CHAP. XIV.] LAST ESSAYS. 435 



self, accept some sort of a philosophy, good or bad, and 

 though the whole virtue of this philosophy depends on it 

 being our own, yet none of us thinks it out entirely for him- 

 self. It is essential to our comfort that we should know 

 whether we are going with the general stream of human 

 thought or against it, and if it should turn out that the 

 general stream flows in a direction different from the current 

 of our private thought, though we may endeavour to explain 

 it as the result of a wide-spread aberration of intellect, we 

 would be more satisfied if we could obtain some evidence 

 that it is not ourselves who are going astray. 



In such an enquiry we need some fiducial point or 

 standard of reference, by which we may ascertain the direc- 

 tion in which we are drifting. The books written by men 

 of former ages who thought about the same questions would 

 be of great use, if it were not that we are apt to derive a wrong 

 impression from them if we approach them by a course of 

 reading unknown to those for whom they were written. 



There are certain questions, however, which form the 

 pieces de resistance of philosophy, on which men of all ages 

 have exhausted their arguments, and which are perfectly 

 certain to furnish matter of debate to generations to come, 

 and which may therefore serve to show how we are drifting. 

 At a certain epoch of our adolescence those of us who are good 

 for anything begin to get anxious about these questions, and 

 unless the cares of this world utterly choke our metaphysical 

 anxieties, we become developed into advocates of necessity or 

 of free-will. What it is which determines for us which side 

 we shall take must for the purpose of this essay be regarded 

 as contingent. According to Mr. F. Galton, it is derived from 

 structureless elements in our parents, which were probably 

 never developed in their earthly existence, and which may 

 have been handed down to them, still in the latent state, 

 through untold generations. Much might be said in favour 

 of such a congenital bias towards a particular scheme of 

 philosophy; at the same time we must acknowledge that 

 much of a man's mental history depends upon events occur- 

 ring after his birth in time, and that he is on the whole more 



