308 HUMANISM 



XVI 



Determinist, follow not from the choice, but from its 

 assumed lack of motive. They are repudiated, therefore, 

 in repudiating the latter. 



Again, it is an error to conceive indetermination as 

 absence of motive. Lack of decision is not the same as 

 lack of motive. What is indeterminate in the act con 

 templated as free/ is precisely what is determined by the 

 choice between the motives. The act, therefore, is in 

 determinate until we choose, and determine it. The 

 indetermination is real, but it is determinable, and so 

 terminable. 



Now that such is the nature of the indetermination in 

 acts of free choice is precisely what introspection reveals. 

 We never feel that we have to choose out of an infinite 

 expanse of possibilities. The alternatives, which appeal 

 to us and are real for us, are never numerous. Our 

 character, our circumstances, our history, our habits, our 

 ideals and notions of what is good/ do by far the greater 

 part of the selection and immensely narrow down the 

 field of abstract possibility. This is a simple fact of 

 direct observation. But it is no less obvious that though 

 all these forces determine by far the greater part, say 

 nine-tenths, of our conduct, and form a fairly rigid frame 

 work which our freedom presupposes and with which, 

 and upon which, it operates, yet they nevertheless do not 

 determine everything, but allow scope for apparently 

 free choices, which are accompanied by a heightened 

 and peculiar sense of power and responsibility. Why, 

 then, should we refuse to acknowledge this fact ? Why 

 should we not admit it as evidence that the choices, which 

 seem real and feel real, are real ? 



Certainly the convenience of conceiving events as 

 determined affords no cogent reason for blinding ourselves 

 to the facts. We have seen that there are limits to the 

 convenience of methodological fictions. Nor does the 

 difficulty lie in the conception of our nature which we 

 have to entertain, if we would think it capable of 

 Freedom. 



For we have merely to think our nature as partly 



