172 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [vt. ti. 



His achievements, physical and mental, are determined by 

 the rate of his nutrition, and by the molecular structure and 

 relative weight of the nervous matter contained in him. His 

 very thoughts must chase each other along definite paths and 

 contiguous channels marked out by the laws of association. 

 Throughout these vaiious phenomena, already generalized for 

 us by astronomers, geologists, biologists, and psychologists, 

 we know that neither at any time nor in any place is law 

 interfered with, — that yesterday, to-day, and for ever, the effect 

 follows the cause with inevitable and inexorable certainty. 

 And yet we are asked to believe that in one particular 

 corner of the universe, upon the surface of one little planet, 

 in a portion of the organism of one particular creature, 

 there is one special phenomenon, called volition, in which 

 the law of causation ceases to operate, and everything goes 

 helter-skelter ! 



Such is the demand which IMr. Froude makes upon our 

 powers of acquiescence, and such is the theory which Mr. 

 Goldwin Smith, in the interests of theology, pronounces it 

 unphilosophical, if not impious, for us to reject. Of the 

 Science of History, Mr. Smith asserts that " it extinguishes 

 all sympathy " ; it " must put an end to self-exertion " ; it 

 ''■ would dissolve the human family" ; it makes man the most 

 helpless of animals, no better in fact than " a beast or a blade 

 of grass " ; it degrades humanity to mere clay ; it establishes 

 "a strange contradiction between our outward observation 

 and our inward consciousness ; it makes us " render up our 

 personality," and become ** a mere link in a chain of causa- 

 tion, a mere grain in a mass of being " ; it builds up, " with 

 much exultation," an " adamantine barrier of law " — what- 

 ever that may be — between man and the source of all good- 

 ness ; and, to crown all, it tells us that " conscience is an 

 illusion," and prevents our having any " rule of right action." * 



1 Lectures on the Study of History, pp. 63, 67, 48, 82, 85, 87, 59. Far 

 abler meu than Mr. Smith or Mr. Froa le hare la like mxaaer allowed their 



