[23] Prof. Huxley, in one of his latest utterances, puts this point strongly: "The practice of what is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion, it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive." Lecture at Oxford on "Ethics and Evolution."
[24] See Dr. Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, II, pp. 5, 99–110.
[25] W. Whewell, Elements of Morality, Sect. 275.
[26] The Doctrine of Morality, by Dr. R. B. Fairbairn (Whitaker, N. Y., 1887), pp. 109–113.
[27] This feature is recognized in what is usually termed "formal freedom," i. e. that psychical capacity of rational choice which is essentially formative of "personality." To lose this would be the loss of personality. Whether the power of free choice between good and evil is impaired in man's corrupt state, being put in bondage or subserviency to a depraved love of sin, is quite a different question.
[28] "Liberum arbitrium habetur, quando positis ad agendum requisitis, potest quis agere vel non agere." Quoted from W. S. Lilly's Right and Wrong, p. 104, 2d Ed., London, Chapman and Hall.
[29] Part I, Chap. VI.
[30] Materialistic evolution, which holds matter as being the energy and cause of all things, leaves no place for free-will, because in truth it leaves no place for mind. For "mind" or "soul" as a real entity or being which thinks, feels and wills, it substitutes mere "mentality" as an effect of atomic or molecular changes in the brain. "Mind," as a self-conscious spirit that itself self-knowingly acts, is repudiated. Nothing is left but a series of sensations, thoughts and wishes that are as truly physically-produced effects as are the varied perfumes of flowers, the fall of rain or the waves of the sea. No selfhood remains in man but the physical organism which, in material causation, gives out the various forms of products or manifestations denominated "mental." But this materialistic theory is not science. It not only stands contradicted by the common judgment of mankind in all ages, but breaks down utterly in the presence of scientific psychology. For this finds among its unquestionable and irreducible facts a real self-conscious subject or self back of the series of thoughts, emotions and volitions, holding all these psychical experiences in its unitary consciousness, and, with its memories of the past, carrying its personal identity through present activity on into the future. The series of mental experiences, in the theory, are independent of each other and dependent only on the brain changes which directly produce them, and thus, by necessity, ignorant of each other. Personal identity, therefore, is full disproof of the theory. For personal identity rests in a single abiding consciousness, in which all separate mental acts are known as its own acts, the materials for memory and comparison. The truth is, that all moral distinctions arise out of the conviction that each individual, in the center of his personality, is a soul, itself determining its rational choices and responsible for the conduct of life.
[31] The contradiction thus involved is well put by Prof. E. D. Roe, of Oberlin, O., in Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct., 1894: "This law (autonomy) pre-supposes the freedom of the will, for without freedom 'oughtness,' 'responsibility' and 'repentance' would possess no significance. Every one, as the necessarians admit, acts under the idea of freedom. Their hypothesis to explain this is, that the subject acts under illusion (necessary illusion, of course). But here an hypothesis is necessary to explain the hypothesis. Why, if necessity is the truth, is the subject necessitated to believe falsity? A very strange truth it is which necessitates itself to be disbelieved." Pp. 656, 657.
[32] See Introduction to the Study of Philosophy, by J. H. W.Stuckenberg, D. D. (Armstrong & Sons, New York, 1888), pp. 321, 322.