186 COSMIC philosophy: [pt. II. 



proposed by one of his reviewers that state-governments 

 should at once suspend judicial operations, and having 

 ascertained from statistics the yearly number of murders, 

 should forthwith hang a corresponding number of individuals, 

 selected by lot from the community. To which suggestion the 

 natural reply would have been, that if governments ever do 

 adopt this singular course of administering justice, they will 

 then be consistently acting on the belief that motives do not 

 stand in a causal relation to volitions. If the volition can 

 follow the weaker motive, the feelings which ordinarily 

 deter from the commission of crime, need not be strength- 

 ened by the fear of punishment.* 



Thus do all the favourite arguments in behalf of the free- 

 will hypothesis recoil upon its defenders. To adopt from 

 barbarian warfare, an ungraceful but expressive simile, they 

 are like awkwardly-thrown boomerangs which wound the 

 thrower. Attempting, as the free-will philosophers do, to 

 destroy the science of history, they are compelled by an 

 inexorable logic to pull down with it the cardinal principles 

 of ethics, politics, and jurisprudence. Political economy, if 

 rigidly dealt with on their theory, would fare little better ; 

 and psychology would become chaotic jargon. That psy- 

 chical actions, and volitions among them, conform to law, is 

 the indispensable axiom of every science or philosophy 

 which treats of the mind and its products, whether indi- 



1 " The very reason for giving notice that we intend to punish certain acts, 

 and for inflicting punishment if the acts be committed, is that we trust in the 

 efficacy of the threat and the punishment as deterring motives. If the voli- 

 tion of agents be not influenced by motives, tlie whole machinery of law 

 becomes unavailing, and punishment a purposeless infliction of pain. In fact 

 it is on tliat very ground that the madman is exempted from punishment ; 

 his volition being presumed to be not capable of being acted upon by the 

 deterring motive of legal sanction. The free agent, thus understood, ia one 

 who can neither feel himself accountable, nor be rendered accountable to oi 

 by others. It is only the necessary agent (the person whose volitions are de- 

 termined by motives, and, in case, of conflict, by the strongest desire or the 

 strongest apprehension) that can be held really accountable, or can feel him- 

 self to be so." — Grcto, Heview of Mill's Examiiiaiion of Samilion's I'hilo^ 

 sopliy, p. 97. 



