104 ESS A YS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



spontaneity and volition. In the voluntary there 

 must be a comparison and a power of choice in 

 the presence of simultaneous possibilities. " Moral 

 judgment, then, credits the Ego with a selecting 

 power between two possibilities, and stands or 

 falls with this." It is impossible to treat the 

 determinist problem as neutral, as Mr. Sidgwick 

 would do. " Either free-will is a fact, or moral 

 judgment a delusion." Moral judgment, then 



" Postulates moral freedom ; and by this we mean, not the 

 absence of foreign constraint, but the presence of a personal 

 power of preference in relation to the inner suggestions and 

 springs of action that present their claims." 



Turning now to the mode in which the moral 

 judgment acts, we find that it is exercised upon 

 incompatible impulses which it distinguishes as 

 higher and lower i.e. by their moral worth. Con- 

 science is "the critical perception we have of the 

 relative authority of our several principles of 

 action." This at once explains the variation in 

 the contents of the moral judgment, on which 

 sophists in all ages base their denial of morality. 

 " Among the sinful crowd it is intelligible enough 

 how * many that are first shall be last, and the last 

 first/ " since the life of widest visible aberration 

 from a Divine standard of perfection is not neces- 

 sarily the most wicked. The publicans and harlots 

 may in the sight of God take precedence of those 

 whose wilful choice of the lower is covered by " the 



