[496] 'Le Sentiment de l'Effort, et la Conscience de l'Action,' in Revue Philosophique, xxviii. 561.
[497] P. 577.
[498] They will be found indicated, in somewhat popular form, in a lecture on 'The Dilemma of Determinism,' published in the Unitarian Review (of Boston) for September 1884 (vol. xxii. p. 193).
[499] See Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens, pp. 594-5; and compare the conclusion of our own chapter on Attention, Vol. I. pp. 448-454.
[500] Thus at least I interpret Prof. Lipps's words: "Wir wissen uns naturgemäss in jedem Streben umsomehr aktiv, je mehr unser ganzes Ich bei dem Streben beheiligt ist," u. s. w. (p. 601).
[501] Such ejaculations as Mr. Spencer's: "Psychical changes either conform to law or they do not. If they do not, this work, in common with all works on the subject, is sheer nonsense: no science of Psychology is possible" (Principles of Psychology, i. 503),—are beneath criticism. Mr. Spencer's work, like all the other 'works on the subject,' treats of those general conditions of possible conduct within which all our real decisions must fall no matter whether their effort be small or great. However closely psychical changes may conform to law, it is safe to say that individual histories and biographies will never be written in advance no matter how 'evolved' psychology may become.
[502] Caricatures of the kind of supposition which free will demands abound in deterministic literature. The following passage from John Fiske's Cosmic Philosophy (pt. ii. chap. xvii) is an example: "If volitions arise without cause, it necessarily follows that we cannot infer from them the character of the antecedent states of feeling. If, therefore, a murder has been committed, we have a priori no better reason for suspecting the worst enemy than the best friend of the murdered man. If we see a man jump from a fourth-story window, we must beware of too hastily inferring his insanity, since he may be merely exercising his free-will; the intense love of life implanted in the human breast being, as it seems, unconnected with attempts at suicide or at self-preservation. We can thus frame no theory of human actions whatever. The countless empirical maxims of every-day life, the embodiment as they are of the inherited and organized sagacity of many generations, become wholly incompetent to guide us; and nothing which any one may do ought ever to occasion surprise. The mother may strangle her first-born child, the miser may cast his long-treasured gold into the sea, the sculptor may break in pieces his lately-finished statue, in the presence of no other feelings than those which before led them to cherish, to hoard, and to create.
"To state these conclusions is to refute their premise. Probably no defender of the doctrine of free-will could be induced to accept them, even to save the theorem with which they are inseparably wrapped up. Yet the dilemma cannot be avoided. Volitions are either caused or they are not. If they are not caused, an inexorable logic brings us to the absurdities just mentioned. If they are caused, the free-will doctrine is annihilated.... In truth, the immediate corollaries of the free-will doctrine are so shocking, not only to philosophy but to common-sense, that were not accurate thinking a somewhat rare phenomenon, it would be inexplicable how any credit should ever have been given to such a dogma. This is but one of the many instances in which by the force of words alone men have been held subject to chronic delusion.... Attempting, as the free-will philosophers do, to destroy the science of history, they are compelled by an inexorable logic to pull down with it the cardinal principles of ethics, politics, and jurisprudence. Political economy, if rigidly dealt with on their theory, would fare little better; and psychology would become chaotic jargon.... The denial of causation is the affirmation of chance, and 'between the theory of Chance and the theory of Law there can be no compromise, no reciprocity, no borrowing and lending.' To write history on any method furnished by the free-will doctrine would be utterly impossible."—All this comes from Mr. Fiske's not distinguishing between the possibles which really tempts man and those which tempt him not at all. Free-will, like psychology, deals with the former possibles exclusively.
[503] On the education of the Will from a pedagogic point of view, see an article by G. Stanley Hall in the Princeton Review for November 1882, and some bibliographic references there contained.
[504] See his Emotions and Will, 'The Will,' chap. i. I take the name of random movements from Sully, Outlines of Psychology, p. 593.