FACULTIES Oh THE MIND. 



405 



time equally influenced by two equal desires, it is certain it can never com- 

 ply with either of them, because a consent and preference would evince a 

 dissimilarity in their value. If a man should chance to be placed between a 

 bottle of wine and a Westphalia ham, with an equal inclination to eat and to 

 drink, there could, in this case, be no possible remedy ; and, by the law of 

 necessity, he must die either of hunger or thirst. The Stoics, therefore," 

 continues he, " who were most rigidly attached to the doctrine of fatalism, 

 when asked how the mind determines when two objects of equal desire are 

 presented to it, or what is the reason that out of a number of crown pieces it 

 selects one rather than another, there being no motive to excite a preference, 

 reply, that this action of the mind is extraordinary and irregular, and proceeds 

 from an impulse equally irregular and fortuitous. But it would be better," 

 continues Montaigne, " in my estimation, to maintain that no two objects can 

 be presented to us so perfectly equal, but that some trifling diff'erence may 

 subsist, and some small superiority be discoverable either in the one or the 

 other." 



And, no doubt, it would be better to maintain such a position ; but who 

 does not see that this is to give up the question '? to renounce the point upon 

 which we are at issue, and openly to confess that there does not exist in the 

 moral world the same counterpoise of cause and cause that is to be perpetually 

 met with in the natural. 



Let us confine ourselves to one more example. A cannon-ball, discharged 

 from the centre of a circle, and equally attracted to the north and to the east, 

 will proceed towards neither point ; but at an angle of 22h degrees, or imme- 

 diately between the two. But is there any one, unincurnbered with a strait- 

 waistcoat, who can suppose that such a rule has any application to the mo- 

 tive powers of the mind ? who can conceive, that a man, starting at Black- 

 friar's Bridge, and having business so equally urgent at Highgate and at Mile- 

 end, that he is incapable of determining to which place he shall proceed first, 

 would proceed to neither, but take a course between the two, and walk in a 

 straight line to Hackney or Newington-Green ] Yet, unless he should thus 

 act, not occasionally, or by accident, but uniformly, and at all times, there is 

 not in the mind the same law of operation, the same sort of necessity, as in 

 matter; but a something, whatever it maybe, producing and designed to pro- 

 duce an irreconcilable distinction ; and, in the correct language of the Epi- 

 curean philosophers, perpetually labouring to prevent the same blind force from 

 vanquishing the one as it leads captive the other : 



Ne mens ipsa necessum 

 Intestinum habeat cunctis in rebus agundis, 

 Et devicta quasi, cogatur ferre, patiquk.* 



Lest the mind 

 Bend to a stern necessity within, 

 And, like a slave, determine but by force. 



But we are told, that unless the moral world were thus constituted, there 

 could be no mutual confidence between man and man ; no series of actions 

 could be depended upon, and it would be impossible to distinguish between 

 one character and another ; or, in other words, how long the same individual 

 would maintain the same character. 



Now this kind of argument, if accurately examined, just as much invali- 

 dates the doctrine it is intended to support as the preceding. There is no 

 one who pretends to place the same degree of confidence in the general course 

 of human actions as in the experienced irain of natural events. Even where 

 the circumstances to reason from aie equally definite, moral dependence is in 

 all instances less certain than physical, and never amounts to more than a 

 probability. The closest friendships may fail, the purest virtue become tar- 

 nished ; and, in the words of Sophocles, which I must beg i.eave to put into 

 our own language— 



* De Rer. Nat. ii. 289. 



