space. It must work "in number, measure, and weight." It cannot enclose a space with two straight lines ; it cannot find a shorter way of joining two points than by a straight line. So also in moral acts ; it cannot do anything that may not be referred to the seven virtues, or the seven sins ; nay, there must be an average in its sins or virtues ; it must either attach itself to all equally, or it must now prefer one, now another. Its acts must be capable of numeration ; and every thing that is numerable becomes at once a subject of statistics, — it has its average, its maximum, and its minimum, and is ticketed as belonging to a "fixed law." Yet, by the hypothesis, it was perfectly free. Therefore perfect freedom, and subjection to a fixed law, are quite compatible even in the individual soul, working in space and time. In its inner self-determination it may be perfectly free ; yet in the manifestations or results of its free action it is bound by the fixed laws of number, space, and time. Again, these results, before they become appreciable, are done ; they have become facts, and as such are removed from the influence of free-will. Not even God, says the poet, can make a fact not a fact, can render undone what is done. That which is done is become a material external product, altogether independent of the interior determination, or free-will, which motived or gave the first occasion of its existence. Hence no examination of these facts, apart from the consciousness of the doers of them, can possibly give us the element of freedom ; they are mere material external facts, as subject to numeration and measurement as a crop of wheat, or the velocity of a bullet.
And if this is true of the acts of an individual, how much more true will it be of the acts of a mass of men ? The laws of number are capable of a much more varied manifestation in large than in small numbers. There is no regularity in throws of dice taken ten and ten together; but in 10,000 throws we can predict with great confidence how many times sixes will be thrown. There is no possible certainty that any given individual will commit
