Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/176

166 is no conception at all, but is an inconceivability. It is, in truth, so worthless and shallow as hardly to be worthy of mention. On account, however, of the place which it holds in ordinary philosophical discourse, we must contribute a few words to its exposure. It arises out of a miserable attempt to effect a compromise between liberty and necessity; and the result is a direct and glaring contradiction. This doctrine endeavours to hold forth an act, as at once original and yet derived, as given and yet not compulsatory or necessitated, as free and yet caused. No wonder that human liberty, embodied in an act of this kind, should halt upon both feet, and harbour in the dingiest lurking-places of a perplexed and vacillating metaphysic, a thing not to be scrutinized too narrowly.

But since we are examining it, let us do so as closely and narrowly as possible. What, then, does this conception of liberty amount to, and what does it set forth? There is, in the first place, the being in question—man—a derivative creature, we are told, from the alpha to the omega of his existence. In the next place, there is the power with which he is said to be invested, of choosing between two or more lines of conduct. In virtue of this power, he is at first indifferent, or equally open to all these courses. He must follow one of them, but is not constrained to follow any one of them in particular, and precisely in this indetermination it is said that human liberty consists. In the third place, when the choice