is thus
destroyed. Although it may still serve to supply motives to conduct, it
seems that it can do so only in the way that belongs to
superstition--that Conscience, as I have before said, is the bogey of
mankind, and that belief in its authority is like belief in witchcraft,
destined to dwindle and to fade before the advance of a better or more
complete knowledge of natural causation.

But the discussion must not end here. Hitherto I have presented the case
Liberty _versus_ Necessity with all the impartiality of which I am
capable; but I have done so without travelling an inch beyond those
limits of discussion within which the question has been debated by
previous writers. I believe, indeed, that I have pointed out several
important oversights which have been made on both sides of the question;
but in doing this I have not gone further than the philosophical basis
upon which the question has been hitherto argued. My object, however,
in publishing these papers is not that of destructive criticism; and
what I have done in this direction has been done only in order to
prepare the way for what is now to follow. Having shown, as it appears
to me conclusively, that upon both the rival theories of Materialism and
Spiritualism--the doctrine of Liberty, and therefore of Moral
Responsibility--must logically fall, I now hope to show that this
doctrine admits of being re-established on a basis furnished by the
theory of Monism.

It often happens that an elaborate structure of argument, which is
perfectly sound and complete upon the basis furnished by a given
hypothesis, admits of being wholly disintegrated when the fundamental
hypothesis is shown to be either provisional or untrue. And such, I
believe, is the case with the issue now before us. For the issue Liberty
_versus_ Necessity has hitherto been argued on the common assumption
that natural causation is not merely the most ultimate principle which
the human mind can reach; but also a principle which is, in some way or
another, external to that mind. It has been taken for granted by both
sides in the controversy that if our volitions can be proved to depend
upon natural causation, as rigid in its sequences within the sphere of a
human mind as within that of a calculating machine, there must be an end
of the controversy; seeing that our volitions would be thus proved to be
rigidly determined by those same principles of fixed order, or 'natural
law,' which are external to, or