FINAL CAUSES 135 



prey are as appropriate to their use as the claws of the 

 tiger or the hand of man." ^ 



M. Janet next considers Spinoza's objections. The 

 latter " explains the belief in final causes as he explains 

 the belief in liberty — i.e., by ignorance of causes. When 

 we act without knowing what determines us to act, we 

 think ourselves the masters of our actions, and we say 

 that we act freely. So when we do not know how 

 Nature acts, we suppose that it acts voluntarily, and in 

 order to be useful to us." '^ 



No doubt an enormous percentage of our acts are 

 automatic, as 1 shall show in the second part of this work, 

 even though we should know — if we tJiought about them — 

 the cause, in many instances ; yet we do these acts spon- 

 taneously. But — and this appears to me to lie at the 

 root of so-called free will — we can make any motive an 

 object of thought ; and so far as we do so, we are not 

 ignorant of the cause, as in all cases of deliberate choice. 

 A selection between two acts may be purely automatic, and 

 we may call it unconscious natural selection, and we act 

 purely and simply in obedience to the strongest motive 

 and we are then automata. But we can bring motives to 

 bear upon the question by a determined reflection, and 

 not merely through automatic memory. We then make 

 the selection an object of deliberate thought. This is 

 volition, or free will. 



Conscious of this, we can, by analogy, infer it in finality. 



Spinoza's objection, moreover, would prove too much, 

 for, as M. Janet observes, " There are thousands of pheno- 

 mena whose causes are unknown, and which are by no 

 means, therefore, given as examples of finality, such as 

 showers of meteors, volcanoes, etc.". 



IP. 209. 2p, 211. 



