Science
asserts that there is evidence to show that an exceedingly large
proportion of human action is governed by fixed law. Religion requires
us to believe that the will is responsible for all this action, not
because it does, but because it might interfere. Science is not able,
and from the nature of the case never will be able to prove that the
range of this fixed law is universal, and that the will never does
interfere to vary the actions from what without the will they would have
been. Science will never be able to prove this, because it could not be
proved except by a universal induction, and a universal induction is
impossible. At present there is no approximation to such proof.
Religion, on the other hand, does not call on us to believe that the
will often interferes, but on the contrary is perpetually telling us
that it does not interfere as often as it ought. Revealed religion,
indeed, has always based its most earnest exhortations on the reluctance
of man to set his will to the difficult task of contending with the
forces of his nature, and on the weakness of the will in the presence of
those forces.
And when we pursue this thought further we see that for such creatures
as we are the subjection of a large part of our own nature to fixed laws
is as necessary for our dominion over ourselves as the fixity of
external nature is necessary for our dominion over the world around us.
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