xvi FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY 309 



plastic, and such that all its reactions have not yet grown 

 rigid. We know that habits grow upon us, and that 

 when they are firmly fixed, they irresistibly control our 

 conduct. But while they are growing, may there not be 

 a stage in which our response is still variable and really 

 indeterminate, however determinate it may grow after 

 wards ? And why regard this as irrational ? Is it not 

 the essential function of reason to keep habits plastic in 

 their responses to the requirements of life ? Do we not 

 know that, if anything can raise us out of the rut of 

 hampering habit, it is reason ? Is not reason con 

 tinually breaking up the habits which have grown too 

 rigid for our good, restoring the plasticity of youth, and 

 clearing the ground for fresh growth. This, if we look 

 not to the abstract word, but to what it really does, is the 

 true meaning of reason. 



This, moreover, is why the experience of Freedom is 

 so closely bound up with the moral struggle. For at first 

 the old habits and desires, which have become bad, will 

 frequently prevail over reason ; in the end they will be 

 transformed into new habits which are good. But while 

 the process lasts, there will be a plastic stage in which 

 action will be variable and indeterminate. 



Clearly, therefore, Freedom is a concomitant of mental 

 and moral growth, a consequence of an incomplete and 

 therefore plastic nature. The alternatives, moreover, be 

 tween which we freely choose, will be the outcome of 

 that nature. Both will always spring from that nature, 

 and remain connected with it by psychological lines of 

 descent which our logic can retrace. Our choices, there 

 fore, will be real for our natures under our circumstances. 

 Whichever alternative our act selects, will seem continuous 

 with what we were and did before. It will not appear 

 upon the scene as an unforeseen irruption from nowhere. 

 It will seem to us a probable and reasonable thing to 

 have done. It will astonish no one who knows, or thinks 

 he knows, us. But we should not have judged otherwise 

 the alternative which was rejected. Had it been enacted, 

 our friends would still have said they quite expected it. 



