406 
ask what that “ something ” is ? — and if that something be 
“only another motive,” may it not be demanded how it came 
to be where a moment before it was not ? In arguing against 
such a common fact of every day’s experience, as human free- 
dom, it is incumbent upon the writer to state his grounds for 
so doing. The Duke of Argyll, under pretence of upholding 
freedom, has fallen into the argument for necessity ; but I 
cannot find that he had any grounds for so doing*, further 
than a fallacious use of words in opposite senses, and a hypo- 
thetical assumption of facts which cannot be proved to have 
existence. 
On page 13 of the Reign of Law it is said : — 
“ The same lecturer (Dr. Tyndall) who told his audience that there was 
nothing spontaneous in nature, proceeded, by virtue of his own knowledge 
of natural laws, and by his selecting and combining power, to present a whole 
series of phenomena — such as ice frozen in contact with red-hot crucibles — 
which certainly did not belong to the 1 ordinary course of nature.’ ” 
But if “ selection ” of motives is to be explained by “ some- 
thing else/’ which is “ only another motive,” “ impelling ” man 
to make the selection, was not Dr. Tyndall right, after all, when 
he began, as the Duke of Argyll says he did ? 
“ Not long ago a course of lectures on the phenomena of heat by a rapid 
statement of the modem doctrine of the correlation of forces— how the one 
was convertible into the other — how one rose out of the other — liow none 
could be evolved except from some other as a pre-existing source. Thus (said 
the lecturer) we see there is no such thing as spontaneousness in nature.”* 
The Duke of Argyll exclaims “ What ! not in the lecturer 
himself? Was there no spontaneousness in his choice of words 
— in his selection of materials — in his orderly arrangement of 
experiments with a view to the exhibition of particular results ? 
It is not probable that the lecturer was intending to deny this; 
it simply was that he did not think of it as within his field of 
view. His own mind and will were then dealing with the 
laws of nature, but it did not occur to him as forming part of 
those laws, or in the same sense, as subject to them.” But if 
the Duke is right in his chapter on the “ Reign of Law in the 
Realm of Mind,” Dr. Tyndall could not have been far wrong 
in saying “ there is no such thing as spontaneousness in 
nature.” Spontaneity , like choice, is not compatible with the 
doctrine of “ another motive ” impelling it ; but “ another 
motive ” impelling it is in harmony with the “ modern doctrine 
of the correlation of forces.” A “spiritual antecedent” is 
* Reign of Law , p. 7. 
