ABSTRACT
This assumption that any action for which causes can be produced is therefore unavoidable is surely a mistake occasioned by the peculiar circumstances of the rise of science.8 It so happened that scientific advance, which consisted in the discovery of far-reaching causal laws, coincided with the widespread theological doctrine of predestination and with the metaphysical picture of the universe as a vast piece of clockwork in which human beings, like cog-wheels, were pushed on in a set pattern of movement. God, as it were, constructed the clock and set it going. If the clock could be seen as a whole, men could see what the future had in store for them and what movements determined that their fate should be this and no other. Causal discoveries revealed the springs and levers which pushed men towards their appointed destiny. The tacit assumption therefore developed that wherever causes could be found for actions, they were also unavoidable. Causes, being pictured always as internal pushes and pulls, were thought somehow to compel a man. And this picture suggests compulsion whether such causes are properly to be regarded as necessary or as sufficient conditions for human action. Men were therefore regarded as being not free because they were the victims of a peculiar internal sort of compulsion exercised by the causes of their behaviour. They were thus not able to avoid doing what they did.
