FREEDOM AND 'FREE-WILL: 187 



this sense. The question that divides them lies a little farther back; the 

 determinist must hold that, if I please to raise my hand, there is some 

 cause within me, or in my environment, or both, that brings about the 

 result; and if I please not to raise it, he must believe that there ia 

 some cause or complex of causes that produces just that result. He does 

 not deny that I can do as I please. He merely maintains that my 

 'pleasing' is never uncaused. On the other hand, the advocate of the 

 'liberty of indifference' maintains that under precisely the same cir- 

 cumstances, internal and external, I may raise my hand or keep it at 

 rest. He holds, in other words, that, if I move, that action is not 

 to be wholly accounted for by anything whatever that has preceded, 

 for under precisely the same circumstances it might not have occurred. 

 It is, hence, causeless. 



Now it would be a horrid thing to feel that one were not free to 

 move or not to move. Freedom is a pearl of great price. But there is 

 nothing especially attractive in the thought of causeless actions, in 

 themselves considered. They strike one, at first glance, as at least some- 

 thing of an anomaly. It seems reasonable to suspect that the great 

 attraction which the doctrine of indeterminism exercises upon many 

 minds must be due to a confusion between it and something else. That 

 this is indeed the case I can best illustrate by citing a passage from 

 Professor James' delightful 'Talks to Teachers.'* It reads as follows: 



"It is plain that such a question can be decided only by general an- 

 alogies, and not by accurate observations. The free-willist believes the 

 appearance to be a reality; the determinist believes that it is an illusion. 

 I myself hold with the free-willists — not because I cannot conceive 

 the fatalist theory clearly, or because I fail to understand its plausibility, 

 but simply because, if free-will were true, it would be absurd to have 

 the belief in it fatally forced on our acceptance. Considering the inner 

 fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a 

 will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the free- 

 dom itself. I accordingly believe freely in my freedom; I do so with the 

 best of scientific consciences, knowing that the predetermination of the 

 amount of my effort of attention can never receive objective proof, and 

 hoping that, whether you follow my example in this respect or not, it 

 will at least make you see that such psychological and pyschophysical 

 theories as I hold do not necessarily force a man to become a fatalist or 

 a materialist." 



I have taken this extract because it may stand as the very type of a 

 'free-will' argument, and as an ideal illustration of the persuasive in- 

 fluence of the ways of expressing things natural to a gifted writer. The 

 school-teacher who has no prejudice against fatalism and materialism, 

 to whom the idea of being endowed with freedom is not attractive, who 



* Chapter XV., pp. 191-192. 



