484 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



feelings, even if remembered by tbeir understandings, 

 that human actions are in this last predicament : they 

 are never (except in some cases of mania) ruled by any 

 one motive with such absolute sway, that there is no 

 room for the influence of any other. The causes, 

 therefore, on which action depends, are never uncon- 

 trollable; and any given effect is only necessary pro- 

 vided that the causes tending to produce it are not con- 

 trolled. That whatever happens, could not have hap- 

 pened otherwise unless something had taken place 

 which was capable of preventing it, no one surely needs 

 hesitate to admit. But to call this by the name neces- 

 sity is to use the term in a sense so different from its 

 primitive and familiar meaning, from that which it bears 

 in the common occasions of life, as to amount almost 

 to a play upon words. The associations derived from 

 the ordinary sense of the term will adhere to it in spite 

 of all we can do : and though the doctrine of Necessity, 

 as stated by most who hold it, is very remote from 

 fatalism, it is probable that most necessarians are 

 fatalists, more or less, in their feelings. 



A fatalist believes, or half believes (for nobody is a 

 consistent fatalist) not only that whatever is about to 

 happen, will be the infallible result of the causes which 

 produce it (which is the true necessarian doctrine), 

 but moreover that there is no use in struggling against 

 it ; that it will happen however we may strive to pre- 

 vent it. Now, a necessarian, believing that our actions 

 follow from our characters, and that our characters 

 follow from our organization, our education, and our 

 circumstances, is apt to be, with more or less of con- 

 sciousness on his part, a fatalist as to his own actions, 

 and to believe that his nature is such, or that his edu- 

 cation and circumstances have so moulded his charac- 

 ter, that nothing can now prevent him from feeling and 



