is willing to have even good things fatally forced upon his acceptance, and who is not inspired by the thought of believing freely in his freedom, must be a poor creature indeed. But suppose Professor James had expressed his thought baldly; suppose he had said: "I myself hold to indeterminism, not because I fail to see the plausibility of the opposite doctrine, but because, if human actions were causeless, what more natural than that man should causelessly believe in their causeless origination? Accordingly, I causelessly believe in the causelessness of my actions, confident that no one knows enough about the matter to prove me in the wrong." Would the doctrine thus stated—and this only means the doctrine stripped of misleading associations—have proved particularly attractive?
It is not attractive even when superficially considered; it only seems arbitrary and unreasonable; a something to be taken rather as a play of fancy than as a serious argument. But looked into more narrowly, the doctrine is seen in its implications to be something very serious and terrible. So little has been said upon this topic in the vast literature of the dispute regarding the will, that I make no excuse for discussing it at some length. The issue has too often been clouded by the associations which hover about the words 'liberty,' 'freedom' and 'freewill,' and the true significance of indeterminism has not been clearly seen. I have said above that it is a pity to stir the emotions when one is trying to settle a question of fact; but as very much has been said upon the topic of the terrors of determinism that it is allowable, as an antidote to this poison, to point out the much more real terrors of 'free-will.'
Let us suppose that the 'libertarian' or 'free-willist'—the indeterminist—is right, and that human actions may be causeless. I am, then, endowed with 'freedom.' This is not freedom in the usual sense of the word, remember; and I have put it into quotation marks to indicate that fact. It means only that my actions cannot wholly be accounted for by anything that has preceded them, even by my own character and impulses, inherent or acquired. But, I ask myself, if I am endowed with 'freedom,' in what sense may this 'freedom' be called mine. Suppose that I have given a dollar to a blind beggar. Can I, if it is really an act of 'free-will,' be properly said to have given the money? Was it given because / was a man of tender heart, one prone to benevolent impulses, and naturally incited by the sight of suffering to make an effort to relieve it? Not at all; in just so far as the gift was the result of 'free-will,' these things could have had nothing to do with the matter. Another man, the veriest miser and skinflint, the most unfeeling brute upon the streets, might equally well have been the instrument of the benevolent deed. His impulses might all be selfish, and his past life a consistent history of sordid greed; I am a lover of my kind; but what has all this to do with acts of 'free-will'? If
