APPENDIX. 



FREE WILL AND NECESSITY. 



% I. The dispute about the freedom of the will is so 

 famous and is considered by many so important, that it 

 seems advisable to discuss the principles which have been 

 assumed concerning, it. We have throughout used the 

 ordinary language about human action, and so may seem 

 to have supposed something like free-will. And this is 

 true in the sense that human conduct cannot be stated 

 except in terms implying freedom in some sense. But our 

 ordinary usage does not really touch the metaphysical 

 controversy between Freedom and Necessity, Indetermin- 

 ism and Determinism. These difficulties only arise when 

 we are not content with stating the facts in a practically 

 sufficient form, but begin to argue about them, and desire 

 to see Jiow we are free or determined. 



And, as usually stated, the difficulty is an insoluble one ; 

 it seems on the one hand impossible to assert that we do 

 things without motives, i.e.^ irrationally, and on the other, 

 false to the facts of our inner consciousness to say that 

 we can never choose between two courses of action, both 

 of which are equally possible, but are necessarily deter- 

 mined by "the strongest motive." 



§ 2. And the reason why the question is in its ordinary 

 form insoluble, is that neither party has sufficiently analysed 

 the terms it uses. Free-will may mean a great many 

 things, the power and the feeling of choice, the capacity 

 for determination by rational motives, etc., as well as 

 indeterminism. 



So also the Determinist confuses, or at least uses, in 

 *' necessity " a word with many different meanings. Thus, 

 physical, logical and moral necessity are very different 

 things. When a man falls over a precipice and exclaims, 

 " I must be killed," the physical necessity which compels 

 him is quite different from the logical necessity he recog- 



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