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 This Book is supplied by MESSRS. SMITH, 
 ELDER & Co. to Booksellers on terms which will 
 not admit of their allowing a discount from the 
 advertised price.
 
 ON FREEDOM
 
 J<T>' 
 
 V 
 
 ON FREEDOM 
 
 BY 
 
 G. \ LOCKER LAMPSON 
 
 " Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing 
 admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we 
 reflect on them : the starry heavens above and the moral 
 law within " (Critique of Practical Reason). 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1911 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson <V Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh 
 
 
 « » 
 
 

 
 7? 
 
 PROLEGOMENA 
 
 Immanuel Kant has demonstrated in the Critique 
 '-' of Pure Reason that the idea of freedom and the 
 - law of nature taking part together in the same 
 a! human action is one that does not involve any 
 necessary contradiction. This was truly an epoch- 
 making achievement, and had that great man 
 left nothing else behind him for the instruction 
 and inspiration of posterity than his exposition 
 of the intelligible and empirical characters, he 
 would still be remembered through the ages as 
 !jj one of the mighty thinkers of the earth. No one 
 ■ can study that part of the Critique with an honest 
 h desire to appreciate its significance without being 
 a convinced that mechanism, as the undisputed over- 
 lord of the realms of faith and knowledge, has 
 finally been driven from the stronghold where so 
 many had imagined it to be irrevocably and im- 
 pregnably entrenched. Not that mechanism was 
 shown to be false — mechanism was only false, if 
 mechanism was to be all in all — but the very idea 
 ^ that law and freedom could participate in the same 
 ; action without contradiction drew the teeth of the 
 sensualistic theory, the intrinsic brutality of which 
 
 i 1
 
 vi PROLEGOMENA 
 
 lay in the assumption that if natural law held good 
 universally, as indeed was maintained, then no 
 such thing as freedom had any chance of survival. 
 During the latter half of the eighteenth century 
 the general position in respect of the problem was, 
 therefore, as follows : — Until Kant appeared upon 
 the scene, the ideas of freedom and natural law 
 had, so far as conscious human activity was con- 
 cerned, remained unreconciled, and, indeed, ap- 
 peared to be unreconcilable. They were obviously 
 antithetical and admittedly contradictory. If a 
 man clung to the tenets of the one school, it was 
 as much as to acknowledge that he repudiated 
 those of the other. Kant was the first to grapple 
 with the difficulty successfully, and, with the 
 insight of genius, to reconcile the apparently 
 immitigable antagonism within the duality by 
 proving that the parallel action of freedom and 
 nature in the same effect could be an idea which 
 did not necessarily contain an insoluble contra- 
 diction. 
 
 There was, however, a further question. As far 
 as can be gathered from the general trend of his 
 dialectic, he would presumably have attributed 
 man's feeling of freedom to that part of the non- 
 contradictory duality which is opposed to natural 
 law. In other words, he would probably have 
 maintained that the feeling of freedom was the 
 direct consciousness of the free side of the duality
 
 PROLEGOMENA vii 
 
 and, as such, neither the outcome nor the expres- 
 sion of natural law — a proposition which lands us 
 in inextricable difficulties. Whether this problem 
 can ever be brought a step nearer to any satis- 
 factory solution is a matter of considerable doubt, 
 but a school of thought has now been in existence 
 for some time which finds itself less and less able, 
 as the years go by, to admit the supersensuous in 
 any shape or form within the region of pheno- 
 menality. Some day it may be proved to the world 
 at large, and without prejudice to human aspira- 
 tions, that it is at least not contradictory to 
 suppose, in fact, that it is not at all improbable, 
 that man's feeling of freedom appertains to that part 
 of the non-contradictory duality which is opposed 
 to freedom. In other words, that the feeling of 
 freedom which every one experiences in the daily 
 walk of life is not the feeling of the free side of the 
 duality, but belongs to, and is the result of, that 
 part of the duality which is represented by the law 
 of nature. 
 
 However this may be, it is in humble and experi- 
 mental continuation of the enquiries of this school 
 that an attempt has here been made (Part II) to 
 suggest how it may be possible that our feeling of 
 freedom is empirical and altogether natural. If 
 any success, however moderate, should attend the 
 effort, the time spent in putting these pages 
 together will not have been wholly thrown away ;
 
 viii PROLEGOMENA 
 
 for the more perfect the homogeneity that can be 
 shown to rule throughout the conscious life of 
 man, the more wonderful will it be seen to be in 
 the exquisite interplay of all its provisions, and 
 ever deeper will belief grow in the existence of a 
 purpose in the Universe. It is inevitable that the 
 transcendent, in years to come, should more and 
 more be relegated to an incommunicable world of 
 its own beyond the limits of the phenomenal, and 
 humanity constrained to admit that neither in 
 thought nor in feeling can it hold any converse 
 with the supernatural. This need not destroy 
 faith in the Infinite nor weaken the belief in man 
 that, though he moves in a contracted sphere, 
 with imperfect knowledge and finite sensibilities, 
 he possesses, for that very reason, a completer 
 aspect, could he but envisage it, and that hemmed 
 in, and incomplete, and blind though he may be, 
 there is a divinity about him that no philosophy 
 can reason away nor any shadows that may envelop 
 him in this life in the least diminish.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prolegomena v 
 
 PART I 
 
 IMMANUEL KANT ON THE PROBLEM OF 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 
 
 Introductory Note 3 
 
 SECTION 
 
 I. A Portion of the Kantian Terminology . 9 
 II. Time and Space 25 
 
 III. The Categories 36 
 
 IV. The Transcendental Object and the Con- 
 
 ception of the Noumenon ... 56 
 
 V. The Understanding and Reason ... 64 
 
 VI. The Freedom of the Will. Practical 
 Freedom distinguished from Trans- 
 cendental Freedom 79 
 
 VII. Introduction to the Problem of Trans- 
 cendental Freedom 84 
 
 VIII. The Problem of Transcendental Freedom 89 
 
 IX. The Problem of Transcendental Freedom 
 
 {Continued) 96 
 
 X. Practical Freedom 116
 
 x CONTENTS 
 
 PART II 
 
 CONCERNING AN EMPIRICAL INTERPRETATION 
 OF THE FEELING OF FREEDOM 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introductory Note 127 
 
 A. — An Etiological as against an Indetermin- 
 
 istic Interpretation 131 
 
 B.— The Empirically Predominant Impulse and 
 the Feeling of Volitional Spontaneity. 
 The Moral Law 138 
 
 C. — Invalidity of the Assignment of an Absolute 
 Character to the Human Will. The Causa 
 sui of the Hegelian Dialectic . . .163 
 
 D.— Invalidity of the Assignment of an Absolute 
 Character to the Human Will {Con- 
 tinued) ......... 198 
 
 -£".— Invalidity of the Assignment of an Absolute 
 Character to the Human Will {Continued). 
 The Subject-Ego and the Object-Ego : 
 The Reflective Reference .... 204 
 
 /-".—Inner and Outer Sense 225 
 
 6?.— Genesis of the Feeling 241 
 
 //".—Analysis of the Feeling 274 
 
 /.—The Justification of Human Effort . . 283
 
 PART I 
 
 IMMANUEL KANT ON THE PROBLEM OF 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM
 
 "The life of Immanuel Kant is hard to describe: he has indeed 
 neither life nor history in the proper sense of the words. He lived 
 an abstract, mechanical, old-bachelor existence in a quiet, remote 
 street of Konigsberg, an old city at the north-eastern boundary of 
 Germany. I do not believe that the great cathedral clock of that 
 city accomplished its day's work in a less passionate and more regular 
 way than its countryman, Immanuel Kant. Rising from bed, coffee- 
 drinking, writing, lecturing, eating, walking, everything had its fixed 
 time ; and the neighbours knew that it must be exactly half-past four 
 when they saw Professor Kant in his grey coat with his cane in his 
 hand step out of his house door, and move towards the little lime- 
 tree avenue, which is called after him the Philosopher's Walk. 
 Eight times he walked up and down that walk at every season 
 of the year, and when the weather was bad or the grey clouds 
 threatened rain, his servant, old Lampe, was seen anxiously following 
 him with a large umbrella under his arm, like an image of Providence. 
 " Strange contrast between the outer life of the man and his world- 
 destroying thought. Of a truth, if the citizens of Konigsberg had 
 had any inkling of the meaning of that thought, they would have 
 shuddered before him, as before an executioner. But the good people 
 saw nothing in him but a professor of philosophy, and when he passed 
 at the appointed hour, they gave him friendly greetings and set 
 their watches." (Heine, translated by Edward Caird in his Critical 
 Philosophy of Kant.)
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO PART I 
 
 The final difficulty that confronts a student of 
 Kant, although from the point of view of the chief 
 problems discussed in his philosophy it is not really 
 a vital matter, is what answer to give the following 
 question : — Did he, somewhat like Fichte after him — 
 who supposed the ego (the human soul) to receive 
 its first excitation by an impulse (Anstoss) from 
 without, caused by what he terms the " absolute 
 ego," and, in reacting against this shock or check, 
 to become conscious of itself and of the non-ego 
 which it produces out of itself * — hold (a) the sub- 
 jective idealistic doctrine that the ego or knowing 
 subject supplies the matter as well as the form 
 of knowledge and experience (the form being sup- 
 plied by our intellectual, the matter by our sentient 
 ego), but that it acts upon, or is excited to action 
 by, something outside itself, which unknown and 
 unknowable something is the real nature and essence 
 behind the phenomena ; in which case Kant's 
 thing-in-itself would be this excitatory Unknown ; 
 (b) the objective idealist doctrine propounded by 
 
 1 See Fichte's Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) — IV. 
 Practical Part of the Science of Knowledge — Fundamental Principle. 
 See also (in the same part) Addenda. (Translation by A. S. Kroeger.) 
 
 3
 
 4 ON FREEDOM 
 
 Schelling, that the ego and non-ego are existences 
 equally real or ideal, but that they are nothing less 
 than manifestations of the Absolute or Universal 
 Nature which produces the non-ego from out of us, 
 and becomes conscious of itself in us, in which case 
 Kant's thing-in-itself would be this self -manifesting 
 Absolute or Infinite ; (c) a special critical intellec- 
 tualism of his own, according to which the knowing 
 subject out of itself supplies the matter as well as 
 the form of knowledge and experience, which as 
 phenomena have no nature of their own, unknow- 
 able or otherwise, outside the knowing subject, 
 but whose real nature as phenomena is in the 
 knowing subject behind them ; in which case the 
 pure knowing subject would be Kant's thing-in- 
 itself ; or, lastly, (d) the absolute idealistic doctrine, 
 for which Hegel, who was vastly indebted to Fichte, 1 
 has generally been given the credit, that although 
 the things of which we have direct consciousness 
 are mere appearances or phenomena, there is 
 nothing whatever outside them as their substrate, 
 either in the knowing subject or apart from the 
 knowing subject, which could be the real nature 
 and essence of them as reparole and limited pheno- 
 mena, but that the true and proper case of these 
 phenomena, finite as they are, is to have their 
 existence founded, not in themselves or any sub- 
 
 1 See, for instance, the Wissensckaftslehre : IV. Practical Part of 
 the Science of Knowledge — " Second Remark " and " Results.' 1
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE 5 
 
 strate belonging to them as phenomena, but in the 
 universal divine Idea. That is to say, as limited 
 phenomena they are not only phenomena for us, 
 but in their own nature, for, as limited phenomena, 
 they have no real substrate. Their only reality 
 and existence is in the universal divine Idea, or the 
 relations between the two terms, subject and object, 
 separated from which, as phenomena, they have no 
 reality behind them. In this latter case, Kant's 
 thing-in-itself would be this universal divine Idea, 
 this relation, which Hegel termed the absolute, 
 living, self-conscious Spirit. 
 
 The first position (a) is in some respects divided 
 from (b) and (d) by a wider cleavage than that which 
 separates it from (c), but all four of them may be 
 ultimately not wholly irreconcilable one with the 
 other. No completely satisfactory answer, how- 
 ever, can be given to this question, inasmuch as 
 Kant seems to incline to each of them in turn 
 in various parts of his published writings. It is 
 possible that he was himself undecided, or regarded 
 the matter as of no real interest to mankind, when 
 once he had proved that the world, as we know it, 
 is nothing but a fabric of our own construction. 
 
 There is another feature of his system which tends 
 to obstruct the apprehension of the reader. He 
 seems to have had an unconquerable aversion to any 
 concrete illustrations that might have rendered the 
 meaning of many of his passages a little clearer.
 
 6 ON FREEDOM 
 
 No one, consequently, has suffered more misinter- 
 pretation at the hands of exegetes. Whether the 
 argument was not always sufficiently clear in his 
 own mind to admit of illustration, which is hardly 
 to be supposed, whether he thought that no one 
 could fail to understand it as it stood, or feared 
 lest any concrete example might exclude from it 
 some essential or introduce into it some alien ele- 
 ment to the detriment of its perfect appreciation, 
 the result at any rate has frequently been a falla- 
 cious interpretation on the part of students, and 
 a loss therefore of the truth which lies perhaps in 
 the particular demonstration. 
 
 The books primarily used in the compilation of 
 this Part (Part I), with the exceptions of Sections 
 I, III, and V, are Immanuel Kant's Kritik der 
 Reinen Vemunft (text of the First Edition), and 
 especially the translation of it by F. Max Muller. 
 
 The explanatory paragraphs interpolated in the 
 translation, and the ampler development of some 
 of Kant's arguments, have been introduced solely 
 for the purpose and in the hope of rendering the 
 latter's meaning as little abstruse as possible for 
 those, who, perhaps, have never had the inclina- 
 tion to study the Critique of Pure Reason, of 
 which the remarks on Transcendental Freedom 
 form only a very small part. The reader, there- 
 fore, who turns these pages may rest assured that 
 a disinterested attempt has been made in his behalf
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE 7 
 
 to convey the great philosopher's meaning clearly, 
 and no other. 
 
 Sections II and IV have been gleaned from dif- 
 ferent parts of the Critique of Pure Reason, as it 
 was thought that, although they do not bear 
 so directly upon the problems of Transcendental 
 Freedom as Sections VI, VII, VIII, and IX, they 
 would serve nevertheless to elucidate some of 
 the passages in the later sections, and, as it were, 
 help to unlock the vast treasure-house of Kant's 
 mind. 
 
 Sections I, III, and V, which have likewise been 
 included merely as a propaedeutic to Kant's dis- 
 sertation on Transcendental Freedom, have been 
 compiled from other portions of the same Critique 
 after due comparison and consideration of numerous 
 exegetic works, the following eight perhaps proving 
 the most useful : — Georg Simmel's Kant — Sechzehn 
 Vorlcsungen gehalten an der Berliner Universitdt 
 (from which several very valuable suggestions 
 have been taken), Friedrich Paulsen's Immanuel 
 Kant, Sein Leben und Seine Lehre (translated 
 by J. E. Creighton and Albert Lefevre), Edward 
 Caird's Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, 
 James Hutchinson Stirling's Text-Book to Kant, 
 W. Windelband's Die Geschichtc der neueren Philo- 
 sophic (translated by James H. Tufts), Richard 
 Falckenberg's Geschichtc der neueren Philosophic 
 (translated by A. C. Armstrong), Kuno Fischer's
 
 8 ON FREEDOM 
 
 Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason 
 (translated by J. P. Mahaffy), and H. A. Prichard's 
 Kant's Theory of Knowledge. 
 
 Section X, containing Kant's doctrine of Practical 
 Freedom, has been added, in order that the reader 
 may obtain by means of it, and in connection with 
 the previous four sections, a view of Kant's doctrine 
 of Freedom as a whole. 
 
 Finally, it may be said that no attempt has here 
 been made to suggest any criticisms of any part of 
 Kant's doctrine. The preliminary sections, as well 
 as those that follow them, doubtless afford oppor- 
 tunities for criticism ; but the grandeur of the 
 central thought must be admitted by every reader, 
 and a tribute of gratitude paid to the great 
 thinker, who, by his genius, has justified the faith of 
 those, who, seeing in nature nothing but necessity, 
 have believed nevertheless in the ultimate freedom 
 of man.
 
 SECTION I 
 
 A PORTION OF THE KANTIAN TERMINOLOGY 
 
 It is not often in any metaphysical discussion that 
 genuine thought is difficult to grasp — and we use 
 the term " genuine thought " for any case where it 
 is possible for a conceptional image to be fitted 
 to any purposive collocation of words that may be 
 used. What, however, is frequently difficult in the 
 extreme is the phraseology in which that thought 
 happens to be clothed. In Hegel there are two 
 conspicuous obstacles that confront the student. 
 In the first place, his terminological system, ap- 
 parently simple and familiar in themselves though 
 the actual words employed by him may generally 
 be, is as hard as, if not harder than, that of any 
 previous or succeeding philosopher. Secondly, he 
 constantly intends his words in their combination to 
 convey what cannot, in the present state of our 
 finitude, be thought at all by the understanding. 
 Where they do convey genuine thought, this 
 thought is in most cases not difficult to grasp, 
 when once the unyielding crust of the Hegelian 
 terminological system has been broken through. 
 With Kant it is different. His phraseology too
 
 io ON FREEDOM 
 
 is hard, a good deal more so indeed than that 
 of most metaphysicians, but it is by no means 
 so peculiarly forbidding and obscure as that of 
 Hegel. Moreover, what Kant intends to convey 
 by his words is nearly always genuine thought, as 
 denned above, that is to say, thought whose content 
 falls within the compass of the cognitive faculties. 
 Unlike Hegel, it is very rarely, if at all, that he 
 strings words together which, though verbally 
 comprehensible in the arbitrary order of their 
 juxtaposition, produce in their colligation no corre- 
 sponding conceptual image in the mind as their 
 combined equivalent. But, as a set-off to these 
 comparative advantages, the genuine thought of 
 the great Konigsberger is harder to seize and to 
 exhaust than the genuine thought of Hegel. It 
 requires a deeper plummet, and, when sounded, 
 will be found to have a richer meaning in it. It 
 is pregnant with weightier consequence, and more 
 abiding and irresistible in its conclusions. It is on 
 account of the enduring value of the solutions 
 arrived at by the Critical Philosophy and the 
 stubborn terminological shell which envelops many 
 portions of Kant's doctrine, that a short elucidation 
 of part of the Kantian nomenclature has been 
 attempted here, in the hope of facilitating for the 
 general reader a better understanding of the pages 
 of Part I that are to follow.
 
 THE KANTIAN TERMINOLOGY n 
 
 A Priori or Pure. — The a priori or pure is the 
 term applied by Kant to one of the factors in all 
 experience. That factor must not be regarded, 
 however, as preceding or arising prior in time to 
 the other according to the law of cause and effect. 
 It is merely an active reality in us which fashions 
 our experience. For the law of cause and effect 
 does not work in us as a known principle, because 
 we happen to interpret our perceptions according 
 to that law. In the case of the law of gravitation, 
 for instance, we transfer a reality, which, so to 
 speak, knows nothing of this law, and as such reality 
 is not able to be grasped by us, into the uncertain 
 language of our ideas. In fact, the formula in 
 which the law of cause and effect is known to us 
 is, as in the case of every law of nature, only the 
 interpretation by us of that soul's reality in us, 
 which reality it is that exercises the function of 
 fashioning experience. This reality is therefore the 
 real a priori, and of its contents we can know 
 nothing. It is merely the condition of that arrange- 
 ment and interpretation of the data of sense which 
 yields a posteriori or empirical knowledge. In 
 short, it is the very condition of the possibility 
 of any experience, and is nothing at all apart from 
 the latter. In other words, the a priori is whatever 
 is presupposed by experience ; or, again, whatever 
 is contributed by the subject itself to a knowledge 
 of objects out of its pure thinking self, irrespective
 
 12 ON FREEDOM 
 
 of anything that it has learnt from or which has 
 been given to it in experience. 
 
 A Posteriori or Empirical. — A posteriori or 
 empirical is in direct contrast to a priori or pure, 
 being whatever constitutes any experience ; that 
 is, whatever has been given to the subject and 
 worked up into an experience by those pure forms 
 of the subject alluded to above. 
 
 Vorstellung = Idea in general. — Kant states in 
 the Critique of Pure Reason that there are plenty of 
 terms adequate to express every kind of Vorstellung 
 or idea, and gives a graduated list of them. The 
 whole class, he says, may be called idea {Vorstellung). 
 Vorstellung, in fact, is any kind of intimation in 
 consciousness or impression on sensibility. 
 
 Perception (German) = conscious idea or Per- 
 ception in general. — Under the heading of Vors- 
 tellung or idea in general there stands conscious 
 idea or perception in general (German Perception). 
 
 Empfindung = Sensation, or subjective or crude 
 perception. — A subjective or crude perception, that 
 is, a perception referring to the subject only as a 
 modification of its state, is sensation (Empfndung) . 
 
 Erkenntniss = Knowledge, or cognition, or 
 objective perception. — An objective perception is 
 called knowledge or cognition (Erkenntniss). 
 
 Anschauung = Perception of an object or 
 formed perception. — Cognition is either perception 
 of an object (Anschauung) or Conception (Begriff).
 
 THE KANTIAN TERMINOLOGY 13 
 
 By perception of an object is meant whatever 
 special sensations {Empfindungen) are, from mere 
 feelings, raised and concreted into what we regard as 
 an actual object apart from us. Kant sometimes 
 seems to use the German words Wahmchmung and 
 Anschauung indifferently, and therefore no ab- 
 solutely defined division can, in his case, be drawn 
 between the two. It is probable, however, that he 
 intended to use Anschauung for pure perceptions 
 (space and time), and Wahrnehmung for empirical 
 perceptions — i.e. perceptions other than space and 
 time. 
 
 Begriff = Conception. — Perception of an object 
 refers immediately to an actually present individual 
 object, and is singular ; whilst conception, which we 
 have seen to be the other kind of cognition, refers 
 to an object mediately, that is, by a characteristic 
 mark that can be shared by several things in 
 common, or, in other words, to a genus. Thus 
 the conception of " gold ' is mediate or indirect 
 (mittelbar) ; that is, we frame this conception 
 through a variety of individual go-betweens. But 
 the perception of a gold pencil-case, which is the 
 perception of an object, is immediate and direct 
 (unmittelbar) , and wholly without intervention or 
 mediation of anything else. It is for this reason 
 that Kant calls an Anschauung or perception of 
 an object an unmittelbar e Vorstellung or immediate 
 idea.
 
 14 ON FREEDOM 
 
 Erfahrungsbegriff = Empirical conception. — 
 A conception is either empirical, that is to say, given 
 a posteriori (like the conception of " gold "), or pure. 
 
 Notio (Kant's text) = Notion or pure con- 
 ception. A pure conception, in so far as it has its 
 origin in the understanding only, that is to say, is 
 a priori, is called Notion (the Notio of Kant's text). 
 
 Idee = Idea or conception of Reason. — A con- 
 ception formed of notions and transcending all 
 possible experience, as, for instance, the conception 
 of "perfect virtue," is an Idea 1 or conception of 
 Reason. In the Critique of Judgment Kant calls 
 this kind of Idea a rational Idea or indemonstrable 
 conception of Reason, in contrast with the above- 
 described empirical and pure conceptions of the 
 Understanding which are always demonstrable (if 
 by demonstration we understand, as in anatomy, 
 merely presentation), i.e. the object corresponding 
 to a conception of the Understanding being always 
 capable of being given in intuition (pure or em- 
 pirical) and authenticated by means of an empirical 
 intuition, that is, the thought of it demonstrated or 
 verified by an example. The conception of magni- 
 tude, for instance, can be given a priori in the pure 
 intuition of s,pace, e.g. of a right line, and conse- 
 
 1 The German word Idee is translated Idea with a capital / in 
 order to differentiate it from idea with a small i, which latter is, on 
 the whole, perhaps the least inadequate rendering of the German 
 Vorstellung.
 
 THE KANTIAN TERMINOLOGY 15 
 
 quently can be authenticated by an empirical 
 intuition, i.e. the thought of it can be demonstrated 
 by an example. 
 
 Erscheinung = Phenomenon. — A phenomenon is 
 the durable object of possible sensations or percep- 
 tions. That is to say, it is an aggregate of possible 
 sensations or perceptions for a subject of a certain 
 intellectual constitution, or, in other words, for the 
 all-embracing consciousness of such a subject, or, in 
 Kant's phrase, " for consciousness in general " {fiir 
 ein Bewusstsein uberhaupt). 1 An actual perception 
 of the object is not necessary in order to constitute 
 it a phenomenon, for a phenomenon can be real, and 
 recognised as real, without its ever having been 
 given in immediate perception, as, for instance, the 
 centre of the earth. Thus phenomena as a whole 
 are the objective world of appearance, or the 
 aggregate of all possible sense-perceptions for an 
 all-embracing consciousness. 
 
 Transcendent. — Transcendent is that which is 
 altogether beyond experience ; in other words, 
 that which transcends or steps out beyond the 
 categories of the understanding. 
 
 Transcendental. — Transcendental is that which 
 is the necessary condition of experience. What is 
 transcendental is, although beyond sensation, not 
 beyond experience, but in experience ; in fact, is 
 
 1 For an explanation of the term "consciousness in general" see 
 the last paragraph but one of Section III.
 
 16 ON FREEDOM 
 
 precisely that mental element which out of mere 
 subjective sensations renders experience possible. 
 As, therefore, what is transcendental is found in 
 experience, and cannot possibly be found outside 
 experience, there is always room for inquiry into 
 the manner in which it takes part in our various 
 kinds of experience. A transcendental inquiry, 
 then, concerns an inquiry into the possibility of 
 experience through certain a priori, general mental 
 forms or categories, which, so to speak, transform 
 our a posteriori or given sensations into objects of 
 experience. Tra?iscendental as a whole, then, may 
 be said to be the entire a priori that out of any a 
 posteriori makes an experience possible. The same 
 thing, however, may be transcendent as well as 
 transcendental. Thus Kant assumes things-in-them- 
 selves as underlying the sensations which we com- 
 bine into the only things (phenomena) actually known 
 to us. These things-in-themselves we, as sensible 
 creatures, can never know, and they are therefore 
 transcendent for us. But, notwithstanding this, 
 they may also be called transcendental, inasmuch as, 
 though we cannot know them, we assume them 
 to be the actual stimuli of experience. 
 
 Immanent. — The immanent use of anything (of 
 the categories, for instance) is the use of it where 
 it is valid, namely, within the limits of possible 
 experience or the phenomenal world. 
 
 Metaphysic. — If it be found that our knowledge
 
 THE KANTIAN TERMINOLOGY 17 
 
 of objects is not merely knowledge of them as they 
 would exist anyhow, whether we ourselves existed 
 to know them or not : that is to say, if objects do 
 not merely tell us what they are in-themselves in- 
 dependently of any contributive knowledge on our 
 part, but, on the contrary, that objects, as we know 
 them, would not exist at all without us, and that 
 we contribute to our knowledge of them by means 
 of certain a priori forms within us, then a systematic 
 exposition of that transcendental, a priori con- 
 tribution is the science of Metaphysic (immanent 
 rationalism) in contradistinction to the old spurious 
 metaphysics which dealt in problems merely trans- 
 cendent. Kant, in fact, will have nothing to do 
 with that so-called metaphysic which on the ob- 
 jective side transcends experience, and he maintains 
 that the only permissible metaphysic is that pure 
 rational knowledge which develops from principles 
 the grounds of experiential knowledge existing in 
 the subject. 
 
 Contingent versus Necessary. — What is a 
 posteriori, that is, given to us in sensation, is con- 
 tingent : what is a priori, or, in other words, con- 
 tributed or given by our own mental forms, is 
 necessary. Thus our various sensations, which are 
 a posteriori, are, as such, merely contingent. That 
 is to say, they are the result of forces or objects of 
 which we know nothing, and, therefore, as far as we 
 know, the resulting sensations given to us might be 
 
 B
 
 18 ON FREEDOM 
 
 quite different to and in quite another order from 
 that in which they happen to be; or, to repeat, 
 they are contingent. Our a priori mental forms, 
 however, impart a necessity to those sensations, 
 that is, connect them in various (for us) necessary 
 ways into objects of perception, so that we per- 
 ceive these objects in a necessary order and manner, 
 and no other. 
 
 Empirical Reality and Transcendental 
 Ideality. — The empirical reality of space, for in- 
 stance, means that space, which is an a priori 
 mental perceptive form, imposes on a posteriori 
 sensations, that is, on sensations given to us by 
 powers we know not what, its own structural 
 peculiarities. That is to say, it imposes its own 
 form on what becomes external experience for us, 
 and in this act is for us empirically real. At the 
 same time, it is also transcendentally ideal. That is, 
 it is the condition itself of all our external experi- 
 ence, and would be nothing at all if the a priori con- 
 dition of the possibility of all external experience 
 were withdrawn, and if it, space, were regarded 
 as belonging to things-in-themselves, or, in other 
 words, to things independently of their relation to 
 our perception. In short, space does not possess 
 absolute reality (neither subsistent reality nor the 
 reality of inherence). Thus, for example, I see a 
 table. That table I perceive with the form of 
 space imposed upon it. As regards that table,
 
 THE KANTIAN TERMINOLOGY 
 
 r 9 
 
 therefore, space is empirically real to me, that is, 
 real in experience, and only in experience. But 
 when I inquire into the matter, I find that space 
 does not belong to a thing-in-itself called table, 
 but is the very condition of my being able to 
 make the thing I call table an object of experi- 
 ence, and, if I did away with that a priori con- 
 dition, no table, as an object of experience, would 
 exist for me. So that space is also transcendentally 
 ideal. 
 
 A Possible Experience or the Possibility of 
 Experience. — The possibility of experience means 
 those a priori mental conditions which enable us to 
 transform our contingent, a posteriori, given sensa- 
 tions into objective perceptions, that is, into the 
 necessity of a ruled and regulated objective uni- 
 verse, called experience. 
 
 Transcendental 
 /Esthetic. 
 
 Trans- 
 cendental 
 Logic. 
 
 I. Transcen- 
 dental 
 Analytic. 
 
 II. Transcen- 
 
 dental 
 Dialectic. 
 
 i. Analytic of I a ' 
 Concep- - . 
 
 tions. 
 
 Metaphysical Deduc- 
 tion of the Categories. 
 j b. Transcendental Deduc- 
 tion of the Categories. 
 
 2. Analytic of 
 Principles. 
 
 a. Schematism of the 
 
 Pure Conceptions of 
 the Understanding. 
 
 b. System of all Principles 
 
 of the Pure Under- 
 standing. 
 
 Transcendental ^Esthetic. — The transcenden- 
 tal /Esthetic (the critique of sensibility) is that por- 
 tion of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in which he 
 deals with those a priori forms which he attributes
 
 20 ON FREEDOM 
 
 to general sense, and which he calls our pure per- 
 ceptions, namely, time and space. These a priori 
 forms, according to him, are the a -priori judgments 
 of mathematics, which relate to the sensibility, 
 and these pure judgments, or a priori knowledge, 
 are concerned with space and time. Kant there- 
 fore makes it his business to demonstrate that our 
 apprehension of space and time is a priori and that 
 this apprehension belongs to the sensibility and not 
 to the understanding, or, in his own terminology, 
 that space and time are pure forms of perception. 
 Without these a priori principles he shows that 
 sensible experience is not possible at all. In fact 
 they are the conditions of sensible experience, and 
 in the sphere of sense correspond to the Categories 
 in the sphere of understanding. 
 
 Transcendental Logic. — The transcendental 
 Logic (the critique of the faculty of thought) is that 
 whole portion of the same Critique in which Kant 
 deals with those a priori elements in us which he 
 attributes to the understanding, and calls the 
 Categories. These pure logical elements of the 
 understanding or universal and necessary rules of 
 thought, which solely concern the form of thought 
 and have nothing to do with the matter of thought, 
 act upon the pure perceptive elements of time and 
 space, and produce principles which, when applied 
 to the a posteriori data of sense, enable us to have 
 experience of objects.
 
 THE KANTIAN TERMINOLOGY 21 
 
 The Transcendental Analytic. — The transcen- 
 dental Analytic deals with the a priori principles 
 of physics, which originate in the understanding. 
 The problem it sets itself to solve is the answer 
 to the question — " How is pure natural science 
 possible ? " or, in other words, " What justifies the 
 assertion that the presuppositions of natural 
 science are true ? ' The first necessary step is to 
 discover all these presuppositions upon a definite 
 principle. In this Kant is assisted by a clue drawn 
 from his own transcendental cesthetic, for he finds 
 that just as the perceptions of space and time 
 originate in the sensibility, so do the a priori 
 conceptions and laws which underlie natural 
 science originate in the understanding, and he 
 therefore concludes that the discovery of all the 
 conceptions and laws which originate in the under- 
 standing will be at the same time the discovery 
 of all the presuppositions of natural science. A 
 twofold problem therefore presents itself for solu- 
 tion in the transcendental Analytic. In the first 
 place, the pure conceptions and laws which belong 
 to the understanding as such, i.e. the categories or 
 a priori logical elements of the understanding, have 
 to be discovered and tabulated ; and secondly, their 
 application to individual things has to be vindi- 
 cated, that is to say, shown to be valid. The trans- 
 cendental Analytic is subdivided into the Analytic 
 of Conceptions and the Analytic of Principles.
 
 22 ON FREEDOM 
 
 The Analytic of Conceptions. — The Analytic 
 of Conceptions again is subdivided into — 
 
 The Metaphysical Deduction of the Cate- 
 gories, the aim of which is to discover and tabulate 
 the pure conceptions of the understanding (i.e. the 
 categories) by inquiring whether the forms of judg- 
 ment (the subject matter of formal logic) really 
 presuppose the categories ; and, 
 
 The Transcendental Deduction of the Cate- 
 gories which aims at vindicating the validity of 
 the categories, that is to say, their applicability to 
 individual things. A transcendental deduction, in 
 fact, is a verification of a priori mental powers 
 by showing, from the necessities of the case, that 
 those powers are actually the conditions of the very 
 possibility of having any experience. That is to 
 say, the necessity of the a priori mental machinery 
 employed by us in the fabrication of our experience 
 is deduced, justified, and demonstrated by an ex- 
 position of its principles of action in regard to that 
 experience, an exposition which shows that without 
 that a priori action the world of facts and experience 
 would not exist for us at all. In short, a trans- 
 cendental deduction shows the legitimacy of the 
 claim made by facts in our experience to a validity 
 which, merely as facts, independently of those a 
 priori mental elements, they would not possess. 
 
 The Analytic of Principles. — The object of 
 the Analytic of Principles is to determine the use
 
 THE KANTIAN TERMINOLOGY 23 
 
 of the categories in judgment. It is subdivided 
 into — 
 
 The Schematism of the Pure Conceptions of 
 the Understanding, which aims at determin- 
 ing the sensuous conditions under which the cate- 
 gories or pure logical elements of the understanding 
 are used, that is to say, the manner in which these 
 pure elements combine the a priori perceptive 
 elements of general sense, time and space, and so 
 render experience possible, when they are applied 
 to the a posteriori data of sensation (in short, the 
 Schematism shows how, that is, under what con- 
 ditions, the categories are applied to the data of 
 sense so as to form experience, whilst the transcen- 
 dental Deduction justifies this applicability), and 
 
 The System of all Principles of the Pure 
 Understanding, which has for its aim the dis- 
 covery of the a priori principles involved in the 
 categories, as exercised under these sensuous con- 
 ditions, such, for instance, as the law that all 
 changes take place according to the law of cause 
 and effect. 
 
 The Transcendental Dialectic. — The trans- 
 cendental Dialectic (critique of ' reason ' in the 
 narrower sense in which Kant uses it) is that portion 
 of the Transcendental Logic in which Kant deals 
 with the Ideas which he attributes to Reason.
 
 2 4 
 
 ON FREEDOM 
 
 The Categories. \ 
 
 Schema. 
 
 Affinity. 
 
 Transcendental Unity of Apper- 
 ception. 
 
 Objective Validity or Objective 
 Reality of the Categories (see 
 also the last paragraph of Section II, 
 and the 3rd, 4th, and 5th paragraphs 
 of Section V). 
 
 Consciousness in General, or, ein 
 Bewusstsein uberhaupt (last para- 
 graph but one). 
 
 Imagination. 
 
 A priori Synthetic Propositions. 
 
 A prior/ Analytic Propositions. 
 
 Mathematical and Dynamical Cate- 
 gories. 
 
 Analogies of Experience. 
 
 Postulates of Empirical Thought. 
 
 Axioms of Pure Perception (see 
 also the last paragraph of Section II). 
 
