CHAP. V.] DUTY AND PLEASURE. 125 



the power of intensifying one motive at will, and so making 

 that motive, for the time, the stronger. As Professor 

 Carpenter has justly observed, much of the mind s work is 

 done by its &quot;automatic faculties,&quot; but &quot;their direction is 

 given by the will, in virtue of its power of intensifying any 

 idea or feeling that is actually present to consciousness, by 

 fixing the attention upon it.&quot; Asserting, as we do, the sub 

 stantial and persistent ego, we have no hesitation in affirm 

 ing that the ego occasionally does &quot; determine the cohesions 

 of the psychical states which arouse an action,&quot; and at the 

 same time in denying &quot; that these psychical states determine 

 their own cohesions.&quot; 

 Mr. Spencer adds : 



&quot; To reduce the general question to its simplest form : Psychical 

 changes either conform to law or they do not. If they do not conform 

 to law, this work, in common with all works on the subject, is sheer 

 nonsense : no science of psychology is possible. If they do conform to 

 law, there cannot be any such thing as free will.&quot; 



It is really impossible to deny that this passage is &quot; sheer 

 nonsense,&quot; since works on psychology have again and again 

 been written by authors who fully accept the freedom of the 

 will. Mr. Spencer s error lies in not distinguishing between 

 perceptions and emotional states which cannot but produce 

 an effect in direct proportion to their strength and that 

 faculty of will which our consciousness tells us is no 

 mere impotence arising from incomplete adjustment; but a 

 conscious exertion of power adding to the strength of such 

 emotional states or such perceptions as may be selected for 

 intensification. 



But the want in Mr. Spencer s mind of any perception of 

 morality is so utter that he looks upon the absence of moral 

 freedom as a positive gain. He says : 



&quot; I will only further say that freedom of the will, did it exist, would 

 be at variance with the beneficent necessity displayed in the evolution 

 of the correspondence between the organism and the environment.&quot; 

 . . . . &quot; were the inner relations partly determined by some other 

 agency, the harmony at any moment existing would be disturbed, and 



