and we
beat our very heads against the cruel barrier which separates us from
them."

"I am afraid I hardly understand you," I said;--"do assist me by some
instance of illustration."

"You are acquainted," he replied, "with the Scripture doctrine of
Predestination, and, in thinking over it, in connection with the
destinies of man, it must have struck you that, however much it may
interfere with our fixed notions of the goodness of Deity, it is
thoroughly in accordance with the actual condition of our race. As far
as we can know of ourselves and the things around us, there seems,
through the will of Deity--for to what else can we refer it?--a fixed,
invariable connection between what we term cause and effect. Nor do we
demand of any class of mere effects, in the inanimate or irrational
world, that they should regulate themselves otherwise than the causes
which produce them have determined. The roe and the tiger pursue,
unquestioned, the instincts of their several natures; the cork rises,
and the stone sinks; and no one thinks of calling either to account for
movements so opposite. But it is not so with the family of man; and yet
our minds, our bodies, our circumstances, are but combinations of
effects, over the causes of which we have no control. We did not
choose a country for ourselves, nor yet a condition in life--nor did we
determine our modicum of intellect, or our amount of passion--we did
not impart its gravity to the weightier part of our nature, or give
expansion to the lighter--nor are our instincts of our own planting.
How, then, being thus as much the creatures of necessity as the denizens
of the wild and forest--as thoroughly under the agency of fixed,
unalterable causes, as the dead matter around us--why are we yet the
subjects of a retributive system, and accountable for all our actions?"

"You quarrel with Calvinism," I said; "and seem one of the most
thorough-going necessitarians I ever knew."

"Not so," he replied; "though my judgment cannot disprove these
conclusions, my heart cannot acquiesce in them--though I see that I am
as certainly the subject of laws that exist and operate independent of
my will, as the dead matter around me, I feel, with a certainty quite as
great, that I am a free, accountable creature. It is according to the
scope of my entire reason that I should deem myself bound--it is
according to the constitution of my whole nature that I should feel
myself free. And in this consists