86 



exciters of an opposite action; and when, eventually, from 

 their greater number or intensity, the first outbalance the 

 others, the interpretation is that, as an accumulated stimulus, 

 they become sufficiently strong to make the nascent motor 

 changes pass into actual motor changes". 1 



As to precisely how this is brought about, Spencer adds: 

 "From the universal law that, other things equal, the co- 

 hesion of psychical states is proportionate to the frequency 

 with which they have followed one another in experience, it 

 is an inevitable corollary that all actions whatever must be 

 determined by those psychical connections which experience 

 has generated either in the life of the individual, or in that 

 general antecedent life of which the accumulated results are 

 organized in his constitution." 2 



Although, therefore, there may be a "seeming indeter- 

 minateness in the mental succession", this is not real, but "is 

 consequent on the extreme complication of the forces in action. 

 The composition of causes is so intricate, and from moment to 

 moment so varied, that the effects are not calculable. These 

 effects are, however, as conformable to law as the simplest 

 reflex actions". 3 



From this standpoint, Spencer examines the "current 

 illusion" in the matter of free will. "When, after a certain 

 composite mass of emotion and thought has arisen in him, a 

 man performs an action, he commonly asserts that he deter- 

 mined to perform the action ; and by speaking as though there 

 were a mental self, present to his consciousness, yet not in- 

 cluded in this composite mass of emotion and thought, he is 

 led into the error of supposing that it was not this composite 

 mass of emotion and thought which determined action. But 

 while it is true that he determined the action, it is also true 

 that the aggregate of his feelings and ideas determined it; 

 since, during its existence, this aggregate constituted his en- 

 tire consciousness that is, constituted his mental self. 

 Either the ego which is supposed to determine or will the 

 action, is present in consciousness or it is not. If it is not 

 present in consciousness, it is something of which we are un- 

 conscious something, therefore, of whose existence we neither 

 have nor can have any evidence. If it is present in conscious- 

 ness, then, as it is ever present, it can be at each moment 

 nothing else than the total consciousness, simple or compound, 

 passing at that moment. It follows inevitably, that when 

 an impression received from without, makes nascent certain 



111 Principles* of Psychology" 218. 



O.C. 219. 



3 Ibid. 



