ON FllEE-WILL, AND MAN'S AUTOMATISM. 129 



we call our will), "wrenching it backward into his;" 

 again, as if the uses of the world had become weary and 

 unprofitable; as if all our old motives had lost their 

 efficacy and influence over us ; all which facts and con- 

 siderations, though they do not contradict the theory 

 that the will is governed by motives, yet show that the 

 reign of law in the human subject is much less uniform 

 than it is in the physical world, and that the theory of 

 Mill requires qualification, if not a new presentation from 

 a more comprehensive point of view. 



6. Our whole moral character the conscious mass 

 of dispositions, impulses, sentiments from which we act 

 is a product that can be analyzed. While conscious 

 motives can mostly be discovered for each separate 

 action, the strength of the motives themselves can be 

 traced backward to larger and more permanent moral 

 forces which Science can investigate and ascertain some- 

 thing about, quite irrespective of the particular state and 

 properties of the physical molecules of the brain and 

 body. 



According to evolution, the cerebral atoms themselves, 

 with their inherent moral properties, were derived from 

 parents and ancestors with like moral properties ; so that 

 even if they are at present ultimate, they are not true 

 first causes, but themselves results of more comprehensive 

 and controlling causes, which can only be explained by 

 the laws of heredity. 



Again, in addition to inherited organization contain- 

 ing in it the germs of the future moral as well as intel- 

 lectual qualities and dispositions, we have been subject 

 from the first dawn of consciousness, from even our 

 mothers' arms, to education, an external and long-con- 

 tinued influence, which co-operates powerfully with 

 inherited organization to give us our principles of action, 



K 



