Philosophic Evolution. 19 r 



they possess, yet that in making a free act of choice they 

 really dominate and control the whole chain of physical 

 causation by their free k will. As to the implications of 

 this truth, it is evident that our own power of dominating 

 physical causation renders supernatural action on the part 

 of the First Cause not only credible, but to be anticipated 

 a priori. Creative action, miracles, response to prayer, 

 and the bestowal after death of rewards and punishments 

 according to our exercise of volition during life, are not 

 only completely congruous with a philosophy which asserts 

 the freedom of the will, but are made antecedently pro- 

 bable by such philosophy. Indeed, that such is really the 

 case may be judged from a consideration of who those 

 are who deny our power of free volition. They are one 

 and all opponents of religion, natural as well as revealed. 

 It is daily becoming more and more apparent, that to deny 

 free will is to deny even the existence still more the ob- 

 ligation of virtue, to uproot every possible basis of mora- 

 lity, and to eliminate from the social organism those legal 

 sanctions, and even those modes of speech, which are 

 bound up with the very existence of " rights " and 

 "duties." Yet these men, finding themselves forced by 

 inexorable logic to accept religion if they accept free will, 

 prefer to deny it, in spite of all the above-mentioned con- 

 sequences, prefer to be untrue to the dicta of their own 

 intellects as to necessary truths, and even to commit the 

 absurdity of denying the supreme certainty to them of their 