 Anticipations of Empirical Percep- 
 tion. / 
 
 Transcendental Object and Thing 
 in-itself. 
 
 An Object in General. 
 
 Noumenon. 
 
 Intelligible World. 
 
 Understanding. 
 
 Reason. 
 
 Paralogisms of Pure Reason. 
 
 Antinomies of Pure Reason. 
 
 Ideal of Pure Reason. 
 
 V See Section III. 
 
 See Section IV. 
 
 See Section V.
 
 SECTION II 
 
 TIME AND SPACE 1 
 
 However knowledge may reach its objects, there 
 is one means by which it reaches them directly, 
 namely, by Perception, which forms the ultimate 
 material of all thought. Perception takes place 
 only so far as an object is given us, and the object 
 can only be given to human beings on condition 
 that it affects the mind in a certain manner. This 
 receptivity or capability of receiving intimations 
 or ideas (Vorstellungen) through the mode in which 
 we are affected by objects is Sensibility. Objects 
 therefore are given to us through our sensibility, and 
 sensibility alone supplies us with perceptions. It 
 is through the Understanding, however, that these 
 perceptions are thought, and thus from the Under- 
 standing there arise Conceptions. All thought, 
 therefore, must at last, directly or indirectly, go 
 back to perceptions, that is, to sense, because it 
 is only through our sensibility that objects can be 
 
 1 Herbert Spencer in his First Principles rejects Kant's doctrine 
 of Time and Space. In a recently published memoir, however, it 
 appears that Spencer himself once confessed in a letter that lie had 
 never even taken the trouble to read beyond the Transcendental 
 JEsthctic, a confession which tends somewhat to diminish the serious- 
 ness of any Spcncerian criticism of the Kantian philosophy. 
 
 25
 
 26 ON FREEDOM 
 
 given to us. The actual affection of our sensibility 
 or susceptibility of impression, so far as we are 
 affected by an object, is Sensation. A perception 
 of an object through sensation is an empirical per- 
 ception. The undefined object of such an empirical 
 perception is a sense-appearance or .Phenomenon 
 (Erscheinung). The element in a phenomenon that 
 corresponds to the sensation or mere feeling may be 
 called its matter ; while that element, which makes 
 it possible that the units of impression or manifold 
 matter of the phenomenon should be perceived as 
 arranged in a certain order, may be called its form. 
 Now it is evident that that without which sensations 
 can have no order or form cannot itself be sensa- 
 tion. The matter of all phenomena, as defined 
 above, is given to us a posteriori by powers we 
 know not what, that is, empirically by means of 
 sensation ; but their form must lie ready for 
 them a priori in the mind, and can therefore be 
 considered as separate from all sensation. All 
 ideas in which there is nothing found that belongs 
 to sensation may be called pure, as distinguished 
 from empirical. The pure form, therefore, of 
 sensuous perceptions, that form in which all the 
 manifold elements or content of the phenomena are 
 seen as arranged in certain ways relatively to one 
 another, must always be found in the mind a priori, 
 and may be called the pure perception. 
 
 Now, it will be found that there are two pure
 
 TIME AND SPACE 27 
 
 forms of sensuous perception which constitute 
 principles of a priori knowledge, namely, Time and 
 Space. Neither of these is an empirical concep- 
 tion derived from experience, but a necessary idea 
 lying within the mind a priori. In order that 
 certain of my a posteriori sensations should be re- 
 ferred to something out of me, that is, to something 
 in a different part of space from that in which I 
 myself am ; again, in order that I may be able to 
 be conscious of them as outside of and beside one 
 another, that is, not merely as different, but as 
 in different places, the idea of space must already 
 be present as a foundation in my mind. The con- 
 sciousness of Space, therefore, cannot be borrowed 
 through experience from relations of external 
 phenomena to one another and to myself, but, on 
 the contrary, this external experience of the re- 
 lations of phenomena becomes possible only by 
 means of the a priori idea of space in my own mind. 
 By no effort of imagination can we realise to our- 
 selves the conception of there being no space, 
 though we can quite readily think of space as 
 empty of objects. 1 Space must therefore be re- 
 garded as a condition of the possibility of external 
 phenomena, and not as a determination or form 
 dependent on them. It is thus an idea a priori in 
 
 1 Kant does not mean an absolutely empty infinite space, which 
 seems to be unthinkable, but, regarding space as itself divisible into an 
 indefinite number of other spaces, he probably means any one of those 
 limited spaces as empty of objects.
 
 28 ON FREEDOM 
 
 the mind, or a pure perception, which necessarily 
 underlies or supplies the basis of all experience 
 of external phenomena. Space, in fact, is nothing 
 but the a priori form of all external phenomena, 
 that is, of all appearance of objects to external 
 sense, and objects in themselves, that is, apart from 
 and outside space, are not known to us at all. 
 
 Time, again, is a pure perception, which lies within 
 the mind a priori, and a necessary idea which sup- 
 plies the basis of all other perceptions. Only in it is 
 all actuality of things possible. It is only because 
 this idea of time lies a priori within the mind that 
 we can observe that certain things' happen at the 
 same time or at different times ; that is to say, with- 
 out this a priori idea, succession and co-existence 
 or simultaneity could not enter into our perception. 
 
 As space is the a priori form of the external sense, 
 so time is the a priori form of the internal sense, 
 that is, of our perceptions of our own selves and our 
 own inner states. This distinction, however, must 
 not lead us to suppose that the internal sense is 
 totally distinct from the external ; for all that we 
 perceive or feel is within us. A particular thing 
 only appears to be without us, in that we dis- 
 tinguish it spatially, and by this means it becomes 
 an external object of perception, and by this means 
 only does our perception become an external one. 
 The a priori perception of time, unlike the a priori 
 perception of space, supplies no shape, but we
 
 TIME AND SPACE 29 
 
 represent to ourselves the succession of time, 
 which is its only dimension, by a line progressing 
 to infinity, a consequence of the fact that time is 
 in a constant flux, while space has its parts per- 
 manently determined in relation to each other. 
 Space, as the pure form of all external perception, 
 is an a priori condition of external phenomena 
 only, but time is the formal a priori condition of 
 all phenomena without exception. For all ideas, 
 whether they have external things for their object 
 or not, nevertheless as determinations of the mind 
 belong to our inner state, and this state falls under 
 the formal condition of inner perception, which is 
 time. Therefore time is a condition of all pheno- 
 mena — immediately of internal or psychical, and 
 mediately also of external phenomena. We cannot 
 say indeed that all things are in time, because 
 when we speak of things in this unqualified way we 
 are thinking of things in abstraction from the 
 manner in which we perceive them, and therefore 
 in abstraction from the condition under which 
 alone we can say that they are in time. But we 
 can maintain that all things " as phenomena," that 
 is, as objects of sensuous perception, are in time, 
 because without that a priori perception of time 
 no phenomena could come within our experience. 
 Time, however, in the same way as Space, has no 
 claim to absolute reality, in the sense that, without 
 taking into account the a priori form or subjective
 
 30 ON FREEDOM 
 
 condition of our sensuous perception, it should by 
 itself be a quality or condition inherent in things. 
 For, if we abstract the a priori form or subjective 
 conditions of our sensuous perceptions, or, in other 
 words, the manner in which we immediately per- 
 ceive our inner state, and mediately all external 
 phenomena, time is nothing, and cannot be reckoned 
 as subsisting or inhering in objects as things-in- 
 themselves, that is, independently of their relation 
 to our perception. Time, therefore, is a purely 
 subjective condition of all human perception. 
 Take away this peculiar condition of our sensibility 
 and the conception of Time vanishes, because it is 
 not inherent in the objects, but in the subject only 
 that perceives them. 
 
 The famous doctrine thus set forth, and which is 
 to be found in the Transcendental Msthetic, is 
 known as the ideality or subjectivity of Time and 
 Space. 
 
 Kant, however, and this is an important con- 
 sideration, does not intend us to look upon space 
 and time as mere empty forms in the subject 
 which are always waiting ready for anything that 
 may enter or be put into them, but he regards 
 them as active functions for placing our sensations 
 in a certain order, and insists that they only have 
 reality therefore when actually engaged in this 
 manner. For, if space and time are looked upon 
 as receptacles existing in themselves within the
 
 TIME AND SPACE 31 
 
 subject, we are at once confronted with the in- 
 soluble problem as to whether they are finite or 
 infinite. Whereas, if they are real only in the 
 active function of synthesis, that is, when actively 
 engaged in gathering our sensations into a certain 
 order, the problem loses its meaning for the under- 
 standing from the point of view of space and time, 
 although our thought is doubtless still confronted 
 with the problem as to the fmitude or infinit}' of 
 the contingent data of sense to which these active 
 functions can be applied. Kant, no doubt, is 
 himself partly responsible for any misunderstanding 
 that may have arisen in this respect, for he employs 
 the term " space " in two different ways. At one 
 time he denotes by it the spatial character of things, 
 that is to say, the form of concrete sensations, 
 which makes them objects of experience for us ; 
 and at another, following the usage of ordinary 
 language, that vast, empty receptacle, which seems 
 to exist independently of all particular things and 
 in which these things appear to stand. What is 
 called " perceiving," however, is merely the bringing 
 together of sensations into the order which we term 
 " space." In fact, space is nothing but the function 
 which, exercised upon sensations, is called " per- 
 ceiving." In other words, it is the process of 
 perception, a form of movement of the soul's activity. 
 The action, therefore, of the subject's perceiving 
 does not, properly speaking, produce space, but
 
 32 ON FREEDOM 
 
 rather it is space. Consequently, the infinity of 
 space denotes nothing but the boundlessness of the 
 process of perception, that is, the absolutely limitless 
 possibility of continuing ever further and further 
 the process of space-forming perception. For our 
 perception, certainly, there can be no limits to 
 space, because wherever we look we see space, that 
 is to say, because what we call " perceiving " is 
 nothing but what may be termed the spatialisation 
 of sensations. 1 
 
 A second point which must be borne in mind is 
 the following. Kant does not wish to maintain 
 that the special empirical form of external pheno- 
 mena is due to space ; that is, that a chair, for 
 instance, is a chair for us and not a table, merely 
 because of this pure perception of space within us. 
 For there must always be something in the thing- 
 in-itself which is the determining ground of the 
 contingent or special empirical form, and no other. 
 All Kant wants to emphasise is that, notwith- 
 standing this, the special empirical production 
 
 1 Schopenhauer in his World as Will and Idea (i.e. World as 
 Thing-in-itself and Phenomenon) does not seem to have completely 
 realised this truth about space and time. He appears to have 
 regarded them more as receptacles waiting for phenomena to be 
 put into them. (See the 2nd Book, for instance, the 24th paragraph 
 from the end ; also the 18th paragraph from the end in the same Book, 
 where he applies the term, '■'■framework of the phenomenal world" — 
 " Grundgeriist der erscheinenden Welt " — to time and space. See also 
 the 4th Book, where he uses the expression, "endless time and 
 space")
 
 TIME AND SPACE 33 
 
 must obey the universal conditions of space and 
 become — but only in its own way — spatial. 
 
 There is a third point which must not be for- 
 gotten. Although time and space are themselves 
 wholly a priori and mental, they still hold of sense, 
 not intellect. They are perceptions, not pure con- 
 ceptions. Determinate periods of time arise in 
 the human mind through limitation of the one, 
 fundamental time. This original time, therefore, 
 must be unlimited or infinite, and the idea of it 
 a perception, not a conception. Time contains in 
 itself an endless number of ideas (its parts, times), 
 but this is never the case with a generic conception, 
 which is contained as a partial idea in an endless 
 number of ideas (those of the individuals having 
 the same name), and consequently comprehends 
 them all under itself, but never contains them in 
 itself. Thus the general conception horse is con- 
 tained in each particular idea of a horse as a general 
 characteristic. Time, however, is not contained in 
 the different times, but they are contained in it. 
 It is similarly the case with space. For this reason, 
 the term general sense has occasionally been em- 
 ployed, in the next section dealing with the Cate- 
 gories, for the a priori perceptions of time and space, 
 in contradistinction to what has there been called 
 special sense, or the contingent, a posteriori units of 
 sensation given to us by powers we know not what. 
 
 Before we leave the subject of time and space
 
 34 ON FREEDOM 
 
 we ought to glance, too, at yet another problem 
 of which Kant has discovered the solution. This 
 problem is — How is it thinkable that that which pure 
 thought establishes as truth which is evident to it, 
 is binding also for objective reality that exists inde- 
 pendently of the understanding ? Or, in other 
 words, how can propositions that are not based 
 on experience, but on pure thought, possess, never- 
 theless, validity for the world of objects or external 
 phenomena — the truth, for instance, that two 
 parallel straight lines, if produced, never meet ? 
 Kant discovers the answer to this question in 
 mathematics. Geometrical propositions are, with- 
 out doubt, pure truths of the understanding, and 
 not generalisations obtained through experience. 
 But at the same time they possess objective validity ; 
 for what the mathematician discovers by abstract 
 calculation holds good for the world of external 
 phenomena, and is verified by measurement. Now, 
 how does this anticipation of reality by the under- 
 standing come about ? That is to say, how is the 
 objective validity of mathematical judgments to 
 be explained ? The answer is because the space in 
 which geometry projects its a priori constructions, 
 that is to say, the space in our idea, is precisely the 
 same space in which external phenomena are. 
 Consequently, everything that geometry establishes 
 for space and spatial ideas in general holds good 
 also for filled space or the world of external pheno-
 
 TIME AND SPACE 35 
 
 mena. For, since no object can be given to the 
 senses unless it is in conformity with the axioms of 
 space and the a priori propositions derived from 
 those axioms by geometry, all objects must neces- 
 sarily agree with these axioms and propositions, 
 although the principles of these axioms and pro- 
 positions lie only in the subject that perceives the 
 objects. In this way the laws of sense become 
 at the same time laws of nature, for nature is in 
 the minutest detail subject to the rules of geometry. 
 The same principle is true of the understanding 
 in general. The phenomenal world, as thought by 
 the understanding, is merely the construction of the 
 understanding itself ; and the laws of the under- 
 standing are consequently laws of nature too. 
 This is a profound thought, and for him to whom 
 it is presented for the first time can be nothing 
 less than a revelation and the discovery of a new 
 world. 
 
 ( 
 
 •* 
 
 'tx 
 
 o 

 
 SECTION III 
 
 THE CATEGORIES 
 
 The Categories, according to Kant, are the pure, 
 radical conceptions, or forms of combination or 
 synthesis of the Understanding, in other words, the 
 specific modes in which the Ego refers to itself the 
 multiplicity or miscellany of sense and unites it 
 there in one consciousness. Just as the pure forms 
 of perception, time and space, are the conditions 
 under which alone objects can be perceived, so the 
 pure conceptions of the understanding are the 
 conditions under which alone objects can be 
 thought. For, if all empirical or a posteriori con- 
 tent is removed from phenomena, and the pure 
 forms of perception, time and space, are left out of 
 consideration, there still remains a pure residue by 
 which alone those phenomena can be thought. It 
 is these pure residual elements which Kant terms 
 the Categories. They are the conditions of all our 
 experience, for without their application to the 
 data of sense we should have no objects of experi- 
 ence whatever. This is what is meant when it is 
 said that the categories possess Objective Validity 
 or Objective Reality. But they are valid for ex- 
 perience, and experience only ; for they are mere 
 
 36
 
 THE CATEGORIES 37 
 
 Forms for relating, and as such are themselves 
 empty. They can refer to an object only through 
 the medium of perceptions, which present a mani- 
 fold to be combined. This perception, however, 
 is, in the case of human beings, only the sensuous 
 perception in the forms of time and space, and as a 
 content for the synthetic function of the categories 
 we have therefore only that given in sensations, 
 that is to say, the categories can only be used by 
 us for purposes of a possible experience, and not 
 for transcendent purposes. In other words, their 
 use is immanent. They " serve only to spell pheno- 
 mena, that we may be able to read them as ex- 
 perience," and lose all their significance if applied 
 to things-in-themselves. 
 
 The way in which Kant discovered the categories 
 was as follows. Every thinking of an object is an 
 act of judgment, or, in other words, all objective 
 thinking is judging, for in the judgment the re- 
 lation thought between subject and predicate is 
 asserted as holding objectively. If, therefore, the 
 categories are the relating forms of the synthesis 
 by which objects arise, there must be as many 
 categories as there are kinds of judgment, and 
 every category is the mode of connecting subject 
 and predicate which is operative in its own kind 
 of judgment. This led him to suppose that he 
 could deduce the table of the categories from that 
 of the judgments which he borrows with slight 

 
 3$ ON FREEDOM 
 
 modifications from Formal Logic. He distin- 
 guishes from the four points of view of — I. Quan- 
 tity ; 2. Quality ; 3. Relation ; and 4. Modality 
 (i.e. the degree of certainty of a proposition), three 
 kinds of judgment for each : — 1. Universal, Parti- 
 cular, Singular or Individual ; that is to say, accord- 
 ing as the judgments make an assertion about all, 
 more than one, or only one of the members of a 
 kind ; 2. Affirmative, Negative, Infinite ; 3. Cate- 
 gorical, Hypothetical, Disjunctive ; 4. Problematic 
 (A may be B), Assertoric (A is B), Apodictic (A 
 must be B). To these twelve kinds of judgment he 
 somewhat artificially, as many critics have thought, 
 makes the twelve categories correspond : — 1. Unity, 
 Plurality, Totality ; 2. Reality Negation, Limitation ; 
 3. Inherence and Subsistence (substance and ac- 
 cident), Causality and Dependence (cause and effect), 
 Community or Reciprocity (action and reaction) ; 
 and 4. Possibility and Impossibility, Existence and 
 Non-Existence, Necessity and Contingency. 
 
 Now, how is it that these categories, being non- 
 sensuous themselves, can be applied to sensuous 
 matter ? The answer is to be found in the Imagina- 
 tion or Imaginative Faculty of the Understanding, 
 which unconsciously combines or synthetises the 
 manifold of sense (i.e. the special a posteriori data 
 of sense and the general a priori perceptions of time 
 and space) into a perception or image, thus making 
 it capable of being brought by the understanding
 
 THE CATEGORIES 39 
 
 under the conscious unity of thought ; while on the 
 side of the Understanding, the same imaginative 
 faculty, by means of the Schema of Time which it 
 finds to hand (this schema having been generated 
 by the action of the categories on the first pure 
 form of general sense, i.e. the a priori perception 
 of time), brings the pure categories into potential 
 relation with the manifold of sense. In virtue 
 of the former imaginative synthesis, time, space, 
 and all the manifold empirical, a posteriori elements 
 given under both these pure forms of perception, 
 are unconsciously combined into definite images 
 or perceptions ; whilst in virtue of the latter, 
 the categories or pure conceptions, which are 
 pure forms of judgment, become principles of 
 unity which (a schematism having been generated 
 by the action of the categories on the pure per- 
 ception of time) can be applied (by the imagina- 
 tion) to those images, and in relation to which, 
 therefore, those images may be brought to con- 
 ceptions, or recognised as containing a unit}' that 
 corresponds to conceptions. 1 
 
 1 Kant appears to regard the Imagination as the Understanding 
 working unreflectively or unconsciously. When the unconscious 
 synthesis by the Imagination has taken place, the Understanding 
 becomes conscious of the procedure, and this consciousness takes shape 
 as the conception of the synthesis which the Imagination has uncon- 
 sciously performed. In fact, in the second edition of the Critique of 
 Pure Reason, Kant says that it is one and the same spontaneity which 
 at one time under the name of Imagination, at another under that of 
 Understanding, introduces connection into the mainfold of perception.
 
 4 o ON FREEDOM 
 
 It is necessary to explain here a little more fully 
 what Kant means by Schema. Five points, five 
 counters, or five fingers are severally a type or 
 image of the number five ; but any triangle, horse, 
 dog, man, or house in general, which we can con- 
 struct in our imagination, cannot represent a type. 
 Each of the latter can only be a schema. The 
 general conception " triangle ' is simply a con- 
 ceived formula out of which a particular type of 
 triangle can be constructed. But the general con- 
 ception is itself a schema, for the triangle thus 
 conceived is of no single form ; it is rather of an 
 infinitude of forms. For, in order to be an 
 absolutely general conception, it must be neither 
 scalene, isosceles, nor equilateral ; neither right- 
 angled, obtuse - angled, nor acute-angled : but 
 merely a triangle in general ; that is, not a type of 
 any particular sort of triangle, but just a schema 
 of all triangles. In the same way horse, man, dog, 
 house are general conceptions ; not types, but 
 schemata, out of each of which a particular type 
 of man, house, &c, can be constructed. The type, 
 in fact, is a single image or figure set up by the 
 imagination ; whereas the schema is an absolutely 
 general formula for the production of a whole 
 family of types. 
 
 Now, Kant conceives the Categories or a priori 
 logical forms of judgment as acting on the multiples 
 of a priori general sense, that is, on the pure per-
 
 THE CATEGORIES 41 
 
 ceptions of time and space, and, through these 
 again, on the multiples of a posteriori or given, 
 empirical, special sense. Of these pure perceptive 
 forms (time and space) the inmost and most general 
 is time, for, as we have seen in the previous section 
 of this Part, time is the a priori condition of all 
 phenomena whatsoever, both internal and external, 
 and into it all matters of sense must be received. 
 If, then, the multiples of time are susceptible to 
 the connecting influence of the categories, it is 
 evident that there is a possibility established of con- 
 veying this uniting influence through the medium 
 (or schema) of those multiples of time to the whole 
 of those a posteriori particulars of special sense that 
 present themselves to us. We can thus under- 
 stand how a system of schemata may be brought 
 about by the operation of the categories or pure 
 logical forms of the understanding on the a priori 
 forms of general sense (i.e. the pure perceptions of 
 time and space). This operation may be termed 
 the schematism of the understanding ; and to that 
 schematism, to these schemata, it is evident that 
 all other data of sense, namely, the a posteriori 
 particulars of contingent, special sense must submit 
 themselves. We can conceive, then, the possi- 
 bility of the conjunction of the pure understanding 
 (i.e. the categories or pure logical forms of judg- 
 ment belonging to the understanding) with the 
 forms of pure general sense (i.e. the a priori per-
 
 42 ON FREEDOM 
 
 ceptions of time and space), and this conjunction 
 producing schemata ; and we can further conceive 
 the conjunction of these schemata with empirical 
 multiples of a posteriori special sense (i.e. particular 
 sensations given to us by powers we know not 
 what), and this further conjunction producing the 
 arranged world of experience. Now, although it is 
 imagination that by its unconsciously combining or 
 synthetising faculty and by means of the schema 
 which it finds to hand, and which is generated by 
 the action of the categories on the multiples of 
 a priori general sense, prepares the way for con- 
 junction, that is, brings the categories into potential 
 relation with the data of a posteriori special sense, 
 it is judgment that in both cases actually produces 
 the conjunction ; for it is judgment that subsumes 
 or brings the particular data of a posteriori special 
 sense, synthetised by the imagination, under their 
 respective schemata ; just as it is judgment that 
 subsumes or brings the pure multiples of general 
 sense (i.e. the pure perception of time) under the 
 pure logical forms of the understanding to the pro- 
 duction of the schemata themselves. 
 
 As regards causality, for instance, the category 
 or pure logical form of thought — " If A is, B is " — 
 which is a hypothetical judgment, has no reference 
 to any time determination. That is, we do not 
 think of B as necessarily succeeding A as an effect 
 of the latter. The imagination, however, makes
 
 THE CATEGORIES 43 
 
 that pure thought relation or hypothetical judg- 
 ment—" If A is, B is "—applicable to the data of 
 sense by means of the pure perception of Time. 
 For by blending that thought relation with the 
 a priori perception of time, we obtain the idea of 
 cause as that in phenomena which must precede 
 something else in phenomena, which something 
 else necessarily follows as its effect. In other words, 
 in the case of causality, self-consciousness or, as 
 Kant terms it, the unity of apperception, possesses 
 a category or logical function which we name 
 antecedent and consequent {i.e. the hypothetical 
 judgment — " If A is, B is "). Time, again, which 
 is only an a priori form of general sense within us, 
 possesses, on its side, a multiple or series, which is 
 the type of change. The category or pure logical 
 function of unity and the pure sense-multiple of 
 Time coalesce by an action of judgment into a 
 schema. This schema is brought by the imagination 
 to bear upon such multiples of special a posteriori 
 sense as present an analogous order or affinity (see 
 last paragraph but one of this section), and thus 
 it is that certain phenomena are perceived by us 
 as objects bearing to each other the mutual re- 
 lation of cause and effect. In fact we arrive at 
 the proposition — " A is the cause of B." This 
 causality, or necessary order in experience, is, as 
 Kant shows, merely the form in which experience 
 is arranged. That form is not necessary for thought,
 
 44 ON FREEDOM 
 
 and is not to be proved from pure logic ; but it is 
 nevertheless necessary for experience. It is inde- 
 pendent of experience only because experience is 
 dependent upon it. The geometrical axioms like- 
 wise are as little logically necessary as the law of 
 cause and effect. One can think of spaces and 
 geometries in which quite other axioms than ours 
 are valid, as the anti-euclidian geometry proved 
 in the nineteenth century, and tried to make use 
 of as a refutation of what Kant maintained were 
 the universality and necessity of the euclidean 
 axioms. But, although not logically necessary, 
 they are, like the law of causality, unconditionally 
 necessary for our experience, for the good reason 
 that they first bring that experience into being, 
 and indeed can only exercise their function at all — 
 viz. the formation of experience — in their applica- 
 tion to the data of sense. In fact, the Kantian 
 a priori signifies universality and necessity for the 
 world of experience only, no logical, absolute 
 validity, but a universal validity for the sphere of 
 sensible objects alone. 
 
 The foregoing paragraph contains, in fact, Kant's 
 answer, in brief, to the celebrated question he him- 
 self puts in the Critique of Pure Reason, namely, 
 ' How are synthetic judgments a priori possible ? ' 
 A priori judgments alone are apodictic, universal, 
 and necessarily valid ; while a posteriori judgments 
 are subjectively valid merely ; they lack necessity,
 
 THE CATEGORIES 45 
 
 and, at best, yield only relative universality. All 
 analytic judgments are a priori, all empirical or a 
 posteriori judgments are synthetic. Between the 
 two lies the object of Kant's search — Do synthetic 
 judgments a priori exist, and how are they possible ? 
 The proposition, for instance — " a body is ex- 
 tended ' ' — is an a priori, analytic, and apodictic or 
 necessary proposition, that is to say, a proposition 
 which is bound up with the consciousness of its 
 necessity, since extension is implied in body, 
 that is to say, is implicit, and the proposition 
 is explicative, that is, it merely analyses what 
 already is present in our conception of body. The 
 universality and necessity of this proposition, in 
 fact, are very easily to be explained, for its truth 
 is inferred by analysis of the mind according to 
 the law of contradiction, since a body having no 
 extension would be contradictory in thought. 
 Again, " all bodies possess weight " is a synthetic 
 and empirical or a posteriori judgment. It goes 
 beyond the mere conception of body and adds a 
 predicate which had not been thought in it, for it 
 is only experience which teaches us that weight is 
 joined to matter, a fact which cannot be derived 
 merely from the conception of matter. But " A is 
 the cause of B " (causality) is an a priori, synthetic, 
 and apodictic or necessary proposition, since cause 
 is not implied in change, that is to say, it is explicit, 
 and the proposition extends knowledge, that is,
 
 46 ON FREEDOM 
 
 adds by means of synthesis something not already 
 present in our conception of change. For it will 
 easily be seen, if we analyse our mind according 
 to the law of contradiction, that change without a 
 cause is not in itself contradictory. Now, it is the 
 possibility of this kind of a priori, synthetic, and 
 necessary proposition, such, for instance, as " A is 
 the cause of B," and the machinery by which it is 
 constructed, that an attempt has been made to 
 describe in the present section. 
 
 Reciprocity is another a priori, synthetic, apo- 
 dictic proposition. We have just seen that there are 
 phenomena in which we cannot return from the 
 second to the first ; that is to say, in which we have 
 to recognise a necessary order and which we are 
 bound to regard as connected by the link of causality, 
 taking the causing phenomenon as prior to the 
 phenomenon that follows it as its effect. So, too, 
 there are other phenomena whose express distinc- 
 tion is that we can take them in any order we please. 
 Thus, in the case of a stone becoming warm in the 
 sun, we regard sun and stone in a certain necessary 
 order, the sun, as cause, being prior to the warm 
 stone, as its effect. Whereas, in the case of a 
 house, I can go from cellar to garret or garret to 
 cellar, not feeling that one part of the house is 
 connected with any other part in any necessary 
 order as cause or effect. The former class of 
 phenomena presenting an analogy (see last para-
 
 THE CATEGORIES 47 
 
 graph but three of this section on " affinity ") to a 
 particular a priori logical mental function (i.e. the 
 relation between antecedent and consequent, or 
 the hypothetical judgment — " if A is, B is ") have 
 been shown to be brought by an action of judgment 
 under that particular logical form or category, and 
 that pure logical process applied to those pheno- 
 mena is named causality. The latter class of pheno- 
 mena, on the other hand, presenting an analogy 
 to a different a priori, logical mental function (i.e. 
 the disjunctive judgment — " either A or B ") are 
 brought by an act of judgment under that particular 
 logical form or category, and that pure logical process 
 applied to those phenomena is named reciprocity. 
 
 We have now seen the schematic machinery 
 employed in the cases of causality and reciprocity. 
 The procedure is similar in respect to any others that 
 we may select. Taking the categories one by one, 
 we have simply to find out what multiples of time 
 respectively correspond to them, and the relative 
 schematic machinery will at once appear. The 
 machinery employed for the production of the 
 schema Number, for instance, is as follows. The 
 succession of time is a sensible multiple of what 
 intellectual multiple is employed in the conception 
 of quantity : it is the homogeneous coming together 
 of like with like, but that is number. The category 
 of quantity is simply the homogeneous addition 
 of pure to pure, and this addition is sensualised in
 
 48 ON FREEDOM 
 
 the succession of time as a homogeneous addition of 
 bare moment to bare moment. Therefore, the intel- 
 lectual multiple in this case, namely, the pure logical 
 form or category of quantity, is brought, through the 
 medium of the schema of number which is obtained 
 from the pure perception, Time, and by the help 
 of the imagination which unconsciously combines 
 or synthetises the various units, into relation with 
 the a posteriori data of sense. Thus quantity is 
 the category or pure conception of the understanding 
 under which any such a posteriori multiple as that 
 which is represented in the succession of time will 
 be brought or subsumed ; which pure logical form 
 or conception is, it is equally evident, essential to 
 produce conscious unity in any such multiple, for 
 otherwise the mind would only be passively filled 
 with a perpetually fleeting succession. We have, 
 however, to remember that each category is itself 
 merely one function of the general principle of 
 unity, namely, self-consciousness or the unity of 
 apperception. So that we finally have the various 
 units, connected with one another in the uncon- 
 scious synthesis of imagination, collapsing into the 
 unity of self-consciousness through the pure con- 
 ception or category of quantity. 
 
 In the case of the schema of Degree, the machinery 
 is of the same kind. The category in this case is 
 quality. Now, no multiple in time itself can be 
 found to correspond to that category. We are
 
 THE CATEGORIES 49 
 
 quite justified, however, in taking the absolute 
 universal of sensation as sensation and conceiving 
 time filled by it. But the process in this filling 
 may be from any amount down to zero, or, equally, 
 from zero up to any amount. This, however, is 
 degree, or the coming together of filled moment of 
 time with filled moment of time. In other words, 
 the category of quality is brought into relation with 
 the a posteriori data of sense by means of the uncon- 
 sciously combining or synthetising imagination and 
 the schema of degree, which is, as usual, obtained 
 through the pure perception. Time, and this cate- 
 gory or pure logical function, imposes conscious unity 
 on the amount exhibited in the filing of time, just as 
 the category of quantity, as we have seen, imposes 
 conscious unity on the bare multiples in the suc- 
 cession of time. In the same way filled time (being 
 in time) is the schema of the category of reality ; 
 empty time (not being in time) the schema of the 
 category of negation ; permanence in time the 
 schema of the category of substance ; existence 
 at any time whatever (whensoever), existence at a 
 definite time, and existence at all times the schemata 
 respectively of the categories of possibility, actuality 
 or existence, and necessity. 
 
 The present place offers a convenient opportunity 
 for explaining what Kant meant by mathematical, 
 as distinguished from dynamical categories. The 
 mathematical categories are those which come under 
 
 D
 
 5 o ON FREEDOM 
 
 the first or second heads of quantity and quality, 
 the dynamical categories those which come under 
 the third head of relation (see second paragraph of 
 this section). He considered mathematical cate- 
 gories to be the more important, as actually con- 
 stituting our perceptions ; whereas the dynamical 
 categories merely deal with the relations of those 
 perceptions, arranging them mutually in a certain 
 manner and order. Take, for instance, the example 
 of the sun and a stone exposed to it. The categories 
 of quality and quantity act formatively on both 
 sun and stone : they give them for the senses ex- 
 tensive magnitude (quantity-number) and intensive 
 magnitude (quality-degree), and actually enable us 
 to perceive each of these objects as we do ; whereas 
 the category of causality merely connects the warm 
 stone with the sun as an effect of a cause, and is 
 therefore a dynamical category. The mathematical 
 categories, in fact, act in such a way as to give us 
 a direct perception, and they are therefore uncon- 
 ditionally necessary ; apodictic, not contingent ; 
 constitutive, not regulative. The dynamical cate- 
 gory of causality, on the other hand, is, as it were, 
 regulative and, in a manner, contingent. For, 
 although we have shown causality to be a necessary, 
 synthetic proposition and, in so far, containing 
 necessity, it is only conditionally necessary, since 
 it is applied to empirical objects already found and 
 thought of in an experience. In fact, it is only the 
 analogy of the connection in the empirical facts,
 
 THE CATEGORIES 51 
 
 sun and warm stone, with that pure logical mental 
 connection between antecedent and consequent 
 (hypothetical judgment) that raises the former into 
 the force of the latter, and produces the necessary 
 synthetic proposition that the sun is the cause of 
 the stone becoming warm. And this is what Kant 
 means when he speaks of the Analogies of Ex- 
 perience, which are three in number : 1. " In all 
 changes of phenomena the substance is permanent, 
 and its quantum is neither increased or diminished 
 in nature " ; 2. " All changes take place according 
 to the law of connection between cause and effect " ; 
 3. " All substances, in so far as they can be per- 
 ceived in space as co-existent, stand in complete 
 community or interaction, that is, reciprocity, 
 one with another." On the other hand, the mathe- 
 matical categories of quantity and quality having 
 more of necessity in them give birth respectively 
 to Axioms of pure perception, the principle of which 
 is — " All perceptions are extensive quantities " 
 (e.g. extensive magnitude of the sun and stone), 
 and Anticipations of empirical perception with their 
 principle — " In all phenomena, the real, which is 
 an object of sensation, has intensive magnitude, 
 that is to say, a degree " (e.g. intensive magnitude 
 of the sun and stone), the axioms, with their 
 principle that an object of perception is always 
 recognisable as an aggregate or extensive magni- 
 tude, containing the most unconditional necessity 
 of the two. In the case of the categories that come
 
 52 ON FREEDOM 
 
 under the fourth head of Modality (see the second 
 paragraph of this section), there result only de- 
 finitions of (i) the possible — viz., that which agrees 
 with the formal conditions of experience (according 
 to perception and conception), (2) the actual — viz., 
 that which is connected with the material conditions 
 of experience (sensation), and (3) the necessary — 
 viz., that which, in its connection with the actual, 
 is determined by universal conditions of experience, 
 that is to say, exists as necessary ; and Kant calls 
 these definitions Postulates of Empirical Thought, 
 The term " postulate " he borrows from geometry, for 
 the reason that the Postulates of Empirical Thought 
 do not add to our knowledge of the nature of objects, 
 and a postulate in geometry (e.g. that it is possible 
 with a given line to describe a circle from a given 
 point) does not enlarge the conception of the figure 
 to which it relates, but merely asserts its possibility. 
 To return to the part played by the imagination. 
 In unconsciously synthetising or combining the a 
 posteriori data of special sense into perceptions or 
 images it operates according to certain rules which 
 make its products, the perceptions, associable or cap- 
 able of being united with the unity of apperception 
 or self-consciousness, that is to say, rules which insure 
 the Affinity, to employ Kant's phrase, of these per- 
 ceptions to one another. This affinity seems to 
 be nothing but a restraint laid upon these per- 
 ceptions from within us by the necessary condition 
 itself of the unity of self-consciousness under which
 
 THE CATEGORIES 53 
 
 condition alone can I be conscious of these per- 
 ceptions as mine. In other words, ideas, as re- 
 ceived into the mind, are subjected to an uncon- 
 scious synthesis of imagination, a synthesis which 
 is subdued a priori to the unity of self-consciousness. 
 Affinity, however, is a difficult term, and it is not 
 easy to define what Kant precisely meant by it. 
 Some have suggested, in contradistinction to the 
 above interpretation, that he meant by affinity 
 some rule proper to a posteriori sense-units them- 
 selves, whereby one rather than another enters into 
 combination with a third in imagination. That is 
 to say, that there must be some empirical condition 
 for the a priori synthesis, whereby the a posteriori 
 matter of sensation is capable of being fitted into 
 the particular a priori form. It will easily be seen 
 that, although these two interpretations are different, 
 it is not impossible to reconcile them, and that there 
 may be truth in both. For the unity of self-con- 
 sciousness may be brought to bear upon units of 
 sensation which, as a posteriori units, have already 
 been prepared in a certain way for the action of 
 imagination and that uniting or synthetic con- 
 sciousness of self. 
 
