e a new relation arises: it is the
relation which subsists between an agent and its act. We may trace changes
in the external world up to the volitions or acts of mind, and perceive no
diversity in the chain of dependencies; but precisely at this point the
chain of cause and effect ceases, and agency begins. The surrounding
circumstances may be conditions, may be occasional causes, may be
predisposing causes, but they are not, and cannot be, producing or
efficient causes. Here, then, the iron chain terminates, and freedom
commences. In the ambiguity which fails to distinguish between "the
relation of cause and effect," and the relation which volition bears to
its antecedents, "consists the strength of the necessitarian system." Let
this distinction be clearly made and firmly borne in mind, and the great
boasted adamantine scheme of necessity will resolve itself into an empty,
ineffectual sound.

Hence, if we would place the doctrine of liberty upon solid grounds, it
becomes necessary to modify the categories of M. Cousin. All things, says
he, fall under the one or the other of the two following relations: the
relation between subject and attribute, or the relation between cause and
effect. This last category, we think, should be subdivided, so as to give
two relations; one between cause and effect, properly so called, and the
other between agent and action. Until this be done, it will be impossible
to extricate the phenomena of the will from the mechanism of cause and
effect.

We think we might here leave the stupendous sophism of the necessitarian;
but as it has exerted so wonderful an influence over the human mind, and
obscured, for ages, the glory of the moral government of God, we may well
be permitted to pursue it further, and to continue the pursuit so long as
a fragment or a shadow of it remains to be demolished.

Section IV.

The scheme of necessity is fortified by false conceptions.

One of the notions to which the cause of necessity owes much of its
strength, is a false conception of liberty, as consisting in "a power over
the determinations of the will." Hence it is said that this power over the
will can do nothing, can cause no determination except by acting to
produce it. But according to this notion of liberty, this causative act
cannot be free unless it be also caused by a preceding act; and so on _ad
infinitum_. Such is one of the favourite arguments of the nece