COMMON THINGS MAN. 



ordinary faculties of the mind, it would have been incompatible 

 with the divine economy to have rendered it the subject of 

 revelation. God does not suspend the laws of nature to reveal by 

 miraculous means those truths which are discoverable by the 

 exercise of our natural faculties. 



78. As the motions and changes produced upon inert matter 

 are physical and mechanical, so human actions are moral and 

 intellectual phenomena. By duly comparing together the former, 

 we are enabled to arrive at generalisations which are the expres- 

 sion of laws, the knowledge of which enables us to foresee, with 

 certainty and precision, how any proposed bodies will comport 

 themselves at any future time, and in any given place, under 

 given conditions. It might, therefore, be naturally expected that 

 the moral and intellectual phenomena of human actions, coming 

 as truly within the range of natural facts as mere physical 

 phenomena, could be equally classified and generalised, and that, 

 consequently, natural laws might be equally established, by the 

 knowledge of which this latter class of phenomena could, under 

 given conditions, be predicted as clearly and certainly as the 

 former. 



79. An essential difference, however, between the two classes 

 of phenomena renders a corresponding distinction in the expres- 

 sion of the general laws to which they are subject, necessary. 

 Bodies consisting of mere inert masses of matter are susceptible 

 of no motion save what they derive from the operation of external 

 forces ; and when such forces are given, their effects can be 

 calculated and predicted. But the moral and intellectual phe- 

 nomena here referred to, proceed from an intern aland spontaneous 

 act of the will of the individual, which cannct be known ante- 

 cedently by the individual himself, and still less by others. The 

 will also being absolutely free, the individual may, under given 

 conditions, act in any conceivable manner ; and consequently, as 

 regards such an individual, the actions cannot be reduced like 

 physical facts to a general law. Men being thus free agents, and 

 their actions being subject to impulses arising from characters, 

 temperaments, passions, surrounding excitements and personal 

 circumstances infinitely various, it might naturally be expected 

 that the record of the actions of any large society of individuals, 

 such as the population of a city, province, or country, would 

 present a confused and heterogeneous mass of facts altogether 

 unsusceptible of rule, law, or generalisation ; and that, conse- 

 quently, such record preserved of the past would throw no light 

 whatever upon the probable future of the conduct of such a 

 multitude of free agents. 



80. Careful and accurate analyses of the acts of men, so far as 

 92 



