his volitions according to the perceptions of his understanding, and wills to act as he judges right. Hence, as man, the animal, by acting upon his volition, invariably obtains the greatest possible amount of present enjoyment; so man, the moral agent, acting upon the law of his moral constitution, and doing what is right, inevitably secures to himself, under the righteous government of the Almighty, the eternal felicity which his immortality fits him to enjoy. As the author of such a nature, the character of God is strikingly illustrated. In the creation of the inanimate and vegetable worlds, his power and wisdom are manifestly displayed; in the creation of the numerous tribes of voluntary agents, his benevolence appears; but in the creation of man, his infinite wisdom, his boundless benevolence and moral holiness are at once strikingly exhibited.

This cursory view of agency, in general, may serve to facilitate the subsequent inquiries, and to preserve us from some of the misconceptions frequently entertained on the subject of liberty. For it is plain, before any question can be instituted respecting the liberty or necessity of an agent, his existence must be first admitted; and it is equally plain, that to discover the liberty or necessity of which he is the subject, his peculiar agency must also be ascertained. What may be liberty to one agent may be necessity, or, pro

bably, no possible state of another whose agency is of a different character; and without this preliminary knowledge therefore, the inquirer will be in danger of committing as absurd and egregious a mistake as were a chemist, confounding a number of acid and alkaline substances, to reason from one as if it were another. Hence most of the misconceptions and inconsistences with which writers on free-will are so frequently chargeable. Not to mention fatalism on the one hand and contingency on the other, which both virtually deny the reality of causation and hence the existence of the universe; more judicious authors not unfrequently exhibit strange inaccuracy of conception. One able divine and no contemptible metaphysician describes man as a free necessary agent. If, by free, he means, as he does, that man acts as he chooses or according to his volition; and if, by necessary, he means, as he also does, that he must act in a certain manner on the principle of causation and cannot act otherwise; the epithets are exactly of the same import, and are both necessarily implied, if words have any meaning, in the term agent; and it would not therefore be more absurd to describe a certain well known fluid by calling it liquid fluid water. If a voluntary agent is free because he does as he wills, he is necessary for the very same reason; for so long as he is free, he cannot do otherwise than invariably act upon

his volition. To free us from all such misconceptions, let us have an agent before us as the subject of inquiry. As the chemist takes for granted the existence of the substance whose elements he proposes to discover, and the anatomist that of the body which he proceeds to dissect; so must the inquirer into the nature of liberty admit, as an indispensable preliminary, that man is really the sort of agent which he is. The anatomist does not question the reality, but inquire the manner of the existence of the human body-how the various parts are situated, mutually related and co-operate in the functions of animal life. So must the moral inquirer investigate only the condition of the agent whose existence he has already assumed; and whether he is found free or necessary, he must not deny that he really exists; for he would then deprive himself of a subject, and be placed in the same ridiculous situation as were a chemist gravely to propose to discover the elements of non-entity, by subjecting it to a process of analysis.

AN ESSAY

ON

MORAL FREEDOM.

SECTION I.

NATURE OF FREEDOM AND STATEMENT OF THE

IN

QUESTION.

In every question respecting free agency, it must be taken for granted, it is plain, as the basis of the inquiry, that the agent whose liberty or necessity is to be ascertained actually exists. Holding then, as a matter of fact, that man is a being capable of judging, willing and acting, we now proceed to inquire what is the nature of the liberty which such an agent is capable of enjoying.

Mr. Hume, in treating the subject of liberty and necessity, proposes a very strange method of conducting his inquiries. "It would seem,' says he," that men begin at the wrong end of the question concerning liberty and necessity, when they enter upon it by examining the faculties of the soul, the influence of the under

standing and the operations of the will. Let them first discuss a more simple question, namely, the operations of body and of brute unintelligent matter, and try whether they can there form any idea of causation and necessity except that of a constant conjunction of objects, and a subsequent inference of the mind from one to the other. If these circumstances form in reality the whole of that necessity which we can conceive in matter, and if these circumstances be also universally acknowledged to take place in mind, the dispute is at an end, or, at least, must be owned to be henceforth merely verbal."

It is one of the most obvious principles of sound reasoning and of the true method of philosophizing, that the peculiar properties of the species are not to be discovered by examining the attributes of the genus. Before Mr. Hume therefore can be permitted to extend his induction so widely in support of his doctrine of necessity, it is necessary to ascertain, whether the specific properties of man, as a rational and voluntary agent, are common to him with brute unintelligent matter. If this is not to be supported in the affirmative, his method of conducting the inquiry is necessarily proved unphilosophical and fallacious. It is just as were a philosopher, in order to ascertain the nature of the smell or colour of a rose, to set himself to consider the solidity of the flower and of the sur