THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 301 



temptation to do wrong, by deiermiiiately keeping before his mind 

 the motives and sanctions of duty, — which constitutes the most 

 effectual means of calling fordi that power of "self-control," 

 which the most enlightened writers of antiquity, and the most 

 successful of modern educators, concur in regarding as the most 

 valuable result alike of moral and of intellectual discipline. — 

 To the consistent Automatist, who denies the existence in the 

 Ego of any self-determining power, and who puts his whole trust 

 in the motives brought to bear from without, it seems to me 

 that the word try can really have no more meaning than the 

 word choice. 



2. That the self-consciousness of freedom involved in the 

 very idea of choice is not illusory, is further indicated by the uni- 

 versal existence of a moral consciousness absolutely inconsistent 

 with the notion of automatism. The conception of freedom, as 

 Mr. Sidgwick remarks {op. cit. p. 50), "is, so to say, the pivot 

 "upon which our moral sentiments naturally play." Our feelings 

 of approval and disapproval in regard to human conduct, are of 

 an order quite different from those we entertain in regard to any 

 kind of mechanical action. I have no moral approbation for a 

 chronometer whose perfect time-keeping gives the true place of 

 a ship at sea, or the true longitude of a transit-station ; such as I 

 have for the maker of that chronometer, whom I know to have 

 put forth his utmost skill in its construction, careless of advantage 

 to himself, but thinking only of the human lives he helps to save, 

 or the accuracy of the scientific researches in which he thus bears 

 an honourable part. Nor have I any moral disapproval for a 

 watch whose stopping or bad-going causes me to incur serious 

 detriment by missing a railway-train ; such as I have for the work- 

 man whose carelessness in putting that watch together proves to 

 be the occasion of my misfortune. Yet, upon the automatist 

 theory, neither of these human agents could help doing exactly 

 what he did ; and I am therefore alike unreasonable in blaming 

 the man who has caused me injury, and in commending the man 

 who has done good service. So, again, our feelings, in regard 

 to the actions of brutes, or of human beings whose brute con- 

 dition seems to justify us in considering them as Automata, are 



