The Press.
London, England, 1856-07-12 00:00:00

666

Mr. Solly contends for free-will or human
liberty as the very groundwork of man's
being. He writes at the close of his essay:—
I will repeat my innermost convlction that the existence
of free-will, in man as a fact of the consciousness, in God
at an object of our faith, is the cardinal point on which
all that is sound in philosophy, or true in religion, ulti-
mately turns. Banish it from heaven and earth, and men
become nothing more than the petty wheels in the vast
machine of which God is the involuntary motive•power.
But the engineer is absent, and he whom we then call God
is bound in the trammels of a merciless necessity—no
object of love, for he cannot hate ; no object of prayer, for
he cannot aid ; no object of praise, for he is a tool in the
hands of a higher fate. Morality then sinks into a cal-
culation of pressure and leverage, and nice adjustment of
screws and :logs ; reverence is but the yielding of the
various parts to the primary force, the spiritual finds no
resting-place, and the material has undivided sway.
Restore free-will, and where all before was death and dark-
ness, all now becomes light and life. Then indeed does
God cease to be the omnipresent automaton, the dead God
of the dead, and becomes a spirit and a power, and the
living God of the living. Then, indeed, are love, and
prayer, and praise, his just meed and our high privilege,
for of his own free-will and of no necessity is he a gracious
God and mercitul, slow to anger and of great kindness,
and his tender mercies are over all his works.

The argument of Mr. Solly is so essentially
logical that it requires a considerable effort
of the reasoning faculty to follow him. We
shall not attempt to do so here, but shall en-
deavour to give a popular notion of the lead-
ing point at issue.
The Necessarians do not, as a rule, deny
that man may act according to his will. But
they assert that the will itself is influenced by
conditions beyond his control, as, for instance,
the constitution of his mind and the circum-
stances which surround it. The Libertarians,
on the other hand, assert that there is in the will
sufficient force to mould the mind and to con-
trol surrounding circumstances.
Whence, then, it may be asked, does this
force come ? What is the will, independent of
the mind and of the circumstances which
surround, move, and direct it ? To this ques-
tion Mr. Solly does not reply so satisfactorily
as could be wished. If we understand him
rightly, he asserts that there is in the will an
absolute and independent principle, equal to
shape its own coutse, and even to mould its
own faculties. Each being has, according to
Mr. Solly, a portion of the Divine Essence
within him, perfectly free, and subject to no
conditions, save those which the general con-
ditions of humanity impose.
Yet it does not appear how the will can
possibly be independent of the original con-
stitution of the mind, or of those circum-
stances which, entirely apart from the will of
the individual, contribute to fashion the incli-
nations of the will.

Suppose two infants of ordinarily facile dis-
position—one the son of a philanthropic noble-
man, the other of a dexterous pickpocket—is
it not tolerably certain that each would obey
the influences of surrounding circumstances—
that one would become an ornament to the
House of Lords, and preside over institutions
for the reformation of offenders, while the
other would tax the ingenuity of penal disci•
plinarians, and come in due time to be re-
garded as an incorrigible criminal?
What is it makes the difference between
a negro of Central Africa, or a Red Indian of
North America, and a polished European ?
Must not the answer be—Difference of natural
and physical constitution in the first instance,
and of surrounding and influencing circum-
stances in the second ? _

These examples show that free-will, however
it may be magnified, can only exist within
certain limits. The bulk of mankind are so
constituted and so circumstanced, even in
civilised communities, that we can feel little
hesitation in pronouncing what their future
will be. Knowing the characters in a country
village, we can affirm with tolerable certainty
in what channels their stream of life will run.
On the other hand, it appears highly proba
ble, that as those fetters which circumstances
impose on the will of the individual are re-
moved, the will itself may become more really
independent ; and this consideration should,
perhaps, of itself be sufficient to determine us
in favour of encouraging the widest liberty of
thought and action which is consistentiAth
the safoty of communities. As the body of
man is undoubtedly capable of much greater
exertion, and of more free and independent
action, when unfettered than when confined,

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