In a note upon the line,
"Necessity, thou mother of the world!"
he enters into a prose dissertation on this new-found deity, which is to depose all the ancient and the modern divinities. In this it is attempted to assimilate the human mind to that part of the creation, in which from given causes, are produced certain effects. The folly of this reasoning consists in the want of analogy between the things compared. The material and the moral world are essentially different. There are certain fixed laws to which the material world is subject, which enable us to speak with certainty of effects as following causes:—but in the moral world, we have no such assurance. The disposition of matter depends upon the laws which regulate matter, which are definite:—but the mind is not governed by any such determinate principles; nor can we argue that the same causes shall produce the same effects on the minds of different individuals. If it be said, if they were exactly in the same circumstances, the same effect would follow the same cause the reasoning would still fail, for it would be impossible to find this agreement of circumstances. We can readily admit the necessity that a grain of wheat shall produce its likeness, when sub-
