whatever is done by a cause or power that is irresistible. In this sense it is opposed to freedom. Man is a necessary agent, if all his actions be so determined by the causes preceding each action, that not one past action could possibly not have come to pass, or have been otherwise than it has been; or if it be so ordained that any future action cannot possibly not come to pass, or be otherwise than it shall be. But he is a free agent if he be able, at any time, to do different things; or, in other words, if he be not unavoidably determined in every point of time, by the circumstances in which he is placed, and the causes to the action of which he is exposed, to do that one thing which he does, and not possibly to do any other thing. Whether man is a necessary or a free agent, is a question which has been debated with much ingenuity by writers of the first eminence. (See Metaphysics, part iii. chap. v.; and also Predestination.)

Mythology, a power superior to all other powers, and equally incapable of being resisted by gods or men. Herodotus, as quoted by Cudworth, mentions an oracle which declared that "God himself could not shun his destined fate;" and amongst the fragments of Philo- memon, collected by Le Clerc, we find the following sentence:

"We are subject to kings, kings are subject to the gods, and God is subject to Necessity." Hence it is that, in the Iliad, we find Jove himself, the sire of gods and men, regretting that he was restrained by Necessity from rescuing his favourite son from the sword of Patroclus. Nay, to such a height was this impiety carried in the earliest ages of Greece, that we find Hesiod and Homer teaching that the gods themselves were generated by Necessity engendering with Night and Chaos.

This power, although always represented as blind and unintelligent, was, however, worshipped as a goddess, bearing in her hand large iron nails, and wedges, and anchors, and melted lead, as emblems of the inflexible severity of her nature. In the city of Corinth she had a temple, in which the goddess of Violence likewise resided, and into which no person was ever permitted to enter except the priest who officiated in sacris.

Learned men have exercised their ingenuity in vain attempts to trace this portentous notion to its origin. Some, who wished to interpret it in a pious sense, have supposed that the gods who are subject to necessity were only those who were the ministers of the supreme numen; and that by necessity itself nothing more was meant than divine providence. But this is not consistent with the generation of the gods according to Homer and Hesiod, nor with the epithets sevex necessitas, dura necessitas, by which this power was perpetually distinguished. Others, amongst whom may be mentioned Mosheim, have supposed that this monstrous fable was invented by the Pagan priests, and diligently inculcated upon the minds of the people, to excuse the villanies of the objects of their worship.