524 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



death from poison, which an antidote, or the use of the stomach pump, 

 will sometimes avert. It is apt to be forgotten by people's feelings, 

 even if remembered by their understandings, that human actions are 

 in this last predicament : they are never (except in some cases of 

 mania) ruled by any one motive with such absolute sway, that there 

 is no room for the influence of any other. The causes, therefore, on 

 which action depends, are never uncontrollable ; and any given effect 

 is only necessary provided that the causes tending to produce it are 

 not controlled. That whatever happens, could not have happened 

 otherwise unless something had taken place which was capable of 

 preventing it, no one surely needs hesitate to admit. But to call this 

 by the name necessity is to use the term in a sense so different from 

 its primitive and familiar meaning, from that which it bears in the 

 common occasions of life, as to amoimt almost to a play upon words. 

 The associations derived from the ordinary sense of the term will ad- 

 here to it in spite of all we can do : and though the doctrine of Neces- 

 sity, as stated by most who hold it, is very remote from fatalism, it is 

 probable that most necessarians are fatalists, more or less, in their 

 feelings. 



A fatalist believes, or half believes (for nobody is a consistent fatal- 

 ist) not only that whatever is about to happen, will be the infallible 

 result of the causes which produce it (which is the true necessarian 

 doctrine), but moreover that there is no use in struggling against it; 

 that it will happen however we may strive to prevent it. Now, a 

 necessarian, believing that our actions follow fi-om our characters, and 

 that our characters follow from our organization, our education, and 

 our circvimstances, is apt to be, Avith more or less of consciousness on 

 his part, a fatalist as to his own actions, and to believe that his nature 

 is such, or that his education and circumstances have so moulded his 

 character, that nothing can now prevent him from feelhig and acting 

 in a particular way, or at least that no effort of his own can hinder it. 

 In the words of the sect which in our own day has so perseveringly 

 inculcated and so perversely misunderstood this gi-eat doctrine, his 

 character is formed for him, and not hy him ; therefore his wishing 

 that it had been formed differently is of no use ; he has no power to 

 alter it. But this is a grand error. He has, to a certain extent, a 

 power to alter his character. Its being, in the ultimate resort, formed 

 for him, is not inconsistent with its being, in part, formed liy him as 

 one of the intermediate agents. His character is formed by his cir- 

 cumstances (including among these his particular organization) ; but 

 his own desire to mould it in a particular way, is one of those circum- 

 stances, and by no means one of the least influential. We cannot, 

 indeed, directly will to be different from what we are. But neither did 

 those who are supposed to have formed our characters, directly will 

 that we should be what we are. Their will had no direct power 

 except over their own actions. They made us what they did make 

 us, by willing, not the end, but the requisite means : and we, when our 

 habits are not too inveterate, can, by similarly willing the requisite 

 means, make ourselves different. If they could place us under the 

 influence of certain circumstances, we, in like manner, can place our- 

 selves under the influence of other circumstances. We are exactly as 

 capable of making our own character, ?/" we will, as others are of mak- 

 ing it for us. 



