74 
C. L. HerncJ'c 
But to whom the larger self has once been revealed, any act 
carried out at a lower behest than this highest brings a sense of 
self-degradation and of shame. In spiritual evolution woe to those 
whose ideal so far exceeds the executive impulses that life becomes 
but a succession of lost battles! 
Two classes are possible, saints and sinners — those who pre- 
serve the will to protect the highest self and those who consciously 
abandon the effort. 
The controversy which has raged as to the freedom of the will 
versus determinism results from a mistaken idea of freedom, 
complicated by a perverted application of the idea of causation. 
As Schelling says : 
to be able to decide for A and non- A without any motive whatever would, 
in truth, simply be a prerogative to act in an altogether irrational man- 
ner. 
Leibnitz says, more bluntly, that to desire such irrational free- 
dom would be to desire to be a fool. 
Let us analyze our feeling of freedom in volition. We first 
must have an alternative, to be, or not to be, to do or not to do, 
to do this or that. The two acts compared are measured by our 
powers and adjudicated in this respect. We do not will to achieve 
what is manifestly impossible. The child but not the man cries 
for the moon, but the moon is not unattainable in the mind of 
the child. This produces a sense of alternative. The second 
judgment is as to the value to self, a comparison of suitability, 
not of possibility. The essence of freedom is in the idea that I 
may do it, not that the thing is permissible or may do itself. 
The idea of uncaused action violates the fundamental thing in 
our feeling of personal freedom. It is precisely the ego-activity 
in action that makes it free. The unhindered expression of self 
in relation to an act or, better, the act issuing in conformity to 
the structure of self or character constitutes freedom. 
The indeterminist ignores the vital element in freedom in the 
search for that impossibility, an uncaused cause. Cause is an 
abstraction convenient as a category, but cause can only mean the 
immediate expression of one being in relation to another. If we 
conceive of a cause unpreceded by another cause, we deny prior 
time. Efficiency and being are the same. Even the being of 
the Absolute Cause, viewed as man must view it in segments, is 
