448 FALLACIES. 



too, the word I is often shifted from one meaning to 

 another, at one time standing for my volitions, at 

 another time for the actions which are the conse- 

 quences of them, or the mental dispositions from 

 which they proceed. The latter ambiguity is exem- 

 plified in an argument of Coleridge (in his Aids to 

 Reflection), in support of the freedom of the will. It 

 is not true, he says, that man is governed hy motives ; 

 " the man makes the motive, not the motive the man;" 

 the proof being that " what is a strong motive to one 

 man is no motive at all to another." The premiss is 

 true, but only amounts to this, that different persons 

 have different degrees of susceptibility to the same 

 motive ; as they have also to the same intoxicating 

 liquid, which however does not prove that they are 

 free to be drunk or not drunk, whatever quantity 

 they may drink. What is proved is, that cer tain 

 mental conditions in the man himself, must co-ope- 

 jate, in the production of the act, with the external 

 inducement : but those mental conditions also are the 

 effect of causes ; and there is nothing in the argument 

 to prove that they can arise without a cause that a 

 spontaneous determination of the man's will, without 

 any cause at all, ever takes place, as the free-will doc- 

 trine supposes. 



The double use, in the free-will controversy, of the 

 word Necessity, which sometimes stands only for Cer- 

 tainty, at other times for Compulsion ; sometimes for 

 what cannot be prevented, at other times only for what 

 we have reason to be assured will not ; has been 

 pointed out by Archbishop Whately, and we shall 

 have occasion hereafter to pursue it to some of its 

 ulterior consequences. 



A most important ambiguity, both in common and 

 in metaphysical language, is thus pointed out by 



