188 COSMIC PEILOSOPBY. [pt n. 



if each epoch is not determined by the preceding epoch, 

 then the inference is inevitable that the Trench Eevolution 

 might have happened in the reign of Louis XI,, or that the 

 progress of Christianity might have been eastward instead of 

 westward. Thus all conception of progress, as well as all 

 conception of order, is at an end. Thus the vast domain of 

 History, numbering among its component divisions the phe- 

 nomena of Language, Art, Eeligion, and Government, the 

 products of social activity as well as the phases of social 

 progress, becomes an unruly chaos, a Tohu-va-Bohu, where 

 event stumbles after event, and change jostles change, with- 

 out sequence and without law. 



I think, therefore, we are quite justified in saying that, 

 when stripped of the metaphysical jargon in which it is 

 usually propounded, the question of free-will becomes an 

 easy one to answer. Having laid the dust which metaphy- 

 sicians have kicked up, we find our vision no longer obscured. 

 From whatever scientific stand-point we contemplate the 

 doctrine of the lawlessness of volition, we find that its 

 plausibleness depends solely on tricks of language. The first 

 vrick is the personification of AVill as an entity distinct from 

 all acts of volition ; the second trick is the ascription to this 

 iSntity of "freedom," a word which is meaningless as applied 

 to the process whereby feeling initiates action ; and the third 

 trick is the assumption that desires or motives are entities 

 outside of a person, so that if his acts of volition were 

 influenced by them he would be robbed of his freedom. Any- 

 one, however, who is not misled by these verbal quibbles, and 

 who bears in mind that a person, psychologically considered, 

 is nothing more than the sum of his conscious states, will 

 perceive at once that when the desires or aversions determine 

 the volitional acts, it is the person himself who determines 

 them. We have accordingly seen that, since liberty of choice 

 means nothing if it does not mean the power to exert volition 

 in the direction indicated by tlie strongest group of motives ; 



