he existence of the human will--I am not here, I
hope, to argue that. I shall only beg leave to assume its existence, for
practical purposes. I may be told (though I trust not in this
University), that it is, like the undulatory theory of light, an
unphilosophical 'hypothesis.' Be that as it may, it is very convenient
(and may be for a few centuries to come) to retain the said 'hypothesis,'
as one retains the undulatory theory; and for the simple reason, that
with it one can explain the phaenomena tolerably; and without it cannot
explain them at all.

A dread (half-unconscious, it may be) of this last practical result,
seems to have crossed the mind of the author on whom I have been
commenting; for he confesses, honestly enough (and he writes throughout
like an honest man) that in human life 'no rational thinker hopes to
discover more than some few primary actions of law, and some
approximative theory of growth.' I have higher hopes of a possible
science of history; because I fall back on those old moral laws, which I
think he wishes to ignore: but I can conceive that he will not; because
he cannot, on his own definitions of law and growth. They are (if I
understand him aright) to be irresistible and inevitable. I say that
they are not so, even in the case of trees and stones; much more in the
world of man. Facts, when he goes on to verify his theories, will leave
him with a very few primary actions of law, a very faint approximative
theory; because his theories, in plain English, will not work. At the
first step, at every step, they are stopped short by those disturbing
forces, or at least disturbed phaenomena, which have been as yet, and
probably will be hereafter, attributed (as the only explanation of them)
to the existence, for good and evil, of a human will.

Let us look in detail at a few of these disturbances of anything like
inevitable or irresistible movement. Shall we not, at the very first
glance, confess--I am afraid only too soon--that there always have been
fools therein; fools of whom no man could guess, or can yet, what they
were going to do next or why they were going to do it? And how, pray,
can we talk of the inevitable, in the face of that one miserable fact of
human folly, whether of ignorance or of passion, folly still? There may
be laws of folly, as there are laws of disease; and whether there are or
not, we may learn much wisdom from folly; we may see what the true laws
of humanity a