strongest. Nature would have a clean sweep through him like water through an unobstructed channel. He would have no freedom of will; that is, he would have no will. But because he is endowed with reason he is susceptible of rational motives, motives from above nature. Thus he is able to choose rational ends and to set himself in resistance to nature and its impulses. In this he is free. If he is swept away by nature rushing like a flood through his instinctive appetencies, it is because he yields to the current and consents to being swept away. By virtue of rationality man brings the objects of different impulses or motives into the light of reason, compares them, and chooses which shall be the object of his activity. He rises above his impulses or motives and determines his end. If he were destitute of reason, this would be impossible. He would then be beneath his impulses or motives, and necessarily driven by them.

Thus man's freedom arises from his being endowed with reason. He is free because he is an energizing Reason, or a rational will. So Milton says, True liberty

"Always with right reason dwells

Twinned, and from her hath no dividual being."

Says Thomas Aquinas: "The faculty of will and reason is called free will. Beings who have reason direct themselves to an end when they know the reason of the end."* John Smith says: "When we converse with our own souls, we find the springs of all liberty to be nothing else but reason; and therefore no unreasonable creature can partake of it." Kant also recognizes freedom as inherent in rationality: "The will is a sort of causal efficiency of living beings so far as they are rational, and Freedom is the attribute of this causal efficiency that it can act independent of foreign causes determining it. So the attribute of the causal efficiency of all irrational beings is a natural necessity of being determined to their activity by foreign causes." "Since Reason is required for action under law, the Will is nothing other than the Practical Reason." He recognizes man, by virtue of his rationality, as belonging to a rational system, "a realm of ends," above nature, and as such capable of determining himself in opposition to natural propensities and influences, and of being determined by laws which his own reason prescribes. He thus lays the foundation of a clear and self-consistent conception of the freedom of the will. But here, again, the malign influence of his phenomenalism as con

* Summa Theologiæ, Prima Secundæ, Ques. I., Art. 1, 2, 7.

† Select Discourses, 1673, p. 128.

Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Abschnitt III. sub initio, & Absch. II., pp. 78 and 36.

trasted with the knowledge of the "thing in itself," reappears and prevents the legitimate development of his conception.

2. Freedom does not imply the consent of the will to reason, but only the capacity of choosing in the light of reason. Kant and others who have found human freedom in the rationality of the will, have fallen into the error that freedom exists only in a will consenting and obedient to reason. Hence in the act of sin man loses his freedom. They have pushed the identification of reason and will to such an extreme that they cease to recognize the two aspects of the human spirit which render the two names significant and necessary; these two aspects are, first, the power of knowing the True, the Right, the Perfect, the Worthy or Good, and the Absolute, which justifies the name, Reason; and secondly, the power of determining in the light of reason the ends of action and the exertion of energy, which justifies the name, Will. They overlook the freedom of the will, which, as I have defined it, constitutes a being a moral and responsible agent, and substitute for it what has been called real freedom, which exists only in the moral perfection of the being and the complete harmony of the determinations of the will with the truths, laws, ideais and ends of Reason.

3. The conception of freedom of the will as consisting in the relation of will and reason-the energizing or practical reason, or the rational will-is a totally different conception from that of Edwards, and lifts us out of the ambiguities and perplexities in which all attempts to develop his conception are involved. According to his conception freedom is discussed from the point of view of efficient causation, and must be defined in terms of power only, as the power of contrary choice. Also the distinction of natural and moral ability which, in accordance with the universal use of language, is legitimately applied to outward acts, is illegitimately applied to the will itself as an explanation of its freedom; with the result, again, that freedom must be defined in terms of power only, overlooking all in which the freedom actually consists. Hence there is left no resource but to distinguish power from itself, as power to the contrary. In this type of thought the will is regarded as merely a power of exertive volition, overlooking its power to determine in choice the ends or objects of its action. In fact the power of contrary choice is only another name for the power of choice. Antecedent to a determination, man is free to choose between two or more. But as yet we cannot speak of a power of contrary choice because no choice has yet been made to which the coming determination is the contrary. After the choice is made and the man looks back on it, his freedom to choose between two comes before him in the remembrance as consciousness that he might have chosen the con

trary of what he did choose. Thus the fact of free choice itself, under the name which denotes the remembrance of it after it was made, is given us as a rationale or philosophical explanation of the fact of free choice. On the contrary, freedom of will, instead of being defined in terms of power only, must be defined with reference to the three aspects of the human mind, intellect, sensibility and will, and in terms recognizing the three. Freedom is in the fact that man is a rational being capable of determining in the light of reason and under the influence of rational motives both the objects of his action and the exertion of his power to act. This is a conception of freedom which stands clear, unambiguous, self-consistent and reasonable, and is adequate to explain the nature and ground of moral responsibility. At the same time it is a philosophical basis for the doctrine that moral character, without ceasing to carry in it personal responsibility and free choice, is yet deep and continuous under all specific actions; a doctrine which, in spite of the philosophical errors and even absurdities which have historically accompanied it, the deepest Christian consciousness has always held for true, and for which a flippant illuminism has attempted to substitute the conception of the limitation of moral responsibility and character to single, ictic and consciously intentional acts.

