LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 423 



not wish to alter his character, cannot be the person who is 

 supposed to feel discouraged or paralysed by thinking himself 

 unable to do it. The depressing effect of the fatalist doctrine 

 can only be felt where there is a wish to do what that doctrine 

 represents as impossible. It is of no consequence what we 

 think forms our character, when we have no desire of our own 

 about forming it ; but it is of great consequence that we 

 should not be prevented from forming such a desire by think- 

 ing the attainment impracticable, and that if we have the 

 desire, we should know that the work is not so irrevocably 

 done as to be incapable of being altered. 



And indeed, if we examine closely, we shall find that this 

 feeling, of our being able to modify our own character if we 

 wish, is itself the feeling of moral freedom which we are con- 

 scious of. A person feels morally free who feels that his 

 habits or his temptations are not his masters, but he theirs : 

 who even in yielding to them knows that he could resist; 

 that were he desirous of altogether throwing them off, there 

 would not be required for that purpose a stronger desire than 

 he knows himself to be capable of feeling. It is of course 

 necessary, to render our consciousness of freedom complete, 

 that we should have succeeded in making our character all we 

 have hitherto attempted to make it; for if we have wished 

 and not attained, we have, to that extent, not power over our 

 own character, we are not free. Or at least, we must feel that 

 our wish, if not strong enough to alter our character, is strong 

 enough to conquer our character when the two are brought into 

 conflict in any particular case of conduct. And hence it is said 

 with truth, that none but a person of confirmed virtue is 

 completely free. 



The application of so improper a term as Necessity to the 

 doctrine of cause and effect in the matter of human character, 

 seems to me one of the most signal instances in philosophy of 

 the abuse of terms, and its practical consequences one of the 

 most striking examples of the power of language over our 

 associations. The subject will never be generally understood, 

 until that objectionable term is dropped. The free-will 

 doctrine, by keeping in view precisely that portion of the truth 



