The daily
experience of every man, from his cradle to his grave, shows that
human acts are as much the subject of external causal influences
as are the phenomena of nature. To dispute this would be little
short of the ludicrous. All that the opponents of freedom, as a
class, have ever claimed is the assertion of a causal connection
between the acts of the will and influences independent of the
will. True, propositions of this sort can be expressed in a
variety of ways connoting an endless number of more or less
objectionable ideas, but this is the substance of the matter.
To suppose that the advocates on the other side meant to take
issue on this proposition would be to assume that they did not
know what they were saying. The conclusion forced upon us is that
though men spend their whole lives in the study of the most
elevated department of human thought it does not guard them
against the danger of using words without meaning. It would be a
mark of ignorance, rather than of penetration, to hastily denounce
propositions on subjects we are not well acquainted with because
we do not understand their meaning. I do not mean to intimate that
philosophy itself is subject to this reproach. When we see a
philosophical proposition couched in terms we do not understand,
the most modest and charitable view is to assume that this arises
from our lack of knowledge.
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