law of causality; it is a cause without being an effect. Freedom here means, as Kant and Schopenhauer put it, the faculty of beginning a causal series. A man is free when he has the power to begin a causal series without being in any way determined thereto. Psychical activity is free when it acts without cause, when it depends upon no antecedent event. I will to perform a certain act; nothing has determined me to will as I did; under the same conditions I could have willed otherwise. However this view may be modified, freedom essentially means a causeless will.

The deterministic view opposes this conception, and holds that there is no such thing as an uncaused process, either in the physical or psychical sphere ; that every phenomenon or occurrence, be it a movement or a thought, a feeling or an act of will, is caused, not an independent factor, but dependent upon something else.

4. Determinism. Which of these two views is correct? Is the will caused or uncaused? Let us see. By a cause we mean the antecedent or concomitant, or the group of antecedents and concomitants, without which the phenomenon cannot appear. The scientist explains things by revealing their invariable antecedents or causes, by showing that things act uniformly under the same conditions. It is a postulate of science that all phenomena in the universe are subject to law in the sense that they are caused, that there is a reason for their

being and acting so and not otherwise.

Now can

we apply the same formula to human willing, or, let us say, making the statement as broad as possible, to the human mind as a whole? Has the human mind any such antecedents or concomitants, or is it independent of them? Is there any reason why the mind should think, feel, and will as it does? Is it dependent upon anything for thinking, feeling, and willing in this way?

Science will naturally answer the question in the affirmative. Its ideal is to explain the world, and explanation is impossible unless things happen according to law, unless there is uniformity in action. Even where we are unable to find the invariable antecedents or causes, we imagine them to be present, though we may regard their discovery as practically impossible.

Now the scientific investigation of mind seems to show uniformity of action. Under the same circumstances the same states occur; the same antecedents seem to be followed by the same consequents. In the first place, we may say that in order to have human consciousness we must be born with human minds, with human capacities for sensation, ideation, feeling, and willing. Physiologically speaking, we must have a human brain, human senseorgans, a human body. In a certain sense, all human beings are alike dependent upon the nature of the consciousness which they inherit from the race. What a being is going to think, feel, and

will in this world depends, to some extent, upon the mental and physical stock in trade with which he begins life.

Not only, however, does man inherit the general characteristics of the race; he also inherits specific qualities from his ancestors. Just as a man may inherit a weak or a vigorous brain and more or less perfect sense-organs, so he may receive from his nation or his ancestors a capacity for thinking, feeling, and willing in a particular way. In short, if we embrace all mental tendencies or capacities or functions under one term, character, we may say that every individual has a character of his own, and that this character is dependent upon the entire past. As Tyndall says: "It is generally admitted that the man of to-day is the child and product of incalculable 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 back to an abysmal past."1

We may say that the way in which the world. affects an individual must depend largely upon his character. Physiologically stated, the impression made by an external stimulus upon a human brain. will depend largely upon the nature of the entire organism affected, which does not merely receive excitations, but transforms them according to its nature. This character, this brain, is the heir of all the ages, an epitome of the past. It is what it

1 "Science and Man," Fortnightly Review, 1877, p. 594.

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is because many other things have been what they were. In this sense we may say that it is determined. I have a human body and not an animal's, because I am the child of human parents; I have a particular human body because I am the child of a particular race, of a particular nation, a particular family. Similarly I may say that I have a human mind, a human will, a particular human mind and a particular will, because I am the child of a particular race, nation, age, and family.

The mind, then, is, in a certain sense, determined by the past. But it is likewise determined by the present. Just as a seed needs certain favorable conditions in order to grow and thrive, a character needs an environment suitable to its development. To express it physiologically, a brain needs stimuli in order that it may act out its nature. It will develop from immaturity to maturity only under the proper conditions. Just as a man must exercise his muscles properly in order to develop them, he must exercise his mental powers in order to develop them.

As was said before, we must give due weight to both the inside and the outside, the character and its physical and social environment. The brain requires stimulation in order to act at all; it will not develop without being incited to action from without. But it is not merely a puppet in the hands of the external world; it does not merely receive, but gives; it strikes back. That is, it reacts upon stimuli according to its own nature. Similarly, the mind is

not merely a passive thing, but an active thing; character is not merely a creature, but a creator. The manner in which a person will think, feel, and act will depend not merely upon the outward circumstances, but upon the inner. Stating the matter psychologically and applying it to the subject of the will, we may say: Whether an idea or feeling is to have motive power or not, depends altogether upon the character of the individual, which has been formed by a multitude of influences and conditions.

Scientific psychology, then, is deterministic in the sense of claiming that states of consciousness, like other facts in the universe, have their invariable antecedents, concomitants, and consequents. Mental phenomena are inserted into the general system of things like all other phenomena. They are not isolated and independent processes without connection with the rest of the world, but parts of an interrelated whole.

5. Theological Theories. - Now that we have considered the psychological answer to the question of free will and determinism, let us briefly examine the attitude of theology and metaphysics toward the problem. Theology is either deterministic or libertarian, according to the conceptions from which it starts out. The great thesis of Christian theology has always been that Christ came to save man from sin. Now, reasoned Augustine, if Christ came to save man from sin, then evidently man was not able to save himself, he was unable not to sin; he was