II. The determinations of the will differ in kind from the strongest impulse of the sensibilities. Those who deny free-will, hold that man's determinations are simply the action of the strongest impulse under the action of external nature on the nervous organization. Such is the will recognized by Dr. Maudsley, Prof. Alexander Bain and others who acknowledge no spirit in man. It is all the will that is left for them. This, however, is not will; it implies neither self-determination nor freedom. An ox does not freely determine that he will eat grass rather than flesh, nor a tiger that he will eat flesh and not grass. The line of their action and the sources of their enjoyment are determined for them by their own nature. So if man always follows the impulse of sensibility which is at the moment the strongest, the objects which he seeks and the sources of his enjoyments are determined for him in his nature; he has no power to determine his exertions nor the end of his exertion; he has no freedom of will, he is "like dumb, driven cattle."

"Torva leaena lupum sequitur; lupus ipse capellam,

Florentem cytisum sequitur lasciva capella,

Te Corydon, O Alexi; trahit sua quemque voluptas."

The hereditary appetite of an oinomaniac is his will, according to this definition. But it is this which enslaves him. His will is the power, so much as is left to him, freely to consent to or to resist the diseased

appetite. In the consciousness of free-will a man says, with Shakespeare:

"I'll never

Be such a gosling as to obey instinct, but stand,

As if a man were author of himself

And knew no other kin."

Kant has distributed the mental phenomena in three classes: Cognition, Feeling, and Appetency or the Conative Powers. The phrase "Bestrebungs Vermögen," faculties of effort or endeavor, is used in German Philosophy as a genus including Will and Desire. Hamilton adopted this classification. † Dr. McCosh also includes the desires or the optative part of man's nature with the will, and selects the name "optative states of mind," as preferable to the name Will. This is, it is true, merely a matter of classification. And yet the separating of desires or appetencies, which are motives of action, from the other feelings and classing them with the will, necessarily obscures the distinction between motives and determinations and tends to the fatal position that the determination is simply the impulse of the sensibilities which is at the time the strongest. But in a free agent, appetencies and desires, however strong, remain always feelings. The determination is his own, and is the distinctive act of will. The Will includes, it is true, the causal efficiency of the soul, its spontaneous causal energy; yet the will is not well described as the conative faculty or faculty of endeavor, because it is distinctively the faculty of determination, determining the end to which it will direct its energies and calling its energies into action when it will. It is to be regretted that writers who believe in free-will should thus adopt a faulty classification which throws out of sight the distinction between determination and motive and tends directly to the denial of free-will.

III. Man's knowledge of his free-will is of the highest certainty.

1. I appeal to consciousness. Prof. Bain enters into an elaborate refutation of this argument from consciousness. § But he attempts to establish only, what no one denies, that the testimony of consciousness in any particular case is indisputable only as to the existence of the mental state known in consciousness. A man's consciousness that he believes in witches is indisputable as to the fact that he believes in them, but of no authority to prove that witches exist.

Admitting this, I appeal to any and every man to say, Are you conscious of having the power of free choice? Have you ever made a free

Kritik des Urtheilskraft; Einleitung.

Divine Government, 274-279.

† Metaphysics, pp. 86 and 129.

The Emotions and the Will, pp. 511-519; The Will, chap. xi., ?? 9-12.

choice? Prof. Bain objects that no one knows the consciousness of any person except his own, and says not "any fellow-man can carry his consciousness into mine." True; but other persons can inform us as to their own consciousness; and the argument is an appeal to Prof. Bain himself or to any other man to testify in answer to the questions. And I doubt not that every one who answers honestly will answer that he is conscious that he has the power of free choice and is responsible for his actions.

It should be added that the consciousness of moral responsibility involves the consciousness of freedom; these two are inseparable; whoever is conscious that he is responsible for his actions, that he blames himself for doing wrong or commends himself for doing right, is conscious of free choice. No man can blame or praise himself or feel responsible for any event which is in no way dependent on his own free-will.

That man is conscious of free-will and responsibility is admitted even by those who deny free-will. Some, as Hume, Diderot, Mill, admit that men believe themselves free and responsible, but account for their self-delusion by education, habit or the association of ideas. Evolutionists acknowledge that man feels himself responsible for his actions, but account for the belief by the cumulative effects of evolution through many generations. Prof. Bain says that "the sense of obligation has no other universal property except the ideal and actual avoidance of conduct prohibited by penalties." But this is a monstrous misrepresentation of the sense of obligation or duty; and, aside from that, the very infliction of penalties is the recognition of the criminal's responsibility for his actions.

Prof. Bain further objects that the notion of freedom is a "generalization," and therefore "is not an intuition any more than the notion of the double decomposition of salts." But we have seen that free will is nothing different from will, that freedom is essential in the very idea of choice. Consciousness of freedom is simply the consciousness of choosing; it is simply the consciousness in every act of choice of the power of choosing either of two or any one of many objects which are compared as ends of action; and whenever the choice is remembered, it is with the consciousness, "I might have chosen otherwise; I was free to choose any one of the objects compared; the determination was my own and within my own power." What I affirm is that every act of choice and every remembrance of an act of choice is accompanied with this consciousness. These are not generalizations; they are simple acts of consciousness and memory. And to whomsoever I might appeal, I have no doubt he would testify, if he uttered his own spontaneous belief, that every choice he ever made and every remembrance of a choice has been accompanied with this consciousness.