x VOLITION: LIBERTY AND NECESSITY 221 



you like. But what determines your likings and 

 dislikings ? Did you make your own constitution ? 

 Is it your contrivance that one thing is pleasant 

 and another is painful ? And even if it were, why 

 did you prefer to make it after the one fashion 

 rather than the other ? The passionate assertion 

 of the consciousness of their freedom, which is the 

 favourite refuge of the opponents of the doctrine 

 of necessity, is mere futility, for nobody denies it. 

 What they really have to do, if they would up- 

 set the necessarian argument, is to prove that 

 they are free to associate any emotion whatever 

 with any idea whatever ; to like pain as much as 

 pleasure ; vice as much as virtue ; in short, to 

 prove, that, whatever may be the fixity of order of 

 the universe of things, that of thought is given 

 over to chance. 



In the second part of this remarkable essay, 

 Hume considers the real, or supposed, immoral con- 

 sequences of the doctrine of necessity, premising 

 the weighty observation that 



" When any opinion leads to absurdity, it is certainly false ; 

 but it is not certain that an opinion is false because it is of 

 dangerous consequence." (IV. p. 112.) 



And, therefore, that the attempt to refute an 

 opinion by a picture of its dangerous consequences 

 to religion and morality, is as illogical as it is 

 reprehensible. 



It is said, in the first place, that necessity de- 



