his
closet is one man: the same person, when he comes out of his retirement,
and mixes in intercourse with his fellow-creatures, is another man.
The necessarian, when he reasons on the everlasting concatenation
of antecedents and consequents, proves to his own apprehension
irrefragably, that he is a passive instrument, acted upon, and acting
upon other things, in turn, and that he can never disengage himself
from the operation of the omnipotent laws of physical nature, and the
impulses of other men with whom he is united in the ties of society. But
no sooner does this acute and ingenious reasoner come into active
life and the intercourse of his fellowmen, than all these fine-drawn
speculations vanish from his recollection. He regards himself and other
men as beings endowed with a liberty of action, as possessed of a proper
initiative power, and free to do a thing or not to do it, without being
subject to the absolute and irresistible constraint of motives. It is
from this internal and indefeasible sense of liberty, that we draw
all our moral energies and enthusiasm, that we persevere heroically in
defiance of obstacles and discouragements, that we praise or blame the
actions of others, and admire the elevated virtues of the best of
our contemporaries, and of those whose achievements adorn the page of
history.

It is in a manner of precisely the same sort as that which prevails
in the philosophical doctrines of liberty and necessity, that we find
ourselves impelled to feel on the question of the existence of the
material universe. Berkeley, and as many persons as are persuaded by his
or similar reasonings, feel satisfied in speculation that there is
no such thing as matter in the sense in which it is understood by the
writers on natural philosophy, and that all our notions of the external
and actual existence of the table, the chair, and the other material
substances with which we conceive ourselves to be surrounded, of
woods, and mountains, and rivers, and seas, are mere prejudice and
misconception. All this is very well in the closet, and as long as we
are involved in meditation, and remain abstracted from action, business,
and the exertion of our limbs and corporal faculties. But it is too
fine for the realities of life. Berkeley, and the most strenuous and
spiritualised of his followers, no sooner descend from the high tower of
their speculations, submit to the necessities of their nature, and mix
in the business of