LAW OF CAUSATION. 419 



acting cause shall coexist. These antecedent pheno- 

 mena, again, were connected in a similar manner with 

 some that preceded them ; and so on, until we reach, as 

 the ultimate step, either the properties of some one 

 primeval cause, or the conjunction of several. The 

 whole of the phenomena of nature were therefore the 

 necessary, or in other words, the unconditional, con- 

 sequences of the original collocation of the Permanent 

 Causes. 



The state of the whole universe at any instant, we 

 believe to be the consequence of its state at the 

 previous instant ; insomuch that if we knew all the 

 agents which exist at the present moment, their collo- 

 cation in space, and their properties, in other words 

 the laws of their agency, we could predict the whole 

 subsequent history of the universe, at least unless some 

 new volition of a power capable of controlling the 

 universe should supervene*. And if any particular 



* To the universality which mankind are agreed in ascribing 

 to the Law of Causation, there is one claim of exception, one dis- 

 puted case, that of the Human Will; the determinations of which a 

 large class of metaphysicians are not willing to regard as following 

 the causes called motives, according to as strict laws as those which 

 they suppose to exist in the world of mere matter. This contro- 

 verted point will undergo a special examination when we come to 

 treat particularly of the Logic of the Moral Sciences, (Book vi., 

 ch. 3). In the mean time I may remark that these metaphysicians, 

 who, it must be observed, ground the main part of their objection 

 upon the supposed repugnance of the doctrine in question to our 

 consciousness, seem to me to mistake the fact which consciousness 

 testifies against. What is really in contradiction to consciousness, 

 they would, I think, on strict self-examination, find to be, the 

 application to human actions and volitions of the ideas involved in 

 the common use of the term Necessity ; which I agree with them 

 in thinking highly objectionable. But if they would consider that 

 by saying that a man's actions necessarily follow from his character, 

 all that is really meant (for no more is meant in any case what- 



2 E 2 



