1 88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is willing to have even good things fatally forced upon his acceptance, 

 and who is not inspired by the thought of believing freely in his 

 freedom, must be a poor creature indeed. But suppose Professor James 

 had expressed his thought baldly; suppose he had said: "I myself hold 

 to indeterminism, not because I fail to see the plausibility of the oppo- 

 site doctrine, but because, if human actions were causeless, what more 

 natural than that man should causelessly believe in their causeless 

 origination? Accordingly, I causelessly believe in the causelessness of 

 my actions, confident that no one knows enough about the matter to 

 prove me in the wrong." Would the doctrine thus stated — and this 

 only means the doctrine stripped of misleading associations — have 

 proved particularly attractive? 



It is not attractive even when superficially considered; it only seems 

 arbitrary and unreasonable; a something to be taken rather as a play 

 of fancy than as a serious argument. But looked into more narrowly, the 

 doctrine is seen in its implications to be something very serious and 

 terrible. So little has been said upon this topic in the vast literature 

 of the dispute regarding the will, that I make no excuse for discussing 

 it at some length. The issue has too often been clouded by the associa- 

 tions which hover about the words 'liberty,' 'freedom' and 'free- 

 will,' and the true significance of indeterminism has not been clearly 

 seen. I have said above that it is a pity to stir the emotions when one is 

 trying to settle a question of fact; but as very much has been said upon 

 the topic of the terrors of determinism that it is allowable, as an anti- 

 dote to this poison, to point out the much more real terrors of 'free-will.' 



Let us suppose that the 'libertarian' or 'free-willist' — the indeter- 

 minist — is right, and that human actions may be causeless. I am, 

 then, endowed with 'freedom.' This is not freedom in the usual sense 

 of the word, remember; and I have put it into quotation marks to indi- 

 cate that fact. It means only that my actions cannot wholly be ac- 

 counted for by anything that has preceded them, even by my own 

 character and impulses, inherent or acquired. But, I ask myself, if I 

 am endowed with 'freedom,' in what sense may this 'freedom' be 

 called mine. Suppose that I have given a dollar to a blind beggar. Can 

 I, if it is really an act of 'free-will,' be properly said to have given the 

 money? Was it given because / was a man of tender heart, one prone 

 to benevolent impulses, and naturally incited by the sight of suffering 

 to make an effort to relieve it? Not at all; in just so far as the gift 

 was the result of 'free-will,' these things could have had nothing to 

 do with the matter. Another man, the veriest miser and skinflint, the 

 most unfeeling brute upon the streets, might equally well have been 

 the instrument of the benevolent deed. His impulses might all be selfish, 

 and his past life a consistent history of sordid greed; I am a lover 

 of my kind; but what has all this to do with acts of 'free-will'? If 



