FREE WILL AND AUTOMATISM 279 



cerely tell you what motives led me to commit the crime. 

 In the first place, I candidly admit that the robbery was 

 deliberately planned. I saw the Earl go into a shop, 

 but I waited till he came out. I had time to reflect on 

 the crime and its consequences, but the devil was too 

 strong for me. I felt reckless with the recklessness of 

 despair. I snatched the pin and made off, but an un- 

 known irresistible power made me turn back and walk 

 into the gentleman's arms (laughter). In the whole 

 course of sixteen years of crime and infamy I have never 

 felt so unutterably miserable and so hopelessly cast 

 down. . . . My lord, the desire within me to commit a 

 theft is great, but believe me to be sincere when I tell 

 you that sorrow and remorse are not strangers to me. 

 How often the thought has flit across my mind that if I 

 only had the will and determination to reform and amend 

 my life I would brighten the last days of my old parents. 

 I would be good, but evil is strong within me. Many 

 and many a time, when coming out of prison, I have 

 formed good resolutions for amendment of my life. I 

 have tried over and over again to get an honest living, 

 but always failed for want of a helping hand." 



But if my position be granted that when the brain 

 had reached a stage of development, beyond that of all 

 other animals, it permitted man to reason abstractedly — 

 so that he alone, it might be added, can be a meta- 

 physician — we obtain the clue to what is called " Free 

 Will," but which I should recognise simply as the con- 

 sciousness of the power to choose, whether they be concrete 

 objects or abstract motives, presented to the mind. 



Besides Huxley, we find by their writings that the 

 Haeckelian Monists or Materialists, all deny the Freedom 

 of the Will in Man. 



It is as well to consider therefore the untenableness 



