LECTURE VII.

Note I., p. 182.

THE Moral and Religious Philosophy of Kant, which is here referred to, is chiefly contained in his Metaphysik der Sitten, first published in 1785, his Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, in 1788, and his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, in 1793. For Kant’s influence on the rationalist theology of Germany, see Rosenkranz, Geschichte der Kant’schen Philosophie, p. 323. sqq. Amand Saintes, Histoire du Rationalisme en Allemagne, L. II. ch. xi. Rose, State of Protestantism in Germany, p. 183 (2nd edition), Kahnis, History of German Protestantism, pp. 88, 167 (Meyer’s Translation).

Note II., p. 183.

See Metaphysik der Sitten, pp. 5, 31, 52, 87, 92; Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, p. 224 (ed. Rosenkranz).

Note III., p. 183.

A similar view of the superiority of the moral consciousness over other phenomena of the human mind, as regards absolute certainty, seems to 329 be held by Mr. Jowett. In reference to certain doubts connected with the Doctrine of the Atonement, he observes, “It is not the pride of human reason which suggests these questions, but the moral sense which He himself has implanted in the breast of each one of us.”²¹⁶²¹⁶   Epistles of St. Paul, Vol. II. p. 468. It is difficult to see the force of the antithesis here suggested. The “moral sense” is not more the gift of God than the “human reason;” and the decisions of the former, to be represented in consciousness at all, require the cooperation of the latter. Even as regards our own personal acts, the intellectual conception must be united with the moral sense in passing judgment; and in all general theories concerning the moral nature of God or of man, the rational faculty will necessarily have the larger share.

Note IV., p. 183.

Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 631. ed. Rosenkranz. Metaphysik der Sitten, p. 31. Religion innerhalb u. s. w. p. 123.

Note V., p. 183.

Religion u. s. w. p. 123.

Note VI., p. 183.

Ibid. pp. 122,184.

Note VII., p. 183.

Ibid. pp. 123, 133. Compare Streit der Facultäten, p. 304.

Note VIII., p. 184.

See above, Lecture III, p. 74.

Note IX., p. 185.

On the existence of necessary truths in morals, comparable to those of mathematics, see Reid, Intellectual Powers, Essay VI. ch. 6 (pp. 453, 454. ed. Hamilton).

Note X., p. 186.

Compare Jacobi, An Fichte, Werke, III. pp. 35, 37. “Just as certainly as I possess reason, so certainly do I not possess along with it the perfection of life, I do not possess the fulness of the good and the true; and just as certainly as I do not possess this, and know it, just so certainly do I know there is a higher Being, and in Him I have my origin . . . . . I acknowledge, then, that I do not know the Good in itself, the True in itself, also that I have only a remote foreboding of it.” That the moral providence of God cannot be judged by the same standard as the actions of men, see Leibnitz, Théodicée, De la Conformité, etc. § 32 (Opera, ed. Erdmann, p. 489).

Note XI., p. 187.

“Wherefore, inasmuch as our actions are conversant about things beset with many circumstances, which cause men of sundry wits to be also of sundry judgments concerning that which ought to be done; requisite it cannot but seem the rule of divine law should herein help our imbecility, that we might the more infallibly understand what is good and what evil. The first principles of the Law of Nature are easy; hard it were to find men ignorant of them. But concerning the duty which Nature’s law doth require at the hands of men, in a number of things particular, so far hath the natural understanding even of sundry whole nations been darkened, that they have not discerned, no not gross iniquity to be sin.—Hooker, E. P., I. xii. 2.

Note XII., p. 187.

This corresponds to the distinction drawn by Leibnitz, between eternal and positive truths of the reason. See Théodicée, Discours de la Conformité, etc. § 2 (Opera, Erdmann, p. 480). The latter class of truths, he allows, may be subservient to Faith, and even opposed by it, but not the former.

Note XIII., p. 189.

That it is impossible to conceive the Divine Will as absolutely indifferent, is shown by Müller, Christliche Lehre von der Sünde, I. p. 128. But on the other hand, we are equally unable to conceive it as necessarily determined by the laws of the Divine Nature. We cannot therefore conceive absolute morality either as dependent on, or as independent of, the Will of God. In other words, we are unable to conceive absolute morality at all.

Note XIV., p. 190.

See above, Lecture I, Note 14.

Note XV., p. 190.

