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combining with, or opposing itself to, other instincts ; and he 
will consider all actions proceeding from the moral sense as 
being equallv necessary with the actions produced by the desires 
of the animal. In short, nearly all the phases of the rational 
faculty which are ordinarily held to be distinctive characteristics 
will be explained by the Fatalist on automatic principles. 1 am 
. not dealing here, it must be remembered, with sound argument, 
but with pure sophistry. Psychology is a strictly indue ive 
science, and the difference between desire and the rational will 
is far more clearly proved to us by an examination of cur own 
nature than by any amount of demonstration. And m indicat- 
in- a phase of the National principle which cannot be accounted 
for on the automatic theory of the Fatalist, I do not mean it 
to be inferred that this phase furnishes the only point of differ- 
ence between the rational and automatic principles, but I am 
simply laying my finger on a point which the fatalistic theory 
leaves uncovered. . . , c ■ 
20. Whenever, on the automatic principle, the agent retrains, 
under the influence of a stronger motive, from an action 
towards which he is impelled by desire, the Fatalist argues 
that the stronger motive gives a necessary character to the 
action: and, so far as the actions of the lower animals are 
concerned, he is undoubtedly right ; e.g., a dog who is on y 
restrained from flying at my throat by the sight of a cudgel 
which I hold in my hand, certainly acts from necessity and is 
quite at the mercy of the predominant feeling. But when the 
Fatalist, extending this principle into all human actions, claims 
for them an automatic character, and resolves the process of 
reflection into a balance of desires, it is evident that his theory 
fails to explain one of the most common operations of the 
rational principle, namely, the restraining of an inclination, not 
bv another and a stronger inclination, as is always the case in 
the conflict of instinctive desires, but by an arbitrary act of the 
will before any antagonistic consideration has presented itse ,- 
an act by which the will checks the inclination, not under the 
influence of another motive, but in order to direct the intellect, 
so to speak, in quest of other motives ; and no one who has 
impartially considered this phenomenon m Ins own mind will 
denv that there is in such cases a conscious and voluntary sus- 
pension of the action towards which he is impelled by desire. 
21. Let us take the case of a schoolboy who has made him- 
self drunk, and has been seriously unwell in consequence; the 
probable result is that he feels for some time to come a strong 
aversion either to alcoholic drinks generally or to the particular 
drink which has caused the disagreeable sensation. His aversion 
