The fact, then, that human conduct is subject to causation, and may by adequate intelligence be predicted in its minutest details until the end of time, no more proves that it is governed by invariable laws, which act irrespectively of human volitions, than the corresponding fact with reference to Divine conduct impairs the freedom of the Divine Will. There is no one living to whom such a doctrine--degrading man, as it does, into a helpless puppet, robbing him of all moral responsibility and of every motive for either exertion or self-control--can be more utterly repugnant than to Mr. Mill, who nevertheless, although dissenting from Mr. Buckle's more extreme opinions, makes use of some expressions which may be construed into a qualified approval of his general views. Even Mr. Mill speaks of 'human volitions as depending on scientific laws,' thereby implying that the circumstances from which human motives and, consequently, human actions result are continually recurring with a certain regularity. He speaks of 'general laws affecting communities, which are indeed modified in their action by special causes affecting individuals, but which, if their effects could be observed over a field sufficiently wide and for a period sufficiently long to embrace all possible combinations of the special causes, would be found to produce constant results.'[26] This proposition seems to proceed on the assumption that general causes are either of uniform operation, or that, if they vary in their effects, their variations, and also those of special causes, occur with a certain regularity, and constantly recur within a certain definite period. But this is precisely what cannot possibly happen. Among the general causes referred to, some few are continuous--those, namely, which are inherent in human nature; but even these are continually modified in their action by changes continually taking place in those other general causes which constitute the existing state of society, and which are not merely continually changing, but are continually becoming more and more different from what they were originally. So much is fully admitted by Mr. Mill himself, and indeed can be scarcely more strongly enforced than by his own words. 'There is a progressive change,' he says, 'both in the character of the human race, and in their outward circumstances, so far as moulded by themselves; in each successive age the principal phenomena of society are different from what they were in the age preceding, and still more different from any previous age.'[27] It is admitted, then, that there can be no recurrence of social phenomena; and it is obvious that, the longer the period of observation, the less possibility can there be of their recurring, since the greater is the certainty that new causes will come into operation. But, even though it were possible that all the external circumstances which have once influenced either communities or