“Sin contains its own retributive penalty, as surely and as naturally as the acorn contains the oak. . . . . It is ordained to follow guilt by God—not as a Judge, but as the Creator and Legislator of the universe. . . . We can be redeemed from the punishment of sin only by being redeemed from its commission. Neither can there be any such thing as vicarious atonement or punishment. . . . If the foregoing reflections are sound, the awful, yet wholesome conviction presses on our minds, that there can be no forgiveness of sins.”- Greg, Creed of Christendom, p. 265. “I believe God is a just God, rewarding and punishing us exactly as we act well or ill. I believe that such reward and punishment follow necessarily from His will as revealed in natural law, as well as in the Bible. I believe that as the highest justice is the highest mercy, so He is a merciful God. That the guilty should suffer the measure of penalty which their guilt has incurred, is justice.”—Froude, Nemesis of Faith, p. 69.

Note XVI., p. 190.

See above, Lecture I, Note 13.

Note XVII., p. 190.

See above, Lecture I, Note 12.

Note XVIII., p. 190.

See Newman, Phases of Faith, p. 8. Compare Wegscheider, Instit. Theol. § 141.

Note XIX., p. 191.

Mr. Rigg justly observes of the theory of immediate forgiveness, as substituted for the Christian Atonement, “Let all men be told that ‘God cannot be angry with any,’ and that whatever may have been a man’s sins, if he will but repent, there is no hindrance to God’s freely forgiving him all, without the infliction of any punishment whatever, and without the 332 need of any atonement or intercession. What would be the effect of such a proclamation? Would it make sin appear ‘exceeding sinful?’ Would it enhance our idea of the holiness of God? Would it not make sin appear a light and trivial thing, tolerated too easily by a ‘good-natured’ God, to be held as of much account by man?”²¹⁷²¹⁷   Modern Anglican Theology, p. 317. Wegscheider indeed actually urges this argument against the Christian doctrine, which it suits his purpose to represent as a scheme of unconditional forgiveness. “Experience teaches, that the belief, that even the most wicked man can easily obtain absolute remission of sins, has always done the greatest detriment to true virtue and integrity.”—Instit. Theol. § 140.

Note XX., p. 191.

Such is, in fact, the theory of Kant. See Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, p. 84. He does not, however, carry his principle consistently out, but admits a kind of vicarious suffering in a symbolical sense; the penitent being morally a different individual from the sinner. Even this metaphorical conceit is utterly out of place according to the main principles of his system.

Note XXI., p. 192.

Some excellent remarks on this point will be found in McCosh’s Method of the Divine Government, p. 475 (4th edition).

Note XXII., p. 192.

“This natural indignation is generally moderate and low enough in mankind, in each particular man, when the injury which excites it doth not affect himself, or one whom he considers as himself. Therefore the precepts to forgive and to love our enemies, do not relate to that general indignation against injury and the authors of it, but to this feeling, or resentment, when raised by private or personal injury.”—Butler, Sermon IX, On Forgiveness of Injuries.

Note XXIII., p. 193.

Thus Mr. Froude exclaims, “He! to have created mankind liable to fail—to have laid them in the way of a temptation under which He knew 333 they would fall, and then curse them and all who were to come of them, and all the world for their sakes! “—Nemesis of Faith, p. 11. This author omits the whole doctrine of the redemption, and treats the fall and the curse as if they were the sole manner of God’s dealing with sinners. His objection, stripped of its violent language, is but one form of the universal riddle—the existence of Evil. A similar objection is urged by Mr. Parker, Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology, p. 64: and by Mr. Atkinson, Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development, pp. 173, 174.

Note XXIV., p. 193.

Aristotle Eth. Nic. V. 10. “For of a thing, which is not limited, the rule is also unlimited, like the plumb-rule of Lesbian house-building, changing according to the form of the stone, and not remaining the same rule.”

Note XXV., p. 193.

On this spirit of universal criticism, Augustine remarks: “But they are foolish, who say, 'Could not the wisdom of God otherwise deliver men, than by assuming human nature, and being born of a woman, and suffering all those things from sinners?' To whom, we say He could, but if He were to do otherwise, He would in like manner be displeasing to your folly.”—De Agone Christiano, c. 11.

