ON THE NOTION OF CAUSE 233 



are laws of correlation of the mental and the physical, 

 in virtue of which, given the state of all the matter in the 

 world, and therefore of all the brains and living organisms, 

 the state of all the minds in the world could be inferred, 

 while conversely the state of all the matter in the world 

 could be inferred if the state of all the minds were given. 

 It is obvious that there is some degree of correlation be- 

 tween brain and mind, and it is impossible to say how 

 complete it may be. This, however, is not the point 

 which I wish to elicit. What I wish to urge is that, even 

 if we admit the most extreme claims of determinism and 

 of correlation of mind and brain, still the consequences 

 inimical to what is worth preserving in free will do not 

 follow. The belief that they follow results, I think, 

 entirely from the assimilation of causes to volitions, and 

 from the notion that causes compel their effects in some 

 sense analogous to that in which a human authority can 

 compel a man to do what he would rather not do. This 

 assimilation, as soon as the true nature of scientific causal 

 laws is realised, is seen to be a sheer mistake. But this 

 brings us to the second of the two questions which we 

 raised in regard to free will, namely, whether, assuming 

 determinism, our actions can be in any proper sense 

 regarded as compelled by outside forces. 



(2) Are human actions subject to 4 rental compulsion ? 

 We have, in deliberation, a subjective sense of freedom, 

 which is sometimes alleged against the view that volitions 

 have causes. This sense of freedom, however, is onlv a 

 sense that we can choose which we please of a number 

 of alternatives : it does not show us that there is no 

 causal connection between what we please to choose and 

 our previous history. The supposed inconsistency of 

 these two springs from the habit of conceiving causes as 

 analogous to volitions a habit which often survives un- 



