112 Trans. Acad, Set. of St. Louis. 



whole problem because it is closely interwoven with the dis- 

 cussions of merit and demerit and the basis for moral respon- 

 sibility. While the drift of opinion, as I have said, has been 

 in favor of Determinism, it should, however, be stated that a 

 few scholars during the last thirty years have held on most 

 tenaciously to a belief in the freedom of the will in the 

 fullest sense of the term^ and some of these have been not of 

 the second but of the first rank. It was upheld explicitly by 

 Martineau, of England, and it was defended at least as a pos- 

 sibility by the great Lotze, of Germany, as we may see in a 

 short chapter in his *' Outlines of Practical Philosophy." 



Others may contend that the law of causation holds 

 strictly within the human consciousness, and use the phrase, 

 ** causation of character," while they may emphatically 

 repudiate the notion that our spiritual experience is simply an 

 effect or a functioning of physical forces. This latter view 

 is explicit in the attitude of Thomas Hill Green. We see it 

 in the very title of his opening chapter — ' ' The Spiritual 

 Principle in Knowledge and in Nature." To the question 

 he himself propounds, ** can the knowledge of nature be 

 itself a part or product of nature? " — he gives an emphatic 

 No. 



Others still may contend that while the law of causation 

 holds in both spheres, as it were, yet it is a different kind of 

 causation in the mind from what we are dealing with in physi- 

 cal nature. This would be the attitude of Wundt. Hence it 

 is, he claims, that while, in physical nature, any future event 

 might be calculable — if one had a mind big enough to take 

 in all the factors, — such a calculation would not be possible 

 in the future acts of an individual person. 



Still more, others may lose themselves completely in the 

 realm of metaphysics and advocate a causation in time^ but a 

 freedom of the will outside of time. 



It must be admitted that this is the dreariest and most exas- 

 perating department in all ethical science, and the one where 

 the thoughtful reader will feel himself most baffled. Each 

 new scholar, as he unfolds his system, will wish to take up 

 this problem and work it out all over again. He is never 