The following passage from the Eclipse of Faith, p. 125, is an excellent statement of the versatility of the “moral reason,” or “spiritual insight,” when set up as a criterion of religious truth. “Even as to that fundamental position,—the existence of a Being of unlimited power and wisdom (as to his unlimited goodness, I believe that nothing but an external revelation can absolutely certify us), I feel that I am much more indebted to those inferences from design, which these writers make so light of, than to any clearness in the imperfect intuition; for if I found—and surely this is the true test—the traces of design less conspicuous in the external world, confusion there as in the moral, and in both greater than is now found in either, I extremely doubt whether the faintest surmise of such a Being would have suggested itself to me. But be that as it may; as to their other cardinal sentiments,—the nature of my relations to this Being—his placability if offended,—the terms of forgiveness, if any,—whether, as these gentlemen affirm, he is accessible to all, without any atonement or mediator:—as to all this, I solemnly declare, that apart from external instruction, I cannot by interrogating my racked spirit, catch even a murmur. 334 That it must be faint indeed, in other men—so faint as to render the pretensions of the certitude of the internal revelation, and its independence of all external revelation, perfectly preposterous—I infer from this,—that they have, for the most part, arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions from those of these interpreters of the spiritual revelation. As to the articles, indeed, of man’s immortality and a future state, it would be truly difficult for my ‘spiritual insight’ to verify theirs; for, according to Mr. Parker, his ‘insight’ affirms that man is immortal, and Mr. Newman’s ‘insight’ declares nothing about the matter! Nor is my consciousness, so far as I can trace it, mine only. This painful uncertainty has been the confession of multitudes of far greater minds; they have been so far from contending that we have naturally a clear utterance on these great questions, that they have acknowledged the necessity of an external revelation; and mankind in general, so far from thinking or feeling such light superfluous, have been constantly gaping after it, and adopted almost any thing that but bore the name.

What, then, am I to think of this all-sufficient revelation from within?”

Note XXVI., p. 193.

For the Socinian theory of a limited foreknowledge in God, see Müller, Christliche Lehre con der Sünde, II. pp. 276, 288; Davison, Discourses on Prophecy, pp. 360, 367. A similar view is held by Rothe, Theol. Ethik, Vol. I. p. 118; and by Drobisch, Grundlehren der Religionsphilosophie, p. 209. For the opposite necessitarian theory, see Calvin, Inst. L. II. ch. 4. § 6; Edwards, On the Freedom of the Will, Part II. Sect. xii. quoted above, Lect. II. Note 7; and in the authorities cited by Wegscheider, Inst. Theol., § 65.

Note XXVII., p. 193.

That God’s knowledge is not properly foreknowledge, as not being subject to the law of time, is maintained by Augustine, De Civ. Dei, XI. 21, De Div. Quæst ad Simpl. 4. If. Qu. 2. § 2, and by Boethius, De Consol. Phil. L. V. Pr. 3-6. A similar view is taken by Wegscheider, Inst. Theol. § 65. As a speculative theory, this view is as untenable as the opposite hypothesis of an absolute foreknowledge and predestination. We can only say that we do not know that the Divine Consciousness is subject to the law of succession; not that we know that it is not. As a means of saving the infinity of God’s knowledge, consistently with the free agency of man, the hypothesis becomes unnecessary, the instant we admit that the infinite is 335 not an object of human conception at all. If this is once conceded, we need no hypothesis to reconcile truths which we cannot certainly know to be in antagonism to each other. We cannot assume the simultaneity of the divine consciousness; for we know nothing of the infinite, either in itself or in its relation to time. Nor, on the other hand, could we deduce the necessity of human actions from the fact of God’s foreknowledge, even if the latter could be assumed as absolutely true; for we know not whether the conception of necessity itself implies a divine reality, or merely a human mode of representation.

Note XXVIII., p. 194.

Wegscheider (Inst. Theol. § 50) denies the possibility of prophecy, on the ground that a prediction of human events is destructive of freedom. In this he follows Kant, Anthropologie, § 35.

Note XXIX., p. 194.

“As it is certain that prescience does not destroy the liberty of man’s will, or impose any necessity upon it, men’s actions being not therefore future, because they are foreknown, but therefore foreknown, because future; and were a thing never so contingent, yet upon supposition that it will be done, it must needs have been future from all eternity: so is it extreme arrogance for men, because themselves can naturally foreknow nothing but by some causes antecedent, as an eclipse of the sun or moon, therefore to presume to measure the knowledge of God Almighty according to the same scantling, and to deny him the prescience of human actions, not considering that, as his nature is incomprehensible, so his knowledge may be well looked upon by us as such too; that which is past our finding out, and too wonderful for us.”—Cudworth, Intellectual System, ch. V. (Vol. III. p. 19. ed. Harrison). “We may be unable to conceive how a thing not necessary in its nature can be foreknown—for our foreknowledge is in general limited by that circumstance, and is more or less perfect in proportion to the fixed or necessary nature of the things we contemplate: . . . but to subject the knowledge of God to any such limitation is surely absurd and unphilosophical, as well as impious.”—Copleston, Enquiry into the Doctrines of Necessity and Predestination, p. 46.