 By these means, then, the Categories, which 
 collectively are the entire systematic tree of the 
 logical functions of judgment, turn these images 
 or perceptions, which have resulted from the un- 
 conscious synthetic activity of the imagination, into 
 objects of experience or an ordered world of objects.
 
 54 ON FREEDOM 
 
 Self-consciousness, which is merely the mind's con- 
 sciousness of the unity of its own action in deter- 
 mining its objects, has, as it were, to impose its 
 own unity of thought upon the various perceptions 
 presented by the imagination. They have to be 
 united in one self-consciousness, and it is owing to 
 these perceptions already, by means of their Affinity, 
 standing in relation to the unity of consciousness, 
 as well as to the fact of this one, unchangeable, 
 identical consciousness, or, in Kantian phraseology, 
 this Transcendental Unity of Apperception, 1 that 
 the Categories (which are simply particular logical 
 functions of judgment under the single general prin- 
 ciple of the unity of apperception) are able to pro- 
 duce an ordered world of experience for us, or 
 what we know as Nature. In fact, we can unite 
 perceptions into an organised system of objects only 
 in so far as we can unite them with the consciousness 
 of self ; but we can unite them with the conscious- 
 ness of self only if we can recognise the identity of 
 the individual self during the act of so combining 
 them ; and therefore nothing can be an object for 
 us unless it conforms to the conditions under which 
 we can be conscious of ourselves as self-identical 
 subjects in apprehending it. Thus the unity of the 
 intelligence with itself is the prerequisite of all 
 objects for the intelligence ; since it is only through 
 
 1 Apperception is a term borrowed by Kant from Leibnitz, and 
 denotes the consciousness of self.
 
 THE CATEGORIES 55 
 
 their conformity to that condition that they can 
 become objects for us, or that we can be conscious 
 of ourselves in relation to them. 1 
 
 The Kantian term, Transcendental Apperception, 
 requires, perhaps, a little further elucidation. Man 
 is not conscious of the co-operation of the categories 
 in the production of objects of experience, but 
 accepts the result of this co-operation as something 
 given to his apprehension from outside and inde- 
 pendently of himself. This co-operation is only 
 discovered through metaphysical investigation. In 
 other words, the production of objects does not go 
 on in the individual consciousness, but lies already 
 at the basis of this consciousness. For this pro- 
 duction a higher common consciousness has to be 
 assumed, which comes into the empirical conscious- 
 ness of the individual, not with its functions, but 
 only with their result. This higher and common 
 consciousness is what Kant sometimes terms con- 
 sciousness in general, at others, transcendental ap- 
 perception, or the I. 2 
 
 This doctrine, which has here been very shortly 
 described, is one of the great landmarks in the 
 history of philosophy, and contains some of the 
 profoundest of Kant's creative thoughts. 
 
 1 For an ampler elucidation of this doctrine see Section V. 
 
 2 Hegel does not appear to have appreciated this deeper meaning 
 of the Kantian phrase, transcendental unity of self-consciotisness, for he 
 interpreted the latter as the consciousness merely of the individual (see 
 § 42 of his smaller Logic).
 
 SECTION IV 
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL OBJECT AND THE CONCEPTION 
 OF THE NOUMENON 
 
 The idea of a Body contains nothing in perception 
 that could belong to an object in itself, but is merely 
 the phenomenal appearance of something, and the 
 manner in which we, as subjects, are affected by it, 
 and, even if we could see to the very bottom of 
 a phenomenon, would remain for ever altogether 
 different from the knowledge of the thing-in-itself. 
 If we drop our own subjective nature, which, as 
 has been shown, is the a priori necessary condition 
 of all our experience, the object, as represented 
 with the qualities ascribed to it by sensuous per- 
 ception, is nowhere to be found, and cannot possibly 
 be found ; because its form, as phenomenal ap- 
 pearance, is determined by this very subjective 
 condition. We know nothing, therefore, of the 
 transcendental object or thing-in-itself, that is, of 
 the object apart from the manner in which we, as 
 subjects, are affected by it. 
 
 But if, notwithstanding this, I insist upon ad- 
 mitting things which are objects of the under- 
 standing only, and which nevertheless, as such, can 
 
 56
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL OBJECT 57 
 
 be given as objects of a perception, though not of 
 a sensuous perception, such things would be called 
 Noumcna (i.e. intelligibilia or things of the intellect). 
 If we thus accepted Noumena as possible, there 
 would be a kind of knowledge in which there is no 
 sensibility, and which alone possesses absolute ob- 
 jective reality, representing objects as they are ; 
 while through the empirical use of our understanding, 
 which has regard only to the manner in which these 
 objects affect our sensibility as phenomena, we 
 know things only as they appear. In this manner 
 an entirely new field would seem to open before us, 
 a world, as it were, realised in thought. It is no 
 doubt perfectly true that the understanding refers 
 all phenomena, that is, all ideas, to something, 
 i.e. a transcendental object or thing-in-itself. But 
 this transcendental object cannot be separated 
 from the sensuous data, that is, from the manner in 
 which we are affected by it, because in that case 
 nothing would remain by which it could be thought. 
 It is not therefore an object of knowledge in itself, 
 but only the thinking of something in general, 
 without taking account of the form of sensuous per- 
 ception. In fact, it is merely the representation 
 of phenomena under the conception of what Kant 
 terms an object in general. That is to say, if we 
 think of a particular object, every object being 
 constituted by a certain number of ideas, we think 
 that these ideas must possess a unity as parts of a
 
 58 ON FREEDOM 
 
 related whole or system, viz., a unity represented 
 phenomenally by the particular object they refer 
 to. It is this conceived unity of those ideas, this 
 related whole or system of which we think they are 
 parts, which constitutes the conception of an object 
 in general, in distinction from the conception of the 
 particular object of our sensuous perception. In 
 other words, the conception of an object in general 
 is generated by the introduction by a particular 
 object, constituted by various ideas, of a systematic 
 unity into those ideas, the correspondence of these 
 ideas with the particular object to which they 
 relate involving that unity. Indeed, this object in 
 general is even a necessary thought ; for the 
 understanding recognises the accidental and sub- 
 jectively-conditioned nature of sense -knowledge, 
 and therefore frames for itself the two correlative 
 conceptions of that which is merely appearance 
 subjectively conditioned, and that which is apart 
 from appearance, namely, the thing-in-itself. The 
 latter may thus be called an intelligible entity, for 
 it is a something which is opposed by the under- 
 standing to the phenomenal as being of a different 
 character. But in order that a noumenon should 
 signify a real object that could be distinguished 
 from all phenomena, I must not only free my 
 thought from all conditions of sensuous perception, 
 but I must have some reason besides for admitting 
 another kind of perception besides the sensuous,
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL OBJECT 59 
 
 in which such a real object can be given, or my 
 thought would otherwise be empty, however free 
 it might be from contradictions. Now, although 
 we cannot prove that the sensuous is the only 
 possible perception, though it is the only one 
 for us, neither can we prove that another kind of 
 perception is possible. Therefore, although our 
 thought may take no account of any sensibility or 
 sensuous perception, the question always remains 
 whether, after that, it is not a mere form of a con- 
 ception, and whether any object would then be left. 
 The object which the understanding frames for 
 itself in contradistinction to the phenomenon is, as 
 has been said, the transcendental object or thing-in- 
 itself, that is, the entirely indefinite thought of 
 something in general or a thought without content, 
 a mere X. This cannot be called the noumenon, 
 for I know nothing of what it is in itself, and a 
 noumenon would have to be something definite 
 which could be distinguished by some sort of percep- 
 tion (although non-sensuous) as a real object. Not- 
 withstanding this, the conception of a noumenon, that 
 is, of a thing which can never be an object of sense, 
 but is thought by the pure understanding alone, is 
 certainly not self-contradictory, for the simple reason 
 that we cannot absolutely maintain that sensibility 
 is the only possible mode of perception, although we 
 cannot affirm the contrary. In fact, the conception 
 of a noumenon is even necessary in order to prevent
 
 60 ON FREEDOM 
 
 sensuous perception from claiming to extend to 
 things-in-themselves, that is, to restrain it within 
 the bounds of phenomena, and thus to set a limit 
 to the objective validity of sensuous knowledge. 
 For all the rest to which sensuous perception does 
 not extend is called noumenon, for the very purpose 
 of showing that sensuous knowledge cannot extend 
 its domain over everything that can be thought 
 by the understanding. But we cannot understand 
 how such noumena are possible at all, and the realm 
 beyond the sphere of phenomena is for us empty. 
 We have indeed an understanding which problema- 
 tically stretches beyond that sphere, but we have 
 no perception by means of which objects outside 
 the field of sensibility could be presented to us, and 
 by which our understanding could extend beyond 
 that sensibility and assert that objects existed. 
 Nor can we conceive how such a perception is even 
 possible. 1 The conception of a noumenon is there- 
 fore merely the conception of a limit, intended to 
 keep the claims of sensibility within proper bounds, 
 and therefore of negative use only. Our under- 
 standing acquires in this way a kind of negative 
 
 1 Schopenhauer was more confident. lie considered the most 
 important step in his philosophy, "the transition from the pheno- 
 menon to the thing in itself, a transition which Kant gave up as 
 impossible," and, he might have added, Fichte as well. (World as 
 Will and Idea : Supplements to the second Book : Chapter xviii). 
 
 Hegel likewise maintained in his smaller Logic (Encyclopedia), § 60, 
 that the phenomenal world was " not the terminus of thought " : that 
 there was "another and a higher region," which "to the Kantian 
 philosophy was an inaccessible other world."
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL OBJECT 61 
 
 extension ; for, by calling things - in - themselves 
 noumena, and regarding them as not objects of 
 sense, it rather limits the sensibility than is itself 
 limited by it. At the same time, in setting limits to 
 sensibility it has also to set limits to itself, for it is 
 obliged to admit that it cannot know these noumena 
 or things-in-themselves by means of the categories, 
 but can only think of them under a name that in- 
 dicates something unknown. 
 
 The conception of a noumenon, therefore, is not 
 the conception of an object, but only a problem 
 which is inseparable from the limitation of our 
 sensibility ; the problem, namely, whether there 
 may not be objects quite independent of that 
 sensibility's perception. This problem can only be 
 answered in an uncertain way, by saying that as 
 sensuous perception does not embrace all things 
 without exception, a place is left open for other and 
 different objects, which problematical objects can- 
 not therefore be absolutely denied, but neither can 
 be asserted as objects for our understanding, be- 
 cause there is no definite conception for them, the 
 categories being unfit for that purpose. Thus a 
 noumenon in a positive sense can only exist for an 
 understanding which does not have to depend upon 
 sense-perception for its material, that is to say, 
 for the divine intellect only. For the human under- 
 standing this Idea, like that of the divine intellect 
 itself, remains a problematical conception.
 
 62 ON FREEDOM 
 
 When Kant, therefore, applies the term " cause ,: 
 to things-in-themselves, he does not, as some of his 
 critics have supposed, indulge in a contradiction 
 of his own doctrine by the application of a category 
 to what is outside the subject and transcendent. 
 By the " causing " or " occasioning " of our sensa- 
 tions is merely meant an inner quality which belongs 
 to them. That is to say, they enter consciousness 
 in a particular manner, which we describe as " pas- 
 sivity " or " receptivity," in contrast to the colour- 
 ing activity of thought, which is accompanied by a 
 creative, spontaneous feeling. This colouring of the 
 sensations by thought is expressed in such a way 
 that the former are " caused " by something purely 
 outside of them. In other words, the manner in 
 which we interpret our sensations in contradistinc- 
 tion to our thought, which fashions them into 
 objects of experience for us, is due to the peculiar 
 characteristic of receptivity possessed in common 
 by them, that is to say, to a particular quality 
 which they all have, or the way in which they 
 enter consciousness. But their method of entry 
 into consciousness we express as " effect " ; that 
 is, the sensations are for us " occasioned " or 
 " caused " by something outside of them. Indeed, 
 it is only in order to express this character of 
 receptivity, that we speak of things-in-themselves, 
 as of that which stimulates or excites this receptivity. 
 Hence it is clear that this " causing " or " occasion-
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL OBJECT 63 
 
 ing " does not really belong to something outside 
 ourselves, but appertains to the general nature and 
 character of the sensations themselves, that is, to 
 the subject as effected. The relation of this " some- 
 thing outside," or, in other words, of things-in- 
 themselves, to the subject is therefore grasped 
 exclusively from the side of the subject. How, 
 indeed, this outside tiling may behave, the signi- 
 ficance of this behaviour for us, can only be 
 expressed as " causing of sensation." This is our 
 share, and our only share, in the relation between 
 us and it. When, therefore, we describe this outside 
 thing as " cause," we do not mean any nature 
 of behaviour belonging to it, but to us. Whilst, 
 therefore, as has alread}' been explained, the char- 
 acter of certain ideas (viz. of sensations coloured 
 by thought) appears, according to purely inner 
 psychological signs, as "effect," the cause outside 
 of them is a mere correlate constructed by those 
 ideas. Consequently, when Kant employs the cate- 
 gory of cause in this connection, the " cause " 
 must not be regarded as denoting something indeed 
 outside the subject, the thing as it is in-itself, but 
 only what it is for us, that is to say, in us. 1 
 
 1 See the Sixth Lecture in Georg Simmel's Kant — Sechzehn Vorle- 
 sungen for the suggestion contained in this last paragraph. That the 
 interpretation given there is probably correct may be inferred from a 
 couple of passages in the Critique of Judgment (see the Kritik der 
 Urtheihkrafl — Introduction, § 9 and footnote — translation by J. H. 
 Bernard).
 
 SECTION V 
 
 THE UNDERSTANDING AND REASON 
 
 In considering man and the Universe in which he 
 finds himself, a distinction must be drawn between 
 (a) The content of subjective consciousness, or the 
 actual sense-perceptions and ideas in a particular 
 individual consciousness ; (b) the objective world of 
 appearance, or the aggregate of all possible sense- 
 perceptions for consciousness in general ; and (c) 
 the reality which exists in itself without any re- 
 lation to a perceiving object, or, in other words, 
 the intelligible world or things-in-themselves. The 
 first (the domain of psychology) is immediate only 
 for the individual subject that has these percep- 
 tions ; the relations between the constituent ele- 
 ments being accidental sequences in time, con- 
 ditioned either empirically or through association. 
 The second (the domain of natural science) is the 
 same for all subjects of like organisation ; the 
 relations between the elements being natural laws, 
 that is, universally valid rules for the connection of 
 objects in space and time. The third, which, as 
 Kant has shown in the preceding section, would 
 
 be the object of a divine intellect, lies altogether 
 
 6 4
 
 UNDERSTANDING AND REASON 65 
 
 outside the forms of sense -perception, and is 
 therefore unattainable by human knowledge, 
 which can only proceed through the medium of 
 sense-perception. It is, as we have seen, only 
 comprehensible in human thought as a necessary 
 conception or regulative Idea for the critical deter- 
 mination of the limited nature of our knowledge, 
 and to make it the object of speculative reason 
 is a completely barren undertaking. These three 
 stages or forms of reality, the subjective, ob- 
 jective, and absolute reality, may be said to be 
 the correlates of the three stages or forms of intel- 
 ligence — the animal, human, and divine ; or, in 
 other words, sense-perception, understanding, and 
 reason. In man, the being intermediate between 
 the animal and God, all three are to be found ; 
 while the animal possesses sense-perception alone, 
 and God may be held to possess reason alone. 
 
 (a) Sense-perception is the capacity for receiving 
 sensations, or the receptivity for affections, the a 
 priori forms of that receptivity being, as already 
 explained in Section II, time and space, and the 
 product of sense-perception a plurality of sense- 
 perceptions in space and time. 
 
 (6) The Understanding is the faculty of producing 
 ideas spontaneously and of connecting them, of 
 thinking by means of conceptions, of bringing or 
 subsuming under certain rules, and of determining 
 the particular by means of the universal, the in-
 
 66 ON FREEDOM 
 
 dividual by means of the genus, that is, of judging. 
 It operates under the forms of logical judgment or 
 synthesis belonging to it, and we have seen that 
 the pure conceptions corresponding to these forms 
 are called " categories . " But the understanding can- 
 not free itself from the sensuous matter in which it 
 works (i.e. space and time), and the categories which 
 enable us to synthetise or combine the matter of 
 sense in different relations, and thus to develop 
 for ourselves the consciousness of a unitary world, 
 are therefore categories of the finite, which cannot 
 be used to determine the infinite. Thus the con- 
 ception of causality, while it enables us to determine 
 successive phenomena in time as necessarily con- 
 nected with each other, cannot enable us to connect 
 the phenomenal as such with the noumenal, that 
 is, with the thing-in-itself. The spontaneity of the 
 understanding stands in contrast with the re- 
 ceptivity of sense. The understanding introduces 
 law and systematic connection among the given 
 individual sense-perceptions, and the product of 
 sense-perception and understanding together is the 
 system of nature, arranged in space and time in 
 conformity with law, as science presents it to us. 
 In fact the laws of the activity of the understanding 
 are at the same time laws of nature, and thus the 
 categories or pure logical forms of judgment of the 
 understanding have, as before explained, what is 
 known as objective validity, on account of this very
 
 UNDERSTANDING AND REASON 67 
 
 fact, namely, that they really make possible and 
 determine for us all objects of possible experience. 
 
 Kant himself tells us that it was the demonstration 
 of this particular truth which entailed upon him the 
 greatest amount of labour, and it is the one which 
 forms the central thought of the Critique of Pure 
 Reason. He bases his proof on two points : (1) All 
 synthesis or combination into different relations of 
 the manifold in sensation, that is, of the plurality 
 of sense-perceptions in space, proceeds from the 
 spontaneous activity of the subject ; the faculty of 
 this spontaneous synthetising being called "under- 
 standing." (2) Objective reality, or nature as a 
 unity of objects, first arises when the understanding 
 reduces the manifold in this manner to the unity 
 which we find in experience ; the conclusion of the 
 whole matter therefore being that the functions 
 of the understanding are constitutive for objective 
 reality, or, in other words, that the formulae (i.e. the 
 categories) which express the activity of the under- 
 standing are at the same time objectively valid laws 
 of nature. 
 
 To put it in an even simpler way. If there were 
 no understanding, there would be no nature for us 
 either, but only a throng of fleeting sensations, or 
 plurality of unrelated and isolated impressions of 
 sense. The fact that we perceive reality as a unitary 
 plurality of permanent things, as a cosmic whole, 
 subject to laws, is not a consequence of the con-
 
 68 ON FREEDOM 
 
 stitution of reality in itself, which may or may not 
 be unitary and regular ; for reality in itself, with its 
 conformity to law, does not pass over into our 
 ideas at all, since we only know it as we are affected 
 by it. Neither is it a consequence of our sensibility, 
 which rather conveys to us quite separate elements 
 in all kinds of order or disorder. It is rather the 
 act of the understanding, which imposes 1 its own 
 unity and regularity, that is to say, its own laws, 
 upon the given elements of sense-perception, and 
 thereby creates for us the unitary world of ex- 
 perience. In this manner it will easily be seen 
 that the thinking ego is really a presupposition 
 of the possibility of the corporal world, which is 
 a product of its own activity. 
 
 All knowing, therefore, consists in the formation 
 of sense-given material by means of the energies 
 which we call " Understanding " ; and this is 
 possible, because it is by this very formation or 
 synthetisation that the object of knowledge or 
 objective image is brought about. We first form 
 this object out of the given impressions of sense, 
 and this is called " knowing it " ; but both are 
 
 1 This word imposes is the explanation of the Kantian term, con- 
 stitutive, in the previous paragraph. The understanding is con- 
 stitutive by reason of its being able to impose in this manner. It is 
 also an explanation of the words objective validity or objective reality, 
 for the fact of the understanding being able to impose its categories 
 upon the a posteriori data of sense, and so turn them into objects 
 of experience, is the same thing as to say that those categories 
 are objectively valid.
 
 UNDERSTANDING AND REASON 69 
 
 only two different expressions for one and the same 
 thing, and for this reason the laws, according to 
 winch our intellect goes to work, must be the un- 
 conditionally necessary laws of apprehendible things. 
 The object of knowledge thus coincides with the 
 knowing of the object. We recognise the object 
 when we produce it as an object. It is, however, 
 the unity of our self-consciousness, that is to say, 
 the " I," which is the active force that enables 
 us to synthetise sense-units in this manner into 
 objects of knowledge. The objectivity of things, in 
 contradistinction to the " I," lies in that very 
 unity of the "I," a unity which the latter itself 
 lends to them and with which they repeat its own 
 form ; a unity, however, which on the side of the 
 " I ' itself, only wins its existence by means of 
 those separate contents of the represented world 
 and as their form. That is to say, the " I " only 
 becomes conscious of itself and of its own unity in 
 the production of its objects of knowledge. Indeed, 
 what we call the " I " is nothing but the function 
 of bringing about the unity, the objective character, 
 and the knowableness of things. 
 
 Kant, therefore, cannot be said to have sub- 
 jectified the world ; rather has he objectified the 
 " I." Moreover, when the sovereignty of the " I ' 
 makes the object above all the product of the 
 subject, the similarit}* in principle of the synthe- 
 tising reality in all subjects guarantees that the
 
 70 ON FREEDOM 
 
 object legitimated by this reality, because created 
 out of it, is really objective, that is to say, neces- 
 sary and universally valid for all. 1 
 
 (c) Reason is the faculty of passing beyond the 
 empirical or sensible world, which is the domain and 
 product of the understanding, to the non-empirical, 
 and its product is the ideal or intelligible 2 world. 
 The understanding, although it pertains to the 
 empirical world, cannot refrain, as we have already 
 seen in dealing with the conception of the Nou- 
 menon in the previous Section, from granting the 
 reality of the intelligible or super-sensuous world, 
 although only as a limiting Idea, towards which it 
 strives, without being able to give it positive content 
 in thought. Human reason is only a feeble reflec- 
 tion of the divine, absolute reason. In man, reason 
 is primarily employed in the practical sphere, that 
 is, in the creation of practical Ideas or, in other 
 words, thoughts about something that ought to be 
 real, although it does not exist in the empirical 
 world, and that can and ought to be realised by 
 reason's own activity, as, for instance, " the perfect 
 state." In the theoretical sphere, reason acts as the 
 principle which (a) limits and (b) regulates the 
 employment of the understanding. It accomplishes 
 
 1 See the Fifth and Seventh Lectures in Georg Sinimel's Kanl — 
 Sechzehn Vorleswngen for the suggestions contained in these last two 
 paragraphs. 
 
 2 It need hardly be pointed out that the term " intelligible" is not 
 employed by Kant in the sense of "comprehensible." It is derived 
 from the word intelligibilia — " things of the intellect."
 
 UNDERSTANDING AND REASON 71 
 
 {a) by employing the Idea of an absolute know- 
 ledge, or the knowledge of things-in-themselves, in 
 order to bring the understanding to the conscious- 
 ness of its necessary limitation to the phenomenal 
 world or world of appearance. It accomplishes 
 (b) by holding out the Idea of the Unconditioned, 
 whereby the unity of knowledge may be completed. 
 The problems connected with Reason are dealt 
 with by Kant in that portion of the Critique of 
 Pure Reason which he calls the Transcendental 
 Dialectic. In it he criticises the attempts which 
 have been made at various times to construct a 
 metaphysics out of noumena, that is to say, to 
 turn the supersensuous, which indeed is a necessary 
 thought, into an object of possible knowledge, which 
 is quite another matter ; and he discovers the 
 illusion which lures mankind into regarding the 
 noumenal or intelligible world from this latter 
 point of view, and thereby into indulging in, what 
 he terms, transcendental dialectic. His argument is 
 as follows : — 
 
 Human thought, which obeys the law of the 
 categories, arranges the given sensuous data in 
 certain relations, so that every phenomenon is 
 conditioned by other phenomena. The result of 
 this is that, if the understanding is to comprehend 
 a phenomenon to the bottom and in its complete- 
 ness, it must grasp the whole of the conditions by 
 which that phenomenon is determined in its con-
 
 72 ON FREEDOM 
 
 nections with the whole experience. That is to 
 say, it must grasp an absolute unity of the entire 
 universe in one homogeneous whole ; a complete 
 enumeration or specification of differences in the 
 universe ; and a perfect continuity of unity and 
 difference, that is, a complete system of links be- 
 tween the highest unity and the greatest multi- 
 plicity. But this the understanding finds im- 
 possible in view of the endlessness of the world of 
 phenomena in its relation to time and space, and 
 therefore this peculiar relation between understand- 
 ing and sensibility results, as may easily be under- 
 stood, in necessary but insoluble problems. It is 
 these problems that Kant calls Ideas, and it is 
 Reason, in its theoretical as contrasted with its 
 practical sense, as explained above, which, accord- 
 ing to him, is the faculty requisite for this highest 
 synthesis of the cognitions of the understanding. 
 But, if reason represents a problem of this kind to 
 itself as indeed solved, it must needs regard the 
 totality of conditions as something unconditioned, 
 that is, something which, although containing within 
 itself the conditions for an infinite series of phe- 
 nomena, is not itself determined by any conditions. 
 This completion of an infinite series is no doubt 
 contradictory for the knowledge of the understand- 
 ing, but it must nevertheless be thought, if the task 
 of the understanding, which aims at such com- 
 pletion, is to be pursued.
 
 UNDERSTANDING AND REASON 73 
 
 The Ideas, therefore, are merely mental repre- 
 sentations of the unconditioned, which must neces- 
 sarily be thought, but cannot ever be an object of 
 knowledge, and the transcendental illusion into 
 which metaphysics falls lies in this, that the un- 
 conditioned is regarded as given, whereas it is only 
 imposed or set as a task in its various forms by the 
 Ideas of reason. In fact, these Ideas are not con- 
 stitutive principles through which, as through the 
 categories which act upon the sense data of our 
 experience, objects of knowledge are produced, but 
 merely regulative or heuristic principles which are 
 always constraining the understanding to seek ever 
 farther afield for more and more of the connecting 
 links in the conditioned world of experience. In 
 the slightly different phraseology of the Critique of 
 Judgment, they are valid only for the reflective, not 
 for the determinant Judgment. Unlike the cate- 
 gories, which can act constitutively, because the 
 data of sense are given upon which they can impose 
 their pure forms, and which they can thus transform 
 into objects of knowledge, the Ideas cannot be 
 applied as constitutive principles, because the full 
 data of sense which would be requisite (i.e. the 
 totality of conditions) are not given in their case 
 upon which they could impose their forms and 
 which they could thereby transform into an object 
 of knowledge (i.e. the unconditioned). The whole 
 of the transcendental dialectic indulged in by
 
 74 ON FREEDOM 
 
 human beings is thus merely due to the fact that 
 they attempt to use productively or constitutively 
 the pure transcendental machinery of thought in 
 its own a priori seclusion, that is to say, without 
 the realisation of the a posteriori of sense. 
 
 Of these Ideas of Reason in its theoretical sphere 
 Kant finds three : (i) The unconditioned for the 
 totality of all phenomena of the inner sense is 
 thought as the soul ; (2) the unconditioned for the 
 totality of all data of the outer sense is thought 
 as the world ; and (3) the unconditioned for the 
 totality of all the conditioned in general is thought 
 as God. 
 
 (1) The first transcendental illusion (the soul) is 
 dealt with in that part of the Critique of Pure 
 Reason which he calls the Paralogisms of Pure 
 Reason, a paralogism being the mistake of con- 
 founding one kind of truth with another, or 
 employing one and the same word in the two 
 premises of a syllogism with a different meaning. 
 In it he shows that the scientific conception of 
 substance is bound to our perception of that 
 which persists in space, and is therefore applic- 
 able in the domain of external sense only ; so 
 that the old metaphysicians in attributing simplicity 
 and permanence to the soul assumed that the 
 qualities of the phenomenal soul, as given in ex- 
 perience, formed part of its own real essence, and 
 thus based their method on a Paralogism. But
 
 UNDERSTANDING AND REASON 75 
 
 although he maintains that the Idea of the soul as 
 an unconditioned real unity of all phenomena of 
 the inner sense is indeed as little capable of proof 
 as of refutation, he nevertheless admits that it is 
 a regulative principle of Reason which incites the 
 understanding to investigate mental phenomena or 
 the inter-connections of the psychical life. 
 
 (2) The second transcendental illusion (the world) 
 is dealt with in that well-known portion of the 
 Critique of Pure Reason which Kant terms the 
 Antinomies of Pure Reason. There are four such 
 antinomies, a number which rests upon the list of 
 the categories, that list being taken as the basis of 
 his argument. He shows that when the universe as 
 an unconditioned whole is treated as an object 
 of knowledge, propositions which are mutually 
 contradictory can be maintained with equal 
 warrant and necessity, in so far as we follow, 
 on the one hand, the demand of the understanding 
 for a completion of the series of phenomena, 
 and, on the other, the demand of the sensuous 
 perception for their endless continuance. Thus 
 he proves that the world must have a beginning 
 and end in time and space ; that, as regards 
 its substance, there is a limit to its divisibility, or, 
 in other words, that it consists of atoms ; that 
 events in it must be traceable to originally free 
 {i.e. unconditioned) beginnings, in other words, 
 that there must be absolute initial points of action
 
 76 ON FREEDOM 
 
 in it ; and that to it, as a whole, there must belong 
 an absolutely necessary cause, God ; and he proves 
 respectively the contradictory opposite for all four 
 cases. Illusion, however, though it be, the Idea 
 of the World as an unconditioned whole serves 
 nevertheless to prompt the understanding to an 
 ever-increasing appreciation of the unity and inter- 
 dependence of external phenomena. 
 
 (3) The third transcendental illusion (God) is criti- 
 cised in that part of the same Critique which he calls 
 the Ideal of Pure Reason, the Ideal which the Reason 
 puts before it being the union of abstract identity 
 (that is, something without any defining terms 
 which as such seem to the understanding to be only 
 a limit and a negation — something therefore limit- 
 less and undefined and thus most real) and Being 
 (the only term under which that most real of real 
 things can be defined) ; a union, in other words, 
 which is God. He shows that all proofs of God's 
 existence, including the three stock proofs that 
 follow, are illusory. Thus in a trenchant argument, 
 criticised rather feebly by Hegel, he refutes the 
 Ontological proof employed by Descartes and Jacobi, 
 and indirectly by Spinoza, which seeks to infer the 
 existence of God from the conception alone of God's 
 being, on the ground, so the proof runs, that one 
 of the attributes of a perfect being must be exist- 
 ence ; he shows that the cosmological proof or argu- 
 ment e contingentia mundi, which seeks the first
 
 UNDERSTANDING AND REASON 77 
 
 cause of all that is contingent in an absolutely 
 necessary being, contains a pctitio principii, in that 
 the procedure involves taking a first cause for 
 granted, which is itself incapable of proof ; and 
 that the physico-thcological argument, or Argument 
 from Design, which tries to prove God's existence 
 from the ordered scheme of the universe, leads at 
 best, not to the conception of a Creator, but merely 
 to that of a wise and good Architect. But in spite 
 of this, he lays strong emphasis upon the fact that 
 the belief in a living, real unity of all reality con- 
 stitutes the only powerful motive for empirical 
 investigation of individual groups of internal and 
 external phenomena and the discovery of new 
 relationships between them, and is therefore a most 
 useful regulative principle of Reason. 
 
 Hence we see that Reason as the faculty of 
 inference, as contrasted with the understanding as 
 the faculty of judgment, is always urging the 
 understanding to push ever farther afield in every 
 department of knowledge, and to bring all things 
 under laws, and thus to arrive at a perfect com- 
 pleteness of knowledge, and it tempts the under- 
 standing to strive after this impossible ideal by 
 dangling before it the Idea of the Unconditioned. 
 In fact, the mind's impulse is to bring all the 
 objects of the world under its own unity, but the 
 laws of the understanding are not such as to permit 
 of its perfect attainment. The logical nature
 
 78 ON FREEDOM 
 
 (understanding and reason) is really the ego-in- 
 itself ; time and space belonging merely to sense, 
 since they are only the sensuous material in which 
 the ego-in-itself works, and which being phenomenal 
 can pass away at death. But the ego-in-itself 
 remains, a spaceless, timeless, pure-thinking spirit ; 
 and this, though unrealisable in perception, is 
 nevertheless a true and necessary thought.
 
 SECTION VI 
 
 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 
 
 Practical Freedom distinguished from 
 Transcendental Freedom 
 
 Kant points out that there are always two ways 
 in which we can conceive events to be due to a 
 cause. Either the causality, in other words, the 
 causal activity or active power or faculty of causing, 
 which produces the event as its effect is natural, 
 or it springs from freedom. 
 
 By natural causal activity is meant the connec- 
 tion of one state in the world of sense with a 
 preceding state in that same world, and in which 
 the second state follows the first in conformity 
 with a rule. Now, as the causal activity of pheno- 
 mena depends on conditions of Time ; in other 
 words, as the effect follows the cause ; as also the 
 preceding state, if it had always existed, could not 
 have produced an effect which first takes place in 
 Time (because, if the cause had always existed, the 
 effect must have always existed along with it, and 
 could not have begun as an effect in time), it follows 
 that the causal activity possessed by the cause of 
 
 79
 
 8o ON FREEDOM 
 
 that which happens or arises, that is to say, of that 
 which is caused (i.e. an event), must, according to 
 the principle of the understanding, have itself arisen 
 as an event in time and itself require another cause 
 to account for it. 
 
 By freedom, on the contrary, in its cosmological 
 meaning, that is, in the sense of there being an un- 
 conditioned or primal cause of all the causal con- 
 nections of the universe, we understand the faculty 
 of bringing a state into existence spontaneously. 
 The causal activity therefore of this freedom does 
 not depend, according to nature's law, on another 
 preceding cause which determines it in time. Taken 
 in this sense, freedom is a purely transcendental 
 Idea, that is, an Idea which neither contains in it 
 anything derived from experience, nor the object 
 of which can be given in any experience ; because it 
 is a universal rule, even of the possibility of any 
 experience, that everything which happens or 
 comes into being must have a cause, and that there- 
 fore the causal activity possessed by that cause, 
 which activity itself has happened or arisen, must 
 itself also have a cause to account for it. As, 
 however, it is impossible within the limits of a 
 possible experience to arrive at an absolute com- 
 pleteness of causal relations in the world, that is, 
 the complete sum of all phenomena, which, as a 
 whole, could be then regarded as itself without a 
 cause, that is, unconditioned and free ; reason
 
 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 81 
 
 creates for itself the Idea of a spontaneity, or a 
 power of beginning to act purely of itself, without 
 being determined to activity by another cause, as 
 the law of natural causal activity demands. That 
 is to say, as we cannot gather together all causal 
 connections under our view, but must ever be 
 seeking for a further cause within the limits of ex- 
 perience, we cannot get the entire sum of the causal 
 connections of the world into a whole. If we could 
 do so, we might look upon this whole as itself 
 without a cause, and thus as unconditioned and 
 complete in itself, and so free. We therefore have 
 to fall back upon our reason, which creates for 
 itself a free, active, unconditioned, supreme, first 
 cause, as a cause of all the causal connections in 
 the world. 
 
