336 Heredity. 



source, though hitherto but little explored, of arguments in favour 

 of fatalism. This much is certain, that heredity and free-will are 

 two opposite and irreconcilable terms. The one creates in us 

 the personality, the character ; it is the peculiar mark which dis- 

 tinguishes us from what is not ourselves ; it is that in us which is 

 most essential, most intimate. The other tends to substitute the 

 species for the person, to blot out what is individual, and to sub- 

 ject all to the impersonal fatalism of its laws, so that we are 

 necessarily destined to feel, think, and act as our fathers, whose 

 thoughts, apparently extinct, re-live in us. In a word, by free- 

 will we are ourselves, by heredity we are others. 



We have, therefore, to consider the question of free-will. This 

 we will endeavour to do very briefly, dismissing all solutions that 

 have been disproved, and simply exhibiting the question as it 

 stands in the present state of science. 



The partisans and the opponents of free-will may contend for 

 ever without agreeing, provided each side stands on its own ground 

 and will not quit it. Those who hold the affirmative proceed 

 subjectively, saying : I have an inner sense of my freedom of will, 

 therefore I am free. Those who hold those negative proceed objec- 

 tively, saying : All things are regulated according to laws ; moral 

 as well as physical science proves this, therefore free-will is an 

 illusion. Each occupies a point of view totally different from that 

 of the other. 



The argument of the former seems at first view decisive, but on 

 reflection it is found less conclusive. If, with the greater part of 

 the philosophers in the last two centuries, we consider psychologi- 

 cal life as limited to the domain of consciousness, and if we identify 

 the soul with the ego, then we may hold that the various motives . 

 of which we are conscious are counsel, advice, reasons, subjects of 

 deliberation, but they are not that which deliberates, compares, 

 selects ; and that, consequently, a voluntary act supposes, besides 

 motives, something more. But if we may hold, as we may with 

 truth, that besides the conscious life there is also an unconscious 

 life whose influence is very great on our sentiments, our passions, 

 our ideas, our activity in general, who can tell what part this uncon- 

 scious agent may play in our determinations ? Hence the asser- 

 tion, I have a consciousness that I am free, therefore I am free, 



