, but simply means invariable antecedence. Let it be that a
cannon-ball does not really knock down the wall against which it
strikes, and that it would be more correct to say that the ball
impinges and the wall falls; though, seeing that the wall would not have
fallen unless the ball had impinged, the distinction is too nice for
ordinary apprehension. As understood, at any rate, by the joint
headmasters of the new school, causation does involve compulsion. 'Men's
actions,' say they, 'are the product not of their volition, but of their
antecedents,' and 'result from large and general causes which must
produce certain consequences.' Neither, if this be so, is it of any
avail to suggest that, possibly, the large and general causes in
question may be of only temporary operation. 'It may be that the rules,'
in accordance with which the sun has hitherto risen every morning since
the creation of the world, 'will hold good only for a time.' It may be
that the springs, whatever they are, by which the universe is kept in
motion, may require to be periodically wound up like the works of a
clock, and that, unless this be done, 'on some particular day out of
many billions,' the sun may fail to rise, just as the clock, if suffered
to run down, would stop on the eighth day. The conjecture would, of
course, be not less applicable to social than to natural laws. It is
conceivable that the large general causes assumed to regulate human
actions might lose their efficacy at the end of a certain cycle, when
mankind might either have to recommence a social revolution similar to
the one just completed, or might have to begin an entirely different
revolution under entirely different laws. Be it so. Still, if the
causes, as long as they remained in operation, possessed a compulsory
character--if, during the continuance of the supposed cycle, men were
bound to act in a certain way in accordance with certain laws, and
irrespectively of their own volition--what would it matter that those
laws were not eternal and immutable? For the time being men would no
more be free agents than the hands of a clock, while the clock was wound
up. Both would be constrained to move in a prescribed direction, whether
they would or no. Men in such circumstances might well be likened, as by
Mr. Buckle they are likened, to links in a chain, but few would be
prevented from joining in Mr. Goldwin Smith's eloquent protest against
the comparison, by being told that the chain