Still the question remains, are we the passive recipients of these movements which register themselves in our brain? Are we merely witnesses to a sequence of movement upon desire, volition coming in as a nexus between the two? Let us again refer to our author. "I believe," he says (p. 483), "that to demand that our volitions shall be stated as either free or not free is to mystify and embroil the real case, and to super-add factitious difficulties to a problem not in its own nature insoluble. Under a certain motive, as hunger, I act in a certain way, taking the food that is before me, going where I shall be fed, or performing some other preliminary conditions. The sequence is simple and clear when so expressed: bring in the idea of freedom, and there is instantly a chaos, an imbroglio, a jumble." Again (p. 484), he says, "If any one asks whether the course of volition in a man or an animal is a case of despotism or a case of freeedom, I answer that the terms have no application whatsoever to the subject. The question put into someone's mouth by Carlyle 'Is virtue then a gas?' is not too ridiculous a parody on the foregoing." That is to say man is simply a machine, a passive subject to the play of forces. And if this is a true account of him, so that "as between the different motives of his mind there is no meaning in liberty of choice," (p. 487), we may admit that freedom and despotism are not applicable terms. This is Determinism, pure and simple.

I have referred already to the curious lapses of consistency of which philosophers of this school may continually be convicted. For example, compare this foregoing passage with another. "Deliberation," he says (pp. 408-409), "is a voluntary act, under a concurrence or complication of motive forces. During the moments of abeyance or suspended action the current of

the thought brings forward some new motive to throw its weight into one scale, whence arises a preponderance. From our own experience, we come to see that it is dangerous to carry into effect the result of the first combat of opposing forces; and this apprehension of evil consequences is a stimulant of the will. It is one of the properties of a well-trained intellect to make at once a decisive estimate of the amount of time and thought to be allowed for the influx of considerations on both sides of the case, and at the end of such reasonable time and thought to give way to the side that appears the stronger."

No doubt we are all agreed on the very reasonable and edifying character of this passage, in which, by the way, the ego has slipped in unobserved. But not to dwell on that, I would leave it to philosophers of Bain's way of thinking to harmonise these two passages, to reconcile the determinism of the first with the freedom of the second. The first would represent man as merely a passive percipient in the drama of his own life, and his actions, like the resultants of mechanical forces, as the inevitable effects of pre-operative conditions. The second, apparently innocent of any sense of inconsistency, endows him with the power of balancing opposing considerations, of with-holding present action as long as he pleases, and finally of giving way, or not, to the side which appears to him the stronger. Such inconsistencies will always crop up in artificial systems of thought which would represent man-who is something superior to nature, since he is nature's interpreter-as nothing more than one of her products, albeit the most complex.

Indeed, this theory of Determinism seems to carry its own condemnation in the revolt of human consciousness against it. Consciousness, since it is the immediate knowledge which the mind itself has of its own operations, is,

after all, the only certain informant to which the Positivist can apply for the facts of mental life. Now if there be any persistent, ineradicable factors in human consciousness they are (i) the sense of our own existence, the sense that I exist as the basis of all my feelings, thoughts, and volitions; and (ii) that I am free to act in accordance with the motives which are pressing upon me,, or to act in direct opposition to them, or to abstain from acting at all. But apparently the method of many of the Positivists in dealing with the nature of man's mind has been first to make their theory, and then select their facts. The prospect of framing a philosophy which shall bring everything in the universe under the same laws of invariable sequence was too attractive to be resisted and so they have jumped to the hasty conclusion that these laws must govern the whole realm of mind as well as of external nature; though in their jump they have lost sight of these two persistent facts in consciousness. As Mr. Sidgwick says, the most overwhelming cumulative proof in favour of Determinism

seems more than balanced by a single argument on the other side, the immediate affirmation of consciousness in the moment of deliberate volition. It is impossible for me to think at such a moment that my volition is completely determined by my formed character and the motives acting upon it. The opposite conviction is so strong as to be absolutely unshaken by the evidence brought against it." On what intelligible theory, I would ask, other than that of my freedom can Determinists account for the fact that at this moment, as I stand here, I have the power to direct my mind whither I will; that at my absolute choice I can make it range over a host of the most incongruous ideas, touching on each lightly, or dwelling on it persistently, dismissing it finally, or reverting to it, as I please. I can at this moment call up an event in my childhood, or a line

of poetry, or an incident in the South African war, or the formula for the square of (a + b), and a thousand such ideas, simply at my absolute will. What explanation can they give why I should take the war incident third, instead of first or second? And in the face of this power, what justification have these philosophers for representing my consciousness of freedom as an illusion? This is not reverie, in which trains of ideas present themselves by mere association. The brain, it is true, may follow a certain involuntary course of action, and may thus suggest to the mind a train of ideas: and this succession of ideas, while the will is passive, might conceivably be accounted for by a theory of Determinism. But we know, too, that the will has the power to control the cerebral action. "We can interrupt a chain of thought, and start another, and out of a variety of thoughts we can reject those which are most pressing."

A good deal of obscurity has been brought into the question before us by the use of the word "motive." Many of the Positivists are too fond of taking it literally, as though motives acted on man in the same way as force does on matter. Of course, if this use were allowed to them, the theory of Determinism would be the more easily defended. But the word "motive" can only be admitted as a metaphor in questions of mental phenomena. "There is no such analogy," says Dr. Momerie, "as the word motive suggests between the movement of a machine and the action of an ego; between the force of the current which is carrying the swimmer away, and the desire which urges him towards the bank. If a number of forces act on a machine, it must inevitably yield to their resultant. But when a number of motives bear upon an ego, he need not yield to any of them. He can pause and reflect. can call up other motives." Even when the whirlwind of

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temptation is sweeping him away, and moral landmarks are for the moment forgotten, yet by a mighty effort he can right himself, and assert his mastery over the "motives" that a moment before seemed so irresistible.

The difference between physical and psychical motives is well illustrated by Professor Green in his Prolegomena to Ethics. He points out that when Esau sells his birthright for a mess of pottage, it was not, strictly speaking, his hunger which was his motive. His animal wants conditioned his motive. But the motive itself was his own idea of himself as finding his chief good in the satisfaction of the animal want. If it were not so, he would not have regarded himself as responsible for his action. And this was the true reason of his subsequent remorse. Here is another fact in mental experience for which Determinism fails to account. It is to no purpose that Spinoza tries to explain away remorse as an illusion of the imagination. We are not deceived. We feel, after each lapse from right, that we might have chosen the better part. Even if there was nothing more to be said, there is strong ground for presumption that remorse is not due to mental illusion, in the fact that this sensibility is most poignant in the pure and noble, and is least keen in the grossly ignorant and degraded. As Dr. Martineau finely says, "It is not the most guilty who know most of guilt."

To sum up, then, the common sense of mankind will always revolt against a system of philosophy as narrow and artificial which, while undertaking to explain all phenomena by its neatly-cut theories, yet ignores the facts which every sane man's consciousness reveals. Already the reaction against Positivism is vigorous and decided, and our ablest thinkers admit that no system which ignores the metaphysical, can ever account in all its