less hordes of Tartar horsemen over the world, and made China and Russia, Persia and the shores of the Baltic Sea, and the wild regions of Siberia, alike to groan and tremble at the barbarous names of Baatou and Houlagou, the vicegerents of the "Universal Sovereign," "Lord Predestined of the Universe!"* This also the doctrine that urged incessantly for two centuries the n.ilitary fanaticism of Turkey against European civilization.

And this the doctrine of each vain man who, living like an animal, has not cultivated his moral or spiritual powers, but has permitted his Conscience to cry in vain, has lived without the control of Reason, has given up his heart inwardly to Selfishness, Sensuality, and Self-will, merely keeping up decent appearance, and complying with the outward requirements of society. And such a man, with his moral faculty wholly uncultivated—the fortress it was given to protect wholly unguarded-this man, having neglected all inward moral preparation, yields to outward temptation, and then cries out, "It was too strong for my Will, and determined it!" and "I was predoomed!" or "Overpowered by the influence of circumstances!"

I do not say that they who hold this doctrine are always vicious; for, as I have said before, nature often corrects the effect of doctrine that is untrue to it, and truly pious men have held it. But this I do say, that history represents it as an element that gives an immense strength to military fanaticism; and the experience of life and nature tell me, that whatsoever may be its effects upon the good, when believed in by the weak or the bad, or taught to them, it is a ready excuse for all vice, a ready means of shifting blame from themselves, and justifying a continuance in sin. And this the author has seen, both in case of the Fatalism of Absolute Predestination, and the Fatalism that supposes our affections and moral state to be the consequence of mere physical organization.†

* "The nation held a convention on the banks of the Sellinga. A Khodsha, or Sage, revered for his age and virtues, rose up in the assembly, and said, Brethren, I have seen a vision. The Great God of Heaven, on his flaming throne, surrounded by the spirits on high, sat in judgment on the nations of the earth: sentence was pronounced, and he gave the dominion of the world to our chief, Temudsin, whom he appointed Gengis Khan, or Universal Sovereign.”—Universal History, by John von Müller.

† The author here alludes to the principles that ensue from the doctrines of Combe on the Constitution of Man.

The author then will be asked, does he suppose this internal power of resistance in the Will to external motive to be, in its immediate action, entirely free from the law of "cause and effect," so that if the man will, he can resist the highest and weightiest motives that can be brought to bear upon him, or admit the very feeblest and weakest.

I consider that it is so; that so far the Will of man, when under its law, is independent of the law of Causation. And this as a part of the constitution of man, in virtue of his being a spiritual being, made in the image of God. I consider that of the Almighty, all His acts are from within, none caused from without, so that He is purely, perfectly, absolutely free. And so he has made man that he has the inward power of Will, capable, under its law,* of resisting all external motive, how weighty so ever it be; that he has this power as a spiritual being, endued with the faculty by God.

Men may say this is speculation,-"man is body, and under the laws of body."

And we say, "No more than it is speculation to say Man has eyes. The fact every one knows and acknowledges to himself and to others a hundred times every day of his life. We admit, then, that man is body,-and we say more, we say man is matter, and subject to the law of matter; man is living or animal body, and subject to its law; and man is spirit, and subject to its law; the laws coexist, and the higher outrules the lower. The man is matter, the mechanical forces then act upon each particle of his frame; the chemical forces, too, act upon him as matter, and their result would be decay; but he is also an animal body, and the vital forces neutralize the chemical and mechanical forces, and cause their effects not to ensue. And so say we: the mere physical motives would have overcome man, if he were only an animal; but since he is a spiritual being as well, he has the power of resistance by an inward Will that is not animal, but spiritual. The truth of this to nature and to our constitution may be seen from the above analogy.

And this leads us to the remark that the brute animals do really and entirely fulfil the notion of beings led altogether by circumstance; for in them we see that external motives, appealing

* See the next chapter.

to animal desires, invariably bring about the same result, act as cause and effect in determining action,-sufficient cause producing the proportionate action invariably. Nor is there, in the brute, any power of internal resistance, that cannot be overcome by an additional force of external motive. Instincts are irresistible in the animal nature, and appetites in their nature addressed by external motives in sufficient degree, can become irresistible; such motives are incapable of being resisted; in fact, there is no internal power to resist them.

The man of the Fatalist is no real man, made in the image of God with a Spiritual Nature, and having thence free-will as a faculty; only in those vertebrated mammalia that are the likest in physical organization unto man, the pongo or the ourang-outang, is it realized.

