768 Dynamic Theory. 



hunting dogs and shepherd dogs fall into their hereditary duties with a 

 sense of responsibility, no doubt, but of a different sort from that which 

 inspired their ancestors while they were acquiring, their habit. Then, 

 their motives were to please their masters and escape the corporal pun- 

 ishment they found to follow failure in their tasks. Now, their organs 

 having become differentiated to the automatic performance of these 

 operations, the sense of responsibility no longer depends upon the recol- 

 lection of corporal pain, but it is the uneasiness which results from the 

 presence of an appropriate stimulus for driving such organs, felt during 

 the time the organs are restrained or prevented by any other motive from 

 acting in response to the stimulation. That is, the dog no longer real- 

 izes a responsibility to his master and his whip but to his own conscience. 

 As with dogs so with men. The requirements of social intercourse and 

 mutual help and restraint, have produced in us organs whose functions 

 are to impel us to perform the duties exacted by these requirements. 

 When from any cause these functions are balked, the resulting inhar- 

 mony is productive of the uneasy sense of violated conscience; of duty 

 neglected or put aside. The habits of these organs, then, supersede and 

 stand to us instead of the direct impact of external stimuli, and we are 

 said to act from moral motives instead of physical motives. 



Our feeling of responsibility, therefore, is a sensation of being bound, 

 instead of a sensation of freedom. We are constantl} T driven by im- 

 pulses of greater or less force, which are usually the resultants of con- 

 flicting motives, and which are therefore decisive by so small a inajorit}- 

 that we are apt to think that we had equal motive to do something else. 

 A man will saj r , ' 'Why, I could have done that other thing just as well 

 as not, if I had thought of it, " or "I could have done so and so if I 

 had wanted to, but I did not want to." He did not want to because, 

 although a small motive would have changed his will, the motive at the 

 moment was not present, although it might have been among the inac- 

 tive memories of his cerebral organs. The knowledge that the elements 

 of causes, which are alread}' in the cortical organs, would, if they had 

 been in action, have altered the result, leads to the erroneous feeling, in 

 such cases, that the causes of the will, or at least of the action, are 

 dominated by self. 



It is not reflected that these organs of the internal senses are only the 

 lurking places of the external forces, which are introduced from with- 

 out, in the first place, and placed there half in ambuscade. They look 

 so naturalized there, we are apt to forget their foreign origin. It is only 

 as long as we are conscious of other motives still in abeyance, which 

 have had no influence upon our action, but which would have had if 

 they had not been dormant, that this subjective feeling of freedom en- 

 dures. We feel, in such case, as if the will was contingent, and might 



