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a position in which this subject appears in its true limitations. 
So long as we know only one thing following another — what is 
called “ antecedence and consequence ” — in natural changes, 
we are fully exposed to the notion of an inexorable sameness 
in those changes. The knowledge of true will at once modi- 
fies this notion. You may calculate in a given case how water 
will run, and even how the wind will blow, but who can calcu- 
late in any case how a free will shall decide ? He reckons 
without his host who studies the so-called “uniformities of 
nature,” forgetting that the material universe is constantly 
affected in what are to us its most important changes by 
moral agencies. Yet this is just how too many reckon, and 
hence come to fancy a world which is full of variations arising 
from both human and divine actions, as if it were a mere 
machine in which no one wheel could ever move except in one 
direction, and at one unalterable speed. Law represents only the 
idea of a generalized mode of action. All reasoning on “laws” 
which is confined to mere order of occurrences, is reasoning 
on the surface of things. It is like reasoning on the move- 
ments of a locomotive, and calculating on a certain speed for 
the train, forgetting the driver. I have known such a train 
leaving one of our most important stations and the chief man 
on the engine so tipsy, that the stoker threw him among the 
coals, and took his place, going off with the train alone. What 
if the stoker had been anything but steady ? I have know T n a 
fine steamer leave one of our harbours and the captain unable to 
see from the stern to the bow of his vessel. He compelled his 
men to hold on with full steam till the ship was hard and fast in 
the mud of the opposite coast ! Shipowners have something 
more to think of than the “ antecedence and consequence ” of 
material change. So has the true philosopher. He must see 
that the freedom of the actors who affect Nature, is as real as 
the laws according to which material objects are affected. In 
perfect accordance with the law of gravitation for example, I 
may raise a weight from the ground, or let it remain at rest, 
or push it along without raising it. It is not possible to take 
in the facts of the case as they ever crowd themselves upon us, 
and yet believe that natural law is anything else than the 
generalized mode of action on the part of those agents by 
whom what is called Nature is affected. If you choose to look 
at occurrences only and to ignore actors, you see nothing else 
but that to which you confine your view j but such limita- 
tion of vision is the opposite of rational. 
When we fairly enter on the region of fact we find that the 
idea of an invariable order of succession in nature is only par- 
tially true, and, when applied universally, exceedingly deceptive. 
