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tions ; that he can refuse to do what he is commanded to do by others, or 
tempted to do by some motive to which his reason or judgment does not 
assent. Conscious of this freedom (for freedom it is, however it may be 
ultimately limited by Law or moulded by a higher Will), man feels himself 
to be a responsible agent. Without it, he would not be man. 
The philosopher, metaphysical or ethical, must, if he honestly take into 
account all phenomena, treat the existence of free-will in man as a funda- 
mental truth. The theologian has another question to deal with (though it 
is very much bound up with the broader philosophical one) when he in- 
quires into the amount of moral strength, or extent of moral helplessness, 
found in the human will, after it has been once perverted by disobedience 
to Divine Law. 
The metaphysical postulate is, that man’s will is free : the ethical axiom 
is, that man is responsible for what he does ; the teaching of the Christian 
religion is, that man’s wUl, perverted and enfeebled for good by sin, is 
by God’s grace restored to the highest condition of fceedom, where the 
Divine will and the human will concur, and in the service of God man 
finds his perfect /rrrdo /a. 
FURTHER REPLY BY THE AUTHOR. 
I have now read with extreme care, many times over, the remarks made 
by the various speakers, and the notes since appended by Lord O’Neill and 
Canon Saumarez Smith. The whole forms, I think, an instructive com- 
mentary on the unity in variety which marks those who think alike on the 
deepest and most formative conceptions. There is one spirit dwelling in all, 
— the differences are only superficial, the unity is deep and structural. 
Necessarily from eleven minds united we get a larger and more complete 
view of the full-orbed truth than can be obtained by any one mind. As the 
chairman and several of the speakers agree that the Freedom of the Will is 
the one point wherein the upholders of Revelation and the Moral Law clash 
most distinctly, and in irreconcileable antagonism, with the advocates of 
Determinism and Automatism, I trust that the importance of the subject 
will justify me if I attempt to reduce to a consistent logical unity what has 
been contributed by all who have taken part in the discussion. Truth is 
one, — it is the intellectual expression of the one God ; all his servants have 
broken glimpses of the full-orbed idea ; what one lacks another supplies. 
Let us then try to blend all into one clear and luminous image. We all are 
agreed that the ego is an entity, the subject of its various states, which states, 
for convenience, we classify into intellect, emotions, desires, conscience, and 
will. Two (Dr. Irons and Canon Saumarez Smith) point out very justly 
that the ego, as the centre and seat of personality, is the active and deter- 
VOL. XYl. 
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