Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Note V.
329
can predict any physical event. This proposition I take
to be a mere interpretation of universal experience, a
statement in words of ivhat every one is
internally con
vinced of. No one who believed that he knew thoroughly
the circumstances of any case, and the characters of the
different persons concerned, would hesitate to foretell how
all of them would act. Whatever degree of doubt he may
feel arises from the
uncertainty whether he really knows
the circumstances or the character of some one or other of
the persons with the degreee of accuracy required ;
but by
no means from thinking, that if he did know these things,
there would be any uncertainty what the conduct would be.
Nor does this full assurance conflict in the smallest degree
with what is called our feeling of freedom. Vol. ii. p. 40(1.
I quote this passage not for the statement it contains
of the doctrine of necessity so much as to call attention to
the ground of that statement,
the nature of the argument
or evidence on which the writer appears to suppose that
doctrine of necessity rests. This proposition, he says,
1
take to be a mere interpretation of universal experience, a
statement in words of what every one is internally con
vinced of; the proposition, viz. that the inducements
internal and external to action supposed, the action of an
individual may be predicted with as much certainty as we
can predict any physical
event. Mr. Mill then appeals to
actual experience, and to internal conviction or conscious
ness, as the evidence of the doctrine of necessity.
Now, if
Mr. Mill were content to mean by this experience and in
ternal conviction of necessity to which he appeals, such an
indistinct or half-perception
of a truth in this direction as
is consistent with the same kind of perception of the con
trary truth of our originality as agents, I would agree with
the necessitarian
him ; and I have in this chapter accepted
maxim, that every event must have a cause, as supplying
one side of the truth on this question. But it is evident
that Mr. Mill means something more than this ; his argu
ment, as an advocate of necessity against originality,
requires a full and distinct experience and conviction on
the side of necessity, not a divided one. Moreover, the