DETERMINISM AND FREE-WILL. ay 
acts of choice, though of course the character, so far as it 
is formed at each stage, predisposes the child or boy or 
young man to particular lines of conduct and makes the 
opposite choice increasingly difficult. 
If the proofs of Determinism were stronger and sounder, I should 
agree with the Archdeacon’s conclusions. 
THE LECTURER’S REPLY. 
Aristotle doubtless, as Dr. Gregory Smith states, assumed that 
the will is practically free. But Dr. Gregory Smith in his Ethics 
of Aristotle, p. 16, states the latter’s view in the following 
terms :—‘“ Will,” he says, “with all its arbitrary changefulness may 
indeed be subject to laws as unvarying as those which govern a 
chess board. But so long as these laws lie beyond his cognisance, 
man is practically free.” 
Dr. Gregory Smith admits ‘‘an almost overwhelming pressure as the 
will,” but claims still for the will the power to decide. Mr. Faithfull 
Davies says much the same thing, ‘Substitute the word influenced 
for ruled or determined,” and it would be accepted by both sides. 
But when, under strong passion, the will is overborne, the word 
“ruled” seems more applicable than “influenced.” Take the case 
of the man who constantly goes to prison for the same offence. 
When his will is debilitated by yielding to passion is he free to 
resist the passion? If so why does he not do so, when he knows 
the inevitable consequence. A man’s best chance is to get into his 
nature other and higher influences, which may serve to conquer the 
force of the temptation which his will is unable to resist. More- 
over, In my paper I showed, that even if the will succeed in 
resisting the passion, it is ruled in this resistance by higher 
principles, such as a sense of duty, love, honour, so that even when 
we prove the will to have been victorious over passion, we have not 
got rid of Determinism. 
The Rev. W. Templeton King seems to have got as near the 
solution as it is possible for us to reach, when he says :—‘‘ Possibly 
the solution of the mystery lies in a power in the will to choose 
between motives which are both seeking to influence it.” Possibly 
there the solution lies, but it is still a mystery, because when the 
will makes its choice as to which influence shall rule it, in making 
that choice, it is influenced by inherited and created character 
