FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 389 



freedom, beauty, and even kingship, all these being good 

 things ; therefore whoever has virtue has all these. 



The following is an argument of Descartes to prove, in his 

 a priori manner, the being of a God. The conception, says 

 he, of an infinite Being proves the real existence of such a 

 being. For if there is not really any such being, I must have 

 made the conception ; but if I could make it, I can also 

 unmake it ; which evidently is not true ; therefore there must 

 be, externally to myself, an archetype, from which the con- 

 ception was derived. In this argument (which, it may be 

 observed, would equally prove the real existence of ghosts and 

 of witches) the ambiguity is in the pronoun J, by which, in 

 one place, is to be understood my will, in another the laws of 

 my nature. If the conception, existing as it does in my mind, 

 had no original without, the conclusion would unquestionably 

 follow that I made it ; that is, the laws of my nature must 

 have somehow evolved it : but that my will made it, would 

 not follow. Now when Descartes afterwards adds that I can- 

 not unmake the conception, he means that I cannot get rid 

 of it by an act of my will : which is true, but is not the 

 proposition required. I can as much unmake this conception 

 as I can any other : no conception which I have once had, 

 can I ever dismiss by mere volition : but what some of the 

 laws of my nature have produced, other laws, or those same 

 laws in other circumstances, may, and often do, subsequently 

 efface. 



Analogous to this are some of the ambiguities in the free- 

 will controversy ; which, as they will come under special con- 

 sideration in the concluding Book, I only mention memories 

 causa. In that discussion, too, the word I is often shifted 

 from one meaning to another, at one time standing for my 

 volitions, at another time for the actions which are the con- 

 sequences of them, or the mental dispositions from which they 

 proceed. The latter ambiguity is exemplified in an argument 

 of Coleridge (in his Aids to Reflection), in support of the free- 

 dom of the will. It is not true, he says, that a man is governed 

 by motives ; " the man makes the motive, not the motive the 



