COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



confusion of ideas like that under which Mr. 

 Bounderby laboured, when unable to see the 

 difference between giving workmen their just 

 dues, and feeding them with turtle-soup out of 

 a gold-lined spoon. To say that actions depend- 

 ent on volition will take place whenever the 

 essential conditions are present, and to say that 

 they will take place even if the conditions are 

 absent, are by free-will theorists held to be one 

 and the same assertion ! ^ Fatalism is, however, 

 much more closely akin to their own doctrine. 

 Each ignores causation ; each is incompatible 

 with personal freedom ; the only difference be- 

 tween them being that the one sets up Chance, 

 while the other sets up Destiny, as the arbi- 

 ter of human affairs. And while each doctrine 

 is theoretically held by large bodies of men, 

 each in practice is habitually contradicted by its 

 upholders. The defenders of free-will, who in 

 practice are obliged to admit a certain con- 

 nection between acts and motives, and the 



^ *' It is owing to the very general misconception of the 

 nature of Law that there arises the misconception of Necessity; 

 the fact that events arrive irresistibly whenever their condi- 

 tions are present is confounded with the conception that the 

 events must arrive whether the conditions be present or not, 

 being fatally predetermined. Necessity simply says that what- 

 ever is is, and will vary with varying conditions. Fatalism 

 says that something must be ; and this something cannot be 

 modified by any modification of the conditions." Lewes, 

 Problems of Life and Mi?id, vol. i. p. 309. 

 272 



