Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

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Note V.
ground on which he has placed the whole doctrine of
necessity or causation is a ground of observation that we
see things, as a matter of fact, taking placje in a certain
order and succession. When he appeals, then, to an in
ternal experience and conviction on the side of necessity,
his argument requires him to appeal to such a full internal
conviction as is grounded on observation. But can Mr.
Mill really mean to assert that we observe a law of causa
tion in operation in our actions, as we do in the events of
the physical world ? Such an assertion would be plainly
untrue, and he himself would be the first to disown it for
;
he explains how it is that we cannot observe such a law in
the case of human actions, as we do in nature : viz. that
we have not the full antecedents before us in the former
case as we have in the latter that we do not know all the
;
inducements, internal and external, operating in a man,
and, therefore, cannot predict with accuracy what his
action will be. But then what becomes of that experience
and internal conviction to which he appeals on this ques
tion ? If we are not able to make the observation that we
act by a law of causation, how can we have the experience
and the internal conviction that we do ? What sort of
conviction, on his own showing, must that be, which has
positively no observation to rest upon ?
The state of the case, then, appears to be this : Mr.
Mill begins with an inductive or presumptive argument on
this question, which, as he proceeds and advances in his
explanation of it, becomes insensibly from an inductive
or conscious
argument; an appeal to 4 internal conviction,
ness. And instead of saying, the law of causation exists
in the case of physical events, therefore we may presume
it does in the case of moral ones or actions he says at
once we see, we know, we are internally convinced, we have
actual experience, that our actions take place upon this
law.
Having established, however, whether by induction or
experience or internal conviction, necessity or the law of
causation, as the law upon which the acts of the human
will proceed, Mr. Mill has to meet an objection to such a