icient
reason, that the phenomena of human action are closely analogous to those
of motion in the material world. The analogy fails in several particulars.
No material object can act on itself and change its own nature,
adaptations, or uses, without any external cause; but the human mind can
act upon itself without any external cause, as in repentance, serious
reflection, religious purposes and aims. Then again, if two or more forces
in different directions act upon a material object, its motion is not in
the direction of either, or with the momentum derived from either, but in
a direction and with a momentum resulting from the composition of these
forces; whereas the human will, in the presence of two or more motives,
pursues the direction and yields to the force of but one of those motives.
We are not, then, authorized to reason about the power of motives from the
action of material forces.

(_e_) Were the arguments against the freedom of the will logically sound
and unanswerable, they would be of no avail against the testimony of
consciousness. Axioms, intuitive beliefs, and truths of consciousness can
be neither proved nor disproved by reasoning; and the reasoning by which
they seem to be disproved only evinces that they are beyond the range and
reach of argument. Thus it may be maintained with show of reason that
motion is impossible; for an object cannot move where it is, and cannot
move where it is not,--a dilemma which does not disprove the reality of
motion, but simply indicates that the reality of motion, being an
intuitive belief, neither needs nor admits logical proof.

2. It is urged against the freedom of the human will that it is
inconsistent with God's foreknowledge of future events, and thus
represents the Supreme Being as not omniscient, and in that particular
finite and imperfect.

To this objection we reply:--

(_a_) If human freedom and the Divine foreknowledge of human acts are
mutually incompatible, we must still retain the freedom of the will as a
truth of consciousness; for if we discredit our own consciousness, we
cannot trust even the act of the understanding by which we set it aside,
which act we know by the testimony of consciousness alone.

(_b_) If the acts of a freely willing being cannot be foreknown, the
ignorance of them does not detract from the perfectness of the Supreme
Being. Omnipotence cannot make two and two five. Omnipotence cannot do
what is intrinsically impossible. No m