88 



will determines it. For if by this free will is meant a spiritual 

 ego other than the states of consciousness, we are compelled 

 to finally admit that this ego, psychically considered, is just 

 these selfsame psychical states, which leads again to the 

 statement that the psychical states determine themselves, 

 that is, their own cohesions; which is, to be sure, tautologous, 

 or, as Spencer says, 'absurd'. 



But, to say that the Will is but the general name given to 

 the special feeling that gains supremacy and determines 

 action, in view of Spencer's physiological basis, is not to deny 

 the existence of Will altogether, but simply to give a defi- 

 nition of it. But the feeling here designated Will must not 

 be supposed to be something purely psychical, and thus in- 

 definite and undetermined, for all the psychical states in- 

 cluding this one specialized as Will, "are produced by experi- 

 ences registered in the nervous structure". "The human 

 brain," it is said, "is an organized register of experiences 

 received during the evolution of life, or during the evolution 

 of that series of organisms through which the human organism 

 has been reached." 1 "Experiences", being dependent, as we 

 have seen, upon the action of 'outer' physical and physio- 

 logical processes, it naturally follows that the Will is deter- 

 mined by such processes, processes which in their turn are, 

 according to Spencer, determined by the laws of matter and 

 motion. Therefore, the psychical antecedent of action the 

 feeling that gains supremacy, is not free, but depends upon 

 "the implied, but unknown, substratum which can never be 

 present" in consciousness; 2 that is, the physiological organ- 

 ism, which, being subject to the laws of matter and motion, 

 is therefore necessarily determined. The "seeming indeter- 

 minateness in the mental succession is consequent upon the 

 extreme complication of the forces in action"; but the in- 

 determinateness is only seeming; in reality there is no such 

 thing. 



But what is the significance of the theory which Spencer 

 has outlined above? 



Manifestly, for Spencer, it lies in the fact that he considers 

 he has brought the so-called ' free will ' within the scope of the 

 laws of matter and motion which do not admit of freedom, 

 and that thus has been achieved the purpose with which he 

 set out, namely, "to interpret mental evolution in terms of 

 the redistribution of matter and motion", that is, to bring it 

 within the scope of his formula of evolution. For Spencer, 



1 See p. 48. 

 2 O.C. 219. 



