thorough conviction. He does not therefore lead his readers into a labyrinth of words, or entangle them among the forms of logic, or mount the airy heights of abstraction, but descends into the plain, and mingles with the business and feelings of mankind, and grapples with common sense, and subdues it to the force of true reason. All philosophy depends no less on deep and real feeling than on power of thought. I happen to have Edwards's 'Inquiry concerning Freewill,' and Dr Priestley's Illustrations of Philosophical Necessity,' bound up in the same volume: and I confess that the difference in the manner of these two writers is

rather striking. The plodding, persevering, scrupulous accuracy of the one, and the easy, cavalier, verbal fluency of the other, form a complete contrast. Dr Priestley's whole aim seems to be to evade the difficulties of his subject, Edwards's to answer them. The one is employed according to Berkeley's allegory, in flinging dust in the eyes of his adversaries, while the other is taking true pains in digging into the mine of knowledge. All Dr Priestley's arguments on this subject are mere hacknied common-places. He had in reality no opinions of his own, and truth, I conceive, never takes very deep root in those minds on which it is merely engrafted.

He uniformly adopted the vantage ground of every question, and borrowed those arguments which he found most easy to be wielded, and of most service in that kind of busy intellectual warfare to which he was habituated. He was an able controversialist, not a philosophical reasoner.

Dr Priestley states in his 'Illustrations' and in his Letter to Dr Horsley, that the difference between physical and moral necessity is merely verbal. He says, speaking of the connexion between cause and effect in the mind, "Give me the thing and I will readily give up the name." It appears to me that Dr Priestley was quite as much attached to the name as to the thing, and that the philosophical principle of necessity, without its unpopular title, would have afforded him but little satisfaction. Now the obnoxiousness of the name, and in my opinion, almost all the difficulty and repugnance which the generality of men find in admitting the doctrine arises from the ambiguity lurking under the term necessity, which includes both kinds of necessity, moral and physical, and with which Dr Priestley delights to probe the prejudices of his adversaries, thinking the differences of moral and physical necessity a mere question of words, and that provided there are any laws or any causes operating upon the mind, it is of no sort

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of consequence what those laws or causes are. It is the same inability to distinguish between one cause and another which creates the vulgar prejudice against necessity, and which is exposed in a very satisfactóry manner by the author of the 'Inquiry into the Will.' He says, in a letter written expressly to vindicate himself from having confounded moral with physical necessity, "On the contrary, I have largely declared that the connexion between antecedent things and consequent ones which takes place with regard to the acts of men's wills, which is called moral necessity, is called by the name of necessity improperly; and that all such terms as must, cannot, impossible, unable, irresistible, unavoidable, invincible, &c. when applied here, are not applied in their proper signification, and are either used nonsensically, and with perfect insignificance, or in a sense quite diverse from their original and proper meaning, and their use in common speech; and that such a necessity as attends the acts of men's wills, is more properly called certainty than necessity. I think it is evidently owing to a strong prejudice in persons' minds, arising from an insensible habitual perversion and misapplication of such-like terms, that they are ready to think that to suppose a certain connexion of men's volitions without any foregoing

motives or inclinations, is truly and properly to suppose such a strong irrefragable chain of causes and effects as stands in the way of, and makes utterly vain, opposite desires and endeavours, like immovable and impenetrable mountains of brass; and impedes our liberty like walls of adamant, gates of brass, and bars of iron: whereas all such representations suggest ideas as far from the truth, as the East is from the West. I know it is in vain to endeavour to make some persons believe this, or at least fully and steadily to believe it for if it be demonstrated to them, still the old prejudice remains, which has been long fixed by the use of the terms necessary, must, &c. the association with these terms of certain ideas, inconsistent with liberty, is not broken, and the judgment is powerfully warped by it; as a thing that has been long bent and grown stiff, if it be straightened, will return to its former curvity again and again."

The reasoning in the 'Inquiry' to which the author here refers, in justification of himself, is as follows:

"Men in their first use of such phrases as these, must, cannot, unavoidable, irresistible, &c. use them to signify a necessity of constraint or restraining a natural necessity or impossibility, or some necessity that the will has nothing to do

in. A thing is said to be necessary, when we cannot help it, let us do what we will. So any thing is said to be impossible to us, when we would do it, or would have it brought to pass and endeavour it, but all our desires and endeavours are in vain. And that is said to be irresistible, which overcomes all our opposition, resistance and endeavour to the contrary. And we are said to be unable to do a thing, when our utmost supposable desires and endeavours to do it are insufficient. All men find, and begin to find in early childhood, that there are innumerable things which cannot be done which they desire to do; and innumerable things, which they are averse to, that must be; they cannot avoid them, whether they choose them or no. It is to express this necessity which men so soon and so often find, and which so greatly affects them in innumerable cases, that such terms and phrases are first formed; and it is to signify such a necessity that they are first used, and that they are most constantly used in the common affairs of life; and not to signify any such metaphysical, speculative and abstract notion as that connexion [between cause and effect] in the nature and course of things, to signify which they who employ themselves in philosophical inquiries into the first origin and metaphysical