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not a mere logical deduction from fancied premises, but the 
resistless teaching of fact. We all know, as we said .before, 
that we can calculate with the precision and certainty of 
mathematics on the sequences of those purely material motions 
that follow an act of will, but we also know by abundant 
experience how impossible it is to calculate on that will itself. 
One of the fundamental truths of human procedure throughout 
its whole history is found in the freedom of man as a being 
capable of will ; and that truth is more thoroughly proved by 
the variety of moral results, than the absence of such freedom 
in matter is proved by the uniformity of material results. But 
this constrains us to see that in a world in which there are mil- 
lions of minds, each capable of true will, and where each 
within its sphere of volition is perfectly free, there cannot but 
be an endless variety and uncertainty of result. It is surely, 
then, anything but scientific to observe the results of material 
change alone, and to ignore the causings of mind. Such pro- 
cedure can lead only to error. The men who are so anxious 
to assure us that “ everything in nature is uniform, are also 
the very men who say to us, “if you will only live according 
to nature ; 55 and they constrain us to estimate that (C if which 
they so constantly use. They force us to think of the truth 
which is implied in the “if ” — the truth that we do. not live 
according to nature — that truth also involved in that if which 
is, that we may so live, and we may not ; which again involves 
the fact of will — the fact of the existence of the most uncertain 
thing in the universe, or even conceivable. It is childish, 
then, to talk of a “ uniform succession of. events 5 " in a world 
in which these millions of minds, or “wills,” as they are so 
often called, are constantly demonstrating their freedom and 
their fickleness. You may think of a train of material changes 
which is ever so extended; if these changes are. to occur, 
you must have a person who shall put the train in motion, 
and you may have many persons who will affect it when it is 
in motion. There lies the uncertainty. On what line of 
“ uniform succession 55 shall we calculate in such cases? There 
is no such “ uniform succession . 55 Myriads of instances can 
easily be given to demonstrate the uniformity of mere material 
and inorganic chains of effects; but, as we have already said, 
not one instance to prove that the same uniformity belongs to 
the action of mind in volition. This clears our atmosphere of 
thought : we see where the uniformity lies, and we see, too, 
where it is absent. So far as changes are purely material, 
there is uniformity; but so far as they are the effects of will, 
they are not so. This is not the teaching of some fine-spun 
thread of logic, nor the voice in a philosophic dream, but the 
