UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



choose, and our constitutions are complexes of 

 forces that date from the past as much as, or more 

 than, they date from the present. 



Determinism is only a name; free will is only a 

 name; the reality is our joyful and conscious obedi- 

 ence to the promptings of our own natures. That 

 our individual natures are a part of the general na- 

 ture, and subject to its laws, is the fact above all. 



At times we are conscious of struggling against a 

 tendency in us, but this struggle also has its natural 

 history. We are pulled two ways, and the stronger 

 pull wins. We yield to it because it is the strongest. 



Freedom of will means freedom to lift the arm, to 

 open the eyes, to close the mouth, but not freedom 

 to lift the hair, or to close the nose or the ears, or to 

 abolish hunger, or any of the other things we might 

 enumerate as against nature. All the little but fun- 

 damental acts of our lives, all the movements of our 

 bodies, are immediately under the control of what 

 we call our wills. But the movements of our spirits, 

 the promptings of our character, our temper, our 

 dispositions, are not in the same sense under the 

 control of our wills. 



Only so much of a man knows itself and is under 

 the control of the conscious will as is necessary to 

 his dealing successfully with outward things. By 

 far the larger part of every one of us is the subcon- 

 scious self. The body runs itself. Our minds have 

 but little to say about it. All the physical functions 



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