SECTION III.

IT is admitted, then, as a matter of fact, that the human agent, in the exercise of his understanding, has, in many instances, the power to change the determinations of his will, as well as to fix them at first. This power of changing the will, it is plain, can be enjoyed only within certain limits in those cases, namely, in which the volition has been the result of partial knowledge, or of a mind under the undue influence of passion. When a resolution has been taken by an enlightened mind, in the deliberate exercise of its faculties, no change can be effected by means of the understanding. To retain his moral freedom, the man must then act according to his volition and cannot act otherwise. Hence an argument is derived against the existence of human liberty.

In entering upon this part of the investigation, it is necessary to premise that, although the facts now to be considered are universally acknowledged without difference of opinion, the

inquiry, regarding what we have termed the freedom of the understanding, is not to be considered any idle logomachy respecting the use of the term necessity. It is of some importance to true science to class things aright, and not to confound objects essentially different under the same term. All the sciences afford striking proofs of the pernicious consequences of such a mode of proceeding, and none more strikingly than the subject under consideration. By the improper use of the term necessity, and by confounding opposite things under that name, men have been led, and apparently with good reason, into the much more dangerous mistake of calling good evil and evil good; and hence have been involved in all the dreadful consequences of moral guilt. The perusal of the writings of the French sceptical school, and the consideration of the causes of the tragical scenes during the revolution in that country, will convince any one that it is not unimportant to settle the right meaning of the terms liberty and necessity, and deliver us from the unmeaning use of them. For as Dr. Brown well observes, "to remove a number of cumbrous words is, in many cases, all that is necessary to render distinctly visible, as it were to our very glance, truths which they and they only have been for ages hiding from our view."

Since the understanding, then, to resume our subject, perceives multitudes of truths to be as

they really are and cannot perceive them otherwise; if, in those instances, the man regulates his will by the decisions of his judgment, he is no longer, it is contended, a free but a strictly necessary agent. The decision of his judgment and determination of his will depend on circumstances over which he has no command. By these circumstances the man's conduct is and must be determined with the most absolute certainty. He must inevitably judge, and will, and act in a certain manner. No choice nor alternative of conduct is left him. It is vain then, it is argued, to contend for human liberty. If the man act upon his judgment, he is shut up to a certain line of conduct as certainly and as unavoidably as if he were compelled to act under the irresistible law of physical necessity.

All the facts here stated are frankly admitted; and it is granted that they do indeed prove a sort of necessity. But let us for a moment consider its nature. It is in truth nothing but the necessity which is implied in the proposition, a thing cannot be and not be at the same time; that is, it is the simple fact of existence. While matter exists, it must be extended, figured and solid; while grass is green, it must be green; while the earth revolves, it must be in motion; and, in like manner, while man remains an intelligent being, he must perceive truth to the extent of his knowledge. The very essence, as

known to us, of an intelligent and rational being is to perceive truth. To suppose a man indifferent with respect to the perception of all truth, is to conceive him to be no longer an intelligent being. When we say, therefore, that man perceives truth to be true, and of necessity cannot perceive it otherwise, we state nothing more than the simple fact, that man is an intelligent crea

ture.

Mr. Hume's doctrine of necessity, we formerly saw, is the bare truth, that all the substances and accidents with which we are acquainted, derive their existence from some cause; that is, it is nothing but the fact of the universal prevalence of causation. With regard to substances, it states, that all those around us are created beings; with respect to actions, it affirms that every action implies an agent acting according to the attributes of his nature. The contrast of the first part of this necessity is self-existence, that is, uncaused, unbeginning existence, which belongs only to the Deity; who, in this sense, therefore, is the only free being in the universe. The last part, since we cannot conceive an accident without a subject, nor an action without an agent, has no contrast, unless we find it in the substantial forms of the school-men; who have the merit of having maintained the reality of something, not only non-existent but inconceivable and contradictory, and of having afforded a

fine specimen of words absolutely without meaning. The necessity of which we are now speaking, though different from Mr. Hume's, and in some respects opposite, is so much the more irrational. The mere fact of existence is necessity. The Deity, as being self-existent, is, in this sense, the most necessary of all beings. As an intelligent being, whose understanding and knowledge is infinite, and who, therefore, perfectly perceives all possible truths, and cannot but perceive them, he is placed under an infinitely greater degree of necessity than any of his finite intelligent creatures, who are necessary only in proportion to their intellectual power. The contrast of this necessity is non-existence. To deliver any being from the necessity of being what he is, or an intelligent being from the necessity of perceiving truth, he must be annihilated; and then, indeed, he will, in this sense, be perfectly free. Nothing is necessary respecting a nonentity. Deprive a man of his rational and moral faculties, and he will be indifferent to all truths not common to him with the brutes; but he will still be under the necessity of being a sentient and voluntary agent. Deprive him, again, of sensation and volition, and reduce him to mere matter, and he will be free from the necessity of feeling and of spontaneous motion; but he will still be under the greater necessity of being solid, extended and figured. Reduce him to a