FATALISM OR FREEDOM 



a million dollars worth of property. If 

 our knowledge of this sequence of events 

 were complete we could unfold an un- 

 broken chain of causally related members, 

 beginning with certain hereditary traits, 

 following through the development of a 

 malevolent personality which cherishes a 

 grudge against a brutal foreman, and cul- 

 minating in the arrest and conviction of the 

 felon. Some of the factors in this se- 

 quence we can describe as external events, 

 some as bodily processes demonstrable as 

 physiological functions. Others we can 

 describe only In subjective terms because 

 we do not yet know what cerebral, endo- 

 crine and other bodily processes have the 

 peculiar properties which at present we 

 can only describe as revenge, hate, pur- 

 pose and the like. To ignore the mental 

 components of this causal sequence because 

 we do not know as much as we would like 

 about the related bodily processes is a 

 travesty of scientific method, for we can 

 practically deal with revenge as a motive 

 of conduct in common life, in the law court, 

 and in a scientific analysis of the behavior. 

 We must therefore recognize conscious 

 acts, that is, processes which we know best 

 introspectively, as by far the most im- 



[46] 



