sciousness or it is not. If it is not present in consciousness, 

 it is something of which we are unconscious, something of 

 whose existence we neither have nor can have any evidence. 

 If it is present in consciousness, then, as it is ever present, it 

 can be at each moment nothing else than the state of con- 

 sciousness, simple or compound, passing at that moment." 

 Obviously here is again only assertion, and no proof. 



7. In the next sentence he makes the same unsupported 

 assertion, saying, "this composite psychical state which 

 excites the action, is at the same time the ego which is said to 

 will the action." 



8. The next sentence is very suggestive and self-revealing, 

 but it contains only assertion, and no proof. He continues : 

 "Naturally enough, then, the subject of such psychical 

 changes (it is passing strange how, if these psychical changes 

 are the man himself, as we have so often been told, there can 

 be a subject of them subject is what underlies phenomena, 

 and if there are only the phenomena, the subject thereof is 

 only a sort of hypostatised zero) the subject of such psychical 

 changes says that he wills the action, since psychically con- 

 sidered he is at that moment" (the same round assertion as 

 before) " nothing more than the composite state of conscious- 

 ness by which the action is excited." This seems to me to be on 

 the whole one of the most remarkable sentences in the whole 

 compass of Philosophy. The poor " subject " is made to do 

 duty in many aspects. In the first clause he is a being who 

 alone makes possible all the "psychical changes," for a 

 psychical change cannot take place save in a psyche, of which 

 it is a change; in the second clause he is alive and active 

 indeed, but under an illusion in thinking he wills the change ; 

 in the next clause he is reduced to "nothing more than the 

 composite state of consciousness" by which the change was 

 effected. Mr. Spencer must be pressed indeed for argument 

 before he could put on paper such hollow reasoning. 



9. In the next sentence we have the old assertion, but no 

 proof. " But to say that the performance of the action is 

 therefore the result of his free-will is to say that he deter- 

 mines the cohesion of the psychical states which arouse the 

 action and as these psychical states constitute himself at that 

 moment" (asserted and not proved once more) "this is to 

 say that these psychical states determine their own cohesions, 

 which is absurd." 



10. In the next sentence he says, " their cohesions " (cohe- 

 sions of these psychical states) " have been determined by 

 experiences." But this is the very statement which the advo- 

 cates of Freedom deny. They say that the cohesions made 



