142 SCIENCE AND MORALS 



III 



existence of uncaused jDhenomena. And the 

 essence of that which is improperly called the 

 freewill doctrine is that occasionally, at any rate, 

 human volition is self-caused, that is to say, not 

 caused at all ; for to cause oneself one must have 

 anteceded oneself — which is, to say the least of it, 

 difficult to imagine. 



Whoever accejDts the existence of an omniscient 

 Deity as a dogma of theology, affirms that the 

 order of things is fixed from eternity to eternity ; 

 for the fore-knowledge of an occurrence means 

 that the occurrence will certainly happen; and 

 the certainty of an event happening is what is 

 meant by its being fixed or fated.^ 



1 I may cite, in support of this obvious conclusion of sound 

 reasoning, two authorities who ^Yill certainly not be regarded 

 lightly by Mr, Lilly. These are Augustine and Thomas 

 Aquinas. The former declares that "Fate" is only an ill- 

 chosen name for Providence. 



"Prorsus divina providentia regna constituuntur humana. 

 Quoe si propterea quisquam fato tribuit, quia ipsam Dei volun- 

 tatem vel potestatem fati nomine appellat, sententiaia tencaty 

 linriuam corrigat" (Augustinus Be Civitate Dei, V. c. i.) 



The other great doctor of the Catholic Church, " Divus 

 Thomas," as Suarez calls him, whose marvellous grasp and 

 subtlety of intellect seem to me to be almost without a parallel, 

 puts the whole case into a nutshell, when he says that the 

 ground for doing a thing in the mind of the doer is as it were 

 the pre-existence of the thing done : 



"Ratio autem alicujus fiendi in mente actoris existens est 

 quredam prse-existentia rei fiendaj in eo" {Summa, Qu. xxiii. 

 Art. i.) 



If this is not enough, I may further ask what " Materialist" 

 has ever given a better statement of the case for determinism, 

 on theistic grounds, than is to be found in the following passage 

 of the Summa, Qu. xiv. Art. xiii. 



" Omnia qua; sunt in tempore, sunt Deo ab ajterno pnesentia, 

 nou solum ea ex ratiouo qua habet ratioues rerum apud se 



