ck
upon precisely that notion of free-will which was so long ago condemned by
Calvin, and exploded by Leibnitz, and which relates, as we have so often
seen, not to acts of the will at all, but only to the external movements
of the body.

Section VII.

The sentiments of Hume, Brown, Comte, and Mill, in relation to the
antagonism between liberty and necessity.

Mr. Hume has disposed of the question concerning liberty and necessity, by
the application of his celebrated theory of cause and effect. According to
this theory, the idea of power, of efficacy, is a mere chimera, which has
no corresponding reality in nature, and should be ranked among the
exploded prejudices of the human mind. "One event follows another," says
he; "but we never can observe any tie between them. They seem _conjoined_,
but never _connected_."(44)

We shall not stop to examine this hypothesis, which has been so often
refuted. We shall merely remark in passing, that it owes its existence to
a false method of philosophizing. Its author set out with the doctrine of
Locke, that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection; and
because he could not trace the idea of power to either of these sources,
he denied its existence. Hence we may apply to him, with peculiar force,
the judicious and valuable criticism which M. Cousin has bestowed upon the
method of Locke. Though Mr. Hume undertakes, as his title-page declares,
to introduce the inductive method into the science of human nature, he
departed from that method at the very first step. Instead of beginning, as
he should have done, by ascertaining the ideas actually in our minds, and
noting their characteristics, and proceeding to trace them up to their
sources, he pursued the diametrically opposite course. He first determined
and fixed the origin of all our ideas; and every idea which was not seen
to arise from this preestablished origin, he declared to be a mere
chimera. He thus caused nature to bend to hypotheses; instead of
anatomizing and studying the world of mind according to the inductive
method, he pursued the high _a priori_ road, and reconstructed it to suit
his preestablished origin of human knowledge. This was not to study and
interpret the work of God "in the profound humiliation of the human
soul;"(45) but to re-write the volume of nature, and omit those parts
which did not accord with the views and wishes of the philosopher. In the
pithy