there
nothing in existence which rises above this passivity of the material
world? If there is not, and such is the evident conclusion of the doctrine
in question, then all things flow on in one boundless ocean of passivity,
while there is no First Mover, no Self-active Agent in the universe.
Indeed, Mr. Mill has expressly declared, that the distinction between
agent and patient is illusory.(51) If this be true, we are persuaded that
M. Comte has been more successful in delivering the world from the being
of a God, than Mr. Mill has been in relieving it from the difficulties
attending the scheme of necessity.

Section VIII.

The views of Kant and Sir William Hamilton in relation to the antagonism
between liberty and necessity.

"To clear up this seeming antagonism between the mechanism of nature and
freedom in one and the self-same given action, we must refer," says Kant,
"to what was advanced in the critique of pure reason, or what, at least,
is a corollary from it, viz., that the necessity of nature which may not
consort with the freedom of the subject, attaches simply to a thing
standing under the relations of time, i. e., to the modifications of the
acting subject as phenomena, and that, therefore, so far (i. e., as
phenomena) the determinators of each act lie in the foregoing elapsed
time, and are quite beyond his power, (part of which are the actions man
has already performed, and the phenomenal character he has given himself
in his own eyes,) yet, _e contra_, the self-same subject, being
self-conscious of itself as a thing in itself, considers its existence as
somewhat detached from the conditions of time, and itself, so far forth,
as only determinable by laws given it by its own reason."(52)

Kant has said, that this "intricate problem, at whose solution centuries
have laboured," is not to be solved by "a jargon of words." If so, may we
not doubt whether he has taken the best method to solve it? His solution
shows one thing at least, viz., that he was not satisfied with any of the
solutions of his predecessors, for his is wholly unlike them. Kant saw
that the question of liberty and necessity related to the will itself, and
not to the consequences of the will's volitions. Hence he was compelled to
reject those weak evasions of the difficulty of reconciling them, and to
grapple directly with the difficulty itself. Let us see if this was not
too much for him. Let us see if