314 NATURE AND MAN. 



lead to right action, than to fix rigid lines of duty, the enforce- 

 ment of which under other circumstances might be not only 

 unsuitable but actually mischievous ; and that they not only most 

 fully recognized the power of each individual to direct the habitual 

 course of his thoughts, to cherish his nobler affections, and to 

 repress his sensual inclinations, but made the possession of that 

 power the basis of the entire system of Christian morality. 



That system has been found to harmonize with the experience 

 of the best and wisest of our race ; which has proved its capa- 

 bility of strengthening every virtuous effort, of giving force to 

 every noble aspiration, of aiding the resistance to the allurements 

 of self-interest, and of keeping at bay the stronger temptations of 

 vicious indulgence. The tendency of the automatist philosophy, 

 on the other hand, which represents man as nothing but "a part 

 " of the great series of causes and effects, which, in unbroken 

 "continuity, composes that which is, and has been, and shall be 

 " — the sum of existence," * seems to me to be no less certainly 

 towards the discouragement of all determinate effort, either for 

 individual self-improvement, or for the general welfare of the race. 

 For though it fully recognizes, as factors in human action, the 

 most elevated as well as the most degraded classes of motives, 

 and gives all the encouragement to the culture of the one and to 

 the repression of the other that faith in the uniformity of causa- 

 tion can afford, yet by refusing to the Ego any capability of /itm- 

 self modifying the potency of those factors, it dries up the source 

 of that sense of independence which springs from the conviction 

 that man's "volition counts for something as a condition in the 

 "course of events," and leaves him a mere instrument in the 

 hands of an inexorable fate. 



To myself it seems as if nothing was wanting either in my 

 own self-consciousness, or in what I know of the conscious 

 experiences of other men, to establish the existence of the " self- 

 " determining power " for which I contend. I cannot conceive 

 of any kind of evidence of its existence more cogent than that 

 which I already possess. And feeling assured that the sources of 

 my belief in it lie deep down in the nature of every normally- 

 constituted human being, I cannot anticipate the time when that 



* Prof. Huxley in Fortnightly Revi'.w, Nov., 1S74, p. 577. 



