PSYCHIC GRADATIONS. 133 



even by their extreme opponents, and yet it is still 

 affirmed to be self-evident by the majority of people. 

 Some of the first teachers of the Christian Churches 

 — such as St. Augustine and Calvin — rejected the 

 freedom of the will as decisively as the famous leaders 

 of pure materialism, Holbach in the eighteenth and 

 Buchner in the nineteenth century. Christian theo- 

 logians deny it, because it is irreconcilable with their 

 belief in the omnipotence of God and in predestina- 

 tion. God, omnipotent and omniscient, saw and willed 

 all things from eternity — he must, consequently, 

 have predetermined the conduct of man. If mar, 

 with his free will, were to act otherwise than 

 God had ordained, God would not be all-mighty and 

 all-knowing. In the same sense Leibnitz, too, was 

 an unconditional determinist. The monistic scientists 

 of the last century, especially Laplace, defended 

 determinism as a consequence of their mechanical 

 view of life. 



The great struggle between the determinist and 

 the indeterminist, between the opponent and the 

 sustainer of the freedom of the will, has ended to- 

 day, after more than 2,000 years, completely in favour 

 of the determinist. The human will has no more 

 freedom than that of the higher animals, from which 

 it differs only in degree, not in kind. In the last 

 century the dogma of liberty was fought with general 

 philosophic and cosmological arguments. The nine- 

 teenth century has given us very different weapons 

 for its definitive destruction — the powerful weapons 

 which we find in the arsenal of comparative physio- 

 logy and evolution. We now know that each act of 

 the will is as fatally determined by the organisation 

 of the individual and as dependent on the momentary 



