180 COSMIO PHILOSOPHY. [pt. il 



by paralysis or insanity, or the constraint exercised by other 

 persons, then we may truly say that we are deprived of free- 

 will and of responsibility. But so long as circumstances allow 

 volition to follow the strongest motive, then we truly say that 

 we are free and responsible for our actions. Thus the tables 

 are completely turned, and much of the current disputation 

 on this subject is reduced at once to unmeaning verbiage. 

 The popular arguments in favour of " freedom " are seen to 

 be as palpable cases of ignoratio elenclii as are those daily 

 urged against the development hypothesis. By a scientific 

 definition of Will, the assertion of freedom is set aside a3 

 irrelevant, leaving behind the assertion of non-causation. 

 That this too is virtually disposed of by the same definition, 

 scarcely needs pointing out. Yet, for the sake of still greater 

 clearness, our present results may fitly be supplemented by a 

 new class of considerations. 



That volitions differ from all other phenomena by their 

 capability of occurring without any cause, is the opinion o£ 

 the free-will philosophers ;. and Mr. Smith, in criticizing 

 the contrary opinion, remarks that "if comets formed their 

 own future " {i.e., were endowed with volition), " they would 

 be rather embarrassing subjects of science." Without at- 

 tempting to decipher the vagaries in which these cosmical 

 bodies might in such case take it upon themselves to in- 

 dulge,^ it will be enough for my present purpose to point out 

 some of the shoals on which the free-will doctrine must land 

 its defenders. If volitions arise without cause, it necessarily 

 follows that we cannot infer from them the character of the 

 antecedent states of feeling. If, therefore, a murder has been 

 committed, we have d priori no better reason foi suspecting 



^ In point of fact a comet does "form its own future" iu tlie same way 

 :hat a man does. The state of a heavenly body at any given moment is a 

 product, partly of the forces, molar and molecular, with which it was endowed 

 at the preceding moment, and partly of the forces simultaneously exerted 

 npou it by environing heavenly bodies. The case of human volition differs 

 from this in nothing save the number and complexity, and cousequent rel* 

 tiv« iucalculableness, of the forces at work. 



