CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE WILL 85 



cess. It seems to me that I have been free only in 

 the sense that I have had the feeling of freedom, and 

 when I examine this feeling it vanishes without 

 leaving a definable or satisfactory residuum. In 

 choosing red rather than blue, I am left with the 

 feeling that I might have chosen blue rather than 

 red, provided, of course, that I do not deliberately 

 subject the process to psychological scrutiny. Yet 

 I am compelled to think this feeling quite illusory, 

 however gratifying it may be to my self-confidence 

 and self-esteem. For it is clear to me that my choice 

 of red as against blue was as definitely fixed and 

 predetermined in the refined physical mechanisms of 

 my brain, as is the sex of a child at the instant of 

 union of the sperm head with the nucleus of the 

 ovum. Just as the sex of the child does not become 

 apparent until some time after the fatal impregna- 

 tion, so the choice of a man may not become apparent 

 until long after all its essential elements have been 

 fixed. No methods of science now at command can 

 enable us to say surely whether a newly impregnated 

 human egg is destined for male or female, despite 

 the fact that the data of experimental biology have 

 rendered it a practical certainty that the sex is in 

 reality fixed. And where a human choice depends 

 on nicely balanced factors, we cannot predict how 

 that choice will be made. Yet it seems to me that 

 the factors in every choice are fatally predetermined 

 and that only our ignorance of underlying conditions 

 makes an accurate prediction impossible. Spinoza 



