Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Note V.
327
ground on this question, or avail himself of the maxim
that every event must have a cause. He does not appeal
to any instinct of reason antecedently demanding a cause
for every event ; nor does he attach to the term cause any
sense of necessary and inherent efficiency and productive
ness in relation to its effect any such mysterious com
pulsion now supposed, by the best philosophical authorities,
to be exercised by the cause over its effect. Vol. ii.
p.
407. By cause and effect he simply means antecedent
and consequent and ; he appeals to our simple observation
for the proof of the existence of this order and succession
in things around us.
Now, it would be obviously begging- the question to
assert that we observe this uniform order and succession in
the events in which the human will takes part ; this would
be asserting to begin with what has to be proved viz.
that this law of causation exists in the department of the
human will; besides, that it would be asserting our observa
tion of something which we evidently do not observe. For
whatever uniformity we may observe in the conduct of
mankind as a mass, however like one generation of men
may be to another, and a preceding age of the world to a
succeeding one, in general moral features and the prin
ciples on which the race is governed and acts, we evidently
do not observe this uniformity in the case of individuals.
And it is the case of the individual which tries the theory
of necessity or causation as applying to the human will.
Upon the ordinary doctrine of chances there will be much
the same amount of virtue and vice in one generation that
there is in others, and the same general exhibition of
character will take place. The doctrine of necessity
re
quires that the individual will act in the same way under
the same circumstances. And this latter fact we certainly
do not observe. Mr. Mill, then, in to
appealing
our ob
servation for a proof of the law of causation, must mean
to exclude from the events in which this is observed those
in which the human will takes part ; i.e. to appeal
to our
And therefore his
observation of material nature only.
argument, when he comes to assert this law as prevailing