318 ARCHDEACON B. POTTER, M.A., ON 
The mystery resembles the old problem: Which existed first, the 
hen or the egg? or again: Did the soil formed from decayed 
vegetation or the vegetation which produces it, first exist? The 
point of my paper was that a mystery exists—not that the will 
is not free. I believe it to be free. I also believe it to be deter- 
mined, but I cannot reconcile the two things. They seem entirely 
incompatible. Professor Orchard objects to a solution which “adds 
the insoluble complication that contradictory propositions are 
simultaneously true.” But that is the very position we are forced 
into as regards many problems in philosophy, ¢.., the love, power, 
and justice of God. 
If God be all powerful and all just, is not even momentary 
injustice inconsistent with these attributes ? The apparently con- 
tradictory may not be contradictory, owing to our limited know- 
ledge, just as real miracles—I mean those that actually happened 
—only seem at variance with law, because our knowledge of law is 
limited. 
Professor Kirkpatrick finds a difficulty in my saying that if the 
will is absolutely free, a man will probably sometimes act in oppo- 
sition to his training and character. But absolute freedom implies 
this. If you toss a penny a hundred times, it will at least once fall 
head downwards. So that if the will is not in any sense ruled by 
motives or character, it must sometimes act contrary to character. 
But it never does: because when it apparently does, there is at work 
some ruling principle which hitherto unseen is now at work. 
Professor White agrees with my view. We are practically free. 
But clearly as he puts it, this freedom still remains incomprehensible. 
I do not think Mr. Champneys realizes the difficulty of the question. 
He says Illingworth need only have gone back a step or two further. 
But he did not, and if he had, he would have come to law, cause, 
determinism. Illingworth in the passage I referred to distinctly 
overlooks the crux of the whole question, viz., that the “ acts of 
will,” so called, which go to build up character, are themselves 
determined by pre-existing character. 
Mr. Champneys does not seem to understand what I mean by 
“education being effective.” I mean that when a boy is really 
influenced by moral education, so that it forms and improves his 
character, then in his after life the result invariably follows, viz., his 
conduct responds to the character so formed. 
