sion of this problem of philosophy, consists in the account which he has furnished of the very nature of the debated question, and of the real assumptions which every argument regarding it must imply. To gain a clear understanding of a disputed question, and of the conditions which must be conformed to before a true answer to it can be obtained, while it is usually a more painful and less manifest stage in the progress of a science or a doctrine, is often a more important one than the subsequent solution of its difficulties. It helps to fill the intellect with suggestive hypotheses of a kind appropriate to the peculiarities of the phenomena which are exposed for scientific explanation. The solution itself is frequently obvious when a new general principle has been obtained; and it is easier to attempt to account for fresh phenomena by means of old hypotheses than to find others which are at once new and true. Disputants have long been obliged to struggle with the haze that has invested the question regarding the meaning of moral agency, and that philosopher has rendered an important service who has in any measure dispelled the mist.
Dr. Reid maintains that liberty is conceivable. Sir William Hamilton asserts the fact of moral freedom as a possible but inexplicable mystery.
Unless the freedom which is maintained is only necessity under another name, there can, we think, be no question that it is a mystery, and as such inconceivable. But even when liberty is resolved into unlimited necessity, the mystery is only made to recede. It is more out
