It is in the Alexandrian school that we find the next move in the question.  In Philo Judaeus, the good man is spoken of as free, the wicked man as a slave.  Except as the medium of a compliment to virtue, the word “freedom” is not very apposite, seeing that, to the highest goodness, there attaches submission or restraint, rather than liberty.

The early Christian Fathers (notably Augustine) advanced the question to the Theological stage, by connecting it with the great doctrines of Original Sin and Predestination; in which stage it shared all the speculative difficulties attaching to these doctrines.  The Theological world, however, has always been divided between Free-will and Necessity; and probably the weightiest names are to be found among the Necessitarians.  No man ever brought greater acumen into theological controversy than did Jonathan Edwards; and he took the side of Necessity.

Latterly, however, since the question has become one of pure metaphysics, Free-will has been the favourite dogma, as being most consonant to the dignity of man, which appears to be its chief recommendation, and its only argument.  The weight of reasoning is, I believe, in favour of necessity; but the word carries with it a seeming affront, and hardly any amount of argument will reconcile men to indignity.

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III.  Another weakness of the human mind receives illustration from the free-will controversy, and deserves to be noticed, as helping to account for the prolonged existence of the dispute:  I mean the disposition to regard any departure from the accustomed rendering of a fact as denying the fact itself.  The rose under another name is not merely less sweet, it is not a rose at all.  Some of the greatest questions have suffered by this weakness.

[ANALYSIS DOES NOT DESTROY THE FACT.]

The physical theory of matter that resolves it into points of force will seem to many as doing away with matter no less effectually than the Berkeleyan Idealism.  A universe of inane mathematical points, attracting and repelling each other, must appear to the ordinary mind a sorry substitute for the firm-set earth, and the majestically-fretted vault of heaven, with its planets, stars, and galaxies.  It takes a special education to reconcile any one to this theory.  Even if it were everything that a scientific hypothesis should be, the previously established modes of speech would be a permanent obstruction to its being received as the popular doctrine.

But the best illustrations occur in the Ethical and Metaphysical departments.  For example, some ethical theorists endeavour to show that Conscience is not a primitive and distinct power of the mind, like the sense of colour, or the feeling of resistance, but a growth and a compound, being made up of various primitive impulses, together with a process of education.  Again and again has this view been represented as