tims of the ferocious passions of one desolating despot? If man has the faculty of free will, why do millions suffer for one man's abuse of it? Why is the despot permitted to abuse it, not only to his own misery, but to that of millions?

LETTER VI.

I CONCLUDED my last letter with an admission, for the sake of argument, that man has such a faculty as free will but I must confess, that, after the most serious consideration that I could bestow upon this curious subject, I am decidedly of opinion that no such faculty belongs to human nature, although Dr. Clarke seems satisfied that he has demonstrated its "real existence." He certainly has proved it to be necessarily an attribute of God, or we must adopt Spinoza's opinion of an infinite series of causes without any first cause, than which a greater or more palpable absurdity never bewildered the human mind. But, in my humble judgment, the doctor is far

indeed from proving that God has imparted to man any property at all similar or analogous to his attribute of free will.

Without wearying you with a tedious examination of the very many subtle arguments that have been adduced on both sides of the various controversies on this subject, I will only observe, that the will must be caused by something: we cannot will without a motive, and that motive must be always perfectly independent of us. No man can help willing to gratify any passion or appetite with which nature has furnished him, unless there appear to his faculty of judgment some consequences likely to result from such gratification that will be more painful to him than the craving of his appetite, or some consequences resulting from abstinence that will give him more pleasure than the gratification of his appetite; in either of which cases he cannot

help resisting his appetite: for it being impossible to will without a motive, and the strength of the motive being always as the degree of pleasure expected from the gratification of the appetite whence the motive originates, it follows that any motive will impel the mind to will, in obedience to its direction, unless resisted by some repelling motive of at least equal, or, more properly speaking, of greater strength; because it is not possible for two contrary motives to act with equal force on the same mind. It is only to actions of very little interest or concern to us that contrary motives can for a moment appear equal to us; and if in such a case we act in one way rather than in another, it follows not that man ever acts without a motive, but that he sometimes acts without being conscious of his motive; as he dreams, and walks, and talks in his sleep, without being aware

of the motive that causes him so to do. Now, paradoxical as it may appear, nothing is more certain than that we are frequently actuated by motives of whose existence we are unconscious.

That man has been but a superficial observer of the human heart, who doubts that its decisions are often formed, in matters of the greatest importance, by motives wholly unknown to the agent; though they are sometimes perceptible to a discerning spectator, and sometimes perceptible to neither

"Oft, in the passion's wild rotation tost,
Our spring of action to ourselves is lost *.

It is scarcely necessary to add, that, when contrary motives act on the mind, it will follow the impulse of the strongest. A motive can be opposed or resisted only by

* Pope.