THE MEANING OF PERCEPTION 179 



The Problem of Free-Will. 



Here we must enquire into the question whether or not volition 

 that is, the freedom to act or not to act, to act now rather than 

 then, or in this way rather than in some other way is truly a 

 factor in our behaviour. That we are really free in this respect 

 is a belief held intuitively by most men and women, and it is one 

 upon which codes of morality and systems of punishment and 

 reward are obviously based. Yet it is no less evident to most 

 people that the majority of their actions are not truly free. 

 Inclinations have been formed by imitation and habit, con- 

 ventions have been established, instinctive tendencies have been 

 transmitted to us by heredity, and material conditions obviously 

 impose restrictions upon our freedom of acting. The consequence 

 is that most of the things that men and women do are the results 

 of '* causation " in just the same sense that physical events are 

 caused ones. We are naturally strongly influenced by the 

 methods of science which show us more or less strict determinism 

 everywhere among inorganic things. All that happens there, 

 we see, happens because something else has previously occurred, 

 and will, in turn, lead to the result that something predictable 

 will happen in the future. 



Further, the strict sequence of cause and effect that charac- 

 terises physico-chemical events is, to some extent, based upon a 

 convention. We agree that the law of conservation applies to 

 all real things, and since there are phenomena to which it obvi- 

 ously does not apply (dreams, hallucinations, and spooks), we call 

 the latter unreal. This is quite justifiable, since the laws of 

 energy are the expressions of our ability to act upon things, and 

 spooks are clearly nuisances to us in that we cannot act upon 

 or control them. But is it not clear fchat the obvious exceptions 

 to determinism are some mental phenomena, and, that being so, 

 is not the logic of applying the law of conservation to mental 

 experience faulty ? 



However, we adopt Bergson's conclusions here, although we 

 do not summarise his argument. We regard any attempt to 

 disprove the freedom of the will as invalidated by the fallacies 

 to which Bergson draws attention. That leaves us free to 

 accept the natural belief in volition held by most people, and to 

 see in what direction it leads us. 



