THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 
Let us examine the matter first psychologically. First, there 
is the concept of an act. Every vivid concept of action creates or 
borrows from the energetic side of the mind an impulse to perform 
the action. A second alternate action is conceived. The mind 
is, as it were, in suspense. Impulses to one or the other act appear 
with fluctuating vividness. There results a sense of suspended 
judgment. The energetic side of the mind is inhibited. We have 
the feeling of being able to do either. The concept is real rather 
than an imaginary one in either case. Were the conflict between 
the concept of jumping over the horse-block and jumping over 
the moon no such feeling of free alternative would exist. 
The inhibition is felt as an internal restraint rather than an 
external coercion. Judgment having been passed upon the 
viability of the two impulses, then moral judgment compares the 
issues of the two acts with the self-ideal. One act will conduce 
to my physical well-being, the other will not : the one act is good, 
the other bad. One act will contribute to the greater welfare 
of the community or of an ideal abstraction cause’’) connoted 
with self, the other will not; the former act is right, the latter 
wrong. One act will bring approval of some constituted author, 
ity to which we owe allegiance, the other not ; the first-mentioned 
act is lawful, the latter unlawful. 
On such considerations as these one act is approved and the 
other disavowed. Inhibition ceases — the impulse to act, rein- 
forced by all the added motives adduced by intelligent consider- 
ation, issues in the midst of expensive, irradiative (pleasurable) 
psychical accompaniments. We have performed a voluntary 
act approved by conscience. 
I am a free moral agent because my acts are j udged to agree 
with the demands of my being or of my character independently 
of any external coercion. 
But was it, after all, a simple algebraic sum of various motives 
which my mind performed? By no means. It was more like 
a case of greatest common divisor, the common dividend being 
my ^ character. 
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