformity of sequence : it 

 implies irresistibleness. Applied to the will, it only means 

 that the given cause will be followed by the effect, subject to 

 all possibilities of counteraction by other causes : but in 

 common use it stands for the operation of those causes exclu- 

 sively, which are supposed too powerful to be counteracted at 

 all. When we say that all human actions take place of neces- 

 sity, we only mean that they will certainly happen if nothing 

 prevents : when we say that dying of want, to those who 

 cannot get food, is a necessity, we mean that it will certainly 

 happen whatever may be done to prevent it. The application 

 of the same term to the agencies on which human actions de- 

 pend, as is used to express those agencies of nature which are 

 really uncontrollable, cannot fail, when habitual, to create a 

 feeling of uncontrollableness in the former also. This how- 

 ever is a mere illusion. There are physical sequences which 

 we call necessary, as death for want of food or air ; there are 

 others which, though as much cases of causation as the 



