A] Note on Freud's Censor 251 



at the same time I was perfectly conscious that I might 

 have rejected this number, and said 10 or 25 or 32 in- 

 stead or indeed anything else. Thus all the psycho- 

 analysts manage to prove, as far as I can see, is that left 

 to itself, without the checking action of consciousness, 

 the brain and memory interact automatically and deter- 

 minately. Many thanks to them for the information! 

 I suspect most of us knew it before 1 We have already 

 argued that the development of freedom, whether of 

 mind or body, whether of intellect or purposive move- 

 ment, was inconceivable except on a determined basis 1 . 

 The determinist cause is not forwarded one millimetre 

 by this work of the new psychologists. Determinists are 

 still up against the irrefragable certainty of mankind that 

 men can choose. All they have succeeded in proving is, 

 that if a man deliberately abstains from choosing he does 

 not choose. The moment I refuse to say 473, and say 

 some other number instead, I exercise my power of 

 choice, and add one more to my evidences of freedom. 

 This kind of reasoning shows that we are exactly 

 where we were before the theory of psycho-analysis 

 dawned to irradiate the world. We have the incontro- 

 vertible fact that men believe themselves and other men 

 to be free in some measure, and that the whole fabric of 

 society rests on this belief. We have the incontrover- 

 tible fact of evolutionary progress. We have the incon- 

 trovertible fact that progress connotes increasing con- 

 trol over one's environment and one's destiny. We have, 

 finally, the strong presumption that the progress of the 

 race is made certain and even determined by the in- 

 terplay of environment and vital impulse. All these 

 matters I have discussed at length in my previous books. 

 Frankly I cannot see that these new factors have any 

 bearing on the general argument there adopted, and I 

 see no reason whatever to modify it. 



1 Evolution and Spiritual Lift, ch. iii. 



