What is true of guilt and retribution is true also of well-doing and reward. If I do well, the volitions being determined by an antecedent necessity, I could not possibly have done otherwise. It does not answer the conditions of the case at all, to say I might have done otherwise, if I had willed to do otherwise; because the will to do as I actually am doing, is a will that could not have been otherwise. Give me, then, in any action called good, great, noble, glorious, &c. the conviction that the choice of this action was a necessary choice, predetermined in a long and unbroken chain of necessary antecedents, and the sense of praiseworthiness, and the judgement I ought to be rewarded, remain no longer. Merit and demerit are connected in our minds with our volitions, under the impression that the good we perform, we perform in opposition to temptation, and with the power and possibility of doing evil; and that the evil we perform, we perform in opposition to motives of good, and with the power and possibility of doing good. But when we are informed that all the power and possibility of a conduct opposite to our actual conduct is this,--that if we had put forth opposite volitions, there would have been opposite external acts, but that nevertheless the volitions themselves were necessary, and could not have been otherwise,--we cannot but experience a revulsion of mind. We perhaps are first led to doubt the philosophy,--or if, by acute reasonings, or by the authority of great names, we are influenced to yield an implicit belief,--the sense of merit and demerit must either die away, or be maintained by a hasty retreat from the regions of speculation to those of common sense. XI. It follows from this system, also, that nature and spirit, as causes or agents, cannot be distinguished in their operations. There are three classes of natural causes or agents generally acknowledged 1. Inanimate,--as water, wind, steam, magnetism, &c.; 2. Animate, but insensible,--as the life and affinities of plants; 3. Animate and sensitive, or brute animal power.