Note XXX., p. 194.

Origen. apud Euseb. Præp. Evang. VI. 11. 36. And if we must say, that foreknowledge is not the cause of events, we will say what, though more 336 paradoxical, is yet true, that the fact that the thing is to be, is the cause of its foreknowledge.”—Leibnitz, Théodicée, § 37. “It is very easy to decide, that foreknowledge in itself adds nothing to the determination of the reality of future events, except that this determination is known; a thing which does not at all increase the determination, or the futurition (as it is called) of these events.”—Clarke, Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, p. 96. “The certainty of Foreknowledge does not cause the certainty of things, but is itself founded on the reality of their existence. Whatever now is, it is certain that it is; and it was yesterday and from eternity as certainly true, that the thing would be to-day, as ’tis now certain that it is. This certainty of events is equally the same, whether it is supposed that the thing could be foreknown or not.”

Note XXXI., p. 195.

See above, Lecture VI, p. 150, and Note 27.

Note XXXII., p. 196.

This question is discussed at some length by Euler, Lettres á une Princesse d’Allemagne, Vol. I. p. 360. ed., Cournot.

Note XXXIII., p. 196.

“Sins are finite; between the finite and the infinite there is no proportion; therefore punishments also ought to be finite.”—Sonerus apud Leibnitz. Præf.²¹⁸²¹⁸   Published by Lessing. in his tract, Leibnitz von den ewigen Strafen (Lessing’s Schriften, ed. Lachmann, Vol. IX. p. 154). The same argument is used by Blasche, Philosophische Unsterblichkeitlehre, § 4; as well as by Mr. Newman, Phases of Faith, p. 78, and by Mr. Froude, Nemesis of Faith, p. 17. The latter however entirely misrepresents Leibnitz’s reply to the objection.

Note XXXIV., p. 197.

Thus Leibnitz replies to the objection of Sonerus: “Even, therefore, if we should concede that no sin is of itself infinite, yet it can with truth be said, that the sins of the damned are infinite in number; for they persist in sinning, through all eternity.” The same argument is repeated in the 337 Theodicée, §§ 74, 133, 266. The reply which Mr. Froude attributes to Leibnitz, namely, that sin against an Infinite Being contracts a character of infinity, is merely noticed by him as “la raison vulgaire,” urged, among others, by Ursinus. With Leibnitz’s language may be compared that of Müller; “And since experience shows, that men really resist the holiest work of divine love, why should it be thought impossible, that this resistance against God may also, on the other side this earthly life, be ever again renewed, and thus carried forward into endless periods?”—Christliche Lehre von der Sünde, II. p. 601.

Note XXXV., p. 197.

Thus Mr. Newman says, “I saw that the current orthodoxy made Satan eternal conqueror over Christ. In vain does the Son of God come from heaven and take human flesh and die on the cross. In spite of him the devil carries off to hell the vast majority of mankind, in whom not misery only, but Sin, is triumphant for ever and ever.”²¹⁹²¹⁹   Phases of Faith, p. 78. And Mr. Parker, to the same effect, remarks, “I can never believe that Evil is a finality with God.”²²⁰²²⁰   Some Account of my Ministry. See Theism, Atheism, etc., p. 261. The remarks of Müller, in answer to similar theories, are worthy of consideration. “It seems incredible, according to what we have said, that the idea of the world is to reach its complete development with an unsettled discord, that opposition to the Divine will is to maintain itself in the will of any creature whatsoever. This difficulty, however, is solved by a correct conception of punishment. The opposition to the Divine will does not hold its ground, but is absolutely overcome, when the entire condition of the beings, in whom it is, is a penal condition; so that evil, being in restraint, is no longer able to disturb the pure harmony of the world glorified and transformed to the kingdom of God.”²²¹²²¹   Christliche Lehre von der Sünde, II. p. 599.

Note XXXVI., p. 197.

