he has been able to maintain the doctrine
of necessity, holding it as a "demonstrated truth," and at the same time
give the idea of liberty a tenable position in his system.

If we would clear up the seeming antagonism between the mechanism of
nature and freedom in regard to the same volition, says he, we must
remember, that the volition itself, as standing under the conditions of
time, is to be considered as subject to the law of mechanism: yet the mind
which puts forth the volition, being conscious that it is a thing somewhat
detached from the conditions of time, is free from the law of mechanism,
and determinable by the laws of its own reason. That is to say, the
volitions of mind falling under the law of cause and effect, like all
other events which appear in time, are necessary; while the mind itself,
which exists not exactly in time, is free. We shall state only two
objections to this view. In the first place, it seems to distinguish the
mind from its act, not _modally_, i. e., as a thing from its mode, but
_numerically_, i. e., as one thing from another thing. But who can do
this? Who regards an act of the mind, a volition, as anything but the mind
itself as existing in a state of willing? In the second place, it requires
us to conceive, that the act of the mind is necessitated, while the mind
itself is free in the act thus necessitated. But who can do this? On the
contrary, who can fail to see in this precisely the same seeming
antagonism which Kant undertook to remove? To tell us, that volition is
necessitated because it exists in time, but the mind is free because it
does not exist in time, is, one would think, a very odd way to dispel the
darkness which hangs over the grand problem of life. It is to solve one
difficulty merely by adding other difficulties to it. Hence, the world
will never be much wiser, we are inclined to suspect, with respect to the
seeming antagonism between liberty and necessity, in consequence of the
speculations of the philosopher of Koenigsberg, especially since his great
admirer, Mr. Coleridge, forgot to fulfil his promise to write the history
of a man who existed in "neither time nor space, but a-one side."

Though Kant made the attempt in his Metaphysics of Ethics to overcome the
speculative difficulty in question, it is evident that he is not satisfied
with his own solution of it, since he has repeatedly declared, that the
practical reason furnishes the only ground on which it can