our inclinations.* But, beside this Universal Duty of Asserting our Freedom by giving to the true Will absolute dominion over the blind instincts of the lower nature, the duty into which, as I have said, all others may be resolved, there is also a Special Duty of Asserting our Freedom by resisting the encroachments of our fellow-creatures; and this concerns us only in our social capacity. Freedom is, in fact, of three sorts, Moral, Personal, and Political.

By "Moral Freedom," I mean the Internal Freedom of the will over the lower nature, whereby the man chooses the Right and rejects the Wrong. This Moral Freedom our fellowcreatures have no right to limit, nor the slightest power to do so unless we abdicate it. This the Jesuit professes to do in favour of his superior, and he thereby commits, so far as in him lies, the suicide of his soul.

By Personal and Political Freedom, I mean the External Freedom belonging to a man; the first in his private capacity, the second as a member of the state. In such External Freedom lies the scope and domain wherein the Moral Free Will is to exert itself in the sensible world. Our Personal and Political Freedom our fellow-creatures have a right to limit only by the reservation of their equal Freedom. But they have often a power to rob us of one, or both. The slave is robbed of his Personal Freedom. Every person left without his voice in the state of which he is a member is robbed of his Political Freedom. The duty of both is to struggle for the entire possession of that domain given them by God for the exercise of their Moral Free Will. But while the deprivation of Personal Freedom constitutes such an incarceration of the soul as to justify violence for the recovery of that which is the whole scope given us for the work of our existence, the loss of Political Freedom shuts us out, on the contrary, from so

*"So needful is sacrifice to the health and hardihood of conscience, that if the occasions for it do not present themselves spontaneously in our lot, we must create them for ourselves; not reserving to ourselves those exercises of virtue which are constitutionally pleasant, but, on the contrary, esteeming the asperity of a duty as the reason why we should put our hand to it at once; not acquiescing in the facility of wisely-adjusted habits, but accepting the ease of living well as the peremptory summons of God to live better. He is, in short, no true soldier of the Lord, nor worthy to bear the Christian armour, who, in service so high, will not make an hour's forced march of duty every day."--J. MARTINEAU, Endeavours, &c, i. 245.

small a portion of our rightful domain, that (while we remember that the end of our Freedom is the Perfecting of our souls) we shall frequently be called on not to relinquish, but to postpone, our struggle for our political rights to other duties more nearly affecting the great purpose of our existence.

I have now, I trust, elucidated sufficiently for the purpose of this work the five propositions which are included under the subject of this chapter; namely,

1st. That the Human Will is Free.

2nd. That this Freedom, though involving present sin and suffering, is foreseen by God to result eventually in the Virtue of every creature endowed therewith. 3rd. That this Freedom is limited, necessarily and contingently, subjectively and objectively, righteously (by God through His laws and by our fellow-creatures claiming their equal rights) and unrighteously (by our fellow-creatures seizing more than their equal rights). 4th. That it is the essential character of all human duty to be an assertion of this Freedom, by giving practical dominion to the pure Will over the lower nature. 5th. That beside this universal assertion of Freedom, into which all human duty may be resolved, man has also a special duty of preserving his Moral Freedom without abdicating it to his fellow-creature, and of preserving his Personal and Political Freedom from the unrighteous invasions of his fellow-creatures.

CHAPTER IV.

WHY THE MORAL LAW SHOULD BE OBEYED.

"A religious act, proceeding from selfish views in this world, or in the next, is declared to be concrete and interested. But an act performed with a knowledge of God, and without self-love, is called abstract and disinterested. He who frequently performs disinterested acts of religion, he sacrifices his own spirit by fixing it on the Spirit of God, and approaches the nature of that sole Divinity who shines by His own effulgence." — Institutes of Menu, 12. 89.

121

IN the last Chapter I endeavoured to demonstrate that the pure Will, the true self of man, is by nature righteous,- selflegislative of the only Universal Law, viz. the Moral,— and that by this spontaneous autonomy would all his actions be squared, were it not for his lower nature, which is by its constitution un-moral, neither righteous nor unrighteous, but capable only of determining its choice by its instinctive propensities and the gratifications offered to them. Thus these two are contrary one to another, "and the spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh against the spirit." In the valour of the higher nature acquired by its victory over the lower, in the Virtue of the tried and conquering soul, we look for the glorious End of creation, the sublime result contemplated by Infinite Benevolence in calling man into existence and fitting him with the complicated nature capable of developing that Virtue which alone can be the crown of finite intelligences. The great practical problem of human life is this: "How is the Moral Will to gain the victory over the unmoral instincts, the Homo noumenon over the Homo phenomenon, Michael over the Evil One, Mithras over Hyle?

That this can ever be accomplished absolutely, either here or hereafter, is a fond dream; for man must ever remain finite, and short of infinity there is no perfection. Yet, even if the gravitation of the lower nature should remain a fixed quantity, the resisting force of the higher is indefinitely susceptible of increase; and thus the holy Will may become more and more completely dominant, world without end.

* I trust I shall not be supposed to hold the old worn-out heresy of the intrinsic evil of any part of the soul or body which the All-Good hath made. This lower nature, which He has given as the necessary machinery of our moral life, as the weight of the great timepiece, is precisely what it ought to be, aye, and a beautiful nature too! Καὶ τα κακῆς ὕλης βλαστηματα χρηστὰ kal éσ0λa," cried even Zoroaster ( Psel. 16., Cory, 278.) But when the weight drags and overpowers the mainspring, the clock stops.