 Now the practical conception of freedom is 
 founded on the Transcendental {theoretical) Idea of 
 freedom, 1 and the question of the possibility of the 
 former is difficult only as it involves the consideration 
 of the possibility of the latter. The difficulty which 
 thus arises is due to our confusing two different things : 
 (i) The consciousness in every man of a faculty of 
 determination, independent of necessitation by 
 sensuous impulses, that is to say, freedom in its 
 practical meaning. For freedom, in its practical 
 sense, is the independence of our will of coercion by 
 
 1 See the previous section, 8th paragraph, for the practical and 
 theoretical spheres of Reason.
 
 82 ON FREEDOM 
 
 sensuous impulses. Will is sensuous, so far as it is 
 affected pathologically {i.e. by sensuous impulses), 
 and animal, if necessitated pathologically . It is free 
 if it is affected, but not necessitated pathologically. 
 The human will is certainly sensuous, but not 
 animal. On the contrary, it is free, because sensuous 
 impulses do not necessitate its action, there being 
 in man a faculty of determination independent of 
 coercion through sensuous impulses. And (2) the 
 transcendental (theoretical) idea of freedom ; that 
 is, our imagining that we have a conception of such 
 a thing as freedom by itself, in other words, of 
 something unconditioned, without a cause, and 
 also that such a thing as freedom is possible in the 
 world ; neither of which we can under any circum- 
 stances maintain, since freedom, as such, that is, 
 something active without itself a cause, cannot 
 come within the limits of any possible experience. 
 
 In fact, the real problem before us is not psycho- 
 logical, but transcendental. It is not practical 
 freedom, but transcendental freedom which is the 
 problem. The question of the possibility of freedom 
 concerns psychology, it is true ; but as it rests on 
 dialectical arguments of pure reason, its solution 
 must engage the attention of transcendental philo- 
 sophy only. Every man, no doubt, is conscious of 
 a faculty of determination independent of coercion 
 by sensuous impulses, that is, of practical freedom. 
 But that is all that he can say with truth ; and he
 
 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 83 
 
 cannot out of this psychological truth produce the 
 possibility of freedom ; that is, he cannot assert 
 that freedom really exists in and by itself as an 
 active, unconditioned cause without having itself 
 a cause. The solution of this problem must, 
 therefore, be settled in another manner, that is, 
 by means of transcendental philosophy.
 
 SECTION VII 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM OF 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 
 
 In the question of nature and freedom we are at 
 once confronted with the difficulty, namely, whether 
 freedom is possible at all, and if it is, whether it 
 can exist along with the universality of the natural 
 law of causal activity. Can we, in fact, affirm 
 that every effect in the world must arise, either 
 from nature, or from freedom, or must we say that 
 in different relations the same event could be due 
 both to nature and to freedom. That every event 
 in the world of sense is connected with a preceding 
 event according to an unchangeable law of nature, 
 admits of no exception. The question, therefore, 
 can only be whether, in spite of that principle, the 
 same effect may not only be determined in accord- 
 ance with natural law, but may also depend upon 
 freedom ; or whether freedom is entirely excluded 
 by that inviolable rule. Here the common but 
 false presupposition of the absolute reality of pheno- 
 mena, as things-in-themselves, shows at once its 
 pernicious influence in embarrassing reason (see 
 
 Section IV). For, if phenomena are things-in- 
 
 8 4
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 85 
 
 themselves, freedom cannot be saved : because, if 
 there is nothing outside phenomena, as the ground 
 of these phenomena, freedom cannot be outside phe- 
 nomena as their cause, that is, freedom cannot be 
 non-phenomenal and outside the limits of experience. 
 The conditions, in fact, would always be members 
 of exactly the same series as the conditioned. 
 Nature in that case would be the complete and 
 adequate cause of every event, and the cause of 
 every event would always be contained in that 
 series of phenomena only, which, with its effect, is 
 necessary according to the law of nature. If, on 
 the contrary, phenomena are taken for no more 
 than they really are, namely, not things-in-them- 
 selves, but ideas only or impressions on sensibility, 
 that is to say, merely objects connected with one 
 another in consciousness according to empirical 
 laws, they must themselves have their source in 
 that which is not phenomenal, that is, their ground or 
 cause must be intelligible only and outside the limits 
 of a possible experience. The causal activity of such 
 an intelligible cause, however, is not determined 
 with reference to its causal activity by antecedent 
 phenomena, although the effects of that intelligible 
 causal activity are presented to us as phenomena, 
 and, as phenomena, must therefore be regarded by 
 us as determined by and linked up with other 
 phenomena in the causal connection of natural 
 law. That intelligible cause, therefore, with its
 
 86 ON FREEDOM 
 
 causal activity, is itself outside the series of pheno- 
 mena and natural causal connection, though its 
 effect (a phenomenal action) is to be found in that 
 series. The effect, therefore, can, with respect to its 
 intelligible cause, be considered as free, and yet 
 at the same time be viewed on its phenomenal 
 side as not free, but as resulting from previous 
 phenomena according to the necessity of nature. 
 What has already been remarked will now very 
 clearly be seen, namely, that, as the unbroken 
 connection of all phenomena in the woof of nature 
 is an unalterable law, it would necessarily destroy 
 all freedom if we were to defend obstinately the 
 absolute reality of phenomena as objects-in-them- 
 selves. Those persons, therefore, who adhere to 
 the common opinion on this subject, can never 
 succeed in reconciling nature and freedom. 
 
 It may be as well to reiterate what is contained in 
 this last paragraph in order to make Kant's meaning 
 still clearer to the reader. Our experience shows us 
 that phenomena in the world of nature are governed 
 by an unchangeable law of nature, namely, the law 
 of causal connection, that is, the law of cause and 
 effect. Therefore, in respect of these phenomena, 
 we cannot hold that there can be such a thing as 
 freedom. If, however, we allow, as we should do, 
 that phenomena are merely ideas or impressions on 
 our sensibility, that is to say, the effects of tran- 
 scendental objects which are the grounds or causes
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 87 
 
 of these phenomena and themselves outside the 
 series of phenomena, in other words, outside the 
 limits of experience, we may then maintain that 
 phenomena are governed by the law of nature as 
 between themselves in the world of nature, and 
 yet hold at the same time that the causes of those 
 phenomena, that is, the causal activity possessed by 
 these transcendental objects, which for us are things- 
 in-themselves and outside the limits of possible 
 experience, are not governed by the law of nature, 
 but are free and unconditioned, i.e. without a cause 
 themselves. But if, on the contrary, we do not 
 allow phenomena to be mere ideas or impressions 
 on our sensibility, that is, if we maintain that 
 phenomena are things in and by themselves, we 
 must then abandon the transcendental Idea of 
 freedom, and with it the practical conception of 
 freedom. For in this latter case we do away with 
 the two series which enabled us to hold the Idea of 
 freedom, namely, the series of phenomena as mere 
 impressions on our sensibility, and the series of trans- 
 cendental objects as the free ground or cause of those 
 phenomena ; and we are left with only one series, 
 namely, that of phenomena, which we assert are 
 objects in themselves. In this latter case, therefore, 
 we cannot possibly adhere to the Idea of freedom ; 
 because in these phenomena, which, we assert, are 
 things-in-themselves, experience only shows us the 
 iron law of nature working through causal connec-
 
 88 ON FREEDOM 
 
 tion, and we cannot in one and the same series 
 have freedom and at the same time not freedom. 
 It follows, therefore, that if we wish to be able to 
 adhere to the Idea of freedom, we must admit that 
 phenomena are mere ideas or effects upon our 
 sensibility of the causal activity of transcendental 
 objects outside the phenomena, which activity may 
 be considered free and unconditioned, since the 
 transcendental objects with their causal activity 
 are outside time and space and possible experi- 
 ence, and are therefore not governed by the law 
 of causal connection which is found everywhere in 
 nature. 1 
 
 1 For a reply to the objection that Kant, inconsistently with his own 
 doctrine, applies the category of cause to things as they are in them- 
 selves outside the subject, see the last paragraph of Section IV.
 
 SECTION VIII 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 
 
 The empirical character of a subject of the world of 
 sense {man) distinguished from its intelligible 
 character ; this distinction being considered with 
 reference to the possibility of a free causal activity 
 in harmony with the Universal Law of Natural 
 Necessity. 
 
 Whatever in an object of the senses is not itself 
 phenomenal may be called intelligible. If, therefore, 
 what in the world of sense must be considered as 
 phenomenal, possesses in itself a faculty which is 
 not an object of sensuous perception, but by means 
 of which faculty this phenomenal being can become 
 the cause of other phenomena, the causal activity 
 of this phenomenal being may be regarded from 
 two points of view : (a) It is intelligible as regards 
 its action, as the causal activity of a thing-in-itself, 
 that is, of something which is not phenomenal, but 
 free and unconditioned ; (b) it is sensible as regards 
 the effects of its action, as the causal activity of a 
 phenomenon in the world of sense. Of the causal 
 
 faculty of such a phenomenal being (man, for in- 
 
 80
 
 90 ON FREEDOM 
 
 stance) we should have to form both an empirical 
 and an intellectual conception, both of which exist 
 together in one and the same effect ; and this 
 twofold way of conceiving the causal faculty of a 
 sensuous object does not contradict any of the 
 conceptions which we have to form of phenomena 
 and of a possible experience. For as all pheno- 
 mena, not being things-in-themselves, but merely 
 ideas or impressions on sensibility, must have for 
 their ground a transcendental object, determining 
 them as mere ideas, there is nothing to prevent 
 us from attributing to that transcendental object, 
 besides the property through which it becomes 
 phenomenal, a causal activity also which is not 
 phenomenal, although its effects appear in other 
 phenomena. Every effective cause, however, must 
 have a character, that is, a rule according to 
 which it manifests its causal activity, and without 
 which it would not be a cause. According to this, 
 we should have in every subject of the world of 
 sense (such as man), first, an empirical character, 
 through which its acts, as phenomena, stand with 
 other phenomena in unbroken connection according 
 to permanent laws of nature, and could be deduced 
 as effects from those other phenomena as their 
 causes or conditions, and in connection with them 
 form the links of one and the same series in the 
 empirical order of nature, that is, in the order 
 which our experience teaches us that nature always
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 91 
 
 preserves. Secondly, we should have to allow to 
 this phenomenal being or subject of the world of 
 sense an intelligible character also, by which, it is 
 true, it becomes the cause of the very same pheno- 
 menal acts or effects as were mentioned in the last 
 sentence, but which itself is not subject to any 
 conditions of time and space and so of sensibility, 
 and is therefore never phenomenal. The empirical 
 character of every such subject of the world of 
 sense might be called the character of the thing 
 as a phenomenon, and its intelligible character the 
 character of the thing-in-itself. 
 
 This active subject (man) in its intelligible char- 
 acter would depend on no conditions of time, for time, 
 we have seen (Section II), is only the condition of 
 phenomena and not of things-in-themselves. In 
 its intelligible character none of its activity would 
 ever begin to be or perish in time ; that is, none of 
 its activity would be initiated by a cause or ended 
 through the cessation of a cause, because its activity 
 would be outside all the laws of nature, and thus 
 spontaneous and free. Thus it would not be sub- 
 ject to the law of determination in time and of all 
 change, namely, that everything which begins to be 
 must have its cause in the phenomena of the previous 
 state. In a word, its causal activity, so far as it is 
 intelligible, would not have a place in the series of 
 empirical conditions by which the event is rendered 
 necessary in the world of sense as following upon a
 
 92 ON FREEDOM 
 
 phenomenal cause according to the law of nature. 
 It is true that this intelligible character could never 
 be known immediately, because we cannot perceive 
 anything except in so far as it appears as a pheno- 
 menon in nature, but it would nevertheless have to 
 be conceived in accordance with the law of our em- 
 pirical state, as we must always admit in thought 
 a transcendental object at the basis of phenomena, 
 though we know nothing of what such an object is 
 in itself. 
 
 In its empirical character, therefore, that subject 
 of the world of sense would, as a phenomenon, obey 
 the law of causal connection in all its acts or effects, 
 and in that respect it would be nothing but a part 
 of the sensuous world, and its effects, like those of 
 every other phenomenon, would arise without fail 
 according to the law of nature. As soon as external 
 phenomena began to influence that subject, and as 
 soon as its empirical character, that is, the natural 
 law of its causal activity, had become known 
 through observation and experience, all its actions 
 ought to admit of explanation as effects of those 
 external phenomena according to the laws of nature, 
 and all that would be requisite for the complete 
 and necessary determination of its causal activity 
 would be found in a possible experience. 
 
 In its intelligible character, however (though we 
 could only have a general conception of it), the same 
 subject would have to be considered free from all
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 93 
 
 sensuous influences and phenomenal determination, 
 that is to say, from all natural necessity. More- 
 over, as in it, so far as it is a noumenon (that is, so 
 far as the transcendental substratum of that subject 
 or the thing-in-itself is concerned), nothing happens, 
 that is, nothing arises in time as an effect of a pre- 
 ceding cause, and as consequently no change which 
 requires the serial order of an effect following upon 
 a cause in time, nor therefore any connection with 
 phenomena as causes, can exist in it, that active 
 being or subject of the world of sense would so far 
 be quite independent and free in its activity from 
 all natural necessity, which natural necessity can 
 exist in the world of sense only. One might say of 
 it with perfect truth, from the point of view of its 
 intelligible character, that it originates its pheno- 
 menal effects in the world of sense by itself, that 
 is, without any previous temporal condition deter- 
 mining it to activity, and being itself outside the 
 world of sense ; though these resultant sensuous 
 acts or effects do not begin in itself, that is, do not 
 begin in the intelligible faculty outside the world of 
 sense, but in the world of sense or phenomena. And 
 this would be perfectly true, for we should not be 
 affirming that these effects in the world of sense 
 originate by themselves, because in the world of 
 sense they are always connected with previous 
 causes in time according to natural laws, though 
 only by means of the empirical character, which
 
 94 ON FREEDOM 
 
 is merely the phenomenal appearance or mani- 
 festation of the intelligible character ; and there- 
 fore they are possible only as constituting a 
 continuation of the series of natural causes. In 
 this way freedom and nature, each in its complete 
 signification, might exist together, and without any 
 contradiction, in the same phenomenal actions, 
 according as we refer those actions to their intelli- 
 gible or sensible grounds. 
 
 fe These two last paragraphs may therefore be 
 summed up very briefly as follows : — The activity 
 of a subject of the world of sense (man) may be 
 regarded from two points of view, namely, its pheno- 
 menon and the transcendental object of that pheno- 
 menon. That transcendental object has the faculty 
 of becoming phenomenal, that is, of becoming the 
 actual phenomenon, man, as well as of causing the 
 phenomenal actions by that man. The causal 
 activity belonging to this transcendental object is 
 original and spontaneous, and so free ; that is to 
 say, it is not itself subject to any cause, being 
 outside temporal and natural conditions. However, 
 although it is the free, spontaneous cause of these 
 phenomenal actions, the latter have, nevertheless, 
 to be linked up in our experience with their natural 
 causes by the law of necessity, and to take their 
 place in the causal nexus of the universe, and there- 
 fore appear to us as neither free nor original, but 
 as actions by the phenomenon, man, who is moved
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 95 
 
 to commit them by empirical influences. When we 
 have learnt the manner in which these phenomenal 
 actions are linked together by the law of natural 
 necessity, we have learnt what is known as the 
 man's empirical character, that character being 
 merely the law of the connection of his actions as 
 phenomena in nature. 
 
 To put it in still another way — The subject of the 
 world of sense (man) in its intelligible character 
 spontaneously originates actions. These actions, 
 however, can only become known to us in the 
 sensuous world of phenomena. But in the sensuous 
 world all phenomena are joined in a causal nexus 
 according to natural laws. Therefore these actions 
 or effects, which are originated by the subject in 
 its intelligible character, appear to us as phenomena 
 dependent upon the empirical character of the 
 subject or, in other words, as governed by natural 
 laws. Therefore we may say that the empirical 
 character of the subject is the phenomenal mani- 
 festation of its intelligible character.
 
 SECTION IX 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENTAL 
 
 freedom (continued) 
 
 Reason as the free ca%ise of actions not contradictory 
 to the Laws of Nature, if reason's causal activity 
 is regarded as a transcendental Idea only. 
 
 The only question, therefore, here is whether, 
 granting that in the whole series of events there is 
 nothing to be found but the necessity of nature, 
 we may yet regard the very same event, which on 
 one side is merely an effect of nature, on the other 
 side as an effect of freedom ; or whether there is 
 a direct contradiction between these two kinds of 
 causal activity ? We require the principle of 
 causal connection in nature in order to be able to 
 look for and to present natural conditions of natural 
 events, that is, phenomenal causes of events in the 
 phenomenal world. Indeed, it is by this means 
 alone that phenomena become a system of Nature 
 and objects of experience. If this is admitted and 
 not weakened by any exceptions, the understanding 
 which in its empirical employment, that is, in its 
 
 employment within the limits of a possible experi- 
 
 96
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 97 
 
 ence, recognises in all events nothing but nature, 
 and is quite justified in doing so, has really all 
 that it can demand, and the explanations of natural 
 phenomena from their natural causes may proceed 
 without let or hindrance. The understanding 
 would not be wronged in the least if we assumed, 
 though it be a mere fiction, that some among the 
 natural causes (man, for instance) have a faculty 
 which is not empirical, but intelligible only (i.e. 
 the faculty of originating without any previous 
 phenomenal cause itself), and the determination 
 of which to activity does not rest on empirical 
 conditions, that is, on the natural laws of causal 
 connection which our experience teaches us, but on 
 mere grounds of the intellect, if only the pheno- 
 menal activity of those causes is in accordance with 
 all the laws of empirical causal activity, that is, if 
 only those causes with their phenomenal activity 
 are admitted to have a phenomenal cause them- 
 selves according to natural laws. 
 
 In this way the active subject (man, for instance), 
 as a phenomenal cause, would be joined with 
 nature through the indissoluble dependence of all 
 nature's actions, and the noumenon only of that 
 subject would contain certain faculties of causing 
 which, if we want to ascend from the empirical or 
 phenomenal to the transcendental object, would have 
 to be regarded as intelligible only. For, if only 
 
 we follow the rule of nature in the inquiry as to 
 
 G
 
 98 ON FREEDOM 
 
 what may be the causes of any particular pheno- 
 mena, we need not trouble ourselves as to whether 
 a non-phenomenal and purely intelligible ground 
 of those phenomena and their connection in nature 
 may be conceived to exist in the noumenon or trans- 
 cendental subject, which is completely unknown 
 to us because outside the limits of a possible 
 experience. This intelligible ground or cause does 
 not touch the empirical questions, that is, does 
 not affect the fact of the unchangeable law of 
 nature as everywhere met with in experience, but 
 concerns only, as it would seem, the thought in the 
 pure understanding. And, although the effects of 
 that thought and action of the pure understanding 
 may be discovered in the phenomena, that is, 
 although the effects of so-called free-will, for in- 
 stance, may seem to be so discovered, these 
 phenomena have nevertheless to be completely 
 explained as derived from their phenomenal cause 
 according to the laws of nature, by taking the 
 empirical character of that cause as the highest 
 ground of explanation, and passing by its intelli- 
 gible character (which is the transcendental ground 
 of the empirical character) as entirely unknown, 
 except in so far as it is indicated by the empirical 
 as its sensuous sign. 
 
 Man, for instance, is one among the phenomena 
 of the sensuous world, and, in so far, one of the 
 natural causes whose causal activity must be
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 99 
 
 subject to empirical laws, that is, to those laws 
 of causal connection which our experience teaches 
 us are everywhere observable in nature. Like all 
 other things in nature, therefore, he must have an 
 empirical character. We learn about this character 
 through observation of the powers and faculties 
 which he exhibits in the production of phenomenal 
 effects. Now, in the inanimate or merely brute 
 nature we see no ground for admitting any faculty 
 except such as is sensuously conditioned, that is, as 
 takes its place in the series of phenomenal, causal 
 connection in accordance with the law of nature. 
 But Man, who knows all the rest of nature through 
 his senses only, knows himself not only so, but also 
 through mere self-consciousness, and this in actions 
 and inner determinations, which he cannot regard 
 as due to impressions of sense. He is thus to him- 
 self partly a phenomenon, partly, however, namely, 
 with reference to certain faculties or powers of 
 causing felt within himself, a purely intelligible 
 object, because the action of these faculties in him 
 cannot be attributed by him to the receptivity of 
 sense. These faculties we call understanding and 
 reason. It is the latter in particular which we 
 distinguish in quite an especial way from all 
 empirically conditioned forces or faculties, that is, 
 from all forces or faculties which are governed by 
 the law of nature as known to us in experience, 
 because reason estimates its objects solely in the
 
 ioo ON FREEDOM 
 
 light of Ideas which transcend the limits of possible 
 experience, and determines the understanding ac- 
 cordingly, which then makes an empirical use of 
 its own conceptions in conformity with the law 
 of nature. 
 
 Now, that this reason of ours actually possesses 
 causal activity, or at least that we are forced to 
 think so, is clear from the imperatives, such as " I 
 ought," which we impose upon ourselves as rules 
 for our conduct. The ought expresses a kind of 
 necessity and connection of phenomenal actions 
 with their grounds or causes which we do not find 
 elsewhere in the whole of nature. For, when we say 
 that an action ought to have happened, we mean 
 that reason ought to have brought that action 
 about ; that is, we connect what we say ought to 
 have happened with our reason as its preceding 
 cause. But the understanding can know in nature 
 only what is, has been, or will be. It is impossible 
 that anything in nature ought to be different from 
 what it in fact is, was, or will be. Nay, if we only 
 look at the course of nature, the ought has no 
 meaning whatever ; for we can as little ask what 
 ought to be in nature, as what properties a circle 
 ought to have. The only question we can properly 
 ask is what happens in nature, and what properties 
 that which happens has. 
 
 This ought, in fact, expresses a possible action, 
 the ground or cause of which cannot be anything
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 101 
 
 but a mere conception, for a free, unconditioned 
 reason as a cause is something outside the limits 
 of all possible experience and merely intelligible ; 
 while, in the case of every merely natural action 
 that is, has been, or will be, its ground or cause 
 must always be a phenomenon preceding that 
 action in time in accordance with the law of nature. 
 No doubt the action to which the imperative ought 
 applies, that is, the action required of us by duty, 
 must be possible under conditions of nature, or we 
 could not say that it ought to happen in experience ; 
 but these natural conditions have no influence in 
 determining the will itself, but only in determining 
 its effects among phenomena. That is to say, the 
 so-called free-will or causal activity belonging to 
 our reason, which we are conscious of when we say 
 that something ought to happen, is not governed 
 by the law of nature, although the ought as con- 
 ceived to be translated into possible practice as a 
 necessary effect of that free causal activity, that is 
 to say, the action to which that ought refers cannot 
 be imagined except as taking its place in the series 
 of natural phenomena, where the law of nature 
 prevails. There may be ever so many natural 
 influences and sensuous stimuli which urge me to 
 an act of will, but they can never produce the 
 feeling of ought in my mind. They can only pro- 
 duce a willing or impulse which is always con- 
 ditioned (i.e. always caused by some natural
 
 102 ON FREEDOM 
 
 phenomenon, such, for instance, as these sensuous 
 stimuli or temptations), but which need by no 
 means necessarily be translated into actual practice 
 (because human will is not animal, and can resist 
 sensuous impulses), and which impulse the " ought " 
 of reason either authorises, prohibits, or sets a 
 measure to. For reason does not yield to the 
 impulse that is given empirically, that is, to the 
 impulse given by some object in the sensuous world, 
 and does not follow the order of things as they 
 present themselves as phenomena, but frames for 
 itself, with perfect spontaneity, an order of its own 
 in accordance with Ideas to which it adapts the 
 empirical conditions or order of nature, and accord- 
 ing to which Ideas it declares actions to be neces- 
 sary, even although they have not taken place and, 
 maybe, never will take place. Yet, although they 
 may not have taken place and never will, perhaps, 
 take place, reason assumes that it can exert causal 
 activity in respect of them, that is to say, originate 
 them, for otherwise it would not expect effects in 
 the world of experience to result from its Ideas. 
 
 To sum up the last two paragraphs — When I say 
 that " a thing did happen," I mention a past event 
 or effect in the world of nature which had its 
 phenomenal cause, which cause was in the series of 
 natural conditions and discoverable by investigation 
 according to natural laws. When, however, I say 
 that " something else ought to have happened in-
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 103 
 
 stead," I maintain that there ought to have been 
 an event or effect, and I attribute to that effect a 
 cause. That cause, however, with its causal activity, 
 does not exist in the series of natural conditions, 
 but only in my own reason. The event which I say 
 ought to have happened is merely a possible event 
 or action, which, nevertheless, must be considered 
 as being able to happen under natural laws and 
 conditions, that is, with a phenomenal ground or 
 cause preceding it in time, or else I could not 
 imagine it as happening in experience. These 
 natural laws do not govern this causal activity of 
 my reason, although the effects of that activity, 
 that is, the event that I say ought to have hap- 
 pened, cannot be imagined except as taking its 
 place in the series of causes or conditions which 
 are governed by the natural laws of cause and 
 effect. These imperatives, therefore, such as ought, 
 prove that we represent our reason to ourselves 
 as possessing a spontaneous, unconditioned causal 
 activity or free-will, which is able to have as its 
 result various effects in experience, that is, in the 
 phenomenal world of nature, although these effects 
 must at the same time be connected in that world 
 of nature with their previous phenomenal and 
 natural causes. 
 
 Let us therefore admit it to be at least possible 
 for reason to possess causal activity with respect 
 to phenomena. It will be remembered that every
 
 104 ON FREEDOM 
 
 efficient cause must have a character, that is to say, 
 a rule according to which it manifests its causal 
 activity, and without which it would not be a 
 cause. It will also be remembered that the em- 
 pirical character of a cause is that through which 
 its acts, as phenomena, stand with other phenomena 
 in unbroken connection according to permanent 
 laws of nature and could be derived as effects from 
 those other phenomena as their causes or conditions, 
 and in connection with them form the links of one 
 and the same series in the order of nature. If, 
 therefore, we admit that reason possesses a faculty 
 of causing with reference to phenomena, in that 
 case, reason though it be, it must yet exhibit an 
 empirical character. For every cause presupposes 
 a rule according to which certain phenomena follow 
 as effects, and every rule requires uniformity 
 (Gleichformigkcit) in the way of effects on which 
 the conception of cause as a faculty, that is, as 
 possessing a power of causing, is founded. This 
 uniformity of effect, as learned from simply ob- 
 serving phenomena, may be called the empirical 
 character of a cause, and this empirical character 
 is permanent, although the effects, according as the 
 accompanying conditions vary, appear in change- 
 able forms. 
 
 Thus the will of every man has an empirical 
 character, which character is simply a certain 
 causal activity belonging to his reason, in so far as
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 105 
 
 that activity exhibits, in its effects in the pheno- 
 menal world, a rule according to which one may 
 infer the motives of his actions and judge of the 
 subjective principles of his will. As this empirical 
 character must itself be gathered from observation 
 of the effects of his causal activity in the phenomenal 
 world, and from the rule or order of those pheno- 
 mena which is supplied by experience, all the acts 
 of a man, so far as they are phenomena, are effects 
 of and traceable to his empirical character and the 
 other causes that co-operate with it in conformity 
 with the order of nature. Moreover, if we could 
 trace all the phenomenal manifestations of his will 
 to the very bottom, there would not be a single 
 action of his which we could not predict with as 
 great certainty as a lunar or solar eclipse, and re- 
 cognise as necessarily resulting from its preceding 
 causes in the order of nature. So long, therefore, 
 as we look only at a man's empirical character we 
 cannot find any trace of freedom. In fact, viewed 
 from this phenomenal side, no human action can be 
 free, and yet this empirical character is the only thing 
 that comes before us when we are merely observing 
 man, and trying to investigate the motive causes of 
 his actions from an anthropological point of view. 
 
 But if we consider the very same actions in their 
 relation to reason, not, however, with reference to 
 speculative reason in order to explain their origin, 
 but solely so far as reason is the cause which pro-
 
 106 ON FREEDOM 
 
 duces them. That is to say, if we do not inquire 
 whether indeed reason has a free causal activity 
 which produces effects, and try to explain how this 
 can be possible and what is really the origin of these 
 effects (an inquiry which would be barren of result), 
 but merely consider these effects as in reality pro- 
 duced by reason. If, in a word, we view man's 
 actions in their relation to reason as practical, we 
 find that they come under a totally different rule 
 and order from the order of nature. For, from this 
 point of view, everything, it may be, in Reason's 
 eye, ought not to have happened, which according to 
 the course of nature has happened, and which in 
 virtue of the phenomenal causes that preceded it 
 was indeed necessary and inevitable. And, contrari- 
 wise, we sometimes find, or believe at least that we 
 find, that the Ideas of reason have really proved 
 their causal activity with reference to phenomenal 
 actions of men, and that those phenomenal actions 
 have taken place, not because they were determined by 
 empirical causes in the order of nature, but because 
 they were determined by grounds of reason alone. 
 
 But supposing that one could definitely say that 
 reason does possess a faculty of causing with respect 
 to phenomena, could the action of reason in pro- 
 ducing these phenomenal effects be called free in 
 that case, seeing that this action can be accurately 
 derived as an effect of the empirical character (the 
 disposition), and is in fact rendered necessary by 
 it according to laws of nature ? That empirical
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 107 
 
 character again is, as has already been said, merely 
 the phenomenal or sensuous sign of the intelligible 
 character (way of thinking). In other words, the 
 empirical character is determined by or is an effect 
 of the intelligible character. This intelligible 
 character, however, we do not directly know, and 
 hence we have to indicate its nature by means of 
 phenomena, which properly give us an immediate 
 knowledge of the disposition (empirical character) 
 only. 1 A phenomenal action then, in so far as it is 
 to be ascribed as an effect to the way of thinking 
 (intelligible character) as its cause, does neverthe- 
 less not result from it according to empirical laws. 
 In other words, it is not, as an effect, preceded in 
 time by the conditions of pure reason {i.e. by the 
 intelligible character or way of thinking) as its 
 cause, but is only preceded by the effects or sensuous 
 sign of that intelligible character, that is, by the 
 phenomenal form of the internal sense, or, in other 
 words, by the empirical character (the disposition) 
 under which guise only can the intelligible character 
 exert its causal activity in the phenomenal world of 
 human action. For pure reason, as a faculty of 
 causing that is merely intelligible, is not subject 
 
 1 Kant adds a footnote here which Max Midler translates as 
 follows: — "The true morality of actions (merit or guilt), even 
 that of our own conduct, remain therefore entirely hidden. Our 
 imputations can refer to the empirical character only. How much 
 of that may be the pure effect of freedom, how much should be 
 ascribed to nature only, and to the faults of temperament, for which 
 man is not responsible, or its happy constitution {merito fortunce), no 
 one can discover, and no one can judge with perfect justice."
 
 108 ON FREEDOM 
 
 to the form of time nor to the conditions belonging 
 to the succession of time, that is, is not subject to 
 the law of nature which requires that every cause 
 should itself have a cause preceding it in time. 
 The causal activity of reason in its intelligible 
 character does not begin to be at a certain time in 
 order to produce an effect, for in that case it would 
 be subject to the natural law of phenomena, in con- 
 formity with which causal series are determined in 
 time, and its causal activity would then be natural 
 and not free. What, therefore, we must say, is that, 
 if reason does in truth possess causal activity with 
 respect to phenomena, it is a faculty by means of 
 which the sensuous or phenomenal condition of an 
 empirical series of effects first begins to be. For the 
 condition or cause that lies in reason is not sensuous, 
 being non-phenomenal, without a cause preceding 
 it in time, and is thus outside the limits of all 
 possible experience, and cannot therefore itself 
 begin to be, for nothing can begin to be where there 
 is no time. In that case we should get what we 
 missed in all empirical series, that is, in all series of 
 phenomena in the world of nature, namely, that 
 the condition or cause of a successive series of 
 phenomenal events might itself be empirically uncon- 
 ditioned, that is, without a cause itself in nature. 
 For the condition or cause in its intelligible character 
 would lie outside the series of phenomena, and would 
 therefore be subject to no sensuous condition, nor 
 to any time-determination through preceding causes.
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 109 
 
 Nevertheless the same cause belongs also, in 
 another respect, to the series of phenomena. Man 
 himself is a phenomenon. His will has an empirical 
 character (the disposition), which is the empirical 
 cause of all his actions. That is to say, all his 
 actions can be traced to sensuous impulses which 
 in turn have their own previous causes discoverable 
 in the causal connection of nature. There is no 
 condition or cause determining man to action in 
 conformity with this empirical character (his dis- 
 position) that is not contained as itself an effect in 
 the series of natural phenomena and subject to 
 their law, according to which law there can be no 
 empirically unconditioned cause of anything that 
 happens in time. No given action, therefore (since 
 it can be perceived as a phenomenon only) , can begin 
 absolutely by itself, that is, spontaneously and 
 without a phenomenal cause preceding it in time. 
 Of pure reason, however, we cannot say that the 
 state in which it determines man's will or, in other 
 words, impels him to action, that is, its causal 
 activity, is preceded by another cause or state in 
 which that activity itself is determined or set in 
 motion. For as reason itself is not a phenomenon, 
 nor subject to any of the conditions of sensibility 
 and the law of nature, there exists in it, even in re- 
 ference to its causal activity, no succession of time, 
 and the law of nature, which governs the succession 
 of phenomena according to unchangeable rules of 
 cause and effect, cannot be applied to it.
 
 no ON FREEDOM 
 
 Reason is therefore the constant condition or 
 cause of all free actions by which man takes his 
 place in the phenomenal world. Nevertheless, every 
 one of these actions is determined beforehand in his 
 empirical character. With regard to the intelligible 
 character, however, of which the empirical character 
 is only the phenomenal mask or sensuous sign, 
 there is neither before nor after, because the intel- 
 ligible character, being non-phenomenal, is not 
 affected by sensuous conditions of Time ; and 
 every one of these phenomenal actions, without 
 regard to the time-relation which connects it with 
 other preceding phenomena in accordance with the 
 empirical character, is the immediate effect of the 
 intelligible character of pure reason. That reason 
 therefore acts freely, without being determined in 
 the chain of natural causes by external or internal 
 conditions anterior to it in time. This freedom, 
 however, must not only be regarded negatively, 
 as independence of empirical conditions (for in that 
 case the faculty of reason would cease to be an 
 active cause of phenomena), but positively also, as 
 a faculty of beginning spontaneously a series of 
 events in nature. Hence nothing begins in reason 
 itself, for reason being intelligible only and non- 
 phenomenal, and thus outside the limits of all 
 possible experience, the sensuous conditions of 
 Time do not apply to it, and nothing can begin 
 except in Time. Reason, also, being itself the 
 uncaused or unconditioned condition of every
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM in 
 
 free action, admits of no conditions or causes 
 antecedent to itself. But nevertheless the effect of 
 reason, that is, the phenomenal action of which 
 reason is the cause, takes its beginning in the series 
 of phenomena, though this effect can never con- 
 stitute in that series an absolutely first beginning ; 
 because, being phenomenal, it has to take its 
 natural place, in conformity with the empirical 
 character, in the causal nexus of the law of nature, 
 and, although a free action of reason, to confess 
 nevertheless to a phenomenal cause preceding it in 
 time. 
 
 Thus in the case of a voluntary action, such as 
 a malicious lie, we might proceed to trace all the 
 causes which led to the lie through a man's empirical 
 character, that is, his natural disposition. But 
 although we believe the lie to have been completely 
 determined by all these natural circumstances, yet 
 we blame the offender all the same. Why do we 
 do this ? Because we regard his Reason as a cause 
 which, independently of all empirical conditions, 
 could and ought to have determined his behaviour 
 otherwise. Although, as appearance, the lie was 
 sufficiently determined in the past, and in this 
 respect was absolutely necessary ; yet it, with all 
 the past which determined it, belongs, so we say, to 
 the one single phenomenon of his character which 
 he makes for himself. The lie, in fact, is imputed 
 to the man's intelligible character. In other words, 
 we regard reason, in spite of all the preceding
 
 H2 ON FREEDOM 
 
 causes in the world of nature to which we can 
 trace the lie, as completely free, and the act is 
 imputed entirely to a fault of this free reason. 
 
