WILL. bll 



hies, a would thus make one eflfective.* And altliougli such 

 quickening of one idea might be inorally and historically 

 momentous, jet, if considered dynamically, it would be an 

 operation amongst those physiological infinitesimals which 

 calculation must forever neglect. 



But whilst eliminating the question about the amount of 



* Caricatures of the kind of supposition which free will demands abound 

 in deterministic literature. The following passage from John Fiske's Cos- 

 mic Philosophy (pt. ii. chap, xvii) is an example: "If volitions arise 

 without cause, it necessarily follows that we cannot infer from them the 

 character of the antecedent states of feeling. If, therefore, a murder has 

 been committed, we have a pi-iori no better reason for suspecting the worst 

 enemy than the best friend of the murdered man. If we see a man jump 

 from a fourth-story window, we must beware of too hastily inferring his 

 insanity, since he may be merely exercising his free-will ; the intense love 

 of life implanted in the human breast being, as it seems, unconnected 

 with attempts at suicide or at self-preservation. We can thus frame no 

 theory of human actions wliatever. The countless empirical maxims of 

 every-day life, the embodiment as they are of the inherited and organized 

 sagacity of many generations, become wholly incompetent to guide us ; 

 and nothing which any one may do ought ever to occasion surprise. The 

 mother may strangle her tirst-born child, the miser may cast his long- 

 treasured gold into the sea, the sculptor may break in pieces his lately- 

 finished statue, in the presence of no other feelings tlian those which 

 before led them to chersish, to lioard, and to create. 



■' To state these conclusions is to refute their premise. Probably no 

 defender of the doctrine of free-will could be induced to accept them, even 

 to save the theorem with which they are inseparably wrapped up. Yet the 

 dilemma cannot be avoided. Volitions are either caused or they are not. If 

 they are not caused, an inexorable logic brings us to the absurdities just 

 mentioned. If they are caused, the free-will doctrine is annihilated. . . . 

 In truth, the immediate corollaries of the free-will doctrine are so shock- 

 ing, not only to philosophy but to common-sense, that were not accurate 

 thinking a somewhat rare phenomenon, it would be inexplicable how any 

 credit should ever have been given to such a dogma. This is but one of 

 the many instances in which by the force of words alone men have been 

 held subject to chronic delusion. . . . Attempting, as the free-will phi- 

 losophers do, to destroy the science of history, they are compelled by an 

 inexorable logic to pull down with it the cardinal principles of ethics, 

 politics, and jurisprudence. Politicr.l economy, if rigidly dealt with on 

 their theory, would fare little better ; and psychology would become 

 chaotic jargon. . . . The denial of causation is the afhrmation of chance, 

 and ' between the theory of Chance and the theory of Law there can be 

 no compromise, no reciprocity, no borrowing and lending.' To write 

 history on any method furnished by the free-will doctrine would be utterly 

 impossible." — All this comes from Mr. Fiske's not distinguishing between 

 the possibles which really tempt a man and those which tempt him not at 

 all. Free-will, like psychology, deals with the former possibles exclusively, 



