e disciple of Leibnitz finds
himself planted precisely on the position he had undertaken to overthrow,
namely, that the will is determined by itself. And again, if it be wrong
to distinguish the motive from the active principle itself, then to say
that the active principle never departs from the motive, is to affirm that
a thing is always as itself.

The great service which a false psychology has rendered to the cause of
necessity is easily seen. For having identified an act of the will with a
state of the sensibility, which is universally conceived to be
necessitated, the necessitarian is delivered from more than half his
labours. By merging a phenomenon or manifestation of the will in a state
of the sensibility, it seems to lose its own characteristic, which is
incompatible with the scheme of necessity, and to assume the
characteristic of feeling, which is perfectly reconcilable with it; nay,
which demands the scheme of necessity to account for its existence. Thus,
the system of necessity is based on a false psychology, on which it has
too securely stood from the earliest times down to the present day. But
the stream of knowledge, ever deepening and widening in its course, has
been gradually undermining the foundations of this dark system.

Section II.

The scheme of necessity is directed against a false issue.

As we have seen in the last section, the argument of the necessitarian is
frequently directed against a false issue; but the point is worthy of a
still more careful consideration.

We shall never cease to admire the logical dexterity with which the
champions of necessity assail and worry their adversaries. They have said,
in all ages, that "nothing taketh beginning from itself;" but who ever
imagined or dreamed of so wild an absurdity? It is conceded by all
rational beings. Motion taketh not beginning from itself, but from action;
action taketh not beginning from itself, but from mind; and mind taketh
not beginning from itself, but from God. It is false, however, to conclude
that because nothing taketh beginning from itself, it is brought to pass
"by the action of some immediate agent without itself." The motion of
body, as we have seen, is produced by the action of some immediate agent
without itself; but the action of mind is produced, or brought to pass, by
no action at all. It taketh beginning from an agent, and not from the
action of an agent. This distinction, t