retain in the vocabulary of our purely intellectual conception such words as Free-will and Responsibility, except, indeed, for the purpose of having finger-posts, as it were, for guiding us to points of view where we may have some of the most impressive aspects of that realm of mystery, by which human thought is encompassed on all sides, and on which we may “break the spirit” in metaphysical contemplation. The problem which these words suggest, as far as it is exclusively speculative, is truly one which, when we attempt to develop it, stirs the mind to its profoundest depths, as it offers to us the alternatives of self-origination, or an infinite course of dependent acts of will.
With this negative rather than positive account of the theory of liberty, which, after all, only amounts to a statement of the reason why no conclusive solution can be given to the problem raised by the fact of moral agency, we leave the adjustment of the other questions connected with it to those who are ready to bestow additional thought on the ideas of causation and responsibility which are those that are most peculiarly involved in the subject. And with this brief reference to a single department of the argument regarding the theory of moral agency, we abruptly and reluctantly close our account of the struggle of the Philosophy of Common Sense with Scepticism, Idealism, and Necessarianism. We regret, for the sake of the science in which we have been expatiating, the necessary concentration of thought and expression, which is manifest in this Essay,
