WILL. 573 



and tbe discussion more refined. But if our speculative 

 delight be less keen, if the love of a iparti pris outweighs 

 that of keeping questions open, or if, as a French philoso- 

 pher of genius says, "V amour de la vie qui s'indignede tant 

 de discoiirs,'' awakens in us, craving the sense of either 

 peace or power, — then, taking the risk of error on our head, 

 we must project upon one of the alternative views the 

 attribute of reality for us ; we must so fill our mind with 

 the idea of it that it becomes our settled creed. The 

 present writer does this for the alternative of freedom, but 

 since the grounds of his opinion are ethical rather than 

 psychological, he prefers to exclude them from the present 

 book.* 



A few words, however, may be permitted about the 

 logic of the question. The most that any argument can do 

 for determinism is to make it a clear and seductive concep- 

 tion, which a man is foolish not to espouse, so long as he 

 stands by the great scientific postulate that the world must 

 be one unbroken fact, and that prediction of all things 

 without exception must be ideally, even if not actually, 

 possible. It is a moral postulate about the Universe, the 

 postulate that what ought to be can be, and that bad acts 

 cannot be fated, bid that good ones must be possible in their 

 place, which woald lead one to espouse the contrary 

 view. But when scientific and moral postulates war thus 

 with each other and objective proof is not to be had, the 

 only course is voluntary choice, for scepticism itself, if sys- 

 tematic, is also voluntary choice. If, meanwhile, the will 

 be undetermined, it would seem only fitting that the belief 

 in its indetermination should be voluntarily chosen from 

 amongst other possible beliefs. Freedom's first deed should 

 be to affirm itself. We ought never to hope for any other 

 method of getting at the truth if indeterminism be a fact. 

 Doubt of this particular truth will therefore probably be 

 open to us to the end of time, and the utmost that a 



*They will be found Indicated, in somewhat popular form, in a lecture 

 on 'The Dilemma of Determinism,' published in the Unitarian Review 

 (of Boston) for September 1884 (vol. xxii. p. 193). 