 Such an imputation clearly shows that we imagine 
 that reason is not affected at all by the influence of 
 the senses, and that it does not change, although 
 its phenomenal manifestations do change : that in 
 it no state precedes which determines a following 
 state ; in fact, that reason does not belong to the 
 series of sensuous conditions or causes which render 
 phenomena necessary as their effects, according to 
 laws of nature. Reason, it is supposed, is present 
 in all the actions of man, in all circumstances of 
 time, and always the same ; but it does not itself 
 exist in time (i.e. in the causal nexus of the law of 
 nature), nor does it enter upon any new state in 
 which it was not before. In fact, with respect 
 to any new state it is determining, but never deter- 
 minable ; that is, by means of its causal activity it 
 can give rise to an effect which takes place in time, 
 but can never itself be an effect of a preceding cause 
 in time. Hence we cannot ask why reason did not 
 determine itself differently, but only why it did 
 not employ its power of causal activity to determine 
 differently those phenomena which appear as its 
 effects in the world of nature. But this is a question 
 that admits of no answer. For a different intelli- 
 gible character would have given a different em- 
 pirical character, that is, would have had a different
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 113 
 
 empirical character as its sensuous sign ; and if we 
 say that, in spite of the whole of his previous course 
 of life, the offender could have avoided the malicious 
 lie, this only means that it was in the absolute power 
 of reason to utter or not to utter the lie, in the latter 
 case, therefore, to effect something quite different 
 to what actually happened according to necessary 
 laws of nature, and that reason, therefore, in its 
 causal activity is, as regards its effects, subject 
 to no phenomenal and temporal conditions. 
 
 We thus see that, in judging of free actions, we 
 can, so far as the causal activity which produces 
 them is concerned, get only so far as the intelligible 
 cause contained in reason, but not beyond. We 
 can see that that cause is free, because it is outside 
 the limits of the world of nature ; that it determines 
 its effects independent itself of sensuous causes 
 in time, and that it is therefore capable of being 
 the sensuously unconditioned condition or cause of 
 phenomena. To explain why that intelligible char- 
 acter should, under present circumstances, give 
 these phenomena and this empirical character as its 
 effects, and no other, transcends all the powers of 
 our reason. But the problem which had to be 
 solved does not require us to ask or to answer 
 any such questions. The problem was merely 
 whether freedom and natural necessity can exist 
 together without contradiction in one and the 
 same phenomenal action ; and this has been suffi- 
 
 H
 
 ii4 ON FREEDOM 
 
 ciently answered by showing that, as freedom may 
 have relation to a very different kind of conditions 
 from those of nature, the law of the latter does not 
 affect the former, and both may consequently exist 
 together in the same action or effect independent 
 of, and undisturbed by, each other. 
 
 It must be carefully noted, however, that Kant, 
 in this examination of the problem of free-will, has 
 had no intention of proving that there actually is 
 freedom, and that it is one of the faculties which 
 are the cause of certain phenomena in our world of 
 sense. This would have been impossible, he says, 
 because we can never infer from experience what 
 cannot be thought in accordance with its laws. 
 Therefore, from an effect in experience we cannot 
 infer a free cause, because a cause without itself a 
 cause preceding it in time is outside all the laws 
 of experience, and therefore cannot be thought in 
 accordance with them. Further, he has not even 
 tried to prove that freedom is possible, for this 
 attempt also, he says, would have been unsuccessful, 
 because we can never know the possibility of any 
 real ground or causal power by means of mere con- 
 ceptions a priori. Freedom has here been viewed 
 by him merely as a transcendental Idea, which leads 
 reason to think that by means of its free causal 
 activity it can absolutely begin a series of pheno- 
 menal conditions, the first link in which, although 
 a phenomenon, is sensuously unconditioned, that
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM 115 
 
 is, without a necessary phenomenal cause preceding 
 it in time according to the law of nature. By this 
 illusion reason becomes involved in a contradiction 
 with its own laws. For reason here wrongly pre- 
 scribes its own laws of free action, which are merely 
 intelligible, to the empirical use of the understanding 
 which has a separate order of laws, namely, the 
 laws of nature which do not allow of any such 
 thing as " freedom." So that in applying one 
 order of laws to a sphere in which another and 
 totally different order prevails there necessarily 
 arises a contradiction. If they are kept distinct 
 and separate, however, there need be no contra- 
 diction, for they may then act independently one of 
 the other. Kant has therefore very clearly shown 
 that the contradiction in which people often be- 
 come involved, when they address themselves to 
 this problem of free-will, rests on a mere illusion, 
 and that nature does at least not contradict the 
 causal activity of freedom, considered as a trans- 
 cendental Idea only. 1 
 
 1 Schopenhauer, an unsparing and not always a fair critic, has de- 
 clared that the pages on Transcendental Freedom in the Critique of 
 Pure Reason contain the deepest thoughts of Kant's philosophy, and 
 that his exposition of the difference between the empirical and intel- 
 ligible character is among the most admirable things ever said by man 
 (Die Well ah Wille und Vorstellung— First half of the first Supple- 
 ment to the First Book). It was from Kant's creative thoughts on 
 this subject that Schopenhauer drew practically the whole of his 
 own philosophic system, in much the same way that a man draws a 
 pail of water from a well.
 
 SECTION X 
 
 PRACTICAL FREEDOM 
 
 " Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at 
 the same time hold good as a principle of universal 
 legislation." x This, says Kant, is the fundamental 
 law of the Pure Practical Reason. His discourse 
 on Practical Freedom, which struck a severe blow 
 at the system of eudaemonism prevalent at the 
 time, is to be found in full in his Critique of Prac- 
 tical Reason and is summarised in a shorter form 
 towards the end of the Critique of Pure Reason, 
 standing apart in the latter work from his treatment 
 of the question of Transcendental Freedom. 2 
 
 Our will, he says, may be free, but this would only 
 refer to the intelligible faculty of causing (dealt 
 with in the preceding sections) which we imagine 
 our reason to possess, and which, when it comes 
 into play, we call volition. With regard to the 
 
 1 Critique of Practical Reason. 
 
 2 In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant lays himself out to discover 
 the extent of pure or a priori in contradistinction to empirical or a 
 posteriori knowledge. In the Critique of Practical Reason he en- 
 deavours to establish the a priori principles of Reason in its practical 
 expression as will. In both these works his business is with the a 
 priori elements of experience ; but in the first he deals with experience 
 as knowledge and in the second with it as morality. 
 
 116
 
 PRACTICAL FREEDOM n7 
 
 phenomenal expressions of that will, that is to 
 say, with regard to our actions in the world of 
 nature, we have to explain them (in obedience to 
 an inviolable maxim, without which reason could 
 not be employed for empirical purposes at all) in 
 no other way than that in which all other pheno- 
 mena of nature have, to be explained, namely, 
 according to nature's unchangeable laws of causal 
 connection. The proposition that the will is free 
 remains ever a transcendent one for speculative 
 reason, being outside the limits of nature and of 
 all possible experience, and can therefore have no 
 employment admissible for objects of experience, 
 and is thus of no real utility to ourselves, but by 
 itself an entirely valueless and at the same time 
 extremely difficult exertion of our reason. If, 
 therefore, the proposition that the will is free is of 
 no use to us, so far as knowledge is concerned, and 
 is yet so strongly recommended to us by our 
 reason, its true value will probably be found to be 
 connected with our practical interests only. 
 
 Kant calls practical whatever is possible through 
 freedom, that is, whatever can take place pheno- 
 menally in a possible experience as an effect of 
 freedom. Now, reason possesses, as it seems, a 
 faculty of causing which is free, and whatever can 
 take place in the phenomenal world as an effect of 
 this faculty, that is, whatever is possible through 
 this freedom he calls practical, and reason in this
 
 n8 ON FREEDOM 
 
 case has a practical use. When, however, the 
 conditions in which our free-will comes into play 
 are empirical, that is, when our senses recommend 
 objects to our reason and our free-will, or the 
 free causal activity belonging to our reason, comes 
 into play with regard to these objects, reason, does 
 not have a practical, but can have no other but a 
 regulative or pragmatic use, serving only to bring 
 about the unity of empirical laws as a means to 
 the attainment of those sensuously recommended 
 objects. Such a system of morals is eudaemonistic 
 and heteronomous, for it makes the reason dependent 
 upon some thing given outside of itself. In the 
 teaching of prudence, for instance, the whole 
 business of reason consists in concentrating all the 
 objects of our sensuous desires in one, namely, 
 happiness, and in co-ordinating the means for ob- 
 taining that happiness. Thus my senses desire 
 happiness and recommend happiness to my reason : 
 reason thereupon holds out the transcendental 
 Idea of perfect happiness which, though outside 
 the limits of all possible experience, and therefore 
 unattainable, acts as a regulative principle, that is 
 to say, is always urging on the understanding to 
 unite and systematise with prudence all the means 
 which lead towards, but can never actually reach, 
 perfect happiness. Reason, therefore, can give us 
 none but pragmatic or material laws of free action 
 (maxims of prudence or hypothetical imperatives)
 
 PRACTICAL FREEDOM 119 
 
 for the attainment of the objects recommended to 
 reason by the senses, and never pure practical laws 
 (laws of duty or categorical imperatives), which are 
 determined by reason entirely a priori and in its 
 autonomous character without any regard to what 
 our senses recommend to it. Pure practical laws, 
 on the contrary, which have as their object, not 
 happiness, but duty or the ought which is given 
 by reason entirely a priori, and which convey com- 
 mands, not under empirical conditions, that is, not 
 because our senses recommend objects to our 
 reason, but in an absolute, unconditional, imperative 
 way, independently of all sensuous desires, would 
 be products of pure reason — such, for instance, as 
 the moral laws, which tell us what ought to take 
 place. Prudence, therefore, is not a moral and 
 practical law which commands, but a pragmatic 
 and material law or hypothetical imperative (" if you 
 will this or that, then you must proceed thus or 
 so "), a maxim of self-love, in fact, which advises 
 and directs the means for the attainment of happi- 
 ness recommended to the reason by the senses. 
 But that we ought to do something is a moral and 
 practical law or unconditional, categorical im- 
 perative, which tells us what ought to take place 
 irrespective of what the senses recommend to our 
 reason. 
 
 Kant, therefore, uses here the conception of 
 freedom in its pure practical meaning only, that is
 
 120 ON FREEDOM 
 
 to say, when our reason tells us that something 
 ought to take place without any regard to what our 
 senses recommend to it. He leaves the pragmatic 
 use of reason out of account. He also takes no 
 account of the other conception of freedom in its 
 transcendental meaning, that is to say, the question 
 as to whether freedom is real, as one of the faculties 
 which contain the cause of certain phenomenal 
 appearances in our world of sense, or whether also 
 it is possible. For this conception of freedom in 
 its transcendental meaning cannot be presupposed 
 empirically (i.e. according to the law of nature as 
 observed in experience) as a cause or explanation 
 of phenomena, but is itself a problem of reason, 
 and has been disposed of already. 
 
 Now, a will, as we have previously shown (Sec- 
 tion VI), is purely animal when it is determined by 
 nothing but sensuous impulses, that is, when it is 
 determined altogether pathologically. A will, on 
 the contrary, which is independent of sensuous im- 
 pulses, and can be determined therefore by motives 
 presented by pure reason alone, is called Free-will, 
 and everything connected with this, whether as 
 cause or consequence, is termed practical. Practical 
 freedom can be proved by experience. For human 
 will is not determined by that only which excites, 
 that is, affects the senses directly ; but human 
 beings possess a power of overcoming the im- 
 pressions made on the faculty of their sensuous
 
 PRACTICAL FREEDOM 121 
 
 desires. This we do by means of our reason, which 
 supplies us with Ideas of what, in a more remote 
 manner, may be useful or hurtful to us. These 
 considerations of what is desirable with regard to 
 our whole state, that is, of what is good and useful, 
 are based entirely on reason. Reason, therefore, 
 gives moral laws which are imperatives, that is, 
 objective laws of freedom, which tell us what ought 
 to take place in the objective world of experience, 
 though perhaps it never does take place, differing 
 in this from the laws of nature, which relate only 
 to what does take place. These moral laws of 
 freedom, therefore, are called practical laws, once 
 more to be distinguished from pragmatic laws of 
 free action, in that the latter are only material 
 maxims for the attainment of objects recommended 
 by the senses to reason, while pure practical laws 
 are the moral laws given by reason entirely a priori 
 without regard to what the senses recommend to it. 
 Whether reason in prescribing these practical 
 *aws of freedom is not in this very action itself 
 determined by other influences, and so not free, and 
 whether that faculty of determination in man 
 which he feels to be independent of sensuous im- 
 pulses, and is therefore called freedom, may not, 
 with regard to higher and more remote operative 
 causes, be nature again, does not concern us while 
 engaged in these practical questions, and while 
 demanding from reason nothing but the rule of our
 
 122 ON FREEDOM 
 
 conduct. This question is a purely speculative one 
 which, while we are only concerned with what we 
 ought or ought not to do, may be disregarded. We 
 know practical freedom by experience as one of the 
 causes which exist in nature, namely, as the causal 
 activity of reason in determining the will, while 
 transcendental freedom demands the independence of 
 reason itself (with reference to its causal activity in 
 beginning a series of phenomena) from all determining 
 causes in the world of sense. That is to say, transcen- 
 dental freedom demands that reason should be able 
 absolutely to begin a series of phenomena without 
 itself being dependent upon any previous pheno- 
 menal condition, thus running counter, as it would 
 seem, to the law of nature, and therefore to all 
 possible experience, and remaining a problem. This 
 transcendental problem, however, does not concern 
 reason in its practical use, but refers to speculative 
 knowledge only, and may be left out of account as 
 quite indifferent when we are dealing with practical 
 interests. 
 
 It will thus be seen that Kant regards Freedom 
 from three standpoints — (a) The transcendental 
 Idea of freedom, in dealing with which he proves, 
 not that freedom is real or even possible, but that, 
 if given its proper place, it is not contradictory to 
 the necessity found in nature. He then proceeds 
 to regard freedom more particularly from the point 
 of view of the invincible belief in every individual
 
 PRACTICAL FREEDOM 123 
 
 that he is a free agent, that is, that his will is not 
 necessitated by sensuous impulses, and he divides 
 this aspect of freedom into two parts : (b) First, the 
 choice by this free will of a particular object which 
 has been suggested to reason by the senses and 
 for the attainment of which reason supplies prag- 
 matic laws of free action ; and (c) secondly, its choice 
 of an object which is prompted by a moral impera- 
 tive alone, that is, which is not suggested to reason 
 by the senses, but solely on moral grounds, and 
 for the attainment of which reason supplies moral 
 laws of free action. 
 
 This is not the place to develop the various 
 problems dealt with in the Critique of Practical 
 Reason. All that may be said is this — In the 
 Critique of Pure {speculative) Reason Kant con- 
 clusively proves that we cannot speculatively argue 
 about God, Freedom, or Immortality. They are 
 beyond the reach of the understanding, even as 
 regards their mere possibility. In the Critique of 
 {Pure) Practical Reason, however — Practical Reason 
 being understood by him to mean a thinking Will, 
 i.e. a will that determines itself on universal 
 principles — he shows that it is the moral duty of 
 man to believe in them and to pursue the course of 
 his life in harmony with these three great Ideas. 
 — " I was obliged to destroy knowledge in order to 
 make room for faith."
 
 " Returning to Leipsic, his [Fichte's] whole mode of thought was 
 revolutionised by the Kantian philosophy, in which it was his duty to 
 instruct a pupil. This gives to the mind, as his letters confess, an 
 inconceivable elevation above all earthly things. ' I have adopted a 
 nobler morality, and, instead of occupying myself with things without 
 me, have been occupied more with myself.' ' I now believe with all 
 my heart in human freedom, and am convinced that only on this 
 supposition duty and virtue of any kind are possible.' ' I live in a new 
 world since I have read the Critique of Practical Reason. Things 
 which I believed never could be proved to me, e.g. the idea of an 
 absolute freedom and duty, have been proved, and I feel the happier 
 for it. It is inconceivable what reverence for humanity, what power 
 this philosophy gives us, what a blessing it is for an age in which the 
 citadels of morality have been destroyed, and the idea of duty blotted 
 out from all the dictionaries.''" (Geschichte der neueren Philosophic, 
 by R. Falckenberg, translated by A. C. Armstrong.) 
 
 "On one of the unbound pages preserved by the Konigsberg 
 library stand these words [in Kant's handwriting] : — 
 
 " ' The existence of the Bible, as a book for the people, is the 
 greatest benefit which the human race has ever experienced. Every 
 attempt to belittle it, or to do away with it entirely, as "the lovers of 
 God and Man" do, is a crime against humanity. And if there are to 
 be miracles, this book, in which the accounts of miracles occur only 
 incidentally, as historical confirmation of the doctrines of rational 
 religion, is itself the greatest miracle. For here we have a system of 
 religious doctrines and beliefs, which has been built up without the 
 help of Greek Philosophy, by unlearned persons, and that has, more 
 than any other, exercised an influence for good upon the hearts and 
 lives of men.'" [Immanuel Kant, Sein Leben und Seine Leltre, by 
 Friedrich Paulsen, translated by J. E. Creighton and A. Lefevre. )
 
 PART II 
 
 CONCERNING AN EMPIRICAL INTERPRE- 
 TATION OF THE FEELING 
 OF FREEDOM
 
 <l 
 
 Man is to draw infinitely nearer to the in itself unattainable 
 freedom " (Fichte's Science of Knowledge).
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO PART II 
 
 The study of Metaphysics suffers from two serious 
 disadvantages. In the first place, it is not, in the 
 general opinion of an impatient and commercially- 
 minded world, productive of any fruitful or whole- 
 some result, either material or intellectual ; and, 
 secondly, it is so arduous and exhausting an occupa- 
 tion, and for that reason frequently accompanied 
 by so much disappointment and mental anguish, 
 that few can afford the time or have even the desire 
 to indulge in it. The understanding of Kant and 
 Hegel, for example, to mention two conspicuous 
 instances, is, for him who approaches them for the 
 first time, a veritable battle, and, as far as the 
 latter is concerned, possibly not always profitable 
 in any equitable proportion to the labour incurred. 
 In spite of all this, philosophy has always been, 
 and will ever remain, of absorbing interest to a large 
 number of people, and an acquaintance with some of 
 its problems on the part of the more thoughtful of 
 mankind can have none other than a lasting and 
 valuable result, so long as the interests and duties 
 of everyday life are not neglected for the dreams of 
 mere abstract contemplation. The duty of every 
 
 man is not only to love his neighbour, but to love 
 
 127 .
 
 128 ON FREEDOM 
 
 himself — Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself — 
 to develop his own faculties to the utmost and 
 enlarge his intellectual horizon, and therefore every 
 effort which he makes to increase the scope of his 
 knowledge, and refine its quality, is commendable, 
 so long, however, and only so long, as such exer- 
 tions are likely to ennoble him as a man and deepen 
 his sense of partnership in the great scheme of 
 the Universe. To engage upon an elaborate treatise 
 merely with the object of proving the desolate 
 hopelessness of life — and Schopenhauer, to name 
 one prominent speculator, is not guiltless in this 
 respect — is to do humanity a bad turn, however 
 brilliant the dialectic or apparently conclusive 
 the argument may be. Human nature is not so 
 happily disposed that it can dispense with any 
 spiritual consolations that it may have won. But 
 this does not mean to say that vulgar super- 
 stition should be tamely acquiesced in or even 
 tolerated, or that every means should not be em- 
 ployed to expose and weaken the claims of those 
 who would rivet upon the intelligence of the modern 
 scientific world the creeds and formulae which so 
 often did duty for religion in times past. In the 
 eighteenth century the genius of Hume rendered 
 some service in this direction, and for this very 
 reason his name was long execrated by those who 
 had a vested interest in outworn theologies and the 
 cramped letter of their law. But Hume's day is
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE 129 
 
 over. He did his work and shattered the old image, 
 but then fell himself into the opposite error and 
 became a worshipper of dogmatic scepticism. He 
 thus had to give place to a greater man. Immanuel 
 Kant is the quarry from which, as far as can be 
 seen, many a generation yet will draw its material 
 for philosophic disquisition. Fichte, Hegel, Schopen- 
 hauer, and man}^ others have dug laboriously in it , 
 and the results of their industry have been given 
 to the world. But the next great forward move will 
 hardly borrow its impetus from these later thinkers, 
 but will gather its strength directly from the cardinal 
 discoveries of the Kantian philosophy and strike out 
 a line of its own from that basic system. That system 
 has a peculiar claim upon the affection and the grati- 
 tude of men. If it marks out with relentless logic the 
 boundaries of the understanding and sweeps away 
 the claims of prelatical and dogmatic domination, 
 it places Faith upon a golden pedestal and enshrines 
 the Moral Law as the highest interest of humanity. 
 Long may such a philosophy live and flourish to 
 strengthen the belief in man that he is of a noble 
 texture, that he has a high and solemn mission to 
 fulfil, and that, however limited the scope and 
 powers of the human mind may be, his Faith in 
 the wisdom of the Unseen is fully justified! The 
 following inadequate pages have been written in 
 this self-same spirit and in that of humble inquiry ; 
 for whatever explanations, materialistic or other,
 
 130 ON FREEDOM 
 
 may be suggested for the phenomena of inner or 
 outer sense, there must always lie beyond such 
 explanations a veil of mystery and impenetrability 
 which no mortal beings, constituted as we are at 
 present, can ever hope to raise.
 
 AN ETIOLOGICAL AS AGAINST AN INDETER- 
 MINISTIC INTERPRETATION 
 
 The foregoing pages (Part I) contain the doctrine 
 of Transcendental Freedom as given to the world 
 by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. 
 A more remarkable production of the human 
 intellect, an argument at the same time more 
 alluring to the wonder-loving intelligence of man, 
 would be hard to imagine, and has surely never 
 found its way into the pages of any treatise on the 
 Freedom of the Will. As far as it goes, that argu- 
 ment is sufficient for its main purpose. For Kant 
 sets out to prove, and it is of the first importance 
 to understand this for a proper appreciation of 
 his criticism, not that freedom is real or even possible 
 as such — neither of these in the present limited 
 state of our cognitive faculties would it be possible 
 to establish — but that the admission that freedom 
 and nature may take part in the same action need 
 in no wise be considered contradictory. This, at 
 least, he does most exhaustively prove in his 
 masterly disquisition. The few sections on this 
 
 metaphysical problem, which are to be found in 
 
 131
 
 132 ON FREEDOM 
 
 that portion of the Critique of Pure Reason known 
 as the Transcendental Dialectic, occupy but a very- 
 small space in that volume, and have by no means 
 been popularly regarded as one of the more impor- 
 tant parts of his great work. But the result of any 
 elaborated study by the deep-sounding mind of this 
 celebrated thinker must always take a foremost 
 place in the history of philosophy, and as the 
 freedom of the will is perhaps the first in importance 
 among the problems of this our mortal life, any 
 light that can be shed upon it, however meagre its 
 beams, is of paramount interest to humanity. Such 
 a sentiment, too, can be the only colourable ex- 
 cuse for the ensuing pages, which have been put 
 together in order to suggest, in a tentative and 
 heuristic fashion, the lines along which any further 
 profitable inquiries into the problem of freedom, as 
 a practical study for the conduct of everyday life, 
 will probably have to proceed. 
 
 Although Kant has successfully proved what he 
 laid himself out to prove, namely, that the idea of 
 nature and freedom both taking part in the same 
 action or effect need in no way produce a mental 
 contradiction, there still remain various ancient and 
 importunate questions regarding final ends, none of 
 which can ever hope in this life to be provided with 
 an answer, for the sufficient reason that the realm 
 to which they refer lies in its entirety outside the 
 empirical conditions of our nature and conscious-
 
 AN ETIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION 133 
 
 ness, and therefore wholly beyond the limits of 
 our finite understanding. There is, however, at 
 any rate one question to which perhaps it is not 
 impossible that an answer should be found, the 
 sphere to which it refers being well within the pale 
 of a possible knowledge and therefore open to 
 methodological investigation. The question is as 
 follows : What is the natural reason, if any, of that 
 distinct and perennial consciousness within every 
 man of what he is accustomed to term " free-will " ? 
 Or, in other words, whence arises the feeling within 
 him that he possesses a faculty of determining 
 many of his conscious actions independently of the 
 sway of sensuous or natural inclinations ? 
 
 Now, whatever validity the following train of 
 argument may possess consists in this, that we start 
 our inquiry, however insufficient the results of that 
 quest may prove at its conclusion to be, from the 
 sure and stable vantage ground of an incontestable 
 fact of consciousness. For we are not about to 
 rack our reason as to whether such a thing as 
 free-will really exists, or whether any such state as 
 freedom be even possible. But we commence with 
 the indubitable fact of the perpetually recurring 
 feeling within every man of this free faculty of 
 determination, a feeling which can and indeed often 
 does invade him, even when all the inclinations 
 present in the subject are clearly recognised to be 
 sensuous, and conscience or moral injunction does
 
 134 ON FREEDOM 
 
 not enter into the case at all, and we then proceed 
 to inquire whether there can be any natural ex- 
 planation why he should possess this feeling of 
 freedom, and, if so, what, under diverse circum- 
 stances, the explanatory links in the etiological 
 sequence may be. How far thought can be divorced 
 from mere feeling, whether indeed any such positive 
 estrangement can take place at all, whether, per- 
 adventure, one of them may not ultimately be 
 inclusive of both, we do not need now to inquire. 
 We start from the indisputable fact that sensibility 
 is our portion in this life, however much any par- 
 ticular instance of sensibility may be shown to be 
 compounded of or reducible to what we recognise 
 as thought, and whether or no mere sense-affection 
 can be made conscious as such for a thinking 
 subject without the assistance of any conceptual 
 admixture. Such considerations dealing with the 
 morphology of knowledge need not, we repeat, form 
 an integral part of such an inquiry as the present, 
 which is directed merely to the fact of a particular 
 kind of affection of sensibility in human nature 
 which is nearly always present with it in some 
 degree of power in its daily walk of conscious life, 
 and which it can never wholly escape from, however 
 it may try. 
 
 With the advance of the sciences, there is nothing 
 which can be predicted with greater certainty than 
 that the so-called causes of everything which comes
 
 AN ETIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION 135 
 
 within the purview of human consciousness will in 
 the future gradually more and more be sought for 
 in the region of natural law, and natural law alone. 
 Doubtless, also, the time will come when many 
 sensuous manifestations that, up till now, have been 
 inexplicable to our intelligence, and therefore re- 
 ferred by out ignorance to supernatural agencies 
 outside the sphere of a possible experience, will 
 claim their due place in the empirical complex of 
 ordered nature. In fact, hardly a day passes but 
 some fresh light is thrown upon the world of objects ; 
 hardly a day but links are discovered which join 
 up what have hitherto been isolated and therefore 
 uninterpreted phenomena in the sphere of sense ; 
 and with this increase of knowledge our conscious- 
 ness grows ever proportionately deeper of the vast 
 realm of things unknown, but knowable, which 
 science has yet to win. With the progress of every 
 department of science, and in particular of episte- 
 mology and other branches of noetics, man will 
 cease little by little to rely upon transcendent 
 solutions of problems which present themselves to 
 his mind, solutions which may, it is true, temporarily 
 save him a considerable sum of mental labour or 
 intellectual disquiet, but which, if he be of a con- 
 scientious and exacting disposition, will ever afford 
 him less and less satisfaction in his daily life, for 
 the good reason that such solutions, though, maybe, 
 posited as something unknown and capable of bare
 
 136 ON FREEDOM 
 
 verbal assertion, can never be objectified in their 
 transcendence by a finite intelligence as real and 
 intuitible explanations of what, after all, for us are 
 merely empirical problems. Unknowable, yea, and 
 unthinkable too, must such interpretations always 
 remain, nothing in fact but the empty makeshifts 
 of an untrained or slatternly mind. 
 
 To discover a natural explanation, on the con- 
 trary, is to discover one more link in the endless 
 chain of causal connection, or, to express it more 
 accurately, one more brick in the sublime architec- 
 tonic of truth. How exceeding precious each such 
 discovery is, can only be realised by those who 
 believe that the more complete our knowledge of 
 the laws of nature and of the vast inter-communal 
 relationship of all phenomena can become, so much 
 the nearer shall we be able to approach a perfect 
 state of social man. And if these natural explana- 
 tions are forthcoming in any given problem, what 
 need can there be to look further afield ? If nature 
 in her perfect ordering shall present some day to 
 the colleges of science a far more comprehensive 
 etiological explanation of all that can enter into 
 human consciousness than that which we possess 
 to-day, this consummation will only be effected 
 step by step ; and, as each fresh problem is sur- 
 mounted, it would be but a superfluous and thank- 
 less task to search for some yet further solution of 
 that same problem in regions beyond our ken, as
 
 AN ETIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION 137 
 
 well as an effort which could only cloud our minds 
 with the impenetrable fog that hangs round the 
 confines of the finite understanding. 
 
 The surest way to truth in respect of certain 
 cardinal, self-appointed problems dealing with the 
 thinking subject is, in the first instance, by a strict 
 interrogation of that reasoning self-consciousness 
 which interested advocacy can rarely deceive. If 
 our thinking self-consciousness cannot support those 
 solutions of problems which tradition and authority 
 have imposed upon us, such solutions, whatever 
 social or other advantages they may be held to 
 possess, are absolutely worthless for us in the 
 interests of truth. On the other hand, if solutions, 
 which we have been accustomed to accept at second 
 hand without demur, are, after inquiry, borne out 
 also by the more direct testimony of a reflective 
 apperception, they will then have impressed upon 
 them such a stamp of probability as ma}^ well 
 suffice our limited requirements until some yet 
 stronger consciousness stands up to contradict them.
 
 B 
 
 THE EMPIRICALLY PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 
 
 AND THE FEELING OF VOLITIONAL 
 
 SPONTANEITY 
 
 The Moral Law 
 
 If there is anything which can be unhesitatingly 
 asserted without fear of contradiction when treating 
 of the problem of freedom, it is, as stated already, 
 that we possess within us, almost continuously 
 throughout our conscious lives, a feeling of a faculty 
 of determination or selection which is independent 
 of the sway of " moral " or sensuous impulses, that 
 is, independent, whether what we call " conscience ' 
 or the " moral law " participates in any decision 
 we may come to, or whether what we feel to be 
 merely sensuous affections are exclusively present ; 
 and this faculty it is which we term free-will. In 
 fact, the only thing we can maintain with apodeictic 
 certainty on this head is that, in spite of the fact 
 that every one of our actions, conscious or other- 
 wise, can be shown without exception to be irre- 
 vocably linked with preceding phenomena accord- 
 
 138
 
 THE PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 139 
 
 ing to natural laws, there is yet within us a feeling 
 of freedom in respect of very many of them. 1 
 
 In order to illustrate in as simple and rudimentary 
 a fashion as possible what generally goes by the 
 name of free-will, three supposititious cases may be 
 taken. In the first (a), free-will is supposed to 
 choose between two conflicting sets of sensuous 
 inclinations ; in the second (b), between what is 
 believed to be a non-sensuous impulse or "moral" 
 injunction, that is to say, " conscience," and an 
 opposing sensuous inclination ; and in the third 
 (c), to freely determine the subject to action in 
 accordance with a sensuous impulse, where that 
 sensuous inclination to act is practically subjectively 
 unopposed, that is, where there is virtually no 
 
 1 Schopenhauer agreed with Kant in the latter's doctrine of the in- 
 telligible character being outside time and space, and the empirical 
 character being the phenomenal manifestation of the intelligible char- 
 acter. But he appears to have gone further than Kant, at least in his 
 published writings, for he maintained that although the intelligible 
 character was merely the will-in-itself, and thus free and original, yet 
 that the feeling of its originality must accompany its acts in self- 
 consciousness, although these acts were already determined in the 
 empirical character and in self-consciousness. Hence arose, according 
 to him, the consciousness of an empirical freedom of the will. But 
 how can there be such a conception as a direct intelligent conscious- 
 ness of something as empirical which at the same time is recognised to 
 be purely transcendent? Although Kant presumably believed, con- 
 trary to the doctrine propounded in this Part (Part II), that the 
 feeling of freedom was the consciousness of the intelligible character, 
 that is to say, of the transcendent, yet, unlike Schopenhauer, he surely 
 would never have claimed that this consciousness of freedom could be 
 the intelligent consciousness of it as empirical.
 
 140 ON FREEDOM 
 
 consciousness of any conflicting stimulus, sensuous 
 or otherwise, to alternative action. 
 
 (a) I happen to be reading one evening, when 
 suddenly I hear a stealthy footfall under the window, 
 which may possibly be that of my servant, who is 
 anxious not to disturb me, but, on the other hand, 
 may be a stranger's. For a moment I hesitate 
 whether to interrupt my reading in order to make 
 sure of the identity of the person outside, or to 
 remain seated and take the chance of the latter 
 being merely a domestic of my own. The conflict 
 is finally decided by my going to the window to 
 relieve my curiosity. In doing this I am conscious 
 of my selective faculty having exerted itself; that 
 is to say, I am conscious of having made a free 
 selection between two possible alternatives, and, 
 still possessed of my feeling of freedom, of having 
 gone to the window and looked out. What, how- 
 ever, in fact, has really taken place ? The inclina- 
 tion to retain that particular sense-affection of 
 comfort before the fire ; the impulse to preserve 
 undiminished the intellectual interest excited by 
 the book ; the opinion, too, that the individual 
 outside was probably some one who had a right to 
 be there, prompted me to proceed with my reading 
 undisturbed. But, on the other hand, a feeling of 
 uneasiness, caused by the recollection of recent 
 burglaries in the neighbourhood, or, in other words, 
 an impulse of self-preservation, added to a consti-
 
 THE PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 141 
 
 tutional nervousness and a sudden access of curiosity, 
 urged me to rise and investigate the matter. These 
 discordant and perfectly natural inclinations, then, 
 met and disputed, and the stronger set of stimuli 
 won the day. That is to say, the impulse of self- 
 preservation, &c, predominated by a certain margin 
 of power over the impulse to retain unimpaired 
 certain affections of sense, and the natural pheno- 
 menal and necessary result followed of my going 
 to the window to look out. Nevertheless, I was 
 conscious at the time of exerting a perfectly free, 
 selective faculty, and, that free selection having 
 been made, of freely performing the action which 
 had been thus freely determined, uncoerced in any 
 degree by the greater strength of any particular 
 sensuous impulse. 
 
 Again (b) — A man is standing behind a relative, 
 of whom he is the heir, on the brink of a precipice. 
 With a slight movement he could send the latter to 
 a sudden and certain death, and indeed has actually 
 raised his hand for that purpose. After a moment's 
 inward conflict, however, he lowers his arm and 
 abstains from murder. In common parlance, his 
 free-will has exerted itself, and he has made a free 
 choice between the two alternatives. Now, what 
 has really happened in this case also ? Greed or 
 the acquisitive impulse, exasperation at having to 
 wait so long for his inheritance, several years'Eabode, 
 maybe, among a lawless community which have
 
 142 ON FREEDOM 
 
 been conducive to a disregard of human life, inclined 
 him to the deed. On the other side, dread of 
 discovery, scandal, and punishment — or, in other 
 words, the impulse of self-preservation ; the know- 
 ledge, moreover, that his relative had become more 
 feeble of late, and would therefore probably die a 
 natural death ere long ; a habit of mind, also, due 
 to the example of less degenerate acquaintances, as 
 well as to early inculcation that murder is a dreadful 
 sin and must not be committed ; that is to say, 
 his conscience, or, in other words, the empirically 
 and independently self-acquired (as will be explained 
 later), as well as the sensuously imparted and 
 thereupon sensuously assimilated moral law, the 
 impressions of which upon his mind were not entirely 
 erased in later years — all these influenced him to 
 hold his hand. The result of this desperate conflict 
 between all these various habits, impulses, and 
 inclinations was that he refrained from murder, 
 the moral inculcation which he received from those 
 in authority during the most impressionable period 
 of his life, and to which, as will be shown in the 
 sequel, his own human nature was more or less 
 adaptable irrespective of any outside human agency, 
 together with the dread of discovery and the expec- 
 tation of his relative's natural death before long, 
 proving too strong for his recently superinduced 
 callousness and constitutional greed. But in spite 
 of these natural causes, which necessarily produced
 
 THE PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 143 
 
 as their effect the external phenomenal action of 
 lowering his hand, the world would nevertheless 
 maintain, as indeed he himself would do, if in after 
 life he should happen to confess to the murderous 
 temptation that had beset him, that his free-will 
 had made the choice between the evil and the good. 
 