See a short treatise by Kant, Ueber das Misslingen aller Philosophischen Versuche in der Theodicée (Werke, VII. p. 385). For a more detailed account of various theories, see Müller, Christliche Lehre von der Sünde, B. II. An able review of the difficulties of the question will be found in Mr. Mozley’s Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, p. 262 seq.

Note XXXVII., p. 197.

The theory which represents evil as a privation or a negation—a theory adopted by theologians and philosophers of almost every shade of opinion, in order to reconcile the goodness of God with the apparent permission of sin, can only be classed among the numerous necessarily fruitless attempts of metaphysicians to explain the primary facts of consciousness, by the arbitrary assumption of a principle of which we are not and cannot be conscious, and of whose truth or falsehood we have therefore no possible guarantee. Moral evil, in the only form in which we are conscious of it, appears as the direct transgression of a law whose obligation we feel within us; and thus manifested, it is an act as real and as positive as any performed in the most rigid compliance with that law. And this is the utmost point to which human research can penetrate. Whether, in some absolute mode of existence, out of all relation to human consciousness, the phenomenon of moral evil is ultimately dependent on the addition or the subtraction of some causative principle, is a question the solution of which is beyond consciousness, and therefore beyond philosophy. To us, as moral agents, capable of right and wrong acts, evil is a reality, and its consequences are a reality. What may be the nature of the cause which produces this unquestionably real fact of human consciousness, is a mystery which God has not revealed, and which man cannot discover.

Note XXXVIII., p. 199.

Analogy, Part II. ch. 5. In another significant passage (Part I. ch. 2), Butler exhibits the argument from analogy as bearing on the final character of punishment. “Though after men have been guilty of folly and extravagance up to a certain degree, it is often in their power, for instance, to retrieve their affairs, to recover their health and character; at least in good measure; yet real reformation is, in many cases, of no avail at all towards preventing the miseries, poverty, sickness, infamy, naturally annexed to folly and extravagance exceeding that degree. . . . So that many natural punishments are final to him who incurs them, if considered only in his temporal capacity.”—Compare Bishop Browne, Procedure of the Understanding, p. 351. “The difficulty in that question, What proportion endless torments can bear to momentary sins? is quite removed, by considering that the punishments denounced and threatened are not in themselves sanctions entirely arbitrary, as it is in punishments annexed to human laws; but they are withal so many previous warnings or declarations of the inevitable consequence and natural tendency of Sin in itself, to render us miserable in another world.”

Note XXXIX., p. 200.

Kant (Religion, u. s. w., Werke, X. p. 45) objects to the doctrine of inherited corruption, on the ground that a man cannot be responsible for any but his own acts. The objection is carried out more fully by Wegscheider, who says, “Neither can the goodness of God allow, that by one man's sin, universal human nature be corrupted and depraved; nor can His wisdom suffer, that God's work, furnished from the beginning with surpassing endowments, be transformed in a little while, for the slightest cause, to quite another and a worse condition.”—Inst. Theol. § 117. The learned critic does not seem to be aware that the principle of one of these arguments exactly annihilates that of the other; for if we concede to the first, that every man is born in the state of pristine innocence, we must admit, in opposition to the second, that God’s work is destroyed by slight causes, not once only, but millions of times, in every man that sins. The only other supposition possible is, that sin itself is part of God’s purpose—in which case we naced not trouble ourselves to establish any argument on the hypothesis of the divine wisdom or benevolence.

Note XL., p. 200.

Aristotle, Eth. Nic. VII. 2. “But one may be at a loss to understand how a person, who takes a right estimate of things, can live without moral self-control. Some, therefore, say that a person, who had knowledge, could not live in such manner; for (as Socrates thought), if knowledge were within him, he could not be controlled by something else, and dragged about by it, like a slave.”

Note XLI., p. 200.

For sundry rationalist objections to the doctrine of Justification by Faith, see Wegscheider, § 154, 155. He declares the whole doctrine to be the result of the anthropopathic notions of a rude age.

Note XLII., p. 201.

