THE HUMAN WILL 



In its completest sense the term is used to signify 

 the doctrine that the human will acts independent- 

 ly of prior causes, and is undetermined by any 

 exterior or interior facts whatsoever, so that, if he 

 will, a man can act against the stronger of two 

 warring motives. Contradicted alike by universal 

 experience, common speech, and every relevant 

 fact and generalization of philosophy, this theory 

 will not here be discussed. 



Then, again, the term is sometimes misapplied 

 as I see it to indicate that man can act by the 

 light of reason, preferring immediate to remoter 

 ends; that he is a rational animal, whereas the 

 lower animals are instinctive. Against this doc- 

 trine, with the reservation that reason can be 

 discerned in the lower animals, scientific psychology 

 enters no demurrer. 



Closely allied to this last is the connotation that 

 man can obey the dictates of his higher nature 

 when the lower would assert itself. This I assured- 

 ly do not dispute. 



To-day, however, we find many theologians pre- 

 pared to assert that by free-will they mean to in- 

 indicate only that man is conscious of a power of 



masterly chapter in Mill's System of Logic. Mill shows that 

 the term necessity is so misleading " as almost to amount to a 

 play upon words"; and he declares that little if any progress 

 can be looked for in the understanding of this subject until a 

 term so misleading, if not positively incorrect, is dropped. 

 He also shows how complete is the distinction between the 

 philosophic doctrine of determinism and the Oriental doctrine 

 of fatalism, with which it is constantly confused. 

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