 Lastly (c) — While strolling beside some water 
 I pick up a pebble and throw it in. In this case, 
 probably, there is little or no conflict between 
 different states of the subject in regard to that 
 action ; the impulse, maybe, to afford myself the 
 evidence of the possession of a particular kind of 
 physical dexterity, or the impulse to affect the 
 organ of sight in a certain manner by causing 
 ripples upon the smooth surface of the lake over- 
 coming any natural indolence to move at all which 
 may possess me at the moment. The sensuous 
 impulse to throw the stone is in fact practically 
 unopposed. But although this action has its so- 
 called cause in nature, which cause again must 
 have had its own constitutive conditions in the 
 iron-bound nexus of natural law, yet it would be 
 universally asserted, and I myself would indubit- 
 ably have had the feeling that, quite independently 
 of the strength of the sensuous impulse, that is, 
 unnecessitated by it, I had of my own free will 
 abetted and indulged that sensuous inclination and 
 elected to throw the stone at that particular moment. 
 
 And we have therefore here reached a point where
 
 144 ON FREEDOM 
 
 it is difficult to see eye to eye with Kant, if we read 
 his doctrine aright. He was of opinion that in 
 certain of our actions we do not feel ourselves to 
 be coerced into the particular phenomenal activity 
 by any sensuous impulses, but constrained only 
 by the commands of an inexplicable moral law or 
 by what he terms the categorical imperative ; and 
 he appears to have held conversely that when the 
 ought does not enter into the question of an action 
 at all, then the subject does indeed feel that action 
 to be more or less necessitated by the particular 
 sensuous impulse thereto. It is submitted, how- 
 ever, that in those cases (such as (a) and (c), for 
 instance, which have just been given in illustration) 
 where the moral law has no part nor lot in the 
 performance of the action, and in which the subject 
 is conscious of its ascendant and sensuous inclina- 
 tion in regard to the latter, that is, where it can 
 connect its phenomenal action in consciousness 
 with the immediately preceding predominant em- 
 pirical impulse thereto, that there is no feeling 
 in the subject of necessitation by that sensuous 
 predominance, but, on the contrary, a feeling of 
 freedom, the peculiar reason of which will be dealt 
 with later on. 
 
 In each of these cases (a, b, and c), therefore, the 
 subject is conscious of having acted in accordance 
 with the election and determination of a perfectly 
 free will. But notwithstanding this, it would most
 
 THE PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 145 
 
 assuredly be found, on the other hand, if that same 
 self-consciousness were subjected to a rigorous 
 interrogation, that in every one of these suppo- 
 sititious episodes the more powerful of the natural 
 impulses and inclinations to alternative action had 
 carried the day. In fact, one cannot conceive the 
 possibility of such an occurrence as a predominant 
 natural impulse of the subject being actually over- 
 borne by a weaker or less pronounced natural 
 impulse in the same subject through the purely 
 adventitious and metempiric agency of an absolute 
 or unconditioned force, called free-will, whose very 
 spontaneity would in itself be completely beyond 
 the conceptual limits of a finite comprehension. 
 For let us take a man whose habit of mind has been 
 moulded from his earliest years as a member of 
 one of the strictest monastic orders, during a period, 
 moreover, when its self-renunciatory discipline was at 
 its height, an order indeed by whom a self-indulgent 
 existence would be regarded as anathema. Let us 
 also picture another man, who has belonged since 
 he was a child to a strolling company of players, 
 whose moral code is at the very opposite pole ; 
 and let us suppose both of them in some situation 
 where those appetites natural to the frailty of 
 humanity could be easily, but, from the point of 
 view of average public opinion, only immorally 
 satisfied. The highest probability is that the 
 
 Trappist, as we will suppose him, would resist the 
 
 K
 
 146 ON FREEDOM 
 
 temptation to gratify those illicit affections, and 
 that the strolling player would yield to it. In the 
 case of the first, what he has always been accustomed 
 to call the " moral law " would stand in the way 
 of his unlawful desires like a flaming sword, and the 
 hardening effects of an ascetic regime, as well 
 possibly as some hereditary propensity, would add 
 their weight to its influence. That is to say, a life- 
 long inculcation, commencing at his mother's knee 
 and almost with the birth of experience, of what 
 he ought to do, that is, must do, in order to deserve 
 and so reap happiness in another and a different 
 world and a measure of inward peace and consola- 
 tion in this ; a doctrine which he was taught by 
 sensuous and empirical methods to revere as soon 
 as he could understand anything, the violation of 
 which also he was trained to dread ; a code of law, 
 in fact, which has gradually permeated his mental 
 system and become what is known as a " second 
 nature " to him, would overcome the temporary 
 desire to break it. In the case of the second, the 
 inclination to indulge his passions would have 
 nearly everything in its favour. The possible 
 influence of heredity, lifelong habit, the daily 
 example of loose associates, and the want of any 
 early inculcation to the contrary, would probably 
 overwhelm any transient influence that might 
 oppose them. In each case, however, the man 
 would maintain that his free faculty of will had
 
 THE PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 147 
 
 certainly determined his conduct, uncoerced in the 
 first by the acquired mental and physical habit, 
 or in the second by the sensual desire ; although in 
 each of them it would be demonstrable that this free 
 faculty of volition had been acting, if acting at all, 
 coincidently and in perfect accord with the natural 
 predominant impulse of the thinking subject, whose 
 action, therefore, one way or the other, would have 
 to take its ordered place in the web and woof of 
 nature as the phenomenal outcome of its natural 
 and constitutive conditions. If, contrary to all 
 expectation, the Trappist proved licentious or the 
 player chaste, we should all no doubt be extremely 
 surprised that either of them had acted in direct 
 opposition to hereditary influences, early training, 
 habit of mind and body, and daily surroundings. 
 But, if we did not let the matter rest there, but 
 diligently pushed our inquiries into all the circum- 
 stances, we should most certainly find that some 
 sensuous conditions had been present which, ex- 
 quisitely fitted into the context of empirical law 
 and unknown to us at the time, had proved in 
 each case to be influences at the moment of tempta- 
 tion too strong to be resisted and overriden even by 
 what we had reasonably supposed would be the 
 predominant state. 
 
 In every instance which can be adduced, free-will 
 invariably acts, if it acts at all, on the side of the 
 predominant natural state of the thinking subject
 
 148 ON FREEDOM 
 
 In some cases the more powerful impulse is merely 
 animal or sensual ; in others, what is known as 
 " moral," that is, a state in which we feel ourselves 
 to be internally and non-sensuously impelled by 
 the dictates of what is termed " moral duty " ; 
 namely, a state of human nature due to our very 
 finitude and therefore wholly sensuous in its origin, 
 as will be explained in the following paragraphs of 
 this section, and which has usually been harnessed 
 for us to a particular code or course of conduct, 
 which from our infancy we have probably been 
 taught by parental and pedagogic or other empirical 
 methods to know as right, and from the violation 
 of which we have been trained to expect an unde- 
 fined, but, at the same time, the severest and, 
 maybe, an everlasting punishment ; the breach of 
 which, therefore, would necessarily all the more 
 create in us a deep and mysterious mental uneasiness. 
 Had we been born members of some savage com- 
 munity instead of members of a civilised race, that 
 same code would have had no place in our mental 
 economy, and no mental or " moral " disquiet could 
 follow upon its breach. In that case, the so-called 
 ' free-will " of a man, whose dominant state was 
 " moral," might, in the absence of the afore- 
 mentioned predominant " moral " state empirically 
 produced by the lifelong teaching of the civilised 
 code, be found acting in a diametrically contrary, 
 and, to a civilised community, immoral direction ;
 
 THE PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 149 
 
 for that contrary subjective state might then 
 represent and be the sensuous result of the lower 
 " moral " code of that savage fraternity, and there- 
 fore be the stronger one. 
 
 Now, why is it, when the feeling that we ought 
 or ought not to do something invades the subject, 
 that this moral imperative seems to be in no way 
 either identical with or conditioned by any sensuous 
 inclination, and that we have the feeling of a free 
 elective faculty in carrying out the behests of that 
 imperative, irrespective of and often directly con- 
 trary to what we feel to be the most powerful 
 sensuous impulses of our being ? That this feeling 
 of a supersensuous injunction arises with every man 
 at intervals more or less frequent, according to the 
 character of his disposition, training, and surround- 
 ings, is an undoubted fact of consciousness, and the 
 only thing with which we are at the moment con- 
 cerned is whether any natural explanation of this 
 feeling is possible ; that is to say, whether it can 
 be etiologically deduced, if not perhaps with as much 
 meticulous precision, at least with equal certainty as 
 many other things in nature, as a sensuously con- 
 ditioned sequent in the phenomenal order of events. 
 In the case of what is felt as a purely sensuous 
 desire, the subject is always conscious of an em- 
 pirical inclination, that is, of an impulse which is 
 immediately and consciously derivable from some 
 excitatory conditions in the phenomenal complex
 
 150 ON FREEDOM 
 
 of nature ; and where that recognised sensuous 
 impulse is the strongest inclination present in the 
 subject, it is able, in the absence of any sufficiently 
 controlling non-subjective force, to find its sensuous 
 expression in external or internal phenomenal 
 activity, and in this manner to obtain the natural 
 satisfaction that it sought for. In the case of an 
 impulse, on the other hand, which is regarded by 
 the subject which experiences it as a moral injunc- 
 tion or dictate of conscience, that subject is con- 
 scious of what it believes to be a supersensuous 
 inclination, that is to say, a non-empirical impulse 
 of a mandatory character which it cannot im- 
 mediately link up with the homogeneous context 
 of natural law, and therefore feels disinclined to 
 attribute wholly or even in part to the so-called 
 causality of sensuous conditions. In this case 
 also, should that inclination happen to be the most 
 powerful impulse present in the subject, it would be 
 able similarly in its turn, in the absence of any 
 sufficiently opposing non-subjective force, to find 
 its sensuous expression in internal or external 
 phenomenal activity, and likewise obtain for itself 
 in this manner the particular satisfaction that it 
 sought for. 
 
 But as the sensuous manifestation of any con- 
 scious state of the subject must, in accordance with 
 our forms of thought, be necessarily provided by 
 the understanding with its constitutive conditions
 
 THE PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 151 
 
 in the ordered architectonic of nature, we are 
 obliged, although we may proclaim with unthinking 
 sincerity that the inward injunctions of moral 
 duty, which impelled us to phenomenal activity in 
 sympathy with them, took their rise in feeling as a 
 sensuously unconditioned and therefore metempiric 
 causality, to concede at the same time that that 
 feeling of impulsion, as sensuously expressed and 
 satisfied, must also have been sensuously determined, 
 within the web and woof of nature, by so-called 
 causes that we may not at the moment be able to 
 indicate with any certitude or exactness, but which 
 would undoubtedly be empirically discoverable, 
 were all the manifold conditions of our upbringing 
 and mental and physical constitution known, in 
 the dynamical series of phenomenal occurrences. 
 As, moreover, human thought is restricted within 
 the bounds of the phenomenal ego, and, although it 
 may presume to be assertory as to what is trans-sub- 
 jective (after all, merely an empirical, limitative 
 concept, without any content, of something unknown) , 
 cannot possibly project itself conceptually into that 
 trans-subjective region or posit anything outside the 
 forms of the cognitive faculties in a trans-subjective 
 fashion, we are obliged, in trying to think of the 
 " moral " impulse which prompts us to any sensuous 
 activity, to think of it, not trans-sub jectively as the 
 primal causality itself or the mere absolute " ought " 
 of conscience apart from the manner in which we
 
 152 ON FREEDOM 
 
 are sensuously affected by it, and which we insist 
 upon declaring to be unconditioned and thus super- 
 sensuous, but as the sensuous and resultant ex- 
 pression of that causality, inseparable from its 
 empirical constituent conditions ; that is to say, 
 not as the alleged metempiric imperative itself, 
 but as the " moral " phenomenal action into which 
 we picture that unconditioned impulse as translated, 
 together with various empirical conditions which 
 belong to that action in time. In other words, 
 whatever it may please us verbally to affirm about 
 this so-called unconditioned moral impulse, we are 
 constrained, when once we try to think about it 
 as such, that is to say, in the light of its alleged 
 undetermined spontaneity, to regard it sensuously 
 as an impulse in phenomenal translation ; mysteri- 
 ous indeed, because elusive in its exact composition 
 and origin, that is, in the precise import and inter- 
 play of many of its constitutive and natural con- 
 ditions, but nevertheless as necessarily bound up 
 with the various empirical states of the subject, 
 memorial and other, and inseparably connected with 
 the interlocked temporalities of our existence. 
 
 Now, it is submitted that there are two general 
 grounds for the intermittent consciousness within 
 every man of impulses prompting him to sensuous 
 activity, impulses untainted, however, as it seems 
 to him, by any sensuous considerations. 
 
 It is, in the first place, in the very nature of the
 
 THE PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 153 
 
 limited capacities of our being that a consciousness of 
 that state of limitation should continually be present 
 to the mind ; for the very essence of limitation in 
 any active subject of the world of sense is the feeling 
 of effort and the experience of failure to extend its 
 mental and physical activity beyond a certain point. 
 Thus a limited subject of the world of nature must 
 ever be seeking, by very reason of those natural 
 boundaries which confine its energies, to pierce 
 that world beyond of which it knows and can know 
 nothing. But very soon it discovers that it is a 
 helpless, imprisoned creature beating its hands 
 unavailingly against invisible walls that hem it in 
 on every side, and the result of this inevitable con- 
 sciousness of human limitation is that there is pro- 
 duced by these perfectly natural causes a feeling of 
 profound mystery in all of us, and a constitutional 
 mental uneasiness which accompanies every man 
 from the cradle to the grave. In fact, the psycho- 
 genetic ground of what is known as the " moral law " 
 in every man is nothing but the incognisable char- 
 acter of the totality of the constitutive conditions 
 of ourselves and of the world around us, a problem 
 which will be dealt with more fully in a later section, 
 and which, in accordance with the very constitution 
 of the human understanding, must always be present 
 to the mind as an unknown quantity and as a 
 reminder of our own finitude in empirically varying 
 degrees of insistent power.
 
 154 ON FREEDOM 
 
 In the second place, the whole moral and religious 
 training to which the young are subjected during 
 their earliest and most impressionable years is 
 directly founded upon this very feeling of mystery 
 and uneasiness which exists in all their parents, 
 elders, teachers, and others in authority, as well as 
 to a lesser extent almost congenitally in themselves. 
 We are taught in fact from our earliest days what 
 we find only too easy to believe, what indeed is but 
 natural and right that we should believe, namely, 
 that this world, as we know it, and the short span 
 of our mortal lives are not all ; that there is some- 
 thing beyond all possible cognition on our part, a 
 something which will yield no ideational product for 
 us, and consequently a something not only beyond, 
 but superior to our intelligence; in fact, some mys- 
 terious hypostatised power directing possibly the 
 destinies of a teleological universe ; and that there- 
 fore finite or sensuous things, although the only 
 ones of which we can have any experience, form but 
 a subordinate part of a vast system unknown to us 
 in its (because unknown) all-wise and perfect en- 
 tirety. From the dawn of our experience the im- 
 portance of this non-sensuous and unknown sphere 
 is impressed upon our imagination, on account of 
 its mystery and metempiric character, as something 
 beyond our mortal clay to fathom, and which there- 
 fore our mortal clay is bound to reverence. Par- 
 ticular courses of conduct are consequently deemed
 
 THE PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 155 
 
 to be lacking in ultimate truth, that is to say, bad 
 or sinful, as having limited, sensuous aims too much 
 in view, whereas other courses are held to partake 
 of ultimate truth, that is to say, to be good or moral, 
 as having less regard to the sensuous or finite aspect 
 of the world, and being shaped with a due and 
 reverential sense of the mystery of the supersensuous, 
 which, being unknown and unknowable, is looked 
 upon as more important than the phenomenal which 
 we do know. In fact, in many cases, what are 
 confessedly merely finite impulses pure and simple 
 tend, as such, to become altogether suspect, and 
 on the birth of such an impulse the empirically- 
 conditioned feeling of the non-sensuous mystery 
 arises in protest, and inclines us to have regard not 
 so much to the purely finite aspect of the^world of 
 phenomena about us, as to the teleological possi- 
 bilities of a world beyond our ken, which, as we 
 can cognose nothing whatever about it nor imagine 
 anything, we believe to be different from our own 
 world of daily experience, with a different scheme 
 of cause and effect, and reward and punishment, 
 and a totally dissimilar state of existence. As, 
 moreover, what we term sensuous impulses are 
 continually in our experience successfully urging us 
 to give them phenomenal expression for the attain- 
 ment of finite ends, so too do we reason analogically 
 that, if those impulses which have in reality been 
 empirically generated in us through the very con-
 
 156 ON FREEDOM 
 
 sciousness of our limited capacities, that is, of our 
 finitude, but which we believe by very reason of their 
 limitative origin to be non-sensuous and " moral," 
 can be given phenomenal expression, we shall 
 thereby successfully attain, outside the finite world 
 of nature and independently of all empirical con- 
 ditions, some mysterious and supersensuous ends. 1 
 
 Finally, it may be added that as all human kind 
 without exception is bound down irrevocably in the 
 world of nature to the sensuous limitations of time 
 and space, and therefore of necessity experiences 
 varying degrees of reverential awe for the unknow- 
 able Supersensuous ; an awe which, as explained 
 above, takes the form of what is commonly known as 
 the " moral law," as distinguished from and opposed 
 to purely sensuous or finite aims, or what is generally 
 known as "sin"; what goes by the name of " original 
 sin " is not only no inexplicable problem as such, 
 nor even a curious or inconsistent feature in the 
 scheme of human life, but, on the contrary, is, in 
 the present restricted state of our thinking being, 
 
 1 Schopenhauer's doctrine was that, with one exception, phenomena 
 are bound together by necessity. That exception was human self- 
 renunciation, or, in his own phraseology, the denial of the will to live. 
 He maintained that this self-renunciation was the direct action of 
 the free will-in-itself, unnecessitated by any empirical conditions, and 
 he evolved the theory in an elaborate manner in his World as Will 
 a7id Idea (i.e. World as thing-in-itself and phenomenon). Cannot 
 this self-renunciation, however, be more easily, because empirically, 
 explained by the suggestion contained in the text, a suggestion which 
 might also for the same reason be substituted for Kant's transcen- 
 dental doctrine of the unknown ought?
 
 THE PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 157 
 
 metaphysically necessary, and a primary and per- 
 fectly natural result of that very limitation. In 
 fact, it is impossible to conceive how such a limita- 
 tion could exist unaccompanied by what we call 
 " sin." For the constitution itself of our nature 
 must irresistibly give rise to a sharp distinction, 
 and thus discordance, in our thinking being between 
 what is and what ought to be ; that is to say, between 
 the cramped and impassable territory of our pheno- 
 menal existence and that unattainable Non-Sen- 
 suous ; and " sin " takes place whenever a natural 
 impulse with a confessedly purely sensuous or finite 
 aim in view conflicts with and predominates over an 
 equally empirically superinduced inclination to have 
 regard, not to our phenomenal world and self as all 
 in all, but to their more truthful aspect of fmitude or 
 phenomenal limitation, and indirectly consequently 
 to their mystical and supersensuous antithesis. 
 In fact, the real problem is, not why " sin " exists 
 in the world, but why finite beings exist at all. 
 
 From what has been already said, therefore, a 
 state of sin will be seen to be one in which a conscious 
 and predominant empirical impulse produces in- 
 ternal or external phenomenal activity on our part 
 concerning a thing, such thing being regarded in a 
 finite and therefore untruthful way, that is, from 
 an aspect of a limited number of its constitutive 
 conditions, as though that limited number consti- 
 tuted the totality, rather than from the point of
 
 158 ON FREEDOM 
 
 view of the unknown totality of its constitutive 
 conditions and a nearer approximation to that 
 totality ; as against a weaker and equally empirical 
 and conscious impulse concerning a thing which is 
 regarded from the point of view of closer approxima- 
 tion to the unknown and supersensuous totality of 
 its constitutive conditions, and therefore in an 
 aspect of greater truth. What is known as virtue 
 is the reverse of this. That is to say, a virtuous 
 state is one in which a conscious and predominant 
 empirical impulse produces internal or external 
 phenomenal activity on the part of the subject 
 concerning a thing which is recognised as unlimited ; 
 that is, which is regarded from the standpoint of 
 the unknown totality of that object's constitutive 
 conditions, a totality, indeed, which, as such, is 
 supersensuous and cannot enter the mind, but 
 which nevertheless the subject believes to be the 
 unknown truth and ultimate reality of that thing, 
 and towards which, therefore, a less finite and 
 untruthful attitude is taken up ; the weaker em- 
 pirical and conscious inclination concerning the thing, 
 viewed imperfectly, and thus untruthfully, from an 
 aspect of a limited number of its constitutive con- 
 ditions, as though that limited number constituted 
 the totality, having been overborne. 
 
 What in the popular mind is known as religion 
 may therefore be said to be nothing else than 
 the metaphysics of the multitude. To view finitude
 
 THE PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 159 
 
 sub specie cetcrnilalis, that is, to view it from the 
 standpoint of an ever-increasing approximation 
 to the totality of its constitutive conditions, is 
 not only an attitude that is metaphysically true, 
 but is what the good as well as the religious man 
 is continually striving, often quite unconsciously, to 
 do, and what the teachers of all creeds the world over, 
 for the most part equally unconsciously, are never 
 weary of inculcating in their own idiosyncratic ter- 
 minology. Sin to them is what to the philosopher is 
 nothing less than a metaphysically untrue envisage- 
 ment of a particular, namely, finitude regarded, as it 
 were, sub specie individuationis ; in other words, 
 stereotyped at any moment in an aspect of a limited 
 number of its constitutive conditions, as though that 
 number constituted the totality. In fact, the whole 
 trend of human nature is in the direction of the 
 truth. Whether he be a professed metaphysician 
 or a virtuous or religious man of low degree and 
 little education, in either case he is striving to view 
 life and to treat its problems under the aspect of the 
 infinite and eternal, and in either case necessarily 
 fails to grasp the ultimate reality. Indeed, the only 
 use of philosophy is in a manner to lessen the 
 mystery, in so far and only so far as to show what 
 the problem really is against which ploughman and 
 schoolman are beating their heads in vain, and so to 
 clear the way to at least one conclusion — namely, 
 that, as thinking human beings are at present
 
 160 ON FREEDOM 
 
 constituted, it is a problem that never can be 
 solved. 
 
 Those who in later days have opposed the deter- 
 ministic doctrine * (a doctrine which in its cruder 
 necessarian form, ignoring, as it usually does, the 
 claims of a spiritual world, cannot command much 
 sympathy) argue that a man's moral attitude does 
 not depend directly upon physical (and, since their 
 argument is based upon the metempiric freedom of 
 the will, by physical they probably mean natural) 
 circumstances, but upon the object which, upon 
 occasion and in view of the circumstances, he pre- 
 sents to himself as a self-conscious being. The 
 character which makes the same natural circum- 
 stances so diverse in their moral influence has 
 doubtless, so they say, had its history ; but the 
 history which thus determines moral action has 
 been a history of moral action, that is, of action 
 in which a man has been an object to himself, 
 seeking to realise an idea of his own good which 
 he is conscious of presenting to himself. For a 
 man's character, they urge, is only formed through 
 his conscious presentation to himself of objects 
 as his good, as that in which his self-satisfaction 
 is to be found ; and just so far as an action is 
 determined by character, it is determined by an 
 
 1 As, for instance, T. II. Green in his Prolegomena to Ethics, an 
 elaborate argument against the creed of the utilitarian or the uni- 
 versalistic hedonist (Book II. Chap. I., § 106).
 
 THE PREDOMINANT IMPULSE 161 
 
 object which the man has thus consciously made 
 his own. But this line of argument, although, 
 maybe, unimpeachable in itself, does not in any 
 way prejudice the statement that no such thing as 
 an absolute faculty of free volition, or, in other 
 words, free-will, can exist or even be conceived in 
 the present constitution of human nature. The 
 object which a man consciously presents to himself 
 as his good, as that in which his self-satisfaction is 
 to be found — whether that object be self-sacrifice 
 for the sake of a particular individual, the highest 
 possible realisation of his faculties, the perfection 
 or happiness of mankind in general, or the purifica- 
 tion of his own life as an end in itself — may indeed 
 be the proximate cause of what we call a " moral 
 action " ; but this does not justify us in affirming 
 that cause to be an absolute one, for we are bound 
 to look behind it and ask why one man presents 
 to himself some particular object as his good, whilst 
 another man presents to himself as his good some 
 totally different object. The only answer to the 
 question is, that in each case there are the empirical 
 and constitutive conditions of the self-presentation, 
 whether they lie hidden within the network of a 
 transmitted nervous system, or whether they be 
 somatic (hereditary or otherwise), or concerned with 
 early training or any other natural influences, and 
 that, were it possible to investigate the ramifica- 
 tions of these conditions sufficiently, a satisfactory
 
 162 ON FREEDOM 
 
 empirical history, not only of a " moral action " 
 itself, but also of the particular causal self-presenta- 
 tion that led to it, would be discovered. A man, 
 in fact, may consciously present to himself a certain 
 object in which he seeks his self-satisfaction, and 
 which he consciously makes his own, and this object, 
 thus presented, may lead directly to action either 
 " moral " or " immoral " as its result ; but in every 
 such case he is not a free agent, in the indeterministic 
 sense of his being endowed with a spontaneous faculty 
 of mental action, but is determined to that mental 
 activity, that is, to the particular form which the 
 presentation to himself by himself takes, whether 
 that presentation lead directly to " moral " or 
 "non-moral" action as its effect, by the causality 
 of sensuous and discoverable conditions which must 
 take their necessary place in the ordered nexus of 
 nature, as we know it.
 
 INVALIDITY OF THE ASSIGNMENT OF AN 
 
 ABSOLUTE CHARACTER TO THE 
 
 HUMAN WILL 
 
 The Causa sui of the Hegelian Dialectic 
 
 The difficulty which we create for ourselves when 
 dealing with the problem of free-will consists in 
 our taking for granted that the faculty of which 
 man is conscious exists as an unconditioned or 
 absolute volitional force, acting (a) either as a sort 
 of impartial arbitrator in a dispute between two 
 equally or unequally divided parties, or (b) where 
 some conscious impulse of the ego happens to be 
 practically unopposed, as an auxiliary or abettor 
 of it, or else (c) when the activity of the subject 
 is imagined to be untinged by any immediately 
 conscious inclination, exercising itself through that 
 subject on its own account among the phenomena 
 of nature. If we cleave to this unphilosophical 
 opinion, we cannot reasonably complain if the 
 problem of free-will remains for ever insoluble. 
 Though few things are more apodeictically certain 
 than that man in his conscious actions, both mental 
 
 and physical, feels within him what he believes to 
 
 163
 
 164 ON FREEDOM 
 
 be the presence of a free faculty of determination, 
 whenever he is able to connect those actions in 
 consciousness with the immediately preceding im- 
 pulses thereto, we take a wrong turning and lose 
 ourselves in a maze of barren speculation, aye, and 
 of contradiction, when we leave the broad and 
 trodden highway of nature, and instead of seeking 
 for the natural interpretation of that feeling by 
 empirical methods, adventure into regions beyond 
 the range of our thought in search of some trans- 
 cendent solution. 
 
 Now, we leave out of account the obvious 
 argument that a faculty cannot be free which is 
 perpetually being forced to choose between the 
 performance or non-performance of a phenomenal 
 action. If free-will has no power of abstention in 
 respect of alternative decision (and the devotees 
 of the doctrine of free-will maintain that every 
 conscious human action without exception, that 
 can be connected in consciousness with a sub- 
 jective impulse thereto, is a result of that 
 faculty), but is compelled to elect whether such 
 an action shall take place or not ; that is to 
 say, if free-will has no option but to make its 
 selection ; in other words, if it cannot adopt a 
 passive attitude of neutral indifferentism, but if 
 its participation on one side or the other in the 
 controversy of sense be necessitated, — then that 
 elusive faculty, with which man is said to be
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 165 
 
 endowed, can no longer be held to be spontaneous 
 and absolute or unconditioned and undetermined. 
 Indeed, the argument may be passed over as suffi- 
 ciently self-evident, and there still remain five valid 
 reasons, on the lowest estimate, why we should 
 hesitate to embrace a metempiric explanation of 
 our feeling of freedom, whereby the mysterious 
 faculty of which each of us is conscious would be 
 made to act in the last resort independently of all 
 empirical conditions. 
 
 The possibility of such a faculty, in the first 
 place, cannot be seized by the cognitive faculties in 
 their present state of limitation, since an absolute 
 cause of phenomenal action, that is, a cause itself 
 independent of any conditions in time, and totally 
 unaffected by the comparative degree of empirical 
 insistence of any of them, is outside the limits of a 
 possible experience, and therefore, as far as human 
 beings are concerned, transcendent and incapable 
 of conceptual presentation. For every phenomenon 
 in nature we are bound to look for some of its 
 immediate conditions in that same nature, and when 
 we think we have discovered them, to proceed in 
 our genetic search to a still higher causality ; that 
 is to say, to a still more amplified enumeration of 
 its constitutive and sensuous conditions, as in turn 
 their own conditions in time, and so on in infinitum. 
 However far we may push this alternately analytical 
 and synthetic inquiry into the constitution of any
 
 1 66 ON FREEDOM 
 
 phenomenon, however industriously we may try to 
 exhaust the multitudinous congeries of conditions 
 in which it ordinarily appears to be embedded, or, 
 rather, out of which it is itself constituted, our 
 reason can never obtain the full satisfaction that 
 it yearns after ; for there must always be some 
 remoter conditions in the background of our most 
 distant horizon, and those again must in their turn 
 possess their own constitutive conditions in accord- 
 ance with the unchangeable law of our experience. 
 An absolute cause, therefore, of a phenomenal 
 effect, that is to say, a cause primal, original, and 
 spontaneous, and thus outside the bounds of 
 possible experience, cannot be seized by the human 
 mind or come within the outermost range of the 
 understanding. It follows upon this, then, that an 
 absolute faculty of selection and determination, or, 
 in other words, free-will, likewise cannot be seized 
 as possible by human thought in its present state 
 of finitude or comprised within the realms of 
 empirical knowledge, and therefore cannot be 
 asserted to be real and existent without equal 
 inconsistency and contradiction. 
 
 The whole fabric of the Hegelian philosophy de- 
 pends upon an answer to the question dealt with 
 in the last paragraph. The nerve centre of that 
 elaborately constructed system is free self-activity 
 or the free self-separation of that activity into what 
 is commonly known as cause and effect. If this
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 167 
 
 principle cannot be shown to be presupposed in all 
 experience, the entire structure of the Hegelian 
 dialectic crumbles to the ground. One of Hegel's 
 most conscientious exponents takes care to point 
 out that the proof of a first cause, which has come 
 down to us from Plato and Aristotle, has formed 
 the vital nerve of all pure theology, and that nothing 
 less than disaster to speculative thought would 
 follow if it could realty be shown that causality 
 does not presuppose an original cause. In fact, he 
 goes so far as to say that Hegel's system would 
 have no basis whatever to rest upon if causality 
 did not presuppose causa sui} 
 
 Now the word cause, as popularly employed, is 
 made to fulfil a kind of threefold office. It is 
 sometimes used as regards its effect in what Hegel 
 is pleased to call a tautological fashion. The rain, 
 for instance, is said to be the cause of the wetness 
 of the ground. The rain (cause), however, is, accord- 
 ing to him, the same as the wet (effect) on the 
 ground, or rather it is the rain in a different posi- 
 tion from what it was before. The term, again, is 
 employed, where the pleonastic use of it is not 
 apparent, for any single and particularly salient 
 
 1 Hegel's doctrine of causality will be found in his Wisse?tschaft der 
 Logik (translated in part by J. H. Stirling in his Secret of Hegel, as well 
 as by W. H. Harris in his Hegel's Logic) ; also in his smaller Logik 
 under the head of the "Doctrine of Essence" contained in his 
 Encyclopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (translated by W. 
 Wallace).
 
 1 68 ON FREEDOM 
 
 condition out of many attaching to an effect, as, 
 for instance, when it is said that the bite of a 
 snake was the cause of a certain man's death. 
 Thirdly, the word is made use of as representing 
 an undefined plurality of conditions or the various 
 conditions which may happen to be present vaguely 
 or otherwise in the mind of the person who employs 
 the expression, as when it is said that a certain 
 European situation was the cause of the resignation 
 of some foreign Minister. In each of these cases 
 the word cause, as so used and generally under- 
 stood, is radically inadequate and incomplete, in- 
 complete in the last example given, still more 
 incomplete in the second, obviously even more 
 incomplete yet in the first, which is the particular 
 example chosen by Hegel. But even in this, the 
 most inadequate and incomplete of the three 
 popular uses of the word, Hegel would have us 
 see the all-important principle of causa sui or free 
 self-separation at work. In his smaller Logic he 
 says, as may be seen in Wallace's translation — 
 " The cause consequently is in its full truth causa 
 sui. . . . Even in the finite cause and its concep- 
 tion we can see this identity between cause and 
 effect in point of content. The rain (the cause) and 
 the wet (the effect) are the self-same existing water. 
 In point of form the cause (rain) is dissipated or 
 lost in the effect (wet) : but in that case the result 
 can no longer be described as effect ; for without
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 169 
 
 the cause it is nothing, and we should have only 
 the unrelated wet left." 
 
 Now, in the first place, the rain (water falling) 
 and the wet (fallen water) are not identical " in 
 point of content," and cannot be interpreted as 
 such for the understanding, as Hegel would have 
 us believe. The only way, as will be explained 
 later, in which they could be regarded as identical 
 in point of content would be the complete know- 
 ledge of each in the totality of its constitutive 
 conditions. Were this attainable by the cognitive 
 faculties, the falling water and the fallen water would 
 be for the understanding a perfect unity without 
 difference, because whichever of them you took would 
 not only be a but the perfect totality. This, however, 
 it is hardly necessary to point out, is impossible for a 
 finite intelligence. In fact, the falling water and the 
 fallen water, being each of them merely a particular 
 aspect of finitude, a fleeting glimpse in each case of 
 an infinitesimal part of the totality of their constitu- 
 tive conditions, are for the human understanding 
 and as empirical experiences — the only experiences 
 of which we can have any cognition — not self-same 
 in point of content, but necessarily different, since 
 the very nature of finitude consists in differentiation 
 and limit. In short, Hegel's error lies in supposing 
 that thought can posit them conceptually as identical 
 in point of content, before first having conceptually 
 posited the totality of their constitutive conditions.
 
 17° ON FREEDOM 
 
 The truth is, that the latter would in any case have 
 to precede the first, but being itself impossible of 
 conceptual presentation, the former therefore must 
 also remain outside the limited scope of our finite 
 understanding. The rain (water falling) is a parti- 
 cular affection of the subject's sensibility during a 
 particular interval of time ; the wet {fallen water) 
 is another and dissimilar affection of that subject's 
 sensibility during a subsequent interval. They each 
 have, as affections of human sentiency, synthetised 
 by the understanding into objects of experience, 
 their imperfectly constitutive sum of empirically 
 comprehensible conditions, a sum or content which 
 is different, and, so long as our cognitive faculties 
 are merely applicable in the finite world, must 
 necessarily remain different in each. Being there- 
 fore, so far as their envisaged conditions are con- 
 cerned — and that is all we can know about them 
 — perforce differently constituted in quantity and 
 quality for the understanding in its empirical 
 activity, they necessarily cannot be made the 
 same in point of content for that understanding 
 or translated into a perfect identity one with the 
 other. The law of the understanding connects the 
 two and associates them together, it is true. They 
 have a multitude of intuitible conditions in common, 
 a multitude which in itself tends perhaps to over- 
 shadow the differences that fall outside it, but as 
 affections of sensibility — and only as affections of 

 
 THE HUMAN WILL 171 
 
 sensibility, intellectualised and expounded by the 
 empirically active understanding, can they be con- 
 sidered so far as we, human beings, are concerned 
 — they are not the same, but, on the very showing 
 of sense and understanding themselves, different. 
 
 In the second place, there is no such thing as 
 what Hegel calls a ' finite cause." The rain as 
 seen falling from the clouds, a particular and com- 
 posite affection of the subject's sensibility, is one 
 condition merely, or rather a mere parcel of con- 
 ditions, chosen from all the conditions out of which 
 the fact of the position of the water upon the 
 ground, a different composite affection of the 
 thinking subject's sentiency, is constituted. With- 
 out the condition of the rain falling from the 
 clouds there would be for the subject, it is true, 
 no position of that fallen water in the shape of the 
 wetness of the ground. But it is merely one small 
 constitutive portion of the vast framework of the 
 constitutive totality, and cannot properly be called 
 a cause. There are innumerable other conditions 
 constituting the fact of the position of that wet 
 upon the ground, or that particular affection of 
 the subject's sensibility, no less indispensable than 
 the condition of the water falling from the clouds, 
 as, for instance, the particular surface temperature 
 at the point of contact between ground and water 
 and not any other temperature, such as would be 
 one of the constitutive elements of a totally diverse
 
 172 ON FREEDOM 
 
 affection of the subject's sensibility, such as ice or 
 steam. In fact, these indispensable conditions are 
 outside the possibility of human enumeration, and 
 it is only the totality of all these necessary con- 
 ditions, a totality unintuitible by a finite intelli- 
 gence, which reason urges us to believe would 
 afford us a full knowledge of how the fact of that 
 wetness of the ground was constituted, or which 
 could be called with even any semblance of truth 
 the cause of it. 
 
