226 HUME x 



existence. It might be well for those who inveigh 

 against the logical consequences of necessarianism 

 to bethink them of the logical consequences of 

 theism ; which are not only the same, when the 

 attribute of Omniscience is ascribed to the Deity, 

 but which bring out, from the existence of moral 

 evil, a hopeless conflict between the attributes of 

 Infinite Benevolence and Infinite Power, which, 

 with no less assurance, are affirmed to appertain 

 to the Divine Being. 



Kant's mode of dealing with the doctrine of 

 necessity is very singular. That the phenomena 

 of the mind follow fixed relations of cause and 

 effect is, to him, as unquestionable as it is to 

 Hume. But then there is the Ding an sick, 

 the Noumenon, or Kantian equivalent for the 

 substance of the soul. This, being out of the 

 phenomenal world, is subject to none of the laws 

 of phenomena, and is consequently as absolutely 

 free, and as completely powerless, as a mathe- 

 matical point, in vacuo, would be. Hence volition 

 is uncaused, so far as it belongs to the noumenon ; 

 but, necessary, so far as it takes effect in the 

 phenomenal world. 



Since Kant is never weary of telling us that we 

 know nothing whatever, and can know nothing, 

 about the noumenon, except as the hypothetical 

 subject of any number of negative predicates ; the 

 information that it is free, in the sense of being 

 out of reach of the law of causation, is about as 



