# A breakable command and an unbreakable causal order

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH04.P029](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P029/#char=261,327): "We were either unable to do things or we were destined to do them."

The opening definition uses ‘law’ in the sense of a command that can be disobeyed. Earlier in this chapter, Cinderella's deadline supplies the model: a condition binds her conduct without making departure or disobedience physically impossible. Calling that a ‘real law’ deliberately privileges moral prescription over the descriptive ‘laws’ of science. It does not establish that these two uses of the word are interchangeable. [Chesterton, *Orthodoxy*, IV](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16769).

A nineteenth-century determinist had already disputed the inference from causation to helplessness. In *A System of Logic* (first published 1843), Mill holds that motives and character determine conduct, yet that a person's wish to resist temptation or reform character can itself help cause a different action. The inspected seventh edition (1868), VI.ii, §§2–3, rejects a coercive bond between cause and effect and distinguishes self-formation from fatalistic resignation. Mill even concedes that necessitarians often feel the discouragement Chesterton describes. [Mill, VI.ii, pp. 418–424](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35421/35421-h/35421-h.htm).

The disagreement therefore concerns what freedom requires. Chesterton treats determination as excluding the freedom he values; Mill preserves deliberation and moral effort within a causal account. On Mill's terms, breaking a command need not break a natural law. His position challenges Chesterton's inference, without proving that Chesterton must accept this conception of freedom.

## Sources

- [G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16769), Chapter IV, Cinderella's midnight command and paragraph beginning ‘In fairyland there had been a real law’; inspected Gutenberg #16769, whose print witness includes reprints through 1934; work first published 1908
- [John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, vol. II, seventh edition (1868)](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35421/35421-h/35421-h.htm), Title page; Book VI, chapter II, §§2–3, printed pp. 418–424
- [Biodiversity Heritage Library, A system of logic bibliographic record](https://field.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/25118), Publication info and Notes: London, J. W. Parker, 1843; First edition

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