NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

We furnish an influence, an incentive for the one, we claim its existence in the other. We provide for obedience here, we demand it there; we give the sharp intonation here, we simply state the law in its imperial power there. We accept as complete the service which fear has brought here; there we despise it, as no solution of the claims of right on the soul. Bain gives the theory of brute life, we are striving to give that of rational life. He takes his examples promiscuously from the causal and the free side of human action. While recognizing the way in which the two laws blend with each other in conduct, we assert the radical distinction between them. If a true, moral command is ever uttered from within, or from without, rightfully to man, liberty, the power to obey it, is implied therein.

The second portion of the proof of liberty, without which the first would be incomplete, is the fact, that the mind does spontaneously, inevitably place this notion of liberty back of human, responsible action as its explanation. Our conclusion is the conclusion of the race; just as certainly, universally, inevitably as is any judgment whatever. We no more necessarily refer an effect to a cause, than we do responsibility to liberty; and responsibility we universally claim of others. It remains to be shown that any man has ever lived, who has not believed in the guilt of his neighbor; it is axiomatic in practical morals, that guilt is commensurate with power. Every excuse and apology presuppose it. The full form, then, of the proof of the existence of freedom is found in the double fact, that we universally lay moral claims upon others, and that we justify ourselves in so doing by attributing liberty to them. There is a large class of familiar and undeniable facts which the mind pertinaciously explains by an assertion of its power of choice. The difficulty of philosophers in analyzing it, their