only of the invariable elements were embodied in the abstract idea. Although more attentive consideration might have shown that in all volition one condition is a superior motive in the direction of the resulting action, yet the ingredient of the phenomenon which most interested the observer was the mind's capacity to entertain different motives, to pause, deliberate, and choose upon the presentation of a variety of open courses. This intervention of deliberative consciousness appeared most strikingly to mark off voluntary action from all other, and easily became the connotation of the name. And thus we may understand how voluntary action as a whole, now looked back upon through this abstract idea, came to mean simply the indeterminate, unpredictable part of the process. This notion of volition, too, was framed agreeably to the ancient modes of thought already spoken of. Instead of voluntary actions -being referred to an indwelling soul as their immediate cause, they were now associated with an occult faculty, the will, which, like the earlier conception, was invested with all the dignified accompani ments of boundless variety of selection, and impenetrable mystery. This faculty, further, was supposed to inhere in the spiritual substance underlying all the phenomena of mind. At the same time its peculiar prerogatives appear to have been regarded as its own, and not as derived from its sustaining substratum.*

By this new idea the obscuration of the real nature of voluntary action was completed. It served to confirm the supposition that there existed something in the mind distinct from the phenomena of volition, namely, an unknown entity or power, capable of originating at any moment an indefinite number of particular volitions bearing no uniform and certain relations to attendant circumstances. To this power men ascribed all such effects as deliberating, weighing, and choosing, while they overlooked the less impressive fact that to a given individual at a given time and in given circumstances, some motive or set of motives will certainly outweigh all others. Thus, instead of conceiving the will, as modern

* The word "will" in its present common meaning of a mental faculty, a distinct part of the mind, seems to be of comparatively modern origin. The Greek and Latin words (0€λnois, voluntas) which were of late formation, were generally used to denote the expression of the result of particular states of deliberation-the course of action willed or chosen, the avowed choice.-Cicero, Tusc. 4, 6, 10. It is scarcely necessary to say that, like the Greek and Latin substantives, both our own "will" and the Wille of the German are of later origin than the verbs, inasmuch as they are derived from them.

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science helps us to do, merely as an abstraction, a sort of imaginary point where a large number of forces may at any given time through the mechanism of thought compound their action, they seem to have pictured it as a mysterious spiritual being, endowed with an infinite variety of latent forces, and discharging these in some utterly irregular and unaccountable way.

A brief study of the more modern writers who have supported the doctrine of undetermined volition, can hardly fail to show that this abstract conception of an occult volitional power, has been the chief contributor to the vitality of the theory. Spinoza recognised that it was the universal will, abstracted from particular volitions, which was supposed to be unconditioned.* But no one appears to have done better service in pointing out this source of the delusion than Mr. Herbert Spencer. He says "Considered as an internal perception, the illusion consists in supposing that at each moment the ego is something more than the aggregate of feelings and ideas, actual and nascent, which then exists. A man who, after being subject to an impulse consisting of a group of psychical states, real and ideal, performs a certain action, usually asserts that he determined to perform the action; and by speaking of his conscious self as having been something separate from the group of psychical states constituting the impulse, is led into the error of supposing that it was not the impulse alone which determined the action."+

So much may perhaps suffice as an account of the chief intellectual ingredients which have made up the conception of an indeterminate will. Early and crude distinctions of the human mind, associations derived from the impressive facts of external coercion, the influences of a transformed animism, and the tyranny practised on the intellect by its own abstractions-these are among the principal intellectual roots of this curious growth. We may now turn to the no less interesting group of emotional influences which appear to have sustained the belief.

Now it is noticeable that writers in favour of uncaused volitions are tacitly referring for the most part to unrealized, in other words,

* Ostendimus enim voluntatem ens esse universale sive ideam, qua omnes singulares volitiones, hoc est, id quod iis omnibus commune est, explicamus. Quum itaque hanc omnium volitionum communem sive universalem ideam facultatem esse credant, minime mirum, si hanc facultatem ultra limites intellectus in infinitum se extendere dicant.-Ethica, pars ii., schol. to prop. xlix.

+ Principles of Psychology, Vol. I., pp. 500, 501. This whole passage on the free-will notion is full of suggestion.

