volition has no cause_." We shall see hereafter that this is a very false
account of the genesis of the common belief, that we possess an internal
freedom from necessity; but it is founded on the truth which no one
pretends to deny, that external efficient causes can only be seen by their
effects, and not by any direct perception of the mind. It was altogether a
work of supererogation, then, for Sir James Mackintosh to bring forth his
theory of moral sentiments to establish the _possibility_ of a thing which
preceding philosophers had admitted to be a _fact_. It requires no
elaborate theory to convince us that a thing might exist without our
perceiving it, when it is conceded on all sides, that even if it did
exist, we have no power by which to perceive it. With this single remark,
we shall dismiss a scheme which resolves our conviction of internal
liberty into a mere illusion, and which, however pure may have been the
intentions of the author, really saps the foundation of moral obligation,
and destroys the nature of virtue.

Section X.

The conclusion of Moehler, Tholuck, and others, that all speculation on
such a subject must be vain and fruitless.

Considering the vast wilderness of speculation which exists on the subject
under consideration, it is not at all surprising that many should turn
away from every speculative view of it with disgust, and endeavour to
dissuade others from such pursuits. Accordingly Moehler has declared, that
"so often as, without regard to revelation, _the relation of the human
spirit to God hath been more deeply investigated_, men have found
_themselves forced ... to the adoption of pantheism, and, with it, the
most arrogant deification of man_."(57) And Tholuck spreads out the
reasoning from effect to cause, by which all things are referred to God,
and God himself only made the greatest and brightest link in the chain;
and assuming this to be an unanswerable argument, he holds it up as a
dissuasive from all such speculations. He believes that reason necessarily
conducts the mind to fatalism.

We cannot concur with these celebrated writers, and we would deduce a far
different conclusion from the speculations of necessitarians. This sort of
scepticism or despair is more common in Germany than it is in this
country; for there, speculation pursuing no certain or determinate
_method_, has shown itself in all its wild and desolating excesses. But it
is