HARMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM 319 



(2) On the other hand, no harmony can be 

 reached by merely translating freedom into deter- 

 minism and yet keeping up the name of freedom. 

 This is usually done by raising the question whether 

 freedom does not simply mean spontaneity in the 

 agent, instead of alternative or choice, and answer- 

 ing it by cancelling choice in favour of spontaneity. 

 But there can be no freedom that omits alterna- 

 tive and choice. It may be true enough that 

 chance for alternative is not the bottom account of 

 freedom, that the existence of alternative needs to 

 be explained, as to both its meaning and its source, 

 by the higher principle of spontaneity, or self-activ- 

 ity; but in no free system can alternative be omitted. 

 In a moral order expressing itself in a time-world 

 of events, it must always be possible to say of any 

 act that it might have been otherwise — it need 

 not have been. Instead, then, of asking whether 

 freedom means choice or spontaneity, we should say 

 that it means both, and explain how the fact of 

 choice arises out of the determinism contained in 

 j(?^-determination, when this acts upon a world of 

 experience which at the time of the choice answers 

 imperfectly to the reason, or ideal-guided conscious- 

 ness, which self-activity really is. 



(3) Nor, again, is the harmony possible if freedom 

 is taken to imply Caprice, or, in the technical sense. 

 Chance. That is, if freedom means power to act 



