Moral Consequences of Heredity. .337 



loses much of its value, because consciousness supplies only a 

 portion of the elements of the problem, and by no means supplies 

 them all. Furthermore, this unconscious agency, which is over- 

 looked, may be, as we shall see, the very groundwork, the essence, 

 and, as it were, the root of the will. 



As for those who, regarding the testimony of consciousness as 

 secondary, adopt an objective method, they derive their arguments 

 chiefly from two sources, physical and physiological phenomena, 

 and historical and social facts. 



The physical world, say they, is subject to the laws of a deter- 

 minism which allows no exception. Experience proves, and 

 science demands this. Science is explanation ; to explain is to 

 determine, and to determine a phenomenon is to refer it to its 

 immediate conditions, or to its laws. We have no intelligible 

 idea of a phenomenon that is produced spontaneously, with nothing 

 to determine it to be, or to be in one way rather than in another. 

 That would be a creation ex nihilo, a miracle. Leibnitz, and after 

 him Laplace, have very forcibly expressed this truth. Physics and 

 chemistry having demonstrated that nothing comes into being and 

 that nothing perishes neither matter nor force that there occur 

 only transformations, which themselves are determinable, the 

 idea of universal determinism has become a scientific common- 

 place. The principle of the correlation or equivalence of forces is 

 the highest expression of this belief in determinism. Thus Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer, taking his stand on this principle of equivalence, 

 reduces all phenomena, without exception, to transformations of 

 motion ; according to him, social facts arise out of certain psycho- 

 logical states, and these out of certain physiological conditions, 

 life itself resulting from the play of physical forces : ' And if it be 

 asked, whence these physical forces which through the intermedium 

 of the vital forces produce the social forces ? we reply, as we have 

 all along, from solar radiation.' 



In a world where all things are so firmly linked together, what 

 place is there for free-will ? What right have you, say the deter- 

 minists, to break up the series of effects and causes, for the purpose 

 of bringing in an unintelligible spontaneity ? You say, when I wish 

 to move my arm I move it; but this movement is not, as you sup- 

 pose, a creation it must have already existed in your organism 



