450 



ON THE GENERAL 



ground of its adoption, are not essentially different. Motives, volitions, 

 and actions, are supposed by both sects to be of the same nature, in re- 

 spect to relative force and operation, as physical causes and effects; and 

 consequently, the same catenation, or necessary dependence of one fact 

 upon another, which marks the experienced train of events in the natural 

 world, is conceived to be perpetually taking place in the moral : " Ali 

 voluntary actions," as Mr. Hume observes, being subjected to the same 

 laws of necessity with the operations of matter, and there being a con- 

 tinued chain of necessary causes pre-ordained, and pre-determined, reach- 

 ing from the original cause of all to every single volition of every human 

 being."* Or, as another writer upon the saftie subject has expressed it, 

 — " The course of events, bbth moral and physicaK is fixed and immuta- 

 ble ; and thoughts, volitions, and actions, proceed in one interrupted con- 

 catenation from the beginning to the end of time, agreeably to the laws 

 originally established by the great Creator." 



So that, under the same circumstances the same motives must be pro- 

 duced in the mind of- every man, give rise to the same volitions, and be 

 succeeded by the same actions ; every one of these, to adopt the language 

 of the Fatalists, being equally a Hnk of that 



Golden everlasting chain, 

 Whose strong embrace holds heaven, and earth, and main. 



If it were not so, it is pretended that there could be no mutual depend- 

 ence or confidence between man and man. No person, from the appear- 

 ance of one action, as performed by his neighbour, could infer a second, 

 or form any opinion of his character. And even the doctrine of divine 

 prescience must be entirely rehnquished ; since, without such a necessary 

 and consecutive connexion, it must be impossible for the Deity himself to 

 foresee any future event, or to know it otherwise than as it occurs at the 

 moment. 



It was not my intention to have touched upon this controversy, but the 

 principles upon which it hinges are so closely blended with the subject 

 before us, that it is impossible altogether to elude it, though the remarks 

 I propose to offer shall be as brief and compressed as I am able to make 

 them. 



In the first place, then, whatever be the necessary connexion between 

 motives, volitions, and actions, it is by no means true that they are " sub- 

 jected to the same laws of necessity with the operations of matter.'* Let 

 me support this assertion by a reference to a few^ simple facts. A needle, 

 or an iron ball, placed between two magnets of equal power, will fall to nei- 

 ther of them, but remain midway at rest for ever, suspended between 

 equally contending attractions. Now, if the same laws of necessity con- 

 trol the moral as control the physical world, a similar moral cause must 

 produce a similar moral effect : and the traveller who, by accident, after 

 having lost himself in a forest, should meet with two roads running in op- 

 posite or different directions, and offering in every respect an equal at- 

 traction, must, like the needle or bullet, remain for ever at rest, because 

 the motive to take one course is just equipoised by the motive to take the 

 other. But can any man in his senses suppose he would remain there 

 for ever, and so starve himself between equally contendnig attractions ? 

 Or rather, can any man suppose such a fact, provided the traveller him- 



• Kssays : On t^ibertv and Necessity j vol. n. 



