having been, prior to the conception, suggested by our conscious experience.

The

It seems to me that all the attempts which have been made to disprove our consciousness of freedom have failed as signally as those which have sought to disprove our consciousness of our own permanence. For my own part, at any rate, I am conscious of myself, not only as a being capable of feeling and of receiving the ideas that are presented to me, but capable also of a voluntary exercise of attention, and a voluntary origination of a train of thought or a course of conduct. free act of an ego is a creative act, and does not therefore involve, as Jonathan Edwards and Hamilton assert, an infinite number of previous volitions. After I have reflected on what I want, what I ought to want, what I am likely to attain, and what is the best means of attaining it, I am conscious of forming a determination or volition to do certain things. Every such volition originates, or rather I, as often as I am the author of such a volition, originate, a new train of thoughts, or a new set of events, or both. This volition sets agoing the requisite movements in the brain, which may then either go on automatically for a considerable time, or may require to be supplemented by fresh volitional causes and cerebral effects. What

F

is the exact nature of the connection between the will and the brain does not, for our present purpose, very much matter. Dr Carpenter says, "The intensity of any ideational state is an expression of hyperamic condition of some part of the cerebrum, as that of a sensational state is of the sensorium. All volitional action is based on an idea of what is to be done. It seems clear that the same vaso-motor action, which is the condition of attention to that idea, will, if excited to produce a still greater local hyperæmia, give effect to it in a spontaneous motorial discharge." But it must be carefully remembered that the volition is neither the intensification of the hyperemic condition nor the motorial discharge that is consequent thereon. It precedes both. The volition is not made for an ego by motion in the brain, but is the outcome of its own activity. I create a volition for myself in "the abysmal depths of personality," which, because it cannot be placed on the dissecting-table, has been declared non-existent.

It is the consciousness of our ability to create volitions that gives us our idea of power. That we have such an idea is very evident. The ablest treatise written to disprove it assumes it as the basis of proof. Hume tries to demonstrate that we have no notion of power by attempting to show that there

is something-viz., habit, capable of producing it. And of course whatever is capable of producing anything has power, according to the ordinary use of that word. Now, whence could we have received this idea of power, if not from the conscious exercise of will?

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It seems to me somewhat unfortunate that the upholders of human freedom have tried to trace the notion of power to our consciousness of effort. Effort," says Bain, "is the muscular consciousness that accompanies voluntary activity, especially in the painful stages. It has been supposed that here we have mechanical power originating in purely mental agency, and that hence volition was the source of all motive power. But it is not the consciousness of effort, but well-digested meals, that enables the labourer to do his work. The concurring consciousness of expended power is no more the cause of that power than the illumination cast by the engine-furnace is the source of the movements generated. It is strange that the consciousness of effort should be deemed the cause of voluntary movements, because when the power is at its greatest the effort is null, and vice versa. The feeling of effort is the symptom of declining energy, the proof that the true antecedent-viz., the organic state of nerves and muscles-is on

the eve of exhaustion." Mill argues to the same effect that the fact of nisus or effort being involved in the idea of power, proves that idea to be concerned rather with the relation of our volitions to our muscles than of ourselves to our volitions.

There is a good deal of weight in these objections. It seems to me that the ideas of power and effort are really, as Bain says, contrary to one another. The muscular sense of effort is a sign that, though we have been exerting some power, we are not possessed of all the power that is necessary for our purpose. I have a consciousness of power in creating a volition, but a sense of effort in carrying it out. It is in the conflict between my power, as manifested in volition, and the resistance of my organism and its environment, that the sense of effort arises. I think it is better to say, therefore, that in effort we are conscious, not of power, but of insufficient power.

The real mystery of the will is to be looked for-not in the relation between the volition and the muscles - but in the relation between the

volition and the ego. There is no more reason to seek for power in the muscles than to look for skill in an artist's brushes and colours. The muscles and the colours are the instruments in

both cases.

Herbert Spencer says that the only force we can know is the force of which we are conscious during our muscular efforts; and he thinks that there is a necessary illusion by which we are obliged to suppose similar forces behind the external phenomenon that resist us. This, he says, is the only conception of causality open to us. Yet this fails; because if the force in a chair, for example, were like our own, the chair must be conscious of sensations as I am. I have never experienced the "necessary illusion" to which Spencer refers. I never suppose muscular exertion in chairs or in any external phenomena. My notion of power in material objects, regarded otherwise than metaphysically, is purely negative. It is that of something, I know not what, which offers resistance, of something which produces results, I know not how.

If the doctrine of necessity were true, we must regard ourselves as merely the passive recipients of impressions and ideas. When we were in a state of what is called deliberation, we should be conscious only of waiting to see which motive would eventually be the strongest. It is possible to form a conception of a conscious being devoid of will. Most animals probably possess it only in its minimum form of determination to obtain, as