Jl 



is misled. He evidently thinks that conforming to law makes 

 free-will impossible. He has that inveterate materialistic bias, 

 often engendered by scientific pursuits, which can only regard 

 "law" as applying to material things to masses or mole- 

 cules and it must have been evident that all through his 

 Theory of the Will he has been thinking only of the currents 

 of nerve-molecules, and has never had in clear vision the 

 immaterial mind which rides upon them. Thinking only of 

 molecules he cannot see how they can be free ; he is com- 

 pelled, whilst he is in this materialistic vein, to regard the 

 whole man as all made up out of them, and all contained 

 within them ; hence he is driven to make these molecules the 

 determining power of each action, and to ignore altogether 

 that immaterial Mind in the man whose existence is one of 

 the structural doctrines of his Philosophy. This Mind may 

 conform to law and yet be free: the Will, which is one 

 aspect of the Mind, may determine, within certain defined 

 limits, along what lines the molecules shall go ; it may make 

 and carry out its decrees as it chooses ; it may be free, and yet 

 all the psychical changes will conform to law, a law the Will 

 imposes. 



It is easy to prove that there can be no contradiction 

 between conforming to law and freedom. We can form the 

 conception of an agent who is free, and is at the same time 

 morally perfect. No one surely will contend that these are 

 logical contradictories which cannot be combined in one con- 

 cept (the illustration would hold if we regarded him as 

 diabolically perfect) ; now this agent is by hypothesis free, and 

 yet it is certain that his very perfection would lead him, with 

 absolute precision, along the lines of that law which laid down 

 the path of moral perfectness. His organisation being perfect 

 would urge him along that path, his will being perfect and 

 free would deliberately approve of the suggestions of the 

 organisation, would accept them, and carry them out. 



If we take up for a moment the Theistic position, the point 

 can be more conclusively proved. Let us ask, " Is God free ? " 

 If not, then He also is bound in the same miserable chain ol 

 Fatalism. If He is free, yet when He gives fullest play to His 

 energies is He not most completely conforming to law the 

 law of His own holy nature. If, then, the Creator can be 

 free and also conform to law, the combination of the two con- 

 cepts in one concrete instance is proved to be possible. Why, 

 then, should it not be possible to the creature also ? Made in 

 the image of Grod, is it not probable that some of the Divine 

 Freedom would be given to us ? As we seek to train our 

 children to be good and holy by setting them free in due 



