h Edwards has deceived himself by an
appeal to logic rather than to consciousness, because the threefold
distinction for which we contend is now admitted by necessitarians
themselves. Indeed, after the clear and beautiful analysis by M. Cousin,
they could not well do otherwise than recognise this threefold
distinction; but they have done so, we think it will be found, without
perceiving all the consequences of such an admission to their system. It
is an admission which, in our opinion, will show the scheme of necessity
to be insecure in its foundation, and disjointed in all its parts.

With the light of this distinction in our minds, it will be easy to follow
and expose the sophistries of the necessitarian. He often declaims against
the idea of liberty for which we contend, on the ground that it would be,
not a perfection, but a very great imperfection of our nature to possess
such a freedom. But in every such instance he confounds the will with one
of the passive susceptibilities of the mind. Thus, for example, Collins
argues that liberty would be a great imperfection, because "nothing can be
more irrational and absurd than to be able to refuse our assent to what is
evidently true to us, and to assent to what we see to be false." Now, all
this is true, but it is not to the purpose; for no one contends that the
intelligence is free in assenting to, or in dissenting from, the evidence
in view of the mind. No rational being, we admit, could desire such a
freedom; could desire to be free, for example, from the conviction that
two and two make four. M. Lamartine, we are aware, expresses a very lively
abhorrence of the mathematics, because they allow not a sufficient
_freedom of thought_--because they exercise so great a _despotism over the
intellect_. But the circumstance which this flowery poet deems an
imperfection in the mathematics, every enlightened friend of free-agency
will regard as their chief excellency and glory.

The same error is committed by Spinoza: "We can consider the soul under
two points of view," says he, "as thought and as desire." Here the will is
made to disappear, and we behold only the two susceptibilities of the
soul, which are stamped with the characteristic of necessity. Where, then,
will Spinoza find the freedom of the soul? Certainly not in the will, for
this has been blotted out from the map of his psychology. Accordingly he
says: "The free will is a chimera of the species, flattered by our pri