 The true cause, the only thing that could be 
 given the appellation of " cause " with even a 
 semblance of authority, is therefore a complete cause, 
 and, as will be shown, such a perfect explanation, 
 if ever discovered, could then no longer be termed 
 a cause in the sense of an irreversible process, that 
 is, of an antecedent followed by a consequent in 
 time determination and linked together by the 
 category of causality, the only sense in which mind 
 can grasp cause. There is thus no such thing as 
 a " complete cause," and properly no such thing 
 as a "partial cause." Indeed, what is ordinarily 
 conceived by humanity as the immediate cause of 
 anything (Hegel's " finite cause ") may be defined as 
 the last remaining condition or parcel of conditions, in 
 time, of which at the moment we are conscious, for the 
 completion in consciousness, under yet one more of the 
 shifting aspects of finitude, of the undefined totality of 
 constitutive conditions — that completion, as entering into
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 173 
 
 consciousness under the guise of infinity viewed from 
 a different finite standpoint, in other words, that 
 undefined and imperfectly interpreted totality in its 
 new position of limited perspective, being what is 
 known by us as the effect. What are popularly 
 known as (partial) causes are therefore merely con- 
 ditions that fit like bricks into the totality of the 
 constitution of a phenomenon, that is, into the 
 fabric of the thing which is popularly known as an 
 effect, and which in their whole sum form its own 
 most innermost texture and constitute its very 
 being ; an effect, however, of which if we could 
 envisage the constitutive conditions in their entirety, 
 would from that very moment cease indeed to be 
 a phenomenon for us at all. A real cause, that is, 
 a cause in its completeness, and even then, as has 
 been already shown, the term could not be used 
 without the employment of a paralogism, would be 
 the entire sum of all the manifold constitutive 
 conditions without any one of which the particular 
 so-called effect would not be. This is the only way 
 in which the term cause can be applied with even 
 a semblance of truth, although the word in that 
 sense would not only be a paralogism, but wholly 
 superfluous as a term of explanation, for, as will 
 be explained later, the totality of conditions would 
 then not be of the nature of a cause at all, but 
 rather a complete knowledge of the constitution 
 of that which ihad been first described as an
 
 174 ON FREEDOM 
 
 effect, in fact, would be the effect itself in its 
 totality. 
 
 A pebble, for instance, thrown by Y impinges 
 on a window without breaking it, the tinkling 
 sound of the impact being heard by X. The im- 
 pelled pebble, however, is merely one condition, or 
 rather parcel of conditions, constituting the resound- 
 ing of the glass, or, in other words, the particular 
 affection of X's organ of hearing at that moment. 
 The other constitutive conditions, to mention but a 
 fraction of them, are (a) X himself, who, as subject 
 and the result at that moment of the whole of his 
 life's experience with his inherited and acquired 
 sensibilities, hears the sound, that is, is affected 
 in that particular manner and no other ; (b) the 
 circumstances that constituted the fact of the same 
 sensible subject being on the scene at that particular 
 moment, in other words, the entire temporal sequence 
 of his own life's actions as well as of those of others ; 
 (c) the manifold climatic and other conditions con- 
 stituting the custom of that part of the world where a 
 peculiar thickness of glass for window purposes was 
 in vogue ; (d) the particular atmospheric resistance 
 to such a moving body at that time and in that 
 clime ; (e) the innumerable conditions constituting 
 the throwing of the pebble by Y with an especial 
 force and at a certain angle ; (/) those that con- 
 stituted the building of the house and the choice 
 of its site ; (g) and the countless geological con-
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 175 
 
 ditions of the weight, shape, and consistency of the 
 pebble. If any single one of these or any of the 
 other unenumerated constitutive conditions had 
 been in the slightest degree different, that X — that 
 is, X as the peculiarly constituted object phenomenon 
 as he existed for himself at that particular instant, a 
 phenomenon object which, let it not be forgotten, 
 afforded the unique and indispensable occasion 
 and material as a background or canvas for that 
 therefore correspondingly unique affection of his 
 sensibilities — that X, we repeat, would not have 
 heard that stone strike that window impelled at that 
 speed under those atmospheric conditions by the 
 hand of Y at that moment. The only cause, there- 
 fore, of that particular affection of X's organ of 
 hearing, which with any semblance of truth could 
 be called the complete cause, were the whole of 
 the conditions constituting that affection of his 
 sensibility, a totality which, with the due reserva- 
 tion in respect of the paralogistic use of the term, 
 as explained above, we may, for the moment, 
 verbally regard as the supreme, true cause without 
 the understanding being any nearer able to form a 
 concept of this ultimate totality or out of it to 
 construct any ideational thought content. 
 
 In one sense, however, any single condition ob- 
 servable in the world of phenomena may be said 
 to be the complete cause of an effect in the para- 
 logistic use of the term which has been temporarily
 
 176 ON FREEDOM 
 
 admitted here for the sake of argument. For no 
 single phenomenal condition could be at all, were it 
 not for the totality of all those conditions that con- 
 stitute the very nature and structure of its own 
 composition. It is the whole of its own conditions 
 that constitute it a condition. Therefore, not only 
 is it the so-called result of all its conditions ; not 
 only does it possess within itself and embody their 
 history and lineage, but being actually compounded 
 of them as a totality, that is, the totality itself con- 
 stituting the very being of the particular condition, 
 it is also, under this aspect, itself the totality of 
 those conditions, and, if this totality could be seized 
 by the understanding, could be regarded from this 
 standpoint, with the reservation in respect of the 
 paralogistic use of the term, as the complete cause 
 of its so-called effect. Thus, the particular manner 
 in which X was affected by the stone's collision 
 with the window (viz., the sound of the impact) 
 was the co-operative result or embodiment of all 
 the catalogued conditions set forth above and of 
 infinitely more besides. It was a microcosm of the 
 Universe, and had to be because of all its conditions, 
 that is, had to be because of the Universe. The 
 whole of the past and present conditions of the 
 Universe might figuratively be obliterated with the 
 exception of that sensible affection, but the whole 
 of the conditions of the Universe would still remain 
 and be bodied forth in it as constituting it, for
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 177 
 
 being in its complete truth and interpretation 
 nothing less than those conditions in their totality, 
 it would contain within itself and indeed actually 
 be the history of the world, the necessary incarna- 
 tion of the all of things. In this sense, therefore, 
 any single condition may, with the afore-mentioned 
 reservation, be regarded in its complete interpreta- 
 tion, that is to say, not sub specie individuationis, 
 but sub specie ceternitatis, as the complete cause of 
 an effect, and, considered thus as the totality and 
 not merely as a condition, as a sufficient explana- 
 tion of it. 1 
 
 Since, therefore, every condition or parcel of 
 conditions, as well as every so-called effect, com- 
 pletely understood, would be seen to be nothing 
 less than the totality of the Universe in microcosm, 
 it follows that every cause, so-called, which now 
 appears to be followed in a non-identical and un- 
 interchangeable fashion by its effect, would then 
 be seen to be merely its own effect from another 
 standpoint. The microcosm of the Universe, or the 
 cause apprehended as the totality, would be seen 
 under a different aspect and non-disjunctively as 
 the same microcosm or the effect apprehended as 
 the totality. In fact, the microcosm would be self- 
 relating or identical with itself in what, by reason 
 
 1 Compare, in the field of mathematics, the theory of self-representa- 
 tion as the principle of the number system, a theory which is at least 
 not inconsistent with the above argument. 
 
 M
 
 I7 8 ON FREEDOM 
 
 of the present limited powers of synthetical appre- 
 hension possessed by the cognitive faculties, are now 
 regarded schismatically as cause and effect, these 
 sensualised differences being imposed upon our 
 reason on account of the temporal and spatial 
 medium to which the intellect is subdued, bound 
 down, as it is, to the laws of the sensuous life which 
 allow it only imperfect, finite glimpses into the 
 unearthly grandeur of the metempiric whole. In 
 this sense, therefore, every condition might, with 
 the above-mentioned reservation, be said to be a 
 complete cause of itself or causa sui. Cause and 
 effect could thus be regarded as transposable and, 
 as it were, perfectly interpenetrable, each of them 
 a totality constituting the other— the effect indeed 
 being the cause itself. 
 
 This argument, which might be introduced by 
 a Hegelian in apologetic support of his master's 
 doctrine of causa sui — although, indeed, the argu- 
 ment has been directed to a cause which in its 
 complete apprehension is seen to be itself its effect, 
 rather than to a cause which actively produces its 
 effect by freely separating itself from itself, that is 
 to say, to a realm which contains, as it were, a 
 static diversity of aspect, rather than to one where 
 self-born dynamical alteration is continually taking 
 place — and which would be valid so long as the 
 totality of conditions could be presupposed as given 
 and comprehensible to the intelligence ; so long also
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 179 
 
 as the category of causality could be applied to that 
 totality without a paralogism — is, however, not 
 defensible, if turned to such a use, so far as the 
 human understanding is concerned, for precisely 
 these two reasons, namely, that such a totality 
 could only be regarded as a cause by indulging in 
 a paralogism and, in the second place, is not and 
 cannot be presupposed, however cunningly devised 
 a term might be applied to it, being by the laws 
 of thought unthinkable. In fact, the doctrine 
 of causa sui, which bears upon its shoulders the 
 heaven-aspiring fabric of the Hegelian system, can 
 be regarded as nothing more than a splendid but 
 empty formula which the understanding cannot 
 translate into the concept which that formula 
 pretends to embody. The difficulty arises because 
 Hegel would have the understanding accept the 
 word cause in the sense of a freely creating, freely 
 self-separating cause, that is to say, a cause which 
 out of itself, by a free act of self-scission or, rather, 
 self-evolution, produces an effect in time, an effect 
 though, which is really once more the cause itself 
 in partial manifestation, having lain within its own 
 womb as a possibility. But such a perfectly self- 
 contained and self-sufficient principle of causation 
 is wholly incomprehensible and outside the sphere 
 of any possible activity of the intuitive faculties, 
 although, if, as we have attempted to describe above, 
 the totality of conditions could be synthetised by
 
 180 ON FREEDOM 
 
 the understanding and thus afford a complete know- 
 ledge of the constitution of a phenomenon, we can 
 see that such a totality, which in the present state 
 of our being, however, can discover no thought 
 content to fit it, would not be the complete cause 
 of that phenomenon, but the phenomenon itself, 
 viewed, however, no longer finitely as a phenomenon, 
 but in its entirety as a totality, and therefore as 
 ultimate reality. 
 
 The only cause which the understanding can 
 properly deal with under its laws, the term partial 
 cause having been shown to be a misnomer and com- 
 plete cause incomprehensible and a misnomer as well, 
 is in fact not a cause at all, but merely a partial 
 glimpse into the constitution of a phenomenon, that 
 is, merely some more or less proximate condition or 
 parcel of conditions, which can come within that 
 empirical series which is capable of ideation ; that 
 is to say, merely some aspect of the totality which, 
 by very reason of the state of fmitude to which we 
 are yoked, must be imperfect. Of every so-called 
 effect in the phenomenal world the human under- 
 standing is bound to look for the empirical condi- 
 tions, conditions which, in the arbitrary regressus 
 imposed upon the understanding by the sensuous 
 time multiples in which it works, must be supplied 
 with their own conditions and so-called antecedent 
 causes in their turn, and so on in infinitum ; and 
 therefore no complete or free self-active cause is
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 181 
 
 observable or conceivable in connection with the 
 world of appearance. The incompletable series, 
 in fact, has not been invented by the cunning oi 
 philosophers in order to confound the intelligence, 
 but is the necessary result of the data which are 
 presented to sensuous perception. For it is a law 
 of the mind that everything phenomenal should 
 be supplied in an ever-increasing regressus with its 
 empirical conditions, and thus it is always seeking 
 to probe phenomena to the bottom, and by exhausting 
 the regressus, or, in other words, by gathering all 
 the constitutive conditions into a totality, to reach 
 a final, free, complete cause of the objects of its 
 experience. Indeed, this is not only a common- 
 place, but a commendable and legitimate intellectual 
 exercise. For it does not involve the presupposi- 
 tion of the true infinite, but is merely the ceaseless 
 excursion of the heuristic understanding into the 
 complexities of what, in contradistinction to the 
 true, may be termed the spurious infinite. The 
 true or actual infinite is what cannot be increased 
 any further, that is to say, what is complete. The 
 spurious infinite, on the other hand, is what is 
 capable of being increased to infinity, or, in other 
 words, the variable large at will or the infinite in 
 -potentia. In the same way, the true or actual 
 infinitely small or the true infinitesimal is what 
 cannot be made any smaller, or what, in other 
 words, is irreducible ; whilst the spurious infinitely
 
 1 8a ON FREEDOM 
 
 small or infinitesimal is what is capable of being 
 indefinitely or infinitely reduced or made smaller, 
 in other words, a variable small at will or the 
 infinitesimal in potentia. Now, the human under- 
 standing in its unsatisfied and asymptotic search 
 for the totality of empirical conditions is, like the 
 mathematical calculus, serviceable only in respect 
 of the spurious forms of the infinite, as defined 
 above, and not in respect of those of the true 
 infinite. Never satisfied with the content of a 
 present experience, it peers through the regressus 
 of conditions in the hope of completing its know- 
 ledge and finding an ultimate free cause or totality, 
 a hope, however, which through that regressus 
 is never destined to be fulfilled. Hegel's " true," 
 ' real," or " efficient " cause can be, in fact, nothing 
 but this knowledge completely attained, but never- 
 theless unattainable, which, as such, would have 
 as its content the totality of conditions, a free, 
 original, and perfect unity. But it is a totality and 
 freedom with which the laws of the cognitive 
 faculties can hold no communion. The mind can- 
 not grasp it and can nowhere find it. Hegel, 
 however, notwithstanding this, would have the 
 understanding not only presuppose it, but categori- 
 cally predicate its essentiality and paralogistically 
 supply it with the function of a cause, laying hold 
 of it as the true and cogitable explanation of the 
 various phenomena of our existence.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 183 
 
 Thus in demonstrating the category of causa sui 
 he argues : — 
 
 (a) That all things are necessitated to be what 
 they are by the totality of conditions : 
 
 (b) That the changes in things, however, thus 
 necessitated, imply that the totality of conditions 
 has had corresponding changes within itself. For 
 that, if a given state of things implies a given 
 state of the totality of conditions necessitating it 
 to be what it is, another state of things (the 
 state preceding the present one) presupposes a 
 different totality of conditions which necessitated 
 that: 
 
 (c) That hence the doctrine of necessity pre- 
 supposes a change in the totality of conditions, 
 which cannot have been necessitated by any being 
 beyond it, for the precise reason that it is the 
 totality : 
 
 (d) That the change, therefore, in the totality of 
 conditions is spontaneous or self-determined and 
 not necessitated, and that freedom thus contains 
 necessity, but necessity does not contain freedom : 
 and 
 
 (e) That causality, therefore, presupposes self- 
 separation, self-activity. 
 
 Now — to resume and finally conclude the argu- 
 ments that have been employed in this section — 
 there are two ways in which the phrase, complete
 
 1 84 ON FREEDOM 
 
 cause or the totality of conditions may be made use 
 of in an enquiry of this description, the one valid, 
 if, as before explained, we overlook for the moment 
 the paralogistic use of the word cause, and the 
 other necessarily invalid. Thus we are justified in 
 saying that no object can be understood by us in 
 its completeness and truth because we are unable 
 to synthetise the totality of its conditions. We are 
 also justified in asserting that the greater the 
 number of its conditions that could be subjected to 
 such a synthesis, the more intimate and thorough- 
 going would our knowledge of the phenomenon be, 
 and that the natural impulse of the understanding 
 is to arrive at a complete interpretation of the 
 thing by an envisagement of the totality of con- 
 ditions, an ideal, however, which is impossible of 
 fulfilment. In this manner of regarding, as it were, 
 negatively the so-called complete cause of a thing — 
 the term cause being used paralogistically in this 
 special sense for want of a better — there is no before 
 nor after in the sense of a necessary processional 
 order, that is, of a cause preceding an effect or an 
 effect as following in time upon a cause. The pro- 
 gressive envisagement of conditions is merely the 
 ever richer apprehension of a thing, by seeing in 
 that thing more and more of the sensuous relations 
 that constitute it a phenomenon. As stated before, 
 the thing comprehended in its full import would be 
 the envisagement of the totality of the conditions,
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 185 
 
 the relational progression, as well as the relative 
 character even of its parts having ceased to exist, 
 and the totality of the conditions would be seen 
 to be, not the whole of which the phenomenon was 
 only part, not even a vast complex of relations, 
 interlocked, but nevertheless reducible to analytical 
 arrangement, of which a few only had previously 
 been sorted out, but the thing per se, in other 
 words, viewed not finitely as a phenomenon in a 
 limited and imperfect aspect, but in its reality 
 as completely interpreted, a unity and not a com- 
 pound. This is the valid manner, and the only 
 valid manner, in which a so-called complete cause 
 could be regarded. The human understanding 
 can aim at arriving at the totality of conditions 
 without ever being able to do so or to form any 
 concept of such a totality, and can assert that in 
 so arriving an exhaustive explanation of the thing 
 would be attained ; that, in fact, the so-called 
 complete cause of the thing would be grasped, 
 but with no characteristics of a before, and the 
 so-called effect likewise seized in its entirety, but 
 with no characteristics of an after attaching to 
 it. So-called cause and effect would be one 
 and the same totality, and knowledge would be 
 perfect. 
 
 The invalid manner in which complete cause or 
 totality of conditions is sometimes employed is not, 
 as in the preceding paragraph, to. apply a certain
 
 186 ON FREEDOM 
 
 paralogistic terminology for want merely of a better, 
 whilst appreciating the paralogism in so doing, but 
 actually to accept the paralogism as true, that is, 
 to presuppose that totality and to regard it as the 
 cause preceding its effect in time. That Hegel does 
 so regard it is manifest from the above paragraphs 
 (b), (c), and (d), where he speaks of change taking 
 place in the totality. No change, however, can 
 take place for the understanding without a before 
 and after, that is, no change can take place accord- 
 ing to the laws of thought without something 
 coming into existence for a discerning subject in a 
 given moment of time that was not in a previous 
 moment of time. But the totality of conditions is 
 transcendent, not empirical. It is outside the scope 
 of the cognitive faculties and any possible experi- 
 ence ; for not being subdued to the temporal de- 
 terminations which govern the sensuous world of 
 phenomena, it cannot be dealt with through the 
 medium of those pure forms of the intellect which 
 are valid only in that world. Hegel, in fact, is 
 attempting to apply the conception of change and 
 the category of causality, which can only be used 
 with objective validity in the empirical world of 
 time determinations, to something which is outside 
 all time determination and metempiric. There can 
 be no before and after in a totality which is timeless 
 and therefore unthinkable, and hence there can be 
 no change in it for the understanding, nor any con-
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 187 
 
 nection in the shape of causal action between what 
 is supersensuous (the totality) and what is merely 
 empirical (any of the particular conditions). The 
 categories of thought are applicable to the sensuous 
 world only and not to the supersensible. We 
 recognise indeed in our present limited existence 
 that a complete knowledge of a thing can never 
 be attained because the knowledge of all its condi- 
 tions is unattainable. We recognise, too, nega- 
 tively that, were we able to acquire a complete 
 knowledge of all the conditions, we should know 
 the thing through and through in its entirety as a 
 perfect totality — so-called cause and effect would 
 be one and the same with no before nor after. But 
 that is a very different proposition from indulging in 
 a double paralogism by asserting that a change in 
 any given state of things, that is, in any particular 
 parcel of conditions, is caused by a change in the 
 totality of conditions ; that time determinations 
 are, in fact, applicable to the totality, and that 
 effects arise out of it. For the terms cause and 
 effect are merely the shackles of our finitude, stages 
 in the imperfection of human knowledge and neces- 
 sary makeshifts of the understanding, tied down, as 
 it is, to the time determinations of the sensuous 
 matter in which it works and to the empirical world 
 of appearance, and can therefore by no possibility 
 be applied to what is transcendent and infinite, 
 that is to say, to what lies outside all temporal
 
 188 ON FREEDOM 
 
 determination and the sphere of mind, and is there- 
 fore unthinkable. 
 
 Thus a change in a given empirical state of things 
 cannot by any possibility presuppose a change in 
 the totality of conditions of that state of things, 
 and Hegel in asserting it falls into the very same 
 kind of paralogism, by attributing change to the 
 metempiric and supersensible and applying the cate- 
 gory of causality to it, as those earlier philosophers 
 who used to insist upon the simplicity and per- 
 manence of the soul, forgetting, as they did, that 
 substance can only be predicated of something that 
 persists in space. To say, therefore, that this 
 transcendent totality changes or is freely self- 
 active does not help us forward in the least. We 
 utter the words totality and free self-activity by very 
 reason of the fact that the cognitive faculties are 
 bound down to their own sensuous laws and cannot 
 comprehend a totality as within those laws, neither 
 a purely free self-activity. That is to say, the 
 terms totality of conditions and free self-activity are 
 employed, because the understanding makes efforts 
 to complete its knowledge and break through the 
 boundaries set by its laws, but finds that it cannot 
 do so, and therefore gives a name empty of all 
 thought-content to that sphere which it is unable to 
 reach — e.g. " totality " — as well as other predicates 
 to suit that unknowable and inconceivable, predi- 
 cates which are made use of to convey the idea of
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 189 
 
 something beyond the range of the cognitive faculties, 
 in fact, to the human mind a blank nothing, such, 
 for instance, as free self-activity, &c. &c. So far, 
 however, from presupposing that sphere which lies 
 outside the bounds of conceptual presentation, as 
 Hegel would have the laws of thought do, it is only 
 the activity of the understanding, prompted by 
 given sensuous data, and working ever further afield 
 within its own domain upon the data presented to 
 it, that induces the consciousness of the limitation 
 of that domain, and hence of the antithesis of a 
 knowable and an unknowable. The totality of con- 
 ditions is therefore not presupposed by the laws of 
 thought and brought to bear upon the data of sense 
 as a sort of a priori machinery, but is rather super- 
 induced a posteriori as a limit to its ability, when 
 engaged upon the work of fashioning experience. 
 For the straining and breakdown of the capacity of 
 any conscious force can only become present to its 
 consciousness, when data have been afforded on 
 which that force can exercise its power and functions. 
 It is only by acting upon data that the conscious- 
 ness can arise of the inability to work beyond those 
 data. In short, a beyond its power cannot be 
 recognised as a limitative concept unless a within 
 its power has first of all been made plain to con- 
 sciousness. A beyond its power, therefore, cannot be 
 presupposed by the laws of thought, but can only 
 supervene in a negative manner in the consciousness
 
 190 ON FREEDOM 
 
 of an active intellectual force by the previous 
 knowledge and consciousness of a within its 
 power. 
 
 A totality of conditions is a beyond its power, and 
 is negatively recognised as such. This Hegelian, 
 free, self-active cause, therefore, apart from the 
 especial paralogistic vice attaching to it, which has 
 been already dealt with, is outside the purview of 
 the cognitive faculties. But the understanding 
 recognises its failure to reach this transcendent 
 sphere only because it has already functioned in 
 its proper empirical domain and become conscious 
 of its own laws and the limitation of its capa- 
 bilities. Therefore this transcendent sphere, this 
 totality of conditions, in which there is no time, 
 no causation, no change, cannot be presupposed 
 by the laws of thought and brought a priori to the 
 consideration of sensuous data, but is continually 
 being superinduced in a negative, a posteriori manner 
 as a result of the empirical activity of the under- 
 standing and the consciousness of the restriction of 
 that activity to the finite world of phenomena. It 
 is recognised as a beyond its power, as something 
 non-sensuous, as a realm where empirical law no 
 longer holds good, and thus as absolute (in contra- 
 distinction to relative) and free. It is not, however, 
 seized by the cognitive faculties, but is a purely 
 negative and limitative concept devoid of reality 
 and content, and only thought as an unknown
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 191 
 
 antithetical to what is grasped, an unknowable in 
 relation to a knowable and known. 
 
 Other instances might be cited from the Hegelian 
 philosophy, in which it is taken for granted that 
 the human mind can think what is transcendent 
 and objectify it by means of empirical predicates in 
 a sort of mental image. The author, for example, 
 of the Pathway to Reality gives a description of the 
 Hegelian notion of infinity, in which occurs the 
 following sentence : " But the true notion of 
 infinity is not an infinity which is numerically 
 different from the finite self, but is the self con- 
 ceived as higher than the distinctions which go 
 to the making of its finiteness, distinctions which 
 therefore really fall within it." Now, this is all 
 very well, but it is not a concept within the range 
 of human thought. Whenever the human mind 
 thinks about the self, that is to say, whenever it is 
 conscious in thought of /, it invariably thinks a 
 sensuous self, that is to say, a phenomenal ego — 
 a self combined out of the phenomenal materials 
 of life's experience, a self, too, in conscious anti- 
 thetic relation to the pure thinking subject. More- 
 over, whenever it thinks such an objective and 
 sensuous self, it is obliged to posit a sensuous non- 
 self in simultaneous objectivity. That is to say, it 
 thinks finitely. It thinks a sensuous or finite self 
 (" finite " because in conscious antithetic relation to 
 the pure-thinking subject) in abstraction from the
 
 i 9 2 ON FREEDOM 
 
 totality of conditions, with a finite world also in 
 abstraction as opposed to or contrasted with it. 
 Without the latter there cannot be the former. In 
 fact, there can be no thinking of the self by the 
 human mind in which these finite distinctions do not 
 occur. Therefore a " self conceived as higher than 
 the distinctions which go to the making of its 
 finiteness, distinctions which therefore really fall 
 within it " — that is to say, a self which is not 
 thought in conscious antithetic relation to the pure- 
 thinking subject, nor sensuously posited in thought 
 in abstraction from the totality of conditions with 
 a non-self in objectivity also in abstraction as dis- 
 tinguished from it, cannot be thought at all. Such 
 a self cannot be " conceived " — it is impossible for 
 the human mind, and the human mind, although 
 this is sometimes forgotten, is the only instrument 
 we have with which to do our thinking. This sort 
 of higher self is therefore transcendent. But, not- 
 withstanding this, Hegel applies to it the predicate 
 of activity. Now whatever the aspects may be 
 under which we think of activity, there is at least one 
 indispensable and invariable aspect without think- 
 ing it under which we cannot think it at all, namely, 
 motion in time. But motion or restlessness in time 
 can only apply to the phenomenal or finite world 
 of experience. It cannot be predicated of what is 
 transcendent and therefore timeless ; and conse- 
 quently to apply the term to " the self conceived
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 193 
 
 as higher than the distinctions which go to the 
 making of its finiteness " is merely a verbal sequence 
 or contradictory form of words ; a sequence, in fact, 
 of different concepts which cannot themselves be 
 synthetically subsumed under a concept ; a sequence, 
 therefore, without the conceptional equivalent in 
 the human mind which in its synthetical union its 
 framer would have us believe it to possess. In 
 fact, the ascription of finite predicates to what is 
 transcendent is one of the chief stumbling-blocks 
 in the Hegelian system. That system, even the 
 most carping critic must admit, is one of the most 
 remarkable efforts of constructive metaphysics in 
 the history of philosophy. Its author, however, 
 finds himself most unfortunately engaged in a per- 
 petual struggle with the termini of thought, and 
 in attempting therefore to delineate the articulation 
 of the transcendent, frequently becomes in this 
 unequal and hopeless contest almost inarticulate 
 himself. 1 
 
 1 A few instances taken at random from Hegel's smaller Logic 
 (Wallace's translation) may be cited here in illustration of this 
 statement : — 
 
 § 12. "Awakened, as it were, by this stimulus [viz. experience], 
 thought is vitally characterised by raising itself above the natural 
 state of mind, above the senses and inferences from the senses into 
 its own unadulterated element, and by assuming, accordingly, at 
 first a stand-aloof and negative attitude towards the point from which 
 it started. Through this state of antagonism to the phenomena of 
 sense its first satisfaction is found in itself, in the Idea of the universal 
 essence of these phenomena : an Idea (the Absolute, or God) which 
 
 N
 
 i 9 4 ON FREEDOM 
 
 We see, then, that the reason we refer phenomena 
 to an unknown, supersensible ground is because we 
 cannot interpret them, as phenomena, in their full 
 
 may be more or less abstract." [Comment here would really be 
 superfluous.] 
 
 § 19. " . . . the theme of Logic is in general the supersensible 
 world, and to deal with that theme is to dwell for a while in that 
 world. Mathematics is concerned with the abstractions of time and 
 space. But these are still the object of sense, although the sensible 
 is abstract and idealised. Thought bids adieu even to this last and 
 abstract sensible : it asserts its own native independence, renounces 
 the field of the external and internal sense, and puts away the interests 
 and inclinations of the individual. When Logic takes this ground, it 
 is a higher science than we are in the habit of supposing." 
 
 [It must be a high science indeed, when even Time and internal 
 sense are done away with, that is to say, even thought itself !] 
 
 §60. "This stage of 'appearance' however— the phenomenal 
 world — is not the terminus of thought : there is another and a 
 higher region. But that region was to the Kantian philosophy an 
 inaccessible ' other world.' " 
 
 [But if a higher region, it must necessarily be beyond and different to, 
 or other than, the lower region. Thought, we are told, can deal with 
 it moreover. Thought, therefore, must be able to define the distinction 
 between the higher and the lower. But in limiting the lower as 
 against the higher region, it is also limiting the higher as against the 
 lower. A limited higher region, however, is finite and not infinite — 
 phenomenal, therefore, and not supersensible.] 
 
 §82. "A certain theory of some conditions and circumstances of 
 nature or mind may be, say these people, very fine and correct as a 
 matter of speculation, but it contradicts experience, and nothing of the 
 sort is admissible in reality. To this the answer is, that the specula- 
 tive is in its true signification, neither preliminarily nor even definitely, 
 something merely subjective : that, on the contrary, it expressly rises 
 above such oppositions as that between subjective and objective, which 
 the understanding cannot get over, and absorbing them in itself, evinces 
 its own concrete and all-embracing nature." 
 
 [But this is no answer ; for no speculation in which mankind can 
 engage can be otherwise than human, and no human speculation 
 can proceed without the machinery of the Categories and the ever- 
 present consciousness of antithesis between the thinking subject and
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 195 
 
 meaning and truth ; that is, we cannot envisage 
 the totality of their constitutive conditions, a 
 totality which is metempiric. In other words, this, 
 
 the object of thought. The opposition, in fact, between subjective 
 and objective is immitigable, and can never be overcome in the human 
 mind, however adventurous may be the particular excursion of the 
 imagination into the regions of hypothesis and conjecture. Fichte, 
 to whom Hegel owed so much, shows this very clearly in the H'issen- 
 schaftslehre — (II. Theoretical Part of the Science of Knowledge D. 4 
 (3) — translated by A. E. Kroeger.] 
 
 § 86. " When thinking is to begin, we have nothing but thought 
 in its merest indeterminateness ; for we cannot determine unless 
 there is both one and another ; and in the beginning there is yet 
 no other. The indeterminate, as we here have it, is the blank we 
 begin with, not a featurelessness reached by abstraction, not the 
 elimination of all character, but the original featurelessness which 
 precedes all definite character and is the very first of all. And this 
 we call Being. It is not to be felt or perceived by sense, or pictured 
 in imagination : it is only and merely thought, and as such it forms 
 the beginning." 
 
 [To think any thing, no matter what, inevitably involves the 
 machinery of the categories. For thought cannot be active apart 
 from its own forms, since it is in the guise of those very forms that its 
 activity as human thought is able to take place. But those forms 
 are the Categories. What category, however, could be made use of in 
 this case ? But if no category is applicable, neither can there be any 
 thought. Moreover, Hegel seems to imply that the a priori precedes 
 the a posteriori in time and can be considered apart from it in thought. 
 As, however, the a priori does not arise prior in time to the a posteriori, 
 but is the very condition of the possibility of the latter, that is, of there 
 being any human thought at all, and is nothing apart from the aposteriori, 
 the argument that it can be seized by thought in its purity independently 
 of the a posteriori is fundamentally unsound.] 
 
 § 88. " In its beginning, the thing is not yet, but it is more than 
 merely nothing, for its Being is already in the beginning. Beginning 
 is itself a case of Becoming ; only the former term is employed with 
 an eye to the further advance. If we were to adapt logic to the 
 more usual method of the sciences, we might start with the re- 
 presentation of a Beginning as abstractly thought, or with Beginning 
 as such, and then analyse this representation ; and perhaps people
 
 196 ON FREEDOM 
 
 for us, incognisable, non-phenomenal substrate is 
 the totality of the constitutive conditions of the 
 Universe, which, if ever grasped by us in its en- 
 tirety, would necessarily lead to the abrogation, 
 not only of the phenomenality of the cosmos we are 
 conscious of as external to our sensuous ego, but of 
 our own phenomenality as well, and show us ourselves 
 and it as the Universe in its perfect and complete 
 teleological unity and unconditioned self-sufficiency. 
 This totality of conditions, therefore, for ever un- 
 attainable, indeed, in its full reality for mortal men, 
 but a goal nevertheless towards which continuously 
 progressive approaches may be made by us, might 
 well in the permissible manner of regarding it, as 
 described in this section, take the place of that 
 equally unknowable ground of phenomena to which 
 Kant gives the name of the thing-in-itself but 
 towards which he holds out no possible hope of 
 any nearer advance in this life, whatever efforts we 
 may make. It might also be substituted, without 
 certainly any loss of consistency, for that eternally 
 changing, self-active, self-causal principle embodied 
 in Hegel's doctrine of the Absolute, a principle 
 which, though, as such, utterly removed, as we have 
 
 would more readily admit, as a result of this analysis, that Being 
 and Nothing present themselves as undivided in unity." 
 
 [But we cannot think of " Beginning as such," that is, of absolute 
 Beginning. The mind has to furnish some conditioning prerequisite. 
 There can, therefore, be no such mental "representation " as absolute 
 lle^inning, nor consequently any "analysis" of it by the cognitive 
 faculties.]
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 197 
 
 seen, from human ken and incomprehensible and 
 contradictory for human thought, he would yet, in 
 striking contrast to the Kantian point of view, force 
 within the range of an intelligence restricted to the 
 phenomenal, and empirically hold up to man's view 
 as the ideationally reasoned explanation of the 
 world.
 
 D 
 
 INVALIDITY OF THE ASSIGNMENT OF AN 
 
 ABSOLUTE CHARACTER TO THE 
 
 HUMAN WILL {Continued) 
 
 Secondly, to assert that free-will or the faculty of 
 spontaneous volition is an active force in nature, 
 which, though untrammelled and uncoerced by 
 nature, and sometimes acting even in opposition to 
 nature, can only manifest its power by working in 
 accordance with the irreversible process of ante- 
 cedent and consequent, that is, in harmony with 
 the dynamical law of time-determination which 
 rules throughout the world of phenomena, is a 
 contradiction in terms. All that we know or can 
 know as finite, sentient beings is a complex of 
 phenomena inseparably bound together in an un- 
 broken causal nexus, all of them dependent upon 
 their constitutive conditions in time. The possi- 
 bility of our knowledge can go no further than this, 
 for whatever point our expeditionary experience 
 may reach, the law of nature is to be found invari- 
 ably working according to an inviolable rule of 
 connection, and outside that rule {i.e. the law of 
 the conditioned) it is not given to us percipient 
 beings to be able to frame a single conception with 
 
 any content to it. If, nevertheless, we persist in 
 
 198
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 199 
 
 verbally maintaining without, however, being actu- 
 ally able to think it, that free-will can, as an uncon- 
 ditional agent in nature, determine internal and 
 external activity on the part of the subject inde- 
 pendently of, and even in opposition to, that same 
 nature, and according to a supersensible order of 
 laws totally different from that of nature, although 
 clothed in the garb of phenomenal compulsion ; and 
 if we insist that experience daily bears witness to 
 the fact, we immediately find ourselves not only 
 clinging to a proposition which has been shown to 
 lie outside human cognition, but, what is a good 
 deal more serious, involved in a contradiction that 
 is wholly irreconcilable. For the two doctrines of 
 freedom and natural law cannot then be squared, 
 and to save one you must sacrifice the other. It is 
 true that nothing intrinsically contradictory is con- 
 tained in the admission that freedom, as a merely 
 metempiric faculty of which we know and can know 
 nothing, may act spontaneously outside nature and 
 consequently outside the range of all possible experi- 
 ence, and take part in the same phenomenon with 
 nature ; and that this would involve no positive 
 contradiction Kant indeed has successfully shown. 
 But to affirm that within the limits of experience 
 freedom and nature can and do take part in pheno- 
 menal presentation, sometimes in opposition, and 
 sometimes in unison, but always without reference 
 to one another, in spite of the fact that free-will
 
 200 ON FREEDOM 
 
 can only manifest itself phenomenally, and that we 
 must refer every phenomenon without exception to 
 its constitutive conditions in time according to em- 
 pirical law, is a contradiction on the face of it, which, 
 though we may assert it verbally, we can have no 
 idea of and form no conception. 
 
