has not been foreseen; but its freedom
of choice is evidently not affected by the fact that the choice which it
will make is known before hand. Neither is that of man. An eager
aspirant to ecclesiastical preferment is not the less at liberty to
refuse a proffered mitre, because all his acquaintances have a well
founded assurance that he will accept. A wayfarer, with a yawning
precipice before his eyes, may or may not, as he pleases, cast himself
down headlong. Whether he will do so or not must always have been
positively foreknown to Omniscience; but that fact in no degree affects
his power of deciding for himself. If arguing on the notion that what is
to be must be, he decide on moving forward to his destruction, then what
has been foreseen is simply that he will so argue and be self-deceived,
and will consequently perish. But the foreknowledge which simply
perceives what direction will be taken by the will is a very different
thing from an over-ruling destiny, which should compel the will to take
some special direction. Still it is obvious that, in this instance also,
foreknowledge is based entirely on causation. It is solely because human
volitions take place as inevitable effects of antecedent causes that
Omniscience itself can be conceived as capable of foreseeing them.

But on such conditions, how can human volitions really be free? How can
man be really at liberty to will of his good pleasure, if what he is
prompted to will depends on the influence which the circumstances that
happen to surround him may exercise on the constitution and character,
which he has derived from pre-existing circumstances? How can his will
be free, if that will be moulded and shaped by circumstances over which
he has no control? I have, I am aware, by the mode I have adopted of
reconciling free-will with foreknowledge, incurred the obligation of
reconciling it with another co-existence of yet greater apparent
incompatibility. By admitting that 'human volitions take place as
inevitable effects of antecedent causes,' that they must be such, and
cannot be other than such, as antecedent causes make them, I have
admitted that the will, though independent of law, is absolutely subject
to, and _must_ implicitly obey, causes. Freewill, then, must be shown to
be compatible not with foreknowledge only, but with necessity also. For
there is no use in attempting to ignore necessity; no use in exclaiming
with Professor Huxley: 'Fact I know, and Law I