SCIENCE AND MAN. 361 



deal to be said in favour of this view, but few of us 

 probably would be able to bring into pky the sol- 

 vent transcendentalism whereby Fichte melted his 

 chains. 



Why do some regard this notion of necessity with 

 terror, while others do not fear it at all? Has not 

 Carlyle somewhere said that a belief in destiny is the 

 bias of all earnest minds ? ' It is not Nature,' says 

 Fichte, ' it is Freedom itself, by which the greatest and 

 most terrible disorders incident to our race are pro- 

 duced. Man is the cruellest enemy of man.' But the 

 question of moral responsibility here emerges, and it is 

 the possible loosening of this responsibility that so many 

 of us dread. The notion of necessity certainly failed to 

 frighten Bishop Butler. He thought it untrue even 

 absurd but he did not fear its practical consequences. 

 He showed, on the contrary, in the ' Analogy,' that as 

 far as human conduct is concerned, the two theories of 

 free-will and necessity would come to the same in the 

 end. 



What is meant by free-will ? Does it imply the 

 power of producing events without antecedents? of 

 starting, as it were, upon a creative tour of occurrences 

 without any impulse from within or from without ? 

 Let us consider the point. If there be absolutely or 

 relatively no reason why a tree should fall, it will not 

 fall ; and if there be absolutely or relatively no reason 

 why a man should act, he will not act. It is true that 

 the united voice of this assembly could not persuade 

 me that I have not, at this moment, the power to lift 

 my arm if I wished to do so. Within this range the 

 conscious freedom of my will cannot be questioned. 

 But what about the origin of the ' wish ' ? Are we, or 

 are we not, complete masters of the circumstances 

 which create our wishes, motives, and tendencies to 



