_4. Free Agency in Practical Life--Literature--History:_ In his work on the "Reconstruction of Religious Belief," (a work by the way, we recommend to our Seventies) W. H. Mallock devotes a chapter to "Mental Civilization and the Belief in Human Freedom," the tenor of which assumes that in the practical affairs of life, in literature and in history, we proceed upon the assumption that man is a free agent and can determine, within certain limits at least, both his physical and moral conduct; and argues that without this power, the life of man would be meaningless. In the matter of love he decides with Shakespeare's Iago that "It is in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are the gardens to the which our wills are gardeners." That this is true he holds to be "attested not only by the private experiences of most civilized men, but also by all the great poetry in which the passion of love is dealt with." "Such poetry is," in Shakespeare's words, "a mirror held up to nature; and it is only recognized as great because it reflects faithfully." In the matter of heroism in the face of physical danger, he holds that the same story repeats itself. "A man who for some great end undergoes prolonged peril, and deliberately wills to die for the sake of that end if necessary, is no doubt valued, because such conduct 'originates in the man's conscious self, which he has deliberately chosen, when he might just as well have chosen its opposite and which is not imposed on him by conditions, whether within his organism or outside it." The virtue which arises from forgiveness of sin exists in consequence of recognition of this force we call agency in man. "Forgiveness," says our author, "is an act which, in the absence of a belief in freedom, (free agency) not only would lose its meaning, but could not take place at all. To forgive an injury, implies that bad as the offence may have been, the man who committed it was better than his own act, and was for this reason not constrained to commit it; and while it is only the assumption of the better potential self in him that makes him a subject to whom moral blame is applicable, it is only for the sake of this self that forgiveness can abstain from blaming. The believer in freedom says to the offending party, 'I forgive you for the offense of not having done your best.' The determinist (one who believes that man has not the power of free will) says: 'I neither forgive nor blame you; for although you have done your worst, your worst was your best also.'" Of the great characters of literature, Mr. Mallock also says: "They interest us as born to freedom, and not naturally slaves, and they pass before us like kings in a Roman triumph. Once let us suppose these characters to be mere puppets of heredity and circumstance, and they and the works that deal with them lose all intelligible content, and we find ourselves confused and wearied with the fury of an idiot's tale."