ca. XVII.] SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL. 173 



Hard words are as powerless to overthrow as to establish 

 a philosophical theory. In scientific inquiry the ability to 

 weigh evidence goes for much, but facility in declamation 

 goes for little. And to anyone who has been brought up 

 amid scientific pursuits, there is but little that is instructive 

 or edifying in the fervid rhetoric of a writer who, in attack- 

 ing a disagreeable doctrine, prefers to stigmatize it as dis- 

 agreeable, rather than to show that tlie evidence is against it. 

 Nevertheless beneath the emotional assertions just quoted 

 there lies a complicated theoretical misconception, the cha- 

 racter of which it is worth our while to examine. The well- 

 worn argument is that unless the human will were "free," 

 there could be no responsibility, and therefore no morality ; 

 that if volitions are caused, even though it be by our own 

 desires, we are all in a condition similar to that of the man 

 who has made a promise under duress, to whom neither 

 praise nor blame can justly be attached for the manner in 

 which his promise is kept. 



It is popularly supposed that there is something very 

 forcible in this argument ; and that, when coupled with the 

 opposing arguments drawn from such sequences as are easily 

 traceable among human affairs, the result is a puzzle which 

 must for ever remain insoluble. The problem of free-will 

 has been described by poets, and is customarily regarded, as 

 the most difficult problem which can occupy human atten- 

 tion; and we frequently hear it said that it can never be 



feelings to run away with them when treating of this question. — "Not the 

 picture of a man ; but the repi'e.scntation of an automaton tliat is what it 

 cannot help heing ; a phantom dreaming what it cannot but dream ; an 

 engine perlbrming what it must perform ; an incarnate reverie ; a weather- 

 cock shifting helplessly in the winds of sensibility ; a wretched association- 

 machine, through which ideas pass linked together by laws over which the 

 machine has no control ; anything, in short, except that free and self-sus- 

 tained centre of underived, and therefore responsible activity, which we call 

 Man" ; — such, says Prof. Ferriei, is "the false representation of man which 

 philoso})hy invariably and inevitably pictures forth whenever she makes 

 common cause with the natural sciences." — Lectures and Philosophical 

 Remuivs, vol, ii. p. 19.5. Verily the free-will question is a great opener of th« 

 flood-gates of rhetoric I 



