]08 
is misled. He evidently thinks that conforminpr to law makes 
free-will impossible. He has that inveterate materialistic bias, 
often engendered by scientific pursuits, which can only regard 
“law^^ as applying to material things — to masses or mole- 
cules — and it must have been evident that all through his 
Theory of the Will he has been thinking only of the currents 
of nerve-molecules, and has never had in clear vision the 
immaterial ]\Iind which rides upon them. Thinking only of 
molecules he cannot see how they can be free ; he is com- 
pelled, whilst he is in this materialistic vein, to regard the 
whole man as all made up out of them, and all contained 
within them ; hence he is driven to make these molecules the 
determining power of each action, and to ignore altogether 
that immaterial Mind in the man whose existence is one of 
the structural doctrines of his Philosophy. This Mind may 
conform to law and yet be free : — the Will, which is one 
aspect of the Mind, may determine, within certain defined 
limits, along what lines the molecules shall go ; it may make 
and carry out its decrees as it chooses ; it may be free, and yet 
all the psychical changes will conform to law, a law the Will 
imposes. 
It is easy to prove that there can be no contradiction 
between conforming to law and freedom. We can form the 
conception of an agent who is free, and is at the same time 
morally perfect. No one surely will contend that these are 
logical contradictories which cannot be combined in one con- 
cept (the illustration would hold if we regarded him as 
diabolically perfect ) ; now this agent is by hypothesis free, and 
yet it is certain that his very perfection would lead him, with 
absolute precision, along the lines of that law which laid down 
the path of moral perfectness. His organisation being perfect 
would urge him along that path, his will being perfect and 
free would deliberately approve of the suggestions of the 
organisation, would accept them, and carry them out. 
If we take up for a moment the Theistic position, the point 
can be more conclusively proved. Let us ask, Is God free ? 
If not, then He also is bound in the same miserable chain of 
Fatalism. If He is free, yet when He gives fullest play to His 
energies is He not most completely conforming to law — the 
law of His own holy nature*? If, then, the Creator can be 
free and also conform to law, the combination of the two con^ 
cepts in one concrete instance is proved to be possible. Why> 
then, should it not be possible to the creature also ? Made in 
the image of God, is it not probable that some of the Divine 
Freedom would be given to us? As we seek to train our 
children to be good and holy by setting them free in due 
