to
the most approved doctrine of causation. No effect can be without a
cause. No doubt, then, the regency of invariable causation holds good of
human volitions. No doubt the volitions and consequently the actions of
men are the joint results of the external circumstances amid which men
are placed, and of their own characters; which again are the results of
circumstances, natural and artificial. So much must needs be admitted,
and something more besides. Certain causes will infallibly be succeeded
by certain effects. From any particular combination of circumstances,
certain determinate consequences and no others will result; those again
will give rise to consequences equally determinate, and those in turn to
others, and so on in an infinite series. It follows, then, from the
regency of causation, that there is a determinate course already, as it
were, traced out, which human events will certainly follow to the end of
time; every step of which course, however remote, might now be foreseen
and predicted by adequate, that is to say by infinite, intelligence.
Infinite intelligence would do this, however, not by the aid of law, but
by virtue of its own intrinsic and unassisted strength, wherewith it
would perceive how each succeeding combination of causes would operate.
For, as cannot be too often repeated, a law is merely a record of
recurrences; and in human affairs there can be no recurrences of the
same aggregate either of causes or results. There being then no historic
laws, there can be no Science of History, for science cannot exist
without laws. The historic prescience, which is an attribute of Infinite
Intelligence, not being regulated by law, or at any rate not by any law
except that of causation, is not, technically speaking, a science, and
even if it were, would be utterly beyond the reach of human intellect
and attainable only by Infinite Wisdom.

The admission made in the last paragraph has cleared the way for the
introduction of a question, from which the subject under discussion
derives its principal interest, and which it is indispensable therefore
carefully, though briefly, to examine. If there be certain determinate
lines of conduct which men will infallibly pursue throughout all
succeeding generations, how can men be free agents? How--for it is
merely the old puzzle over again--how can foreknowledge be reconciled
with freewill? The difficulty is not to be got rid of by discrediting
the reality of freewill,