746 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



text-book on " Mental Philosophy," postulates that " freedom of will 

 is power to do as I like^'' and that " the will is free when I can will 

 to do just what I please'''' — seemingly unconscious that the whole ques- 

 tion is why "I like" or why " I please." Others make both free-will 

 and necessity utterly unfathomable mysteries, and then choose between 

 them. Sir William Hamilton, while admitting that fi'eedom of the 

 will is "wholly incomprehensible"; that we "can not conceive a free 

 volition"; that we are "utterly unable speculatively to understand 

 how moral liberty is possible to man or God " — insists, nevertheless, 

 that the doctrine of necessity is equally unthinkable, because we can 

 not conceive an infinite regression of causes to all eternity ; and then 

 finds in " our consciousness of an uncompromising law of duty " a 

 decisive proof of free-will. This is certainly to claim for conscious- 

 ness of duty, as a witness, a superior function to that which it fills as 

 an agent ; for if it has proved again and again an unreliable guide 

 to conduct — leading Calvin to burn Servetus, the Inquisition to tor- 

 ture heretics, and the Puritans to hang witches and Quakers — it is not 

 easy to see why so imperfect a guide to action should be of such 

 supreme value as a testimony to freedom of action. Nor is it clear 

 how a Christian philosopher should have found in our consciousness of 

 the moral law an evidence for a " wholly incomprehensible " theory, 

 superior in force to that which the theistic hypothesis supplies to the 

 doctrine of universal causation. 



As it stands to-day, the question is very nearly one between science 

 and theology. On the one hand, science asserts that to the law of 

 causation there are no known exceptions ; that mind as well as matter 

 is subject to law. Theology, on the contrary, clings to the freedom 

 of volition as the apparent foundation of morality ; and insists that 

 each man is a new cause — a new, unconditioned, responsible factor in 

 the conduct of the universe ; and this is the view most generally 

 accepted by the world. The reason is not far to seek : it lies in the 

 teaching of theology regarding man's future state. We instinctively 

 feel that, if upon the nature of our actions depends the awful fate of 

 unending hapiDiness or misery in another existence, justice to the 

 creature demands that his liberty be undetermined in any way by the 

 Creator. Now, theology for the past eighteen centuries has taught, 

 as it yet teaches, this doctrine of eternal punishment. While at the 

 present day it is rarely pushed forward into the old-time prominence, 

 it stands in the creed of every orthodox church ; it is yet an essential 

 element of Christian faith. Let us look at it for a moment as pre- 

 sented by a theologian, the greatest that America ever produced, the 

 Rev. Jonathan Edwards. The extracts quoted are from the edition of 

 his sermons published in 1879 : 



You have often seen a spider wl)en thrown into the midst of a fierce tire; 

 and have observed how immediately it yields to the force of the flames, and the 

 fire takes possession of it, and at once it becomes full of fire, and is burned into 



