it may have proved, along with the influences of curiosity, a distinct stimulus to much of the early faith of mankind in purely fictitious beings and agencies in nature-the instincts of action, which crave definite scope for their satisfaction, helping to retain in the mind. and vivify the crudest suggestions of experience and analogy. Similarly, in the practical mind of the experienced adult, this active force, modified by knowledge and habit, and appearing as a powerful predilection for all practical ideas, may no doubt help to give intensity and strength to its every-day convictions. With such persons, whose mental horizon is that of pressing daily exigency, ideas that appear remote from their immediate pursuits do not attract belief. On the other hand, within the limits of their practical affairs, any clear and definite idea, by opening up a channel for active endeavour, serves as a point d'appui for the believing impulse. They prefer even the certainty of evil to uncertainty, since the former opens up at least a road for alleviative action.

At the same time it is clear that even this influence, the precise extent of which need not be determined, is still a force favouring a certain order of beliefs, namely, such as are fitted to be immediate openings to action. In the large class of beliefs which I have called passive, the great initiative impulse is feeling, action being at times conspicuously absent, as in all the phenomena of anxiety and alarm. So, too, in the more intellectual beliefs, we find conviction growing up without any trace of the influences of activity, its sufficient cause being here intense conception, whether reminiscent, imaginative, or logical.

Passing from active impulse to action itself, one may ask whether the habit of practically carrying out a conviction has any reflex effect in strengthening it, apart, of course, from any new logical influence the results of the action may supply. It seems pretty certain that habitual conduct, while tending to become less and less a conscious process, and so to leave but little room for the distinct intellectual conditions of belief, may very much heighten the latent resisting force of faith. Religious conviction, for example, illustrates not only the support supplied by the many entwining tendrils of feeling, but also the tendency of any idea long cherished and acted upon to become a necessity of the mental organization, to tear up which, would be to strike deep down towards the roots of mental life. The effects of habit on belief appear thus to be twofold: while it may tend to reduce the believing process to a rapid and fugitive mental state, it at the same time immensely deepens the potential tenacity of belief.

The mode, however, in which the will most certainly affects belief is through the activities of voluntary attention. We have seen how the presence of an emotional element in an impression or in an idea serves directly to vivify it. And it must now be added that whenever the impression or idea is a pleasurable one, it calls forth the energies of attention and thus rises into greater distinctness and acquires greater permanence.* It is in this manner that all our wishes succeed, apart from their immediate emotional influence, in keeping their objects before the mind. A sad, or even a painful feeling may excite the imagination to action, and so promote belief, but it cannot work through the will; for, so far as it is a painful state of mind, voluntary energy will tend directly to oppose it and to terminate its existence. On the other hand, a pleasurable feeling has the double advantage of an emotional and of a volitional influence on the ideas and beliefs. All the pleasurable emotional susceptibilities may thus, through the stimulation of attention, exert an appreciable effect on belief. Thus, for example, the sentiment of curiosity or of unity will frequently induce a concentration of attention on the ideas which gratify it, by force of which they tend to keep possession of the mind to the exclusion of all rival suppositions.

Another mode in which the will may indirectly affect belief is through a restraining of the emotional impulses. With growing experience the mind learns the evil of hasty belief prompted by desire and unsupported by evidence, and thus a motive is generated for restraining the tendency of feeling to keep ideas before the mind in false proportions. This exercise of the will may either directly modify the strength of the feeling itself, or, by a direction of attention to other ideas, indirectly discourage the feeling. By this means each of the higher sentiments of truth may become a motive in checking the tendencies of the more exciting feelings, and even in limiting the effects of its rival sentiments. Thus for example, a feeling for the supreme value of experience as a basis of belief frequently incites the will to resist the impulse to accept any new idea which appears to simplify and unify the phenomena of

nature.

This voluntary regulation of belief will be as various in quality and in degree as are the developments of the will as a whole, and the stages of intellectual discipline. Its highest manifestation is

The effects of attention on our sensations have been examined in the preeeding paper.

the habitual control of all the emotional and ideal impulses of belief by a deliberate postponement of confidence till all suggestions relative to the matter have occurred to the mind, and all the higher sentiments of truth and consistency have had time to exert their several influences. Just as deliberation before action is nothing but a higher development of volitional force in consequence of numerous experiences of the mischief of hasty conduct, so a temporary repression of the emotional influences, and a thoughtful and impartial attention to the ideas suggested by the proposed subject of confidence, are nothing but finer developments of the voluntary command of thought and feeling, consequent on innumerable discoveries of the inadequacy of any one impulse to the formation of just convictions. And in the highest types of mind this voluntary activity, with its subtle and highly complex motive, supplies an invaluable element in the growth and retention of belief. Although this influence of volition on belief clearly has its limits,-for otherwise the many pious attempts to coerce belief could hardly have been so futile-yet as an indirect agency controlling all the proper sources of belief, it must be looked on as the highest condition of conviction in a well-developed mind.