“Or notion of freedom does not, it is true, exclude motives of conscious action; but motives are not compulsory, but are always effectual only through the will; motives for the human will can therefore proceed from God, without man’s being thereby forced, without his losing his freedom, and becoming a blind instrument of the higher power.”—Drobisch, 340 Grundlehren der Religionsphilosophie, p. 272. In like manner, Mr. Mozley, in his learned and philosophical work on the Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, truly says, “What we have to consider in this question, is not what is the abstract idea of freewill, but what is the freewill which we really and actually have. This actual freewill, we find, is not a simple but a complex thing; exhibiting oppositions and inconsistencies; appearing on the one side to be a power of doing anything to which there is no physical hindrance, on the other side to be a restricted faculty” (p. 102). Neither the Pelagian theory on the one side, nor the Augustinian on the other, took sufficient account of the actual condition of the human will in relation to external influences. The question was argued as if the relation of divine grace to human volition must consist wholly in activity on the one side and passivity on the other;—in the will of its own motion accepting the grace, or the grace by its irresistible force overpowering the will. The controversy thus becomes precisely analogous to the philosophical dispute between the advocates of freewill and determinism; the one proceeding an the assumption of an absolute indifference of the will; the other maintaining its necessary determination by motives.

Mr. Mozley has thrown considerable light on the true bearings of the predestinarian controversy; and his work is especially valuable as vindicating the supreme right of Scripture to be accepted in all its statements, instead of being mutilated to suit the demands of human logic. But it cannot be denied that his own theory, however satisfactory in this respect, leaves a painful void on the philosophical side, and apparently vindicates the authority of revelation by the sacrifice of the laws of human thought. He maintains that where our conception of an object is indistinct, contradictory propositions may be accepted as both equally true; and lie carries this theory so far as to assert of the rival doctrines of Pelagius and Augustine, “Both these positions are true, if held together, and both false, if held apart.”²²²²²²   P. 77. To the same effect are his criticisms on Aquinas, p. 260, in which he says, “The will as an original spring of action is irreconcilable with the Divine Power, a second first cause in nature being inconsistent with there being only cue First Cause.” This assumes that we have a sufficient conception of the nature of Divine Power and of the action of a First Cause; an assumption which the author himself in another passage repudiates, acknowledging that “As an unknown premiss, the Divine Power is no contradiction to the fact of evil; for we must know what a truth is before we see a contradiction in it to another truth” (p. 276). This latter admission, consistently carried out, would have considerably modified the author’s whole theory.

Should we not rather say that the very indistinctness of conception prevents the existence of any contradiction at all? I can only know two ideas to be contradictory by the distinct conception of both; and, where 341 such a conception is impossible, there is no evidence of contradiction. The actual declarations of Scripture, so far as they deal with matters above human comprehension, are not in themselves contradictory to the facts of consciousness; they are only made so by arbitrary interpretation. It is nowhere said in Scripture that God so predestines man as to take from him all power of acting by his own will:—this is an inference from the supposed nature of predestination; an inference which, if our conception of predestination is indistinct, we have no right to make. Man cannot foreknow unless the event is certain; nor predestine without coercing the result. Here there is a contradiction between freewill and predestination. But we cannot transfer the same contradiction to Theology, without assuming that God’s knowledge and acts are subject to the same conditions as man’s.

The contradictory propositions which Mr. Mozley exhibits, as equally guaranteed by consciousness, are in reality by no means homogeneous. In each pair of contradictories, we have a limited and individual fact of immediate perception,—such as the power of originating an action,—opposed to a universal maxim, not perceived immediately, but based on some process of general thought,—such as that every event must have a cause. To establish these two as contradictory of each other, it should be shown that in every single act we have a direct consciousness of being coerced, as well as of being free; and that we can gather from each fact a clear and distinct conception. But this is by no means the case. The principle of causality, whatever may be its true import and extent, is not derived from the immediate consciousness of our volition being determined by antecedent causes; and therefore it may not be applied to human actions, until, from an analysis of the mode in which this maxim is gained, it can be distinctly shown that these are included under it.²²³²²³   I am happy to be able to refer, in support of this view, to the able criticism of Professor Fraser, in his review of Mr. Mozley's work. “The coexistence,” he says, “of a belief in causality with a belief in moral agency, is indeed incomprehensible; but is it so because the two beliefs are known to be contradictory, and not rather because causality and Divine Power cannot be fathomed by finite intelligence?”—Essays in Philosophy, p. 271.

By applying to Mr. Mozley’s theory the principles advanced in the preceding Lectures, it may, I believe, be shown that, in every case, the contradiction is not real, but apparent; and that it arises front a vain attempt to transcend the limits of human thought.

Note XLIII., p. 201.

Analogy, Introduction, p. 10.