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It may, perhaps, add a good deal of clearness to these illustrations, if we ask, since the animals act, and have therefore some guidance unto their action, what is there in them that corresponds to the "Will"? We answer, that the immediate desire, which is the strongest towards any thing external, that is to them for a "Will." The Desires, as it were, reign by turns in them, and, answering to the variety of external motive, each Desire, in its turn, is in some measure a sort of Will. The external allurement addresses the animal appetite, so as to arouse it into action, and this rushes onward toward the outward object, with a force that leads the whole animal: thus, in them animal desire is produced by "external motive," under the law of cause and effect; the motive producing the emotion of the appetite, and that again the action of the animal according to that law. And we must say that, in most cases, it is not a single motive, but a complication of motives external, and that these tend generally to the preservation of the animal, and to its uses in the system of Nature, as of course we should expect from the creation of a Being infinitely wise.

But the general distinction that man has by his nature a “Will capable of resisting all motives from without, how weighty and forcible soever," and that the animals, on the contrary, are wholly and entirely governed by Desire, external circumstances acting upon their appetites, according to the law of cause and effect, this I count so generally true, that every one at once will see the distinction in Will between man and animals. Man has a Will

inward, and spiritual, and free; animals an appetite, wholly animal, and under the dominion of outward motive. Animals properly have no will.

And this brings us to the examination of a most important question with regard to the action of man. We have shown that there is no action of man's life wherein will not come in man's power; and then that man is not a puppet or a machine, driven by irresistible power, and dreaming that he moves when he only seems to move, but that in all circumstances he has power coming from himself: we have shown, too, that he has an internal faculty whereby he can resist all motives coming from without, and accordingly admit or not admit their influence. And from this last train of argument and illustration that we have employed, our readers may see that this power of free-will is a natural faculty of his constitution, not animal, but spiritual and internal. And now comes the question of fact, "as to Free Action upon Free-will, how far is man free?"

This I conceive to be a plain matter-of-fact question, as to each individual of our race, a practical and scientific question also, which, in this last point of view, may be put in this way: "Seeing that I have the faculty, by my constitution, of freedom, how shall I train it so that the power in itself and in its action shall attain the highest degree of perfection? And, on the contrary, what is that course of action by which, if I pursue it, the faculty may be so injured as to lose its natural powers, and not to have its natural effects?" This to answer, I conceive, would be to examine the subject practically and scientifically, with a view to life. We shall proceed, then, to this examination.

Now, taking it for granted that man's power manifests itself, and is not wholly extinguished in any, and that each one has this faculty of resisting outward motive according to an inward power; as a matter of fact, are there men that do not exert this power, but are led as the animals, by external circumstances, and therefore are not, in fact and in effect, free?

We answer, and each one who has looked upon the world can answer, that in fact and in effect there are men so led, and not free. And secondly, that the men themselves, every man and all men that are under such bondage, know that it is not by an external irresistible power they have been so enslaved, nor by the want of an internal faculty of resistance, but because of

themselves that they have not used that faculty they had, habitually,* and under the guidance and governance of the Conscience, the Reason, and the Affections.

And the situation of persons under such bondage, we shall see to be truly and really the situation of brute animals, roused to action, and stimulated by the animal appetite, and the outward circumstance that awakens and excites that appetite, so that the peculiar desire, whatsoever it be, takes the place of the Will in the man, and is to him for a Will.

This is the state of the man that is enslaved. We have seen gluttons, and drunkards, and licentious men, and liars, and misers, and vain men, and ambitious men; and while we saw the faculty or power in them of Free-will to exist, we saw that in effect they were "slaves," as much perhaps as if the faculty had no action and no existence. And we saw, moreover, that in each step of their progress towards this state, their own power and their own Will had been exerted suicidally, until both power and Will, as against the ruling appetite, ceased almost to have any being.

As a matter of fact, I have seen a drunkard, who, against all motives of religion, against all of reason and conscience, against all of happiness and self-interest, knowing that he was ruining and destroying his own life, and rendering miserable all those that he loved and was bounden to,—and against all this, the man indulged the one appetite, and would indulge it. Now, as a matter of fact, that man's Will was in bondage, he was not free. And as a matter of fact, there are thousands and tens of thousands that are so.

Is it not, then, just as well, while we admit that in all Man's acts, his own power comes in, and that he ever has the faculty of Free-will, to consider these cases that are before our eyes, and, instead of arguing that they are free, and closing our eyes to the fact that they are not, to examine how the faculty may become diseased and lose its strength and its power, and the man become a slave. Abstract proofs that "all men have the faculty and power of sight," avail not much to him whose eyes are diseased so that he cannot see; nor will the fullest demonstration of the laws of Optics be of much use to him: the practical

* See particularly the chapter upon Habit, and generally, the second, third, and fourth books of this treatise.