tervention of which previously existing causes are enabled to produce
certain effects. We shall see, according to an expressive phrase, that
he "could not help it," and, of consequence, while we look down from the
high tower of philosophy upon the scene of human affairs, our prevailing
emotion will be pity, even towards the criminal, who, from the qualities
he brought into the world, and the various circumstances which act upon
him from infancy, and form his character, is impelled to be the means
of the evils, which we view with so profound disapprobation, and the
existence of which we so entirely regret.

There is an old axiom of philosophy, which counsels us to "think with
the learned, and talk with the vulgar;" and the practical application of
this axiom runs through the whole scene of human affairs. Thus the
most learned astronomer talks of the rising and setting of the sun,
and forgets in his ordinary discourse that the earth is not for ever at
rest, and does not constitute the centre of the universe. Thus, however
we reason respecting the attributes of inanimate matter and the nature
of sensation, it never occurs to us, when occupied with the affairs
of actual life, that there is no heat in fire, and no colour in the
rainbow.

In like manner, when we contemplate the acts of ourselves and our
neighbours, we can never divest ourselves of the delusive sense of
the liberty of human actions, of the sentiment of conscience, of the
feelings of love and hatred, the impulses of praise and blame, and the
notions of virtue, duty, obligation, right, claim, guilt, merit and
desert. And it has sufficiently appeared in the course of this Essay,
that it is not desirable that we should do so. They are these ideas
to which the world we live in is indebted for its crowning glory and
greatest lustre. They form the highest distinction between men and
other animals, and are the genuine basis of self-reverence, and the
conceptions of true nobility and greatness, and the reverse of these
attributes, in the men with whom we live, and the men whose deeds are
recorded in the never-dying page of history.

But, though the doctrine of the necessity of human actions can never
form the rule of our intercourse with others, it will still have its
use. It will moderate our excesses, and point out to us that middle path
of judgment which the soundest philosophy inculcates. We shall learn,
according to the apostolic precept, to "be angry, and sin n