Or it may admit that the world owed its existence to an intelligent first cause, but assume that its author never designed to create free agents, but determined to set in operation certain causes which should work out given results. However fatalists may differ as to the cause of the necessity which governs all events, they agree as to its nature. It may arise from the influence of the stars, as the ancient Chaldeans held ; or from the operation of second causes, or from the original constitution of things ; or from the decree of God. It avowedly precludes all liberty of action, and reduces the acts of men to the same category with those of irrational animals. Properly speaking, however, fatalism refers this necessity to fate,— an unintelligent cause.
2. A second form of the doctrine of necessity, is the mechanical theory. This denies that man is the efficient cause of his own acts. It represents him as passive, or as endued with no higher form of activity than spontaneity. It avowedly precludes the idea of re- sponsibility. It assumes that the inward state of man, and conse- quently his acts, are determined by his outward circumstances. This doctrine as connected with the materialism of Hobbes, Hart- ley, Priestley, Belsham, and especially as fully developed by the French Encyclopasdists, supposes that from the constitution of our nature, some things give us pain, others pleasure ; some excite de- sire, and others aversion ; and that this susceptibility of being acted upon is all the activity which belongs to man, who is as purely a piece of living mechanism as the irrational animals. A certain ex- ternal object produces a corresponding impression on the nerves, that is transmitted to the brain, and an answering impulse is sent back to the muscles ; or the effect is spent on the brain itself in the form of thought or feeling thereby excited or evolved. The gen- eral features of this theory are the same so far as its advocates ignore any distinction between physical and moral necessity, and reject the doctrine of free agency and responsibility, however much they may differ on other points.
8. A third form of necessity includes all those theories which supersede the efficiency of second causes, by referring all events to the immediate agency of the first cause. This of course is done by Pantheism in all its forms, whether it merely makes God the soul of the world, and refers all the operations of nature and all the actions of men to his immediate agency ; or whether it regards the world itself as God ; or whether it makes God the only sub- stance of which nature and mind are the phenomena. According to all these views, God is the only agent ; all activity is but diflfer- ent modes in which the activity of God manifests itself.
282 PART n. Ch. IX. -free agency.
The theory of occasional causes leads to the same result. Ac- cording to this doctrine, all efficiency is in God. Second causes are only the occasions on Avhich that efficiency is exerted. Al- though this system allows a real existence to matter and mind, and admits that they are endowed with certain qualities and attributes, yet these are nothing more than susceptibilities, or receptivities for the manifestation of the divine efficiency. They furnish the occa- sions for the exercise of the all-pervading power of God. Matter and mind are alike passive : all the changes in the one, and all the api^earance of activity in the other, are due to God's immediate operation.
Under the same head belongs the doctrine that the agency of God in the preservation of the world is a continuous creation. This mode of representation is indeed often adopted as a figure of speech by orthodox theologians ; but if taken literally it implies the absolute inefficiency of all second causes. If God creates the out- ward world at every successive moment. He must be the immediate author of all its changes. There is no connection between what precedes and what follows, between antecedent and consequent, cause and effect, but succession in time ; and when applied to the inward world, or the soul, the same consequence of necessity fol- lows. The soul, at any given moment, exists only in a certain state ; if in that state it is created, then the creative energy is the immediate cause of all its feelings, cognitions, and acts. The soul is not an agent ; it is only something which God creates in a given form. All continuity of being, all identity, and all efficiency are lost ; and the universe of matter and mind becomes nothing more than the continued pulsation of the life of God.
Nearly allied with the doctrine of a continued creation is the " exercise scheme." According to this theory the soul is a series of exercises created by God. There is no such thing as the soul^ no self, but only certain perceptions which succeed each other with amazing rapidity. Hume denies any real cause. All we know is that these perceptions exist, and exist in succession. Emmons says, God creates them. It is of course in vain to speak of the liberty of man in producing the creative acts of God. If He creates our volitions in view of motives, they are his acts and not ours. The difference between this system and Pantbeism is little more than
nominal.
Contingency.
Directly opposed to all these schemes of necessity, is the doctrine
of contingency, which has been held under different names and