548 



LOGIC OF TftE MORAL SCIENCES. 



stances of any case, and the charac- 

 ters of the different persons concerned, 

 would hesitate to foretell how all of 

 them would act. Whatever degree 

 of doubt he may in fact feel arises 

 from the uncertainty whether he 

 really knows the circumstances, or 

 the character of some one or other of 

 the persons, with the degree of accu- 

 racy required ; but by no means from 

 thinking that if he did know these 

 things, there could be any uncertainty 

 what the conduct would be. Nor 

 does this full assurance conflict in 

 the smallest degree with what is 

 called our feeling of freedom. We 

 do not feel ourselves the less free be- 

 cause those to whom we are inti- 

 mately known are well assured how 

 we shall will to act in a particular 

 case. We often, on the contrary, re- 

 gard the doubt what our conduct will 

 be as a mark of ignorance of our cha- 

 racter, and sometimes even resent 

 it as an imputation. The religious 

 metaphysicians who have asserted 

 the freedom of the will have always 

 maintained it to be consistent with 

 divine foreknowledge of our actions ; 

 and if with divine, then with any 

 other foreknowledge. We may be 

 free, and yet another may have rea- 

 son to be perfectly certain what use 

 we shall make of our freedom. It is 

 not, therefore, the doctrine that our 

 volitions and actions are invariable 

 consequents of our antecedent states 

 of mind, that is either contradicted 

 by our consciousness or felt to be de- 

 grading. 



But the doctrine of causation, when 

 considered as obtaining between our 

 volitions and their antecedents, is al- 

 most universally conceived as involv- 

 ing more than this. Many do not 

 believe, and very few practically feel, 

 that there is nothing in causation but 

 invariable, certain, and unconditional 

 sequence. There are few to whom 

 mere constancy of succession appears 

 a sufficiently stringent bond of union 

 for so peculiar a relation as that of 

 cause and effect. Even if the reason 

 repudiates, the imagination retains, 



the feeling of some more intimate 

 connection, of some peculiar tie or 

 mysterious constraint exercised by 

 the antecedent over the consequent. 

 Now this it is which, considered as 

 applying to the human will, conflicts 

 with our consciousness and revolts 

 our feelings. We are certain that, 

 in the case of our volitions, there is 

 not this mysterious constraint. We 

 know that we are not compelled, as 

 by a magical spell, to obey any parti- 

 cular motive. We feel that if we 

 wished to prove that we have the 

 power of resisting the motive, we 

 could do so, (that wish being, it needs 

 scarcely be observed, a new antece- 

 dent ;) and it would be humiliating 

 to our pride, and (what is of more 

 importance) paralysing to our desire 

 of excellence, if we thought other- 

 wise. But neither is any such myste- 

 rious compulsion now supposed, by 

 the best philosophical authorities, to 

 be exercised by any other cause over 

 its effect. Those who think that 

 causes draw their effects after them 

 by a mystical tie are right in believing 

 that the relation between volitions 

 and their antecedents is of another 

 nature. But they should go farther, 

 and admit that this is also true of all 

 other effects and their antecedents. 

 If such a tie is considered to be in- 

 volved in the word necessity, the doc- 

 trine is not true of human actions ; 

 but neither is it then true of inani- 

 mate objects. It would be more cor- 

 rect to say that matter is not bound 

 by necessity, than that mind is so. 



That the free-will metaphysicians, 

 being mostly of the school which rejects 

 Hume's and Brown's analysis of Cause 

 and Effect, should miss their way for 

 want of the light which that analy- 

 sis affords, cannot surprise us. The 

 wonder is, that the Necessitarians, 

 who usually admit that philosophical 

 theory, should in practice equally lose 

 sight of it. The very same miscon- 

 ception of the doctrine called Philo- 

 .sophical Necessity which prevents the 

 opposite party from recognising its 

 truth, I believe to exist more or leu| 



