Note 5 — CONTENTS. (continued 3)

As doctrines about fate and necessity involve a numerous class of mischievous superstitions, and are the bases of the success of endless impostures, it seems worth while to turn aside for a moment from the high road of my narrative to examine them. Some philosophers assert, that we are the inert patients of necessary causes: others, that we do what we list, without any cause, on the spontaneous impulse of our will: while nine-tenths of the human race maintain that we are governed by an unalterable fate, which is predestined, and that all the events of life take place for the sake of accomplishing some end! What is our real condition? We exist on a globe which, by a balance of mechanical powers, moves round a centre of gravity between it and the centre of the sun; and also round its own centre of gravity, communicating its aggregate motions to all the particles that compose it, and thereby exciting them into various modes of action, producing and sustaining all the phenomena which we witness. The entire mass then is the patient of these arrangements, and every thing on the earth is physically subservient to them. But, in animal organizations, we find a set of powers different from those which characterize inert minerals or plants. An animal has his own powers of loco-motion—he moves on his own centre of gravity—and, though the earth is his stage and the place of his origin, yet he is an independent Microcosm. To assist his loco-motion, to enable him to determine his course, to preserve his being, and to choose between what is good for him, and what is evil to him; he is provided with senses, with which he sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels; with memory; and with powers of reasoning by analogy, or his senses and his experience would be useless: and yet men say, that such a creature is as much the patient of physical causes, as a stone or a plant! On the contrary, is it not evident, that an animal possesses peculiar powers of sense and reason, in order that he may not be the patient and victim of physical circumstances? But, say they, his actions are determined by his motives, and these are governed by causes over which he has no control; those causes are necessary, and, therefore, his actions are necessary. True—but these exterior causes (granting that they are always necessary links of a chain,) operate on a man only according to his estimate of them, which varies in different men, and in the same men at different times. The causes, at least as far as regards beings which are really their patients, may be regarded as necessary, and they may govern passive existences with absolute dominion; but in all animals they have to encounter the principle of individuality, the feeling of independence, the desire of well-being, and the energies of self-love. These, so to speak, enter into an argument with the causes—a process of reasoning takes place—a decision of judgment is formed—and that judgment it is which directs the will and the action. In other words, an erroneous and varying judgment interposes between the causes and the action; consequently, however absolute and necessary may be the causes, the action governed by an intervening imperfect judgment, and a varying estimate of these causes, is not equally absolute and necessary. Place ten men, or animals, in the same critical situation, and their judgment of the circumstances will lead each of them to act differently; though the necessary causes which ought to have governed their actions were the same; but their judgments, their knowledge, or their experience, were different, and, therefore, their actions. If animals were omniscient, they would have perfect judgments, which would exactly accord with the exterior or necessary circumstances, by which they might then be said to be governed; or, if they were stones and plants, they might be inert patients. But theirs is a mixed species of existence, they are neither plants nor gods. They have powers which plants have not, by which they can freely judge of the means of averting many palpable dangers; though their powers of judging are too limited to enable them to estimate all circumstances correctly, and therefore to move in necessary unison with the immutable physical laws that govern the changes and the motions of inert matter. Return