The Meta'physics of a Naturalist 
75 
a sequence of causes. When viewed otherwise, as an omniscient 
being might view it, it is conceivable that the idea of cause would 
altogether disappear. 
The only conceivable kind of human freedom is that which 
consists in the unhindered expression of self in response to exter- 
nal motives. It is idle to suppose that the ego could go back 
of self and fabricate a feeling of cause prior to its own being, or 
construct a mechanism for deciding behind the deciding agent. 
It is left for deterministic philosophers to imagine such a deus 
ex machina. 
But if it be true, as Tyndall says, that 
it is admitted generally that the man of today is the child and product 
of incalculably antecedent times. His physical and intellectual textures 
have been woven for him during his passage through phases of history 
and forms of existence which lead the mind to an abysmal past, 
then the ego is not only caused, but it is one of the most compli- 
cated webs of causation. With what made me what I am, I 
have nothing to do; but, being what I am, I am responsible for 
my acts in so far as they conform or fail to conform to this ego. 
Responsibility is the strongest argument against the indeter- 
minist position in its narrower sense. To admit that I am to 
blame is to admit that the act was chosen with reference to self. 
To claim that the act was directed arbitrarily by some other 
power than one’s own character would be to absolve the only 
ego we know from responsibility. 
