recourse to a fiction in which few persons ever concurred with him, and which is now universally regarded as one of the vagaries and dreams of philosophy. If we are to be saved from an insupportable fate only by such means, our condition must indeed be one of forlorn hopelessness. Before we take leave of Leibnitz, there is one view of the difficulty in question which we wish to notice, not because it is peculiar to him, but because it is very clearly stated and confidently relied on by him. It is common to most of the advocates of necessity, and it is exceedingly imposing in its appearance and effect. “Men of all times,” says he, “have been troubled by a sophism, which the ancients called the ‘_raison paresseuse_,’ because it induces them to do nothing, or at least to concern themselves about nothing, and to follow only the present inclination to pleasure. For, say they, if the future is necessary, that which is to happen will happen whatever I may do. But the future, say they, is necessary, either because the Divinity foresees all things, and even preëstablishes them in governing the universe; or because all things necessarily come to pass by a concatenation of causes.”(23) Leibnitz illustrated the fallacy of this reasoning in the following manner: “By the same reason (if it is valid) I could say—If it is written in the archives of fate, that poison will kill me at present, or do me harm, this will happen, though I should not take it; and if that is not written, it will not happen, though I should take it; and, consequently, I can follow my inclination to take whatever is agreeable with impunity, however pernicious it may be; which involves a manifest absurdity.... This objection staggers them a little, but they always come back to their reasoning, turned in different points of view, until we cause them to comprehend in what the defect of their sophism consists. It is this, that it is false that the event will happen whatever we may do; it will happen, because we do that which leads to it; and if the event is written, the cause which will make it happen is also written. Thus the connexion (_liaison_) of effects and their causes, so far from establishing the doctrine of a necessity prejudicial to practice, serves to destroy it.”(24) The same reply is found more than once in the course of the same great work; and it is employed by all necessitarians in defence of their system. But it is not a satisfactory answer. It overlooks the real difficulty in the case, and seeks to remove an imaginary one. The question is, not whether a necessary connexion between our volitions and their _effects_ is a discouragement to practice, but whether a necessary connexion between our volitions and their _causes_ is so. It is very true, that no man would be accountable for his external actions or their consequences, if there were no fixed relation between these and his volitions. If, when a man willed one thing, another should happen to