SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL 



Bohu, where event stumbles after event, and 

 change jostles change, without sequence and 

 without law. 



I think, therefore, we are quite justified in 

 saying that, when stripped of the metaphysical 

 jargon in which it is usually propounded, the 

 question of free-will becomes an easy one to 

 answer. Having laid the dust which meta- 

 physicians have kicked up, we find our vision 

 no longer obscured. From whatever scientific 

 standpoint we contemplate the doctrine of the 

 lawlessness of volition, we find that its plausi- 

 bleness depends solely on tricks of language. 

 The first trick is the personification of Will as 

 an entity distinct from all acts of volition ; the 

 second trick is the ascription to this entity of 

 " freedom," a word which is meaningless as ap- 

 plied to the process whereby feeling initiates 

 action ; and the third trick is the assumption 

 that desires or motives are entities outside of a 

 person, so that if his acts of volition were in- 

 fluenced by them he would be robbed of his 

 freedom. Any one, however, who is not misled 

 by these verbal quibbles, and who bears in mind 

 that a person, psychologically considered, is 

 nothing more than the sum of his conscious 

 states, will perceive at once that when the de- 

 sires or aversions determine the volitional acts, 

 it is the person himself who determines them. 

 We have accordingly seen that, since liberty of 

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