to future actions. The sense of freedom, which an interrogation of personal consciousness is said by the school of Hamilton to afford, is drawn, not so much from a review of past volitions, as from the anticipation of future ones. Looking at past actions, whether our own or those of others, we can have no great doubt as to the presence of determining motives, at least in the majority of cases. The doubt arises when one looks onward into the future. The partial explanation of this fact is probably to be found in what has been said about the abstract and easily misleading nature of the current ideas respecting the will. Although actual cases of voluntary action manifest the presence of some determining motive, it could not have been predicted in many particular instances what ⚫ would be that ruling consideration. The nature of voluntary action is so complex, that when it is but a little removed from the present there is a difficulty-except in a few classes of action where some supreme influence, such as conscience, can be counted on as constant-in precalculating which of all the elements entering into the process will prevail. And to the majority of minds inability to predict seems a mark of the absence of objective uniformity: uncertainty in its proper sense, that is, doubt arising from ignorance, comes to mean want of a uniform order in the phenomena themselves. But the mere uncertainty attending future volitions does not seem an adequate explanation of this intense belief in their lawless spontaneity. It is probable that this idea is a source of pleasure to the human mind. Men like to look upon the wide region of the future as something wholly undetermined. The very love of the vague and undefined, which appeals to the emotions of wonder and affords scope for imagination, serves to make any new discovery of uniformity in phenomena unpalatable and obnoxious. We may see this, too, in many other departments of inquiry. To many minds the progress of astronomical discovery is a shock and a disappointment. They like to gaze up at the unclouded nocturnal heavens, and to conceive that the bright spheres are wild free spirits wandering whithersoever their own unfettered will carries them. And they are apt to regard in much the same light many other seemingly spontaneous movements of nature, such as the growth of flowers, the formation of dew, and the changeful play of the winds. Now, whatever is pleasing to the mind is kept before it by the attraction of feeling; and thus a strong opposing force is presented to newly discovered truths.

Besides this general emotional tendency to indulge ideas of

vagueness, the popular conception of future volitions illustrates other influences of feeling tending no less to support the common belief in free-will. Of these one of the most curious seems to be that afforded by the mere force of a robust activity. It has been remarked in the preceding essay, that out of the nervous energy stored up in the organism, there grows, prior to all motive, a strong tendency to action of all kinds; and this disposition serves, as was there shown, to influence the ideas and expectations. A vigorous lad will uniformly dwell on all the bright possibilities of movement, all the pleasures to be derived from wide and various action, overlooking on the other hand all the risks of failure. Very nearly allied to this idea, is the wild supposition that one's future actions will be boundless, unlimited by any such conditions, external or internal, as a careful study of the past would certainly disclose. In other words, the thirst for action, by generating extravagant ideas of our own active powers, easily helps to sustain an inexact notion of volition as a whole, investing it with

attributes of vagueness and boundlessness. This effect may be illustrated by the case of a boy who is very zealous for some new plan, and who has to be reminded that to-morrow he will not care to finish what he is now so eager to begin. And it may reasonably be supposed that most persons feel something of this influence in picturing to themselves the unknown region of action which lies before them.

The proper emotional forces seem to have had still greater influence than eagerness for unlimited action in sustaining the belief now considered. Any mode of feeling is very apt to take full possession of the mind for a certain period, colouring all the ideas and beliefs of the time. Now, in anticipating the future of our lives, of which so little can safely be predicted, there is clearly ample room for this play of the stronger and more habitually recurring feelings. First of all, it is evident that a feeling of pride and a sense of power would naturally lead one to regard his future actions as absolutely undetermined. People are a little apt to resent being too easily understood even by their friends, and like to imagine that their future action is a perfect mystery to their neighbours. And thus the idea that future actions are already fixed by the ever unfolding series of causes, easily appears degrading to the majority of minds. It may well seem unworthy to suppose that such trivial influences have had any effect in sustaining so speculative a doctrine; yet a careful attention to its modes of advocacy can leave the inquirer

in little doubt on the subject. The attributes of fixity and certainty have been looked on by metaphysicians themselves as destructive of the supreme dignity of the human will. It is curious that it seems never to occur to these writers that their past actions, the reasons for which they would probably always confess themselves able to discover, are perfect illustrations of this fixity of relations, and so ought, on this supposition, to be a constant source of humiliation.

Once more, any form of emotion which frequently stimulates voluntary conduct, is exceedingly likely to lend a false colouring to future action. It should be remembered that in looking onward to unrealized actions we are not making them a subject of scientific interest merely, as when an astronomer, for example, anticipates any sidereal phenomenon. Our volitions are objects not so much for the speculative as for the practical reason: they interest us less as facts susceptible of scientific study and arrangement, than as the grand means of attaining the desired ends of life. A brief experience of life shows us that happiness and well-being are quite as conditional upon our own conduct as upon the set of circumstances into which we may happen to be born. For not only are human actions the direct means of securing the temporary ends of life, they have, even when they do not directly modify some permanent circumstance in a person's surroundings, a reflex influence upon his moral nature. And so it happens that a person in anticipating his future field of action, since he is unable, as already seen, to predict what any but the immediately adjacent segments of time will evolve, will be exceedingly likely to magnify unduly the efficiency of his own impulses. Thus he will be inclined, when filling up in imagination a variety of possible futures, not only to construct sets of circumstances which the common conditions of life scarcely warrant him in expecting, but also to conceive himself as inspired by the ardour of certain lofty purposes more powerfully and exclusively than those same life-conditions commonly if ever, allow us to witness.* The future career of a man, to whom the

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* It might seem that this tendency would only account for the belief in extravagant and unnatural achievement of future action owing to combinations of motive influence far more energetic than any yet experienced. It does not appear to explain the expectation of future action as undetermined by any motives. The individual in these ideal endeavours still imagines himself swayed by emotions similar in kind to those which have often stimulated him to actions. But, in fact, this tendency to believe in the extraordinary intensity and exclusive influence of certain feelings in the future, very soon leads its