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CHAPTER II. 

 OF LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 



1. THE question, whether the law of causality 

 applies in the same strict sense to human actions as 

 to other phenomena, is the celebrated controversy 

 concerning the freedom of the will; which, from at 

 least as far back as the time of Pelagius, has divided 

 both the philosophical and the religious world. The 

 affirmative opinion is commonly called the doctrine 

 of Necessity, as asserting human volitions and actions 

 to be necessary and inevitable. The negative main- 

 tains that the will is not determined, like other phe- 

 nomena, by antecedents,, but determines itself; that 

 our volitions are not, properly speaking, the effects 

 of causes, or at least have no causes which they uni- 

 formly and implicitly obey. 



I have already made it sufficiently appear that the 

 former of these opinions is that which I consider the 

 true one; but the misleading terms in which it is 

 often expressed, and the indistinct manner in which 

 it is usually apprehended, have both obstructed its 

 reception, arid perverted its influence when received. 

 The metaphysical theory of free will, as held by phi- 

 losophers (for the practical feeling of it, common in a 

 greater or less degree to all mankind, is in no way 

 inconsistent with the contrary theory), was invented 

 because the supposed alternative of admitting human 

 actions to be necessary, was deemed inconsistent with 

 every one's instinctive consciousness, as well as hu- 

 miliating to the pride and even degrading to the 

 moral nature of man. Nor do I deny that the doc- 



