24 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



should modify, but not destroy — on Lucretius' principles — the free- 

 will of nature. 



(c and d) These ai^guments also tend only to limit the extent of 

 free-will that Lucretius can have atti-ibiited to nature : not to cast 

 doubts on its existence. 



(e) It is -very difficult to understand how Mr. Masson can ui-ge 

 this objection. He has himself shown the similarity of Lucretius' 

 (or, as he calls it, M. Guyau's) doctrine of spontaneity in nature to 

 Schopenhauer's doctrine of will (p. 232), to G-assendi's doctrine of 

 consciousness (p. 140), and to Pi'ofessor Clifford's doctrine of mind- 

 stuff (pp. 132 seq.) ; and we may add to the list the cognate theories 

 of Zollner (Lange's History of Materialism, vol. ii., p. 328), and of 

 Czolbe (id., p. 291), (comp. vol. i., p. 13, note). If these specula- 

 tions are on a level, in respect of truth, with Andersen's fairy tales, 

 then the same may be said of M. Guyau ; not otherwise. No doubt 

 there is a resemblance up to a point, but the question of degree is 

 everything. 



According to M. Guyau, Lucretius conceives that in nature as in 

 man each thing has, so to speak, its tether {foedera naturae, fati 

 fines, foedera fati, Lucretius V. 309-310, II. 254); when it has 

 reached the end of its tether it stops necessarily ; and practically, as 

 with man, it stops short of this. This finita j^otestas, as Lucre- 

 tius calls it (I., 76, 77), does not, says Mr. Masson, mean "limited 

 power," but " fixed power" (p. 223, note) ; but the very next words, 

 atque alte terminus haerens, " and the deep-set goal," make for M. 

 Guyau's view, and are naturally interpi-eted by him to mean what 

 Mr. Benn means by "the limiting possibilities of existence." 



Why is it more difficult to reconcile the two — the law which 

 tethers and the free-will which gives an area of freedom within that 

 law, in the case of nature than in the case of man 1 No one denies 

 free-will just because he cannot rid himself of the legacies received 

 from human nature and the nature of his ancestors ; and, conversely, 

 no one argues that the believer in free-will substitutes for human 

 life in this world Andersen's fairy-world. 



It is an old suggestion that the so-called " waste" in nature, and 

 the sacrifice of countless seeds and lower lives, is but the expression 

 of the same freedom which in human life makes evil possible, and 

 causes so much waste there also. If M. Guyau be right, Lucretius 

 says no more than this. 



