SCIENCE AND MAN 877 



us probably would be able to bring into play the solvent 

 transcendentalism whereby Fichte melted his chains. 



Why do some regard this notion of necessity with ter- 

 ror, while others do not fear it at all? Has not Carlyle 

 somewhere said that a belief in destiny is the bias of all 

 earnest minds? "It is not Nature," says Fichte, "it is 

 Freedom itself, by which the greatest and most terrible 

 disorders incident to our race are produced. Man is the 

 cruelest enemy of man." But the question of moral re- 

 sponsibility here emerges, and it is the possible loosening 

 of this responsibility that so many of us dread. The no- 

 tion of necessity certainly failed to frighten Bishop Butler. 

 He thought it untrue even absurd but he did not fear 

 its practical consequences. He showed, on the contrary, 

 in the "Analogy," that as far as human conduct is con- 

 cerned, the two theories of free-will and necessity would 

 come to the same in the end. 



What is meant by free-will? Does it imply the power 

 of producing events without antecedents? of starting, 

 as it were, upon a creative tour of occurrences without 

 any impulse from within or from without? Let us con- 

 sider the point. If there be absolutely or relatively no 

 reason why a tree should fall, it will not fall; and if there 

 be absolutely or relatively no reason why a man should 

 act, he will not act. It is true that the united voice of 

 this assembly could not persuade me that I have not, at 

 this moment, the power to lift my arm if I wished to do 

 so. Within this range the conscious freedom of my will 

 cannot be questioned. But what about the origin of the 

 "wish"? Are we, or are we not, complete masters of 

 the circumstances which create our wishes, motives, and 

 tendencies to action? Adequate reflection will, I think, 



