consequently, this phenomenon of liberty, is one of whose beginning we know nothing; whose cause, independently of the great first cause of all things, we are totally unable to trace. It is an ever abiding reality, to which the term phenomenon is applied in quite a different sense from what it is to all other objects around us; one, therefore, to which the principle of causality, in its proper sense, does not at all apply. If our spontaneity were to come and go, presenting a succession of phenomena, then we should look for a cause, by which each of the parts of this succession were severally produced; but as it is one abiding fact of mind, which never varies, we can no more inquire for the particular cause of its spontaneous action beyond the will of the Creator, than we can for the particular cause of the great abiding fact of the universe itself. That very attribute of deity, which renders God himself a spontaneous source of action, was communicated by the Deity to man, when he made him intelligent, responsible, and free.

Instead, then, of arguing the doctrine of liberty, upon the arena of our separate volitions, which, as they come and go, are subject to the law of causality, we must remove the question one step further back to the idea of personality. Volitions are not free, but man is; they are in each case determined, but man determines them; they each arise and go as their cause impels, but that cause itself, which is grounded on the very notion of personality, is not a phenomenon, but an abiding fact of mind—freedom. To test the justice of these conclusions we have

only to appeal to the facts of our consciousness. Do we mean the same thing when we speak of a cause and when we speak of a motive? Do we attach the same certainty and uniformity of sequence to the one as we do to the other? And if we feel on certain occasions a motive to be for the moment irresistible, are we not conscious of a higher power within, lying behind the impulse that urges us, by which the motive may be arrested and the spell of its influence finally broken? This power is no other than that of spontaneity, the attribute and distinctive feature of every being that possesses reason and personality.

Consider again the phenomena of intelligence, of design, of attention. Whence is it that we can form purposes; whence that we can judge between plans for execution; whence that we can make at any predetermined time a beginning; whence that we can stop in our course, and anon proceed ; whence that we mould all the circumstances in which we may be placed, so as to tend to the accomplishment of our scheme? These voluntary actions, it is true, may spring from motives; but motives, we again repeat, are states of mind, in the production of which self, as an active principle, has as much, and often more, to do than any objective realities. All these facts point to a uniform and abiding cause, which does not take its stand among the passing phenomena of human things, but which is free and active in its very nature; open, indeed, to the influence of inducements, but not governed

by them; cognisant of the power of motives, but having no cause and no beginning, except in God. To the argument, then, before stated, "Every volition must have a cause, and therefore is not free,” we may reply, Every volition has a voluntary cause, and therefore the man is free."

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The question as to the possibility of free agency in the creature co-existing with omniscience in the Creator, we do not attempt to moot. The problem is really the same as the possibility of God's creating a responsible and intelligent being at all, a possibility, which we can only resolve into the fact of the Divine omnipotence. God willed to make man free, and accordingly he is free; he willed to create him in his own image, and did not therefore pass by the most distinctive feature which that image presents.1

I know not whether anything more satisfactory can be said on this point, than what has been said by Archbishop Whateley, namely, that on these high questions relating to Deity, we see only parts of great truths, and not enough to render them perfectly consistent to our understanding. Much confusion too would be prevented if the strictures he has given upon the ambiguity of the term, necessity, were kept in view. The effect of such a clearing up of terms is always to bring the matter in hand to its plainest statement, and show the real basis on which it rests. This, in fact, the Archbishop has done, by appealing on behalf of freedom to the moral consciousness of mankind. "If in saying all things are fixed and necessary, they [necessarians] mean that there is no such thing as voluntary action, we may appeal from the verbal quibbles, which alone afford a seeming support to such a doctrine, to universal consciousness; which will authorise even those, who have never entered into such speculations as the foregoing, to decide on the falsity of the conclusion, though they are perplexed with the subtle fallacies of the argument."-Bampton Lecture, Appendix, p. 539.

The long discussion into which the doctrine of necessity has led us, has almost caused us to lose sight of the original problem with which we started, namely, to determine by what faculty it is, that we become cognisant of moral distinctions. The analysis, however, which we have given of human liberty, has gone far to settle this point also. Take any action of a voluntary agent, and ask—why is it a moral action? First of all, we must see that it is not a mere forced and instinctive movement, but that it really flows from volition. But, next, from what does the volition flow? Clearly, as we have seen, from a mental emotion; so that we must now look to this, as including in it the moral element. But, lastly, whence arises the emotion? Psychology shows us, that every emotion springs from some conception of our reason. In reason, therefore, we have the primitive and essential distinction of right and wrong, arising upon the contemplation of human actions; in emotion, we have the feeling of moral approbation and disapprobation excited by this conception; and then in the will we find the effort, which carries out the last impulse of the emotions into practical operation. If one of these three elements be wanting, the moral nature must be incomplete. First, we must have the conception of right and wrong, or moral intelligence would be wanting; next, we must have the feeling or impulse arising from it, or moral disposition would be wanting; and, lastly, we must have freedom to act upon right or wrong motives, or else responsibility

would be wanting. According to this, conscience or the moral nature must consist in the combination of reason, sensibility, and will, all acting together upon the fundamental conceptions of good and evil; while the perversion of conscience must consist in dimming our moral ideas, in blunting our moral susceptibilities, and in weakening the power of the will over the whole man. How vastly this differs from the sensational view of our moral nature, which makes it consist in calculating for pleasure, it is needless to explain.

(C) SENSATIONAL PHYSIOLOGISTS.

The application of physiological investigations to mental science is, comparatively speaking, of recent date. A few crude speculations may be found amongst writers of an earlier period, respecting animal spirits and other "fictitious entities” of a similar nature; but all of them about equally visionary and ungrounded. Hartley in our own country and Bonnet on the Continent, appear to have been the first who employed a sound and experimental knowledge of the human frame to discover the physical conditions of sensation or intelligence; although in neither case did very marked success result from their efforts. But within the last twenty years the science of physiology, both as applied to man and to the inferior animals, has expanded to so vast an

1

Perhaps we ought to have mentioned Swedenborg, as one who in the eighteenth century grounded many psychological views upon his extensive researches in anatomy and physiology.