ON FREE-WILL, AND MAN'S AUTOMATISM. 135 



exercise of a free uncaused will. Science explains the 

 facts and phenomena of Nature from second causes, which 

 are invariably, as Mill tells us, phenomenal causes. To 

 do so is the business of Science. She is not concerned 

 either with ontologic or with first causes ; but the exist- 

 ence of a free-will, or ego, is either an ontologic cause 

 with which Science is not concerned, or it is a phenomenal 

 one for w^hose existence she finds no evidence, while it 

 would contradict her two highest generalizations, the law 

 of universal causation and the law of the conservation of 

 energy. The doctrine of a free-will would enthrone the 

 man himself as Deity, would make the ego a true creator 

 a result consistent possibly with most forms of German 

 transcendental philosophy, but not with the conclusions 

 of psychology and of modern science generally. 



8. But is it not an admitted fact that men can alter 

 their character for the better ? and does not this imply a 

 power of free-will ? Not so; a power of improving the 

 character to a certain limited extent is granted ; but this 

 power, limited at best, is one that steadily decreases with 

 years, and a time comes when it ceases altogether. The 

 old cannot change their character for the better. In 

 fact, a time comes in our mature years, different though 

 it be for different persons, when the character has acquired 

 such rigidity, such uniformity in its actions, and it has 

 become so near to an impossibility for its possessor to 

 change it for the better, that some theologians bring in 

 a special miracle to get over the otherwise insuperable 

 difficulty the miracle of sudden conversion, represented 

 as a change of heart, of soul, and of life. But this very 

 necessity for a supernatural intervention is in effect, as 

 it is in the express words of those who believe in it, an 

 admission of the impotence of the free autonomous will 

 of Kant and the metaphysicians to do the work of change. 



