SOMETHING NEW IN "FREEWILL" 353 



is it not much the same? He who supposes that the philosophers are 

 free from the passions of other men does not know the history of human 

 thought. 



As to the " freewill " controversy, it has been penetrated through 

 and through with passion and with prejudice. The real impulse which 

 makes men " f reewillists " showed itself more than two thousand years 

 ago, when a man who cared little about meliorism and cared a great 

 deal about doing as he pleased without external interference, invented 

 the " freewill " doctrine, under the mistaken notion that it released him 

 from the decrees of fate. Some men wish to be freed from fate from 

 higher motives, and some from lower; but freed from it we all of us 

 wish to be. And just so long as men confuse " freewillism " with 

 the doctrine that men may be free, will they determine at all hazards 

 to be " freewillists." 



In their desperation, men of real ability will urge arguments that 

 are not arguments, will propose remedies that are worse than any dis- 

 ease likely to overtake us in the course of nature. They must hold on 

 to their leaky doctrine ; is not anything preferable to a surrender to the 

 decrees of fate ? But they fight a losing battle, and the exercise must 

 be a depressing one. Is it not better to go to the common-sense deter- 

 minist or to the man of science, and learn that there is no such thing 

 as fate, and that men may be free even in an orderly world ? 



vol. Lxxin. — 23. 