In conclusion it may be remarked, that if this analysis of the conditions of belief be a correct one, it must be adequate to the explanation of those tolerably uniform stages in the development of belief which are observable both in the individual and in the race. That is to say, it would enable one, from a consideration of the order of the causes actually exhibited, to explain the order of the effects. Thus, one ought to be able to say why the historical development of belief presents certain seemingly regular phases, say, the three stages assigned by Auguste Comte. From a consideration of the ignorance of primitive man, of the emotional state suitable to this condition, and of his gradual emergence out of this state through the accumulated lessons of experience transmitted by tradition and possibly by mental inheritance, it should be possible to predict the general course of development which we now find human belief to have taken. Yet this synthetical complement to the analysis must be left to the reader to supply for himself. An illustration of such deductive explanation may be found in the following paper, which deals with the forces originating and sustaining one of the most curious of the speculative beliefs of mankind.

THE GENESIS OF THE FREE-WILL

DOCTRINE.

If the development of a great speculative question can ever reach a stage at which one is justified in asserting that there is nothing new to be said about it, this final phase would seem to have been attained by the free-will controversy. For many centuries it has been the battlefield of polemical philosophies. All the fervour of theologians has been brought to bear on both sides, and many of the mightiest intellects, which form the central columns in the great invisible temple of thought, have made this issue the grand test of their speculative range and dialectic skill. Yet more, the question is not of a nature to be susceptible of much new direct illumination from the progress of human knowledge. It arises more from the peculiar complexity than from the inaccessibility of the phenomena concerned, more from the incapacity of the mind for clear and steady observation of facts presented to it, than from the narrow limits that circumscribe its field of vision.

This being so, it might seem, primâ facie, an act of no ordinary presumption to attempt to add to the capious pre-existing stock of argument in behalf of either side. In defence of such a course, however, it could be urged, that if there remain no more general features of the question to be discovered, those already exposed to view may be illustrated anew, and perhaps brought nearer to the region of perfect intellectual vision. Further, it might be pleaded that even if there is little of this work remaining to be done, and a decision must be made upon the facts and reasonings already presented, it will not be amiss for us, in the capacity of military students, to revisit the old battle-ground, in order to see how the fight was carried on, what position each conflicting party took up, and by what causes the fortune of the day was determined.

Yet the following essay does not propose to itself to undertake a complete review of the controversy. It does not aim at giving the

rationale of the arguments, or at estimating their logical value. It seeks to be a psychological rather than a logical study: not to determine the relative force of all the various considerations urged on both sides, but to account for some of those peculiar notions and beliefs, the strong vitality of which has given much of its duration and ardour to the combat. It cannot be laid to the writer's account if in attempting this he seem so far a partisan as to confine his attention to the ideas involved in one view of the subject. For any one only slightly acquainted with the controversy must have perceived, that all which was peculiar in the conceptions and opinions concerned was on one side. The supporters of the doctrine of freewill have, ipso facto, committed themselves to a theory which is not only unique, but in direct contradiction to the principles by which, confessedly, all other departments of phenomena are explained.

The peculiar theory whose origin and continued acceptance we are about to examine, may, perhaps, be thus stated: Human actions, done consciously and with choice, do not, like the operations of material nature, present a distinct order of occurrence, and so admit of generalization and prediction. That is to say, one cannot be certain that similar circumstances-including the external surroundings of the moment and the permanent dispositions and fugitive impulses of the agent-will be attended with a similar result. Our voluntary actions are, on the contrary, the unconditional products of perfectly spontaneous beings, and must be conceived as falling into certain directions rather than into others, not because of any limiting circumstances external or internal, but simply because of the fortuitous and unpredictable selection of an undetermined mind or will.

This is as good a definition of the curious tenet as the present writer is able to frame. At the same time, it must be remarked that its advocates have rarely sought to reduce it to a precise definitive form. And it must be admitted that there are considerable differences in the mode of viewing the subject, as illustrated, for example, by Kant's ingenious reservation of the epithet unconditioned for the noumenal, as distinguished from the phenomenal will. Yet all forms of the doctrine that need concern us really point to the conclusion, that actions resulting from choice cannot be classified with the ordinary phenomena of causation in respect to their invariable order and conditional certainty. I shall, following excellent examples, discard the terms necessity and freedom, and employ the expressions determined or determinate with their