ON FKEE-WILL, AND MAN'S AUTOMATISM. 145 



besides a compulsion scarcely short of physical, which 

 want may bring and for which none should be held 

 accountable morally the sum total of the conditions of 

 society itself may be one of the larger causes of the com^ 

 pulsion to crime, on which account also a plea for mercy 

 and leniency is allowed in all cases where it can be 

 exercised without danger to the general social interests. 



11. And yet, after all, in spite of the speculative 

 conclusion that the will is not a free causal agency, but 

 itself determined by causes, is there not the equally clear 

 practical conviction that man can control the course of 

 his life and actions to some considerable degree ? Are 

 we not assured that man is not only the master of 

 Nature, but more the master of his own destiny to-day 

 than he was in any former period of his history? I 

 think we must admit it. And still more; man in 

 civilized communities feels assured that he is not the 

 slave of any fatalistic necessity ; that he is less the sport 

 of chance than man in former ages or in ruder nations ; 

 that he can not only direct and shape the outward 

 physical facts and forces of Nature in his favour, but 

 that he can even, if he wishes it, to an important extent, 

 reshape his own character, in which is implicitly con- 

 tained so much, if not as Schopenhauer contends the 

 whole, of his future destiny. The Man has, if his Will 

 has not, a certain directive power. Even the believers 

 in his automatism are obliged to grant so much, however 

 little their principles would explain it. He can to a 

 large extent control his conduct; he has an undoubted 

 and a great capacity of working towards distant aims, 

 which he strongly desires to reach, and of foreseeing and 

 directing the intermediate steps towards these ends. "We 

 thus possess a practical freedom, the freedom of working 

 towards a desired end, the only freedom of any value ; 



L 



