DETERMINISM AND FREE-WILL. 305 
fatalism, determinism, and free-will. He says, “Fatalism is a 
motive not to act—determinism the strongest motive of action 
—indeterminism, a source of foolish complaint against oneself. 
He says again, “the obedience to law which determinism 
ascribes to action is not a blind, but a discriminating 
obedience.” 
I confess I cannot realize this distinction between fatalism 
and determinism. If the will is really ruled by motives—then 
the whole man seems the slave of the history which has 
evolved his character. 
Another objection to this explanation is that it makes 
nature a deceiver. It is desirable that man should believe 
himself free, because if he did not he would not exercise his 
wil, and so would relapse into idleness and uselessness. It is 
the belief that he is free that rouses him to action. If this 
belief is a delusion, then nature deceives us, and the ignorant 
man is a better member of society than the educated thinker. 
The latter is aware of the deception, while the former is 
ignorant of it. “Ignorance” in this case is truly “bliss,” as it 
is essential to action. JRiehl’s argument regarding freedom 
resembles Comte’s regarding prayer. The latter did not 
believe in answers to prayer, and yet strangely was so alive to 
its good effect on the subject praying that he advised his 
followers to observe the practice. But such a theory is open 
to the same objection as Riehl’s, that if this is so, nature 
deceives, and ignorance of the reality of things is better than 
knowledge. 
Green in his Prolegomena to Ethics sums up his view in this 
way :—“ Will, then, is equally desire and thought, as they are 
involved in the direction of a self-distinguishing and _ seli- 
seeking subject to the reaiization of an idea.” It must be a 
mistake to regard the will as a faculty which man possesses 
along with other faculties. The will is simply the man; any 
act of will is the expression of the man as he at the time is. 
The motive issuing in his act, the object of his will, the idea 
which for the time he sets himself to realize, are but the same 
thing in different words. Each is the reflex of what for the 
time the man is; in willing he carries with him his whole self 
to the realization of the given idea. 
This certainly is a good description of what takes place in 
the act of willing. But we can hardly say that it makes the 
process less a mystery to us. 
Ladd thus explains the phenomena: “That man is in some 
sort the creature of circumstances, and that many men are 
