ON FREE-WILL, AND MAN'S AUTOMATISM. 137 



may succeed in permanently improving the character ; 

 but in order to a continued perseverance and a final 

 victory, these good motives and inducements must con- 

 tinue with us as constant forces in the hour of temptation, 

 and they must be so powerful as to conquer and subdue 

 the old competing inducements and army of lower motives 

 which still, though in diminishing strength, besiege the 

 will. Thus, even in the change of character for the 

 better, and still more clearly in the far commoner change 

 for the worse, we do not get beyond the sway and sphere 

 of motives. We are still within the circle of known, 

 natural, and phenomenal causes. We do not reach or 

 perceive the operation of a free-will, which, did it indeed 

 exist, we should imagine could have no difficulty in im- 

 proving the character. In the change of character here 

 described, we find neither the miraculous agency of 

 free-will nor the still more miraculous sudden conversion 

 of the character by supernatural agency. Every way 

 regarded, the alleged fact of free-will turns out to be an 

 unmeaning figment, an inconceivable and impossible 

 thing. It was a fiction invented by the older meta- 

 physicians anxious for the dignity of man and for the 

 interests of morality, both of which, in the opinion of 

 the necessitarian, can very well dispense with it ; and a 

 fiction sometimes countenanced by theology, in the same 

 interests of morality, sometimes discountenanced, because 

 opposed to the general theological doctrines of original 

 sin and of grace, as well as to the particular doctrine of 

 predestination. 



9. Does not this theory of the determination of the 

 will by motives take away all merit and demerit from 

 our characters and actions ? and does it not destroy all 

 moral responsibility or accountability for the consequences 

 of our actions ? If the strongest motive prevails and 



