132 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



all cases. But they also leave no scope for the exercise 

 of free-will. In the first case the action is determined 

 mechanically, and in the second and third, by the strength 

 of the motives at work. There is literally no work left 

 for a free will to do, even if the existence of the supposed 

 independent entity called the free self could be proved. 

 There is no work for it to do which is not already taken 

 in hand by other agencies. There is only the case, more 

 conceivable than ever actual, of which the free-will meta- 

 physicians have made so much use the case where the 

 motives seem exactly balanced, as in the example of the 

 ass of Buridanus between the two identical bundles of 

 hay. Here, it is urged, on the motive theory there could 

 be no decision according to the strongest motive, from 

 whence it follows the ass must starve ; but he does not : 

 therefore there is some faculty which arbitrarily elects 

 for one or the other, i.e. there exists a free-will. But even 

 in this extreme case, one or other alternative at a par- 

 ticular moment seems to present the stronger inducement, 

 and the volition, rightly or wrongly, is carried with it. 

 Moreover, if the individual could not properly be said to 

 act from the stronger motive in such a case, but rather 

 from a mechanical and unreasoning impulse, just as little 

 could this impulse be ascribed to the action of a free will. 

 7. If it were possible to uncoil from the completely 

 formed character one by one the various factors which have 

 gone to compose it, so as to lay bare the pure nucleus or 

 inner core of self which is supposed to lie at the root of 

 character, and which it is further supposed can act irre- 

 spective of motives, or even in opposition to their strongest 

 momentum, how much, we might ask of the free-will 

 metaphysician, would remain to represent our proper self, 

 and what range would be left for its free will to operate in ? 

 Indeed, is it not clear that the more superinduced moral 



