perplexing to him, and ludicrous to the spectators. But we must not look at him too contemptuously on that account, when we consider the extreme difficulty which modern and Christian metaphysicians find, in settling the limits between free-will and necessity. The question is not, and probably never will be set at rest. The insu perable difficulty seems to be this. If we go the whole length of the former, we seem to deny the prescience of God; for how could any being know, a year ago, or ten thousand years ago, how I shall act an hour hence, when I, a perfectly free agent, am not now determined how I shall act, and do not mean to make up my mind till the last moment? On the other hand, if, to avoid Scylla, we run upon the Charybdis of necessity, we incur the double danger, of setting ourselves free, as machines and not accountable agents, from all moral responsibility, and of making the Deity not only the cause, or to say the least of it, the unpreventing by-stander, but even almost, if not quite, the perpetrator of evil. No Christian philosopher will commit such suicide, as to leap into either of these gulfs: and therefore all endeavour, some more successfully than others, to steer a middle course between them: or, to change the metaphor, they endeavour, like skilful artists, to select such parts of each system as will work up best together, and dove-tail into a uniform and practical piece of machinery. I am not going to be so rash, as to enter far upon this subject; but I think we may feel our way to it, and make some. thing like an approach, in the following manner. How would an ordinary, average man act in such or such circumstances? To this question a person

of sound sense, and much knowledge of the world, will know how to return a shrewd, and probable answer. In fact, the question is asked, and answered, and that not only speculatively and curiously, but the answer is acted upon, every day. Should the question be put respecting the friend of this sensible man, whose general character, private sentiments, peculiarities and oddities are known to him; his quantum of wisdom and good conduct in his grave capacity, as a member of parliament or a churchwarden, his nonsense and folly in the recesses of his family; the answer will be justified by the event in a large majority of cases. But as no man can fathom all the depths of his nearest friend's heart; or, if he could, his own reach of reason would not be far enough to comprehend and estimate unerringly all he might have found there; in a minority, bearing some assignable proportion to the majority of cases, the answer will fail in some points or altogether. Yet this attempt at prescience, whether successful or unsuccessful, has no interfering influence over the liberty and independence of the friend so speculated upon: for we assume the whole discussion to take place with strangers, without the knowledge of the party. Should this party, having acted wrong, be subsequently called to account, and having received a hint that his friend had been prophesying his delinquency, plead predestination as his apology, no jury, no commissioners of bankrupts would listen for a moment to such a plea : the court would so entirely doubt its sincerity, that they would scarcely quarter him on the Lunatic Asylum instead of committing him to gaol. The only difference between the prescience

of the wise man and that of the Deity, but that a most important one, is that the first is fallible, the last infallible. But that infallibility has no tendency whatever to exonerate the evil doer. It lays no more previous obligation to do evil, than would the fallible prognostication which happened to be true, but might have been false.

I do not know whether we may not be assisted in unravelling this tangled thread, by the very perplexities of Epicurus.

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sum.

To secure his liberty, he thought it necessary to deny that every proposition is either true or false. He was afraid of the affirmative; Chrysippus could not support his fatality with the negative, and thought it inconsistent with common sense. Cicero gives the following account of the controversy. Itaque contendit omnes nervos Chrysippus, ut persuadeat, omne žíæμa aut verum esse, aut falUt enim Epicurus veretur, ne, si hoc concesserit, concedendum sit, fato fieri, quæcumque fiant: (si enim alterutrum ex æternitate verum sit, esse id etiam certum: et, si certum, etiam necessarium: ita et necessitatem, et fatum confirmari putat) sic Chrysippus metuit, ne, si non obtinuerit, omne, quod enuntietur, aut verum esse, aut falsum, non teneat, omnia fato fieri, et ex causis æternis rerum futurarum. Sed Epicurus declinatione atomi vitari fati necessitatem putat. Itaque tertius quidam motus oritur extra pondus et plagam, (deviating from the perpendicular, which he holds to be the natural, and as it were instinctive tendency of the atom,) cum declinat atomus intervallo minimo. Id appellet ἐλάχιστον. Quam de clinationem sine causa fieri si minus verbis, re cogitur confiteri. Hanc rationem Epicurus

induxit ob eam rem, quod veritus est, ne, si semper atomus gravitate ferretur naturali, ac necessaria, nihil liberum nobis esset, cum ita moveretur animus, ut atomorum motu cogeretur. Hinc Democritus, auctor atomorum, accipere maluit, necessitate omnia fieri, quam a corporibus individuis naturales motus avellere."-De Fato, cap. 10. But Cicero had before said, cap. 9., that he need not have denied the doctrine, maintained not only by Chrysippus, but by Leucippus and Democritus from whom he borrowed. "Nec magis erat verum, Morietur Scipio, quam, Morietur illo modo: nec minus necesse mori Scipionem, quam illo modo mori: nec magis immutabile ex vero in falsum, Necatus est Scipio, quam Necabitur Scipio: nec, cum hæc ita sint, est causa, cur Epicurus fatum extimescat, et ab atomis petat præsidium, easque de via deducat, et uno tempore suscipiat res duas inenodabiles; unam, ut sine causa fiat aliquid, ex quo exsistet, ut de nihilo quippiam fiat, quod nec ipsi, nec cuiquam physico placet ; alteram, ut, cum duo individua per inanitatem ferantur, alterum e regione moveatur, alterum declinet. Licet enim Epicuro, concedenti, omne enuntiatum aut verum, aut falsum esse, non vereri, ne omnia fato fieri sit necesse : non enim æternis causis, naturæ necessitate manantibus, verum est id, quod ita enuntiatur: Descendit in Academiam Carneades: nec tamen sine causis: sed interest inter causas fortuito antegressas, et inter causas cohibentes in se efficientiam naturalem. Ita et semper verum fuit, Morietur Epicurus, cum duo et septuaginta annos vixerit, Archonte Pytharato; neque tamen erant causæ fatales, cur ita accideret: sed, quod ita cecidisset, certe casurum, sicut cecidit, fuit."

In this illustration touching the period of Epicurus's death, Cicero seems to have laid hold of the subtle, but true distinction, that there were no necessary causes why he should die just at that time; but its having so happened, shows that it was so to happen from accidental causes. Now the question is, whether the tertius motus of Epicurus, whimsical as it is in his application of it, may not enable us to avoid the extremes of predestination or the denial of foreknowledge. We probably increase our own difficulties, by looking too exclusively at the final act as a single point, which confessedly must either be or not be, and negligently passing over all that vacillation of purpose and alternation of opinion on the part of the person ultimately acting either right or wrong, which Epicurus would ascribe to the atoms declining from the direct line in the vacuum, but which middle state of mind is as much the subject of that foreknowledge, with the exact moment at which hesitation shall subside into resolution, as the overt act which closes the whole. The foreknowledge in question therefore is prophetic, and it is judicial; but it is not compulsory. As the subtlety of the distinction can only be rendered tangible, to those who are not habituated to these discussions, by familiar illustration, the foreknowledge of God may perhaps be best reconciled with the free-will of man, the mercies of his moral providence with the allowance of evil in the world, by running a parallel, but at a vast distance, between his conduct and that of an earthly father. The father, wise and experienced, is anxious to preserve the innocence and virtue of his son; but is aware of all the influence which the temptations of the world exercise over the young and thoughtless. He