THE HUMAN WILL 



possible to cause the volitional acts which char- 

 acter determines. And to assert determinism is 

 merely to assert that the human will is caused. 



/. Education and Determinism 



To the consistent advocate of free-will if such 

 there were the word education would perhaps 

 simply convey the every - day, vulgar, purblind 

 meaning. Or he might include physical as well 

 as intellectual education; and to these might add 

 that form of intellectual not moral education 

 which consists in teaching what is right and wrong 

 in given circumstances, it being assumed, with 

 Tennyson, that we "needs must love the highest 

 when we see it." But the libertarian, who denies 

 that the will is caused, cannot consistently see any 

 reason to hope that education may influence char- 

 acter and, therefore, action. 



The determinist, however and, of course, we 

 are all determinists in practice will have a larger 

 hope of education. From biology, to begin with, 

 he will borrow a term which gives him what I 

 venture to regard as the best definition of educa- 

 tion the provision of an environment. The boy's 

 heredity is unalterable; but his environment can 

 be modified he can be educated. And the least 

 important part of his education is the intellectual, 

 of course the word education, in accordance with 

 the law of verbal degradation, being commonly 

 used and understood in its lowest meaning. But 

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