310 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



individuals, and that it varies in degree and intensity in all 

 individuals. The power of perfect self-direction, assimila- 

 tion and self-orientation which would distinguish a perfect 

 personal whole is only imperfectly realised in individual 

 cases; and in the same way there is a corresponding failure 

 to realise the perfect ideal of Freedom. 



Now in proportion as the Personality fails to achieve the 

 character of a perfect whole, in the same proportion it is 

 merely mechanical in its action, and therefore in the same 

 proportion it becomes externally determined or un-free in 

 its actions. The result is that the Personality is partly (so 

 far as it is a whole) free, and partly bound or externally 

 determined — that is to say, in so far as it is or behaves like 

 a mechanism. Thus the fuller and more complete a Person- 

 ality is the greater its power of central self-control, or the 

 fuller its freedom. Weak characters have much less freedom 

 than strong characters. 



Temptation to the strong Personality finds itself en- 

 meshed in the transforming power of a great system of cen- 

 tral control which will actually turn it into a stimulus to the 

 higher life; while the same temptation operating on a weak 

 Personality finds little to withstand its force, and the re- 

 sultant moral lapse is almost a mechanical equivalent of the 

 temptation. Freedom is characteristic of the Whole just as 

 Necessity is characteristic of Mechanism; and this is as true 

 in regard to the moral action of the human agent as in 

 abstract theory. 



In what sense is the human agent free? In the everlasting 

 controversy as to the freedom of the will, it has never been 

 really denied that the will determines actions; that I can 

 will to do this or that and do it accordingly. But Necessi- 

 tarians and Determinists have contended that this will is 

 itself not free, but determined by motives and conditions 

 like all other natural events; that it is itself a mere link in 

 the causal mechanical chain; and that the consciousness of 

 freedom is really an illusion. Supporters of the Free Will 

 theory have, on the other hand, contended that volitions are 

 free, that the will in deciding on any course of conduct may 