 In the third place, if free-will were in truth an 
 absolute faculty ranging the universe of mind, inde- 
 pendent in its selective and determining capacity of 
 the comparative importunity of empirical conditions, 
 and thus able to throw its powerful and victorious 
 weight upon the one side or the other of the various 
 conscious impulses of a subject of the world of sense, 
 there could be no conceivable reason why it should 
 not at times cast in its lot with the weaker natural 
 inclination of the thinking subject as against the 
 empirically stronger one. A wealthy citizen, for 
 instance, might be possessed of such a feeling of 
 patriotic devotion to his country, the result not 
 only of a long series of peaceful and happy years 
 spent under the aegis of its Constitution, or of 
 innumerable honours showered upon him by a 
 grateful people for his services to the State, but 
 also of systematic mental or moral training sensu- 
 ously assimilated during his early youth, as to 
 absorb his whole being and overwhelmingly out- 
 weigh any transient inclination to swerve from the 
 loyalty due to his citizenship ; notwithstanding 
 which, we should see this absolute faculty of volition
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 201 
 
 choosing for him the easily discoverable betrayal of 
 his fatherland for some paltry pecuniary advantage, 
 a line of conduct directly antagonistic to the whole 
 trend of his most powerful natural propensities, and 
 a course of action which, in the absence of this 
 incomprehensible and irresponsible free faculty (or 
 of the intervention, of course, of some totally unex- 
 pected and sufficiently powerful natural " cause ") 
 would have had no possible chance of assertion. 
 We should see the leading runner representing his 
 country in a neck-and-neck race stop within a few 
 yards of the winning-post with some utterly trivial 
 object, and so lose the plaudits of his compatriots 
 and the prize which he might have gained. In fact, 
 countless examples could be given in which the 
 strongest possible mental (" moral " or otherwise) 
 or physical inclination, or both combined, would, 
 for no reason, be passed over by this unconditioned 
 faculty of free-will in favour of physical or mental 
 inclinations so weak as to be almost imperceptible. 
 And the words " for no reason " are used advisedly, 
 because, were there any determining natural reason 
 present for this free faculty becoming active in any 
 given case in a particular manner and no other, that 
 is to say, were there any empirical cause of its 
 special activity, that faculty would no longer be 
 unconditioned or spontaneous, and to call it free- 
 will would be a contradiction in terms. If man 
 therefore in truth possessed an original, absolute
 
 202 ON FREEDOM 
 
 faculty of volition, his whole empirically constructed 
 temperament and disposition, the acquired habit of 
 his mind, the entire system of his congenital con- 
 stitution, physical and mental, his " moral ' and 
 sensual proclivities, in fact, the strongest natural 
 impulses of his being — impulses determined by what- 
 ever constitutive conditions can enter into a temporal 
 experience, varying from early moral inculcation, 
 sensuously imparted, to inherited taste or later 
 associations — could and would, without the smallest 
 reason whatsoever, be turned upside down by free-will, 
 and rendered completely nugatory. This, however, 
 never happens within the sphere of human experi- 
 ence. For in every instance, without fail, the 
 empirically predominant state of the thinking sub- 
 ject carries the day ; and, without exception, were 
 an adequate investigation possible into all the 
 bearings and circumstances of the case, the natural 
 and sufficient constitutive conditions would be dis- 
 covered for every such necessary state and therefore 
 for every conscious human action. 
 
 In the fourth place, the theory that mankind 
 does indeed possess an absolute power of determina- 
 tion is by no means to be embraced without inquiry 
 as the necessary explanation of the problem why 
 we do most undoubtedly feel within us, when we 
 arc consciously acting either physically or mentally, 
 the presence of what we believe to be such a faculty ; 
 because, if it is possible to discover an empirical
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 203 
 
 interpretation without straying outside the limits 
 of a possible experience, there will be no further 
 need for the exhausting mental exertion involved in 
 trying to project ourselves from the sphere of con- 
 ceptual possibility into the region of the unknowable 
 and inconceivable. If we could find some natural 
 ground to satisfy the demands even of probability, 
 it would be an unprofitable task still to insist upon 
 an expedition in search of a solution, which, unable 
 ever to be otherwise than a mere empty, limitative 
 concept without any possible perceptual filling, 
 could never relieve the cravings of human nature.
 
 INVALIDITY OF THE ASSIGNMENT OF AN ABSO- 
 LUTE CHARACTER TO THE HUMAN WILL 
 {Continued) 
 
 The Subject-Ego and the Object-Ego : 
 The Reflective Reference 
 
 Lastly — and this is our fifth reason — to predicate 
 freedom in regard to the ego is either contradictory 
 under one aspect, as we have shown, or, even if 
 true under the other, completely barren of human 
 interest. The ego of every man's consciousness, 
 unaware of it though he may usually be, is com- 
 pounded of two aspects — the subject-ego and the 
 object-ego. In the same way that he knows objects 
 external to himself and to one another, he knows 
 himself and is conscious of himself as an object- 
 phenomenon among other objects, determining and 
 determinable by them ; an object-phenomenon, 
 however, which has no precisely defined territory 
 within the boundaries of which it holds sole and 
 undisputed sway, shut off from the rest of the 
 sensuous world by a dividing line which is per- 
 manently and irrevocably fixed ; but an object- 
 phenomenon separated from other phenomena by 
 a line which is continually shifting backwards and 
 
 204
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 205 
 
 forwards, so as to include rather more or rather less 
 on either side of the limit — an object-phenomenon, in 
 short, which encroaches upon and is itself encroached 
 upon by the rest of the finite world. In addition to 
 this, however, he is conscious of himself in an indirect, 
 elusive, antithetical manner as a pure-thinking sub- 
 ject also. In the same way, too, that he neces- 
 sarily in his mind, whenever his thought dwells 
 upon the problem, refers every phenomenon external 
 to his object-ego to an unknown, supersensuous 
 substrate, the totality of its constitutive conditions, 1 
 so does he also by a similar reflective process refer 
 the object-ego, which he knows and thinks about 
 as an object among other phenomena, to a non- 
 phenomenal subject or Soul as its metempiric 
 ground. Again, in the same manner that the 
 knowledge of objects external to the ego is dependent 
 on a pure knowing subject which is conscious of the 
 object-ego and antithetically distinguishes those 
 external objects from it, so similarly is this know- 
 ledge of the object-ego only possible at all, inasmuch 
 as the pure subject-ego is indirectly aware of itself 
 in a sort of subliminal consciousness, and can thus 
 distinguish the object-ego from itself by antithesis. 
 This correlation, therefore, of the subject and 
 object-ego which takes place in the mind, that is, 
 of the sensuous and the supersensuous, is, as sug- 
 
 1 For the reason described in Section C.
 
 206 ON FREEDOM 
 
 gested above, something more than that mere re- 
 flective reference of the phenomenal object-ego to 
 its metempiric ground (i.e. the totality of its con- 
 stitutive conditions), a reference of the sensuous to 
 its non-sensuous basis which results in the case 
 of all objects of knowledge without exception from 
 the limited nature of that medium in which the 
 understanding works. For it is here a question, 
 not only of a reflective reference of the phenomenal 
 to the supersensuous, which takes place, it is true, 
 in the case of the object-ego just as much as in 
 that of phenomena external to the latter, whenever 
 our thought is directed in a contemplative fashion 
 to what the complete truth of any phenomenal 
 object may be, but, as we have said, of a kind of 
 sub-consciousness, or, more properly speaking, in- 
 direct and negative self-consciousness, of the subject- 
 ego pure and simple ; a consciousness which, apart 
 from its indirect and antithetical character, is 
 devoid of all thought-content, and which probably 
 by the vast majority of mankind is confusedly 
 absorbed into their direct consciousness of the 
 object-ego ; the twofold consciousness, thus com- 
 bined, being then regarded by them as the undivided 
 consciousness of their subject-selves. 
 
 Now, in referring a phenomenon external to the 
 object-ego to its supersensuous ground, which, we 
 repeat, is a necessary, limitative act of the mind, 
 whenever we begin to reflect upon what any pheno-
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 207 
 
 rnenon may be in its complete interpretation, we 
 obtain no knowledge of that ground, except a 
 negative idea of it, and our thought of it conse- 
 quently has no content. The reference is merely 
 limitative ; that is to say, it is the result of the 
 impossibility of subduing the relativity of the pheno- 
 menon, or, in other words, of appraising it in the 
 totality of its constitutive conditions. On the 
 other hand, in the case of the object-ego, there is, 
 as we have said, more than a mere empty reflective 
 reference of it to the totality of its constitutive 
 conditions, that is, to a non-phenomenal subject-ego 
 as its supersensible ground. There is also a kind 
 of sub-consciousness, or, to express it more accu- 
 rately, indirect consciousness, superinduced in a 
 negative, antithetical manner, of that unknowable 
 and unrealisable pure-thinking basis which antici- 
 pates, and, if it always remained for us distinc- 
 tive in character, would render supererogatory any 
 merely reflective reference to it ; a sub-conscious- 
 ness, which, to repeat, is not a direct, but an 
 indirect consciousness of that pure subject, neces- 
 sarily induced by the very dependence itself of 
 knowledge of an object on a knowing subject ; that 
 is to say, by the direct antithetic relation itself 
 within the ego of subject and object. For, although 
 this so-called sub-consciousness of the transcendent 
 ground of the object-ego is only indirect, the con- 
 sciousness of the fact of antithesis within the ego
 
 208 ON FREEDOM 
 
 is direct. In other words, we are directly conscious 
 of the object-ego, and hence necessarily of the fact 
 of division and antithesis within the ego as a whole ; 
 but since we cannot seize one side of that anti- 
 thesis in thought — namely, that of that subject-ego 
 — we can only be conscious of that side in an, as 
 it were, indirect manner through the medium of 
 that fact of which we are directly conscious, namely, 
 the existence of contrast and division. This peculiar 
 kind of negative or indirect consciousness, it is hardly 
 necessary to point out, the ego does not feel in 
 respect of the relation between a phenomenon 
 external to the object-ego and the supersensuous 
 ground of that phenomenon, since that antithetic 
 relation is on both its sides wholly objective to the 
 ego, one side not being, as it were, swallowed up 
 through identity with the subject that observes the 
 antithesis, and therefore enters into our thought as 
 a reflective reference merely, due to the limited 
 nature of our understanding. 
 
 If, however, we choose to reflect upon our pheno- 
 menal object-ego, and thus, in addition to our own 
 indirect and negative consciousness of its non- 
 phenomenal ground, that is, of the pure-thinking 
 subject-ego, to obtain a sort of limitative concept 
 of this metempiric antithesis by reference, we find 
 that this reflective reference is more vivid in the 
 case of the ego than in the case of external pheno- 
 mena and their supersensuous ground. And this
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 209 
 
 accession of distinctness in respect of the reference 
 is only natural, for the crude externality of the 
 reference has here been partially overcome, and is 
 made by the ego in regard to itself, with the super- 
 added advantage of that auxiliary but elusive sub- 
 consciousness, or rather negative consciousness, 
 which is ever present with us. It is a reference, 
 in short, to the supersensuous groundwork, that is, 
 to the totality of the constitutive conditions of my 
 own phenomenal personality by the subject-ego 
 itself, which, however, in this reference, as in the 
 case of the reflective reference by it of things 
 external to the object-ego to their metempiric sub- 
 strate, is only able to make use of those forms 
 of thought which rule in the world of appearance, 
 and cannot therefore turn its thought upon its 
 subject-self on account of the impossibility of apply- 
 ing the machinery of the categories to what is trans- 
 cendent. In this reference, therefore, to the 
 subject-ego by the subject-ego there is, as in the 
 case of the reference by the thinking subject of 
 external phenomena {i.e. external to the object-ego) 
 to their supersensuous ground, no thought-content, 
 and consequently no knowledge. The result of the 
 reference is merely a limitative concept. In fact, 
 leaving out of account the elusive kind of subliminal 
 consciousness already alluded to, we know as little 
 of the non-phenomenal groundwork of the object- 
 ego in our reflective reference to it, although the 
 
 o
 
 210 ON FREEDOM 
 
 reference, it is true, is more intimate and insistent, as 
 we do of the supersensuous ground or the totality 
 of their constitutive conditions to which we refer 
 phenomena external to that ego in our efforts to 
 overcome their relativity. Moreover, if I now drop 
 my merely reflective reference, empirically made, and, 
 without thinking of myself as an object-ego at all, 
 try to concentrate my thought upon this so-called 
 sub-consciousness, then, as soon as I attempt to 
 do so and to form a subject "I" out of it, even 
 this phantom of indirect, negative consciousness 
 recedes into the extreme background of appercep- 
 tion, and like an ignis fatuus eludes me altogether, 
 becoming, as it were, merely an object-ego for 
 me. In fact, if it were indeed possible to transfix 
 the subject-ego in thought, it would then no 
 longer be a subject, but an object. How often 
 have some of us, perhaps, imagined that we had 
 arrested it in thought, when it seemed instantane- 
 ously, in the very moment even of our introspective 
 effort, to dissolve and transform itself into the 
 object-ego, and we found the subject-ego to be as 
 unplumbed, as deeply hidden from us, and as evan- 
 escent to our thought, as ever ! But this, again, 
 is only what might be expected, for how could we 
 presume to envelop in forms of mental action, 
 forms which are applicable to the sensuous life 
 alone, something which lies outside the sphere of 
 phenomena, in this case the ground of a particular
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 211 
 
 phenomenon, namely, the pure-thinking, non-pheno- 
 menal "I," the totality of conditions of the object- 
 ego ? Thought, in fact, can, in the case of human 
 beings, only know itself when operative under the 
 forms of time and space, or, in other words, when 
 it is no longer pure, but clothed in the garb of 
 phenomenal activity, that is to say, when it has 
 become an object, and consequently cannot direct 
 itself upon itself as a pure subject. 
 
 There is a further point to be considered in this 
 connection, namely, the question of personal iden- 
 tity. The indirect or negative consciousness of 
 the subject-ego, of which we have been speaking, 
 is always more vividly present in us, whenever we 
 happen to be engaged in such action, physical or 
 mental, as does not involve either any speculative 
 reflection upon the mystery of our phenomenal 
 object-ego or any profitless attempt to reach that 
 same elusive, antithetical consciousness of the 
 subject-ego by means of thought. It is therefore 
 in all probability more clearly defined for us in 
 extreme youth, when the reflective reference is 
 weaker, than in our later and more contemplative 
 years. Or to put it in another way, the conscious- 
 ness of antithesis between subject and object-ego is 
 more distinct then than later, and the synthetic 
 unity of the ego more susceptible of involuntary 
 subjective analysis. A very young child, for in- 
 stance, usually speaks of itself in the third person,
 
 212 ON FREEDOM 
 
 treating its phenomenal being with its manifold of 
 inner sense as an object, and in all probability 
 sharply differentiating that object in consciousness 
 from its pure-thinking subject-ego ; for in order 
 to place itself distinctly as an object before itself, 
 it must be distinctly conscious of itself in an 
 antithetical, negative manner as a subject as well. 
 That subject, however, it is only aware of indirectly 
 in what may be termed a sort of sub-consciousness, 
 as explained above, and cannot apply the " I " to 
 it in thought, being, as it is, metempiric. But with 
 the growth of experience the reflective reference by 
 the subject-ego of the object-ego to its metempiric 
 ground, or the undefined totality of its constitutive 
 conditions, becomes more persistent, and the gradual 
 result of this change is that the feeling grows ever 
 stronger that this supersensible background or 
 subject-ego, in its relation to the object-ego, remains 
 identical. The reason of this is not far to seek. As 
 the pure subject-ego is for us always unknowable 
 in this reflective reference, and therefore devoid of 
 any thought-content, it remains for us as thinking 
 beings, on the principle of the identity of indis- 
 cernibles, changeless, and therefore always identical 
 and never ending ; for there cannot exist differences 
 and distinctions for human thought in what is 
 transcendent and devoid of all empirical conditions. 
 Indeed, it is in part thus that there arises what 
 is one of the most abiding of human beliefs, namely,
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 213 
 
 the belief in immortality ; a belief which rests, not 
 on that negative and indirect consciousness of the 
 subject-ego, the elusive and metempiric character 
 of which can afford no basis for reflection, but on 
 this reflective reference empirically carried out by 
 us. The belief, in fact, is not original, but empirically 
 generated, and people, consequently, are sometimes 
 heard to say that the more they reflect upon the 
 problem of their own existence and of the world 
 around them, the more convinced do they become of 
 the immortality of the soul and of a future life. 
 
 But the growing reflective reference of the object- 
 ego to this perpetually unknowable and therefore 
 for us changeless and identical substrate (the 
 totality of its constitutive conditions) leads us by the 
 logical and unconscious movement of thought to 
 suppose that an identical groundwork must carry 
 an identical superstructure ; that what, in fact, is 
 always being referred to the same unvarying basis 
 as its ultimate reality must itself retain an identity 
 of essence, and that therefore the object-ego also, 
 with its manifold of inner sense, must possess a 
 personal identity through life. A feeling of pheno- 
 menal continuity is thus set up. The consequence 
 of this is that the object is regarded as no less a 
 primary and, in some respects, permanent part of 
 the ego than the subject. In fact, the object-ego 
 being, unlike the other, immediately present to 
 thought, soon occupies the chief place in our con-
 
 214 ON FREEDOM 
 
 scious being, and we apply the " I " to it in thought, 
 thus displacing with it the " third person " of our 
 tenderer years. In this manner does the elusive, 
 antithetical consciousness of the subject-ego be- 
 come, as such, less and less distinctive in character 
 with the growth of reflection, until we almost lose 
 the conscious antithesis of subject and object-ego 
 and involuntarily absorb the indirect, negative kind 
 of consciousness of the one into the stronger and 
 more direct consciousness of the other. In fact, 
 the really important antithesis for us becomes, not 
 the subject-ego on the one hand and the object- 
 ego and other objects on the other, but the ego and 
 the non-ego, that is to say, the ego in its entirety 
 on one side as a subject and objects external to that 
 ego on the other. 
 
 It may be argued—" This is all very well, but how 
 can I reflectively refer a past object-ego, recognised 
 as having been mine, to its non-phenomenal ground, 
 unless there be a connecting link between the think- 
 ing subject then and the thinking subject now ; 
 that is to say, unless there is something in common 
 between the two, something identical, in fact, which 
 enables me to appropriate the past phenomenal 
 ego in order to refer it, on reflection, to its non- 
 phenomenal ground ? Does not the very fact of 
 my being able to refer a past object-ego, as mine 
 (that is, as described in a former paragraph of this 
 section, through the instrumentality of an, as it
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 215 
 
 were, negatively and indirectly superinduced con- 
 sciousness of the metempiric side of the antithetic 
 relation within the ego), to its unknowable, timeless 
 ground prove the identity of the subject ground 
 then and now ? ' We have, however, to bear the 
 following points in mind : namely, (a) that Time 
 is a purely ideal or subjective condition of all our 
 experience ; (b) that what is known as " memory ' 
 enters into practically every immediately conscious 
 moment of the life of man ; (c) that the mental 
 images we are conscious of in memory are merely 
 particular affections of our inner sense or conscious 
 modifications of our phenomenal ego which have 
 been fashioned by pure thought into objectivity, 
 just as fear, curiosity, or sympathy are inner sense- 
 affections, each of them possessing its own char- 
 acteristics ; (d) that every kind of affection of 
 human sensibility, without exception, and in its 
 entirety, is an immediately present affection of the 
 phenomenal ego, that is, of sense, inner or outer 
 as the case may be, an affection in direct 1 and 
 objective conscious relation with its metempiric 
 antithesis or subject-ego, and which that pure subject 
 deals with in each case according to its own fixed 
 laws of objectification ; (e) that the multiform 
 
 1 For to repeat, at the risk of somewhat wearisome iteration, the 
 consciousness of antithesis between subject and object-ego is direct, 
 although the self-consciousness of the subject-ego itself is only in- 
 directly and negatively, or, as it were, sub-consciously superinduced 
 through the direct consciousness of the object-ego and therefore of a 
 necessary antithetic relation within the ego.
 
 216 ON FREEDOM 
 
 images of memory, or the various idiosyncratic 
 affections of inner sense that go by that name, 
 having been adjusted in accordance with certain 
 rules of relativity by the pure-thinking subject, are 
 therefore merely immediately present affections of 
 our phenomenal sentiency of which the ego is 
 conscious, and which the pure-thinking subject 
 fashions into objectivity according to the synthetic 
 laws of thought : in other words, modifications here 
 and now of our phenomenal or object-ego, however 
 much 'we may feel them under a certain aspect 
 resulting from our own finitude — compelled, as we 
 are, to accord to every immediate affection of our 
 sentiency its particular and limited parcel of em- 
 pirical and temporal conditions — to be mere present 
 shadows thrown by real prototypal objects in ante- 
 cedent times ; and (/) that when I therefore re- 
 member myself as suffering great physical pain, for 
 instance, a year ago, I am able to call that so-called 
 antecedent state mine, solely because that state, as 
 thus remembered, that is, as the actual manner in 
 which my inner sense is now being affected, does 
 not concern a non-present phenomenal or object- 
 ego as affected in this particular manner, but is an 
 immediate affection or modification of my present 
 object-ego, and therefore in present conscious 
 relation, indirectly and negatively superinduced 
 though the consciousness of the metempiric side 
 of that relation may be, with its supersensuous
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 217 
 
 antithesis, or, in other words, with my subject- 
 ego. 
 
 The direct conscious antithesis, however, of sub- 
 ject and object-ego, by means of which, as we have 
 said, the " antecedent state ' in the case of a 
 memorial affection is able to be appropriated by 
 the subject as its own, is concerned only with the 
 immediate and present affection of the object-ego, 
 and not with that purely prototypal and non- 
 present aspect of it, as such, which is due to a 
 subjective rule of causality in us, or, in other words, 
 to the ideality of our time-determinations ; the law 
 of that ideality in this particular kind of sense- 
 affection constraining us to regard the affection, in 
 that aspect, that is to say, in disruption from the 
 immediacy of the affection, as the real antecedent 
 state which has cast the present affection as its 
 shadow through the medium of thought, and whose 
 metempiric antithesis, therefore, in that aspect of 
 disruption, we can only speculatively and non-sub- 
 jectively, that is to say, not, so to speak, sub-con- 
 sciously be aware of in that indirect, subjective 
 manner, as before explained, but only objectively 
 aim at, as in the case of any other objects external 
 to the present object-ego, through reflective reference. 
 But we have already seen in several preceding 
 paragraphs how we always, whenever we reflect upon 
 the matter, refer our phenomenal ego in a general 
 sort of way in all its manifold modifications to its
 
 218 ON FREEDOM 
 
 non-phenomenal ground or the totality of its con- 
 stitutive conditions. It has been shown, moreover, 
 how this reflective reference of the phenomenal ego 
 to an incognisable ground induces the belief in the 
 general identity of that ground throughout the 
 multiplicity of the modifications, and, as conse- 
 quential thereto, the feeling also of continuity of 
 essence in respect of the impressionable phenomenal 
 ego itself. The results in the case of those present 
 modifications or sense-affections termed images 
 of memory must therefore be analogous to those 
 produced by any other present affections of the 
 object-ego, except that, in the case of these peculiar 
 affections, our reference is influenced in a particular 
 manner by those ideal conditions through which we 
 construe that particular kind of affection ; and thus, 
 whilst we are induced to believe, on reflection, in the 
 general identity of the ground of the phenomenal 
 ego, whatever its modifications may be, we all the 
 more distinctly feel that ground, in the case of 
 memorial images, to be that of a phenomenal ego 
 as affected, not merely in various co-existent or 
 coincident ways, but as affected in different and 
 antecedent times or, in other words, during what 
 we term the natural past life of a man. 
 
 For, to repeat, this belief in the identity of the 
 supersensible ground of our phenomenal being could 
 not be effected, in the case of images of memory, 
 by means solely of that elusive kind of self-con-
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 219 
 
 sciousness of the subject-ego, superinduced indirectly 
 by the direct consciousness of the object-ego and 
 therefore of a necessary antithetic relation within 
 the ego, an antithesis within the ego which on its 
 metempiric side we only recognise to be directly 
 related to what we also recognise at the same time 
 to be exclusively immediate and present affections 
 of the phenomenal ego, and not therefore to those 
 peculiar affections under their ideally determined 
 and purely prototypal aspect, which, in that aspect 
 of diremption from immediacy, although, even then, 
 necessarily in every part of them equally immedi- 
 ately present to sense in actuality, or we could not 
 be conscious of them at all or perform the act of 
 reference to their ground, we are constrained by 
 the idiosyncratic operation upon them of that sub- 
 jective temporal medium, in which our thought 
 works and to which it is subdued, to reflect upon 
 as causal and existent in antecedent times. In this 
 latter case, although we can appropriate the memo- 
 rial affections in their generality as our own, that 
 is, recognise them as the way in which our pheno- 
 menal ego was affected in the past, on account 
 of their being in fact nothing less indeed than 
 immediate and present affections of our object-ego's 
 sentiency, we, nevertheless, in reflecting upon that 
 aspect of them which we are constrained by the 
 subjectivity of those particular temporal conditions 
 with their resultant law of causality to regard as
 
 220 ON FREEDOM 
 
 not immediate and present, but as non-present and 
 prototypal, are obliged to aid and abet, as it were, 
 that direct consciousness of the antithetic relation 
 of subject and present object-ego which here par- 
 tially fails us, by referring them under that non- 
 present aspect, in the same general sort of way 
 that we refer on reflection all other things external 
 to the present object-ego, to their non-phenomenal 
 ground, thereby unwittingly constructing our belief 
 in the perpetual identity of that ground throughout 
 the manifold changes of phenomenal man. The 
 much- vexed question, therefore, whether we really 
 retain our personal identity through life loses a 
 large part of its significance. It would be beyond 
 all human ability to deny such identity without 
 presumption ; it would be equally presumptuous 
 to affirm it categorically. All that has been argued 
 and suggested here is that we do not feel that we 
 are identical in different times by means exclu- 
 sively of our direct consciousness of the fact of 
 antithesis within the ego of subject and object, or 
 solely on account of that peculiar kind of indirectly 
 superinduced sub - consciousness, so laboriously 
 defined above, of the supersensuous side of that 
 antithetic relation, that is, of the pure subject-ego ; 
 but very largely through our habit of reflective refer- 
 ence, a reference which builds up this feeling of con- 
 tinuity by empirical means open to investigation, 
 whether that feeling be ultimately a true inter-
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 221 
 
 pretation of the real state of the case or no, a 
 matter, indeed, which, even if not wholly meaning- 
 less, must at any rate continue to be beyond our 
 
 ken. 
 
 We thus appear to derive, in a measure, the 
 feeling of and belief in our personal identity from 
 our reflective reference, empirically carried out, of 
 the phenomenal to the supersensuous, and not 
 exclusively from that indirectly superinduced con- 
 sciousness of the metempiric subject-ego, which from 
 moment to moment is merely a sort of negative 
 result of the direct consciousness of the object-ego, 
 and therefore of a necessary antithetic relation 
 within the ego. To the question, therefore, why 
 human beings feel and believe that their ego pre- 
 serves a personal identity throughout the various 
 vicissitudes of their existence, a partial answer may 
 be given. To ask, however, whether the subject- 
 ego does in reality remain identical is a conundrum 
 devoid of any reasonable meaning. For " iden- 
 tity " involves the condition of permanence or 
 time-duration, since it implies that something now 
 is the same as another previously. But it has just 
 been shown that the subject-ego is metempiric in 
 character, that is to say, outside all conditions of 
 time and space, and therefore elusive to thought. 
 Consequently to inquire whether man's subject- 
 ego, that is, the supersensuous substrate or the 
 totality of the constitutive conditions of his object-
 
 222 ON FREEDOM 
 
 ego, does in fact preserve identity through life, is 
 merely to speak of the unthinkable in terms of 
 human thought, in other words, to apply sensuous 
 predicates to what is transcendent, and to try to 
 lop and shape the infinite so as to fit it into the 
 Procrustean bed of the finite understanding. We 
 must therefore remain content to inquire why it 
 is that human beings feel and believe that their sub- 
 ject-selves retain their identity through life ; but 
 it is meaningless to ask whether, and equally futile, 
 as well as contradictory, to affirm that their sub- 
 ject-ego is in reality an essence which preserves 
 its identity through all the phases of phenomenal 
 change. 
 
 The problem of the ego is indeed the profoundest 
 of all psychological and metaphysical problems, and 
 the key, perhaps, to all the others, for is not " I ' 
 the Atlas that bears upon its back the secrets of the 
 Universe ? A simple, undivided ego we certainly 
 are not — our own reflection and that elusive, indirect 
 consciousness tell us as much — but an ego com- 
 pounded of subject and object. The " I ' which 
 every man fixes in thought and has knowledge of ; 
 the " I " which he has pity, ambition, and love for ; 
 in whose behalf he slaves throughout a lifetime ; of 
 whom he feels proud or ashamed, is not the pure- 
 thinking subject-ego which lies behind his so-called 
 personality like a canvas behind the paint, but the 
 phenomenal or object-ego. That object-ego is the
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 223 
 
 whole of his past and present experience ; the 
 countless associations of his ideas ; his mental 
 peculiarities and physical organism ; his memory, 
 passions, and hereditary and other instincts ; his 
 temperament, nature, and manifold of inner and 
 outer sense ; the sum, in fact, of his whole con- 
 scious life and being empirically known to him. 
 It is therefore bound down by natural law, and in 
 the light of that law alone can its various springs 
 and impulses be reached by human thought. But 
 the subject-ego cannot be known or thought, and 
 for the reason that it cannot be empirically known 
 or thought, to predicate freedom of it is, even if 
 true, devoid of interest for human nature. Directly 
 we attempt to predicate any property concerning 
 it, and by means of thought to fit that predicate 
 to its object, it immediately eludes our grasp and 
 the cloak of our predicate falls on the shoulders of 
 the object-ego, of whom freedom cannot be pre- 
 dicated without contradiction, subdued as it is to 
 natural law. That there is a subject-ego in each 
 of us we all believe. It is not only with us, as 
 has been explained, in the shape of that fugitive 
 and indirectly superinduced consciousness which is 
 present to every man as an undefined something 
 in necessary antithetic relation to that object-ego 
 which he knows and posits by that very self-same 
 pure thought, although it becomes, it is true, less 
 distinctive in character with the growth of experi-
 
 224 ON FREEDOM 
 
 ence, until we almost lose sight of its origin and 
 transfer it in our imagination to the object-ego to 
 which it does not belong ; but it is also a matter 
 for reflective reference, a reference which is the 
 necessary and natural result of the peculiar function 
 of the human understanding, which cannot overstep 
 the phenomenal sphere marked out for it, and 
 which for that very reason is forced to admit a non- 
 sensuous background to its knowledge as a limi- 
 tative concept, an ultimate reality, in short, which 
 must be for ever beyond the scope of its powers. 
 More than this, however, we none of us can say. 
 
 For all practical purposes, however, the ego may 
 be regarded as one undivided thinking subject with 
 external phenomena for its objects. For we can- 
 not separately attach the metempiric part of it in 
 thought, and though there is in all of us a kind of 
 sub-consciousness of it, like the distant tinkling of a 
 bell, the whole of our consciousness in this life upon 
 which the thought of the subject-ego can be directed 
 appertains to the object-ego alone. Throughout 
 this Part (II), therefore, the term "subject' or 
 " thinking subject " has been employed as compris- 
 ing the ego in its entirety, that is to say, the pheno- 
 menal or object-ego, with its manifold of inner and 
 outer sense, as well as the pure-thinking subject- 
 ego, whatever it may be.
 
 INNER AND OUTER SENSE 
 
 A clearly defined distinction has therefore been 
 drawn between that general reflective reference by 
 the subject-ego of the phenomenal object-ego to its 
 unknowable metempiric ground, or, in other words, 
 to the totality of its constitutive conditions, and that 
 elusive kind of self-consciousness of the subject-ego, 
 which is superinduced in a negative and indirect 
 way by the direct consciousness of the object-ego, 
 and, consequently, of a necessary antithetic relation, 
 within the ego, of subject and object. It has also 
 been pointed out that, although this reflective refer- 
 ence is made with respect to both the object-ego 
 and phenomena external to that ego, the direct 
 consciousness of the fact of antithesis within the 
 ego of phenomenal and non-phenomenal, as well 
 as the above peculiar kind of sub-consciousness, 
 indirectly generated through that direct conscious- 
 ness, of the supersensible ground of the pheno- 
 menal, only exist in our present state of finitude 
 in the case of the object-ego and its subject. Indeed, 
 it is this distinction which especially characterises 
 
 what we recognise as the world around us as con- 
 
 225 • p
 
 226 ON FREEDOM 
 
 trasted with ourselves as objects in it. In spite 
 of this, however, the gulf which divides the two is 
 possibly not quite so immitigable for thought as 
 might appear at first sight. In fact, it may be 
 due to an apparently subordinate feature of our 
 organism that we are not self-conscious in a similarly 
 elusive, indirect manner of the supersensuous ground 
 of nearly the whole of our world of nature as our own 
 subject-ego, in antithetic relation to that world in 
 another form as that subject's object or object-ego. 
 In order to make this observation plainer, it may 
 be as well to define more precisefy what is meant 
 by the terms inner and outer sense, as made use of 
 in connection with the object-ego in the last para- 
 graph but one of the previous section, so as to 
 avoid the confusion which is sometimes brought 
 about by different interpretations being placed upon 
 them. There is no need here to discuss whether 
 indeed the actual terms can ever properly be em- 
 ployed in antithetic juxtaposition or no ; whether 
 possibly they may not be crude and misleading and 
 even in some respects contradictory. There are 
 those who would go so far as to abolish the very 
 distinction. That there is a distinction, however, 
 for the everyday consciousness of man is beyond 
 dispute, and the question for the moment is merely 
 the analysis of that differentiation in feeling of 
 which all men are aware. What is commonly 
 known as an affection of outer sense may be said
 
 THE HUMAN WILL 227 
 
 to be whatever part of that modification of my pheno- 
 menal or object-ego's sentiency I am conscious of as 
 given, that is, as independent of and not immediately 
 constituted by the activity of my own thought, in other 
 words, as not merely made up of or consisting of the 
 manner in which my thought is acting at the moment, 
 however clearly I may recognise, on consideration, 
 the purely phenomenal character of the whole world, 
 as I know it. An affection of inner sense, on the 
 contrary, may be denned as whatever part of that 
 modification of my object-ego's sentiency I am con- 
 scious of as not given, that is, as dependent upon 
 and immediately constituted by a particular pheno- 
 menal movement of my own thought, in other words, 
 as merely made up of and consisting of the manner 
 in which my thought is acting at the moment, let the 
 excitatory causes of that thought-movement be what 
 they may. Sights, tastes, touches, smells, and 
 sounds, for example, will be recognised, so far as a 
 certain given part of the object-ego's modification in 
 each of these cases is concerned, as falling under 
 the first head ; whilst doubts, fears, hatreds, loves, 
 sorrows, joys, curiosities, ambitions, and so forth, 
 will be felt, as such, that is to say, in so far as 
 they are not given, to fall wholly under the second. 
 We say as such advisedly, because what is known 
 as outer sense is not in the ordinary unreflecting 
 consciousness of mankind always easily discerptible 
 in any clearly demarcatory fashion from what is
 
 228 ON FREEDOM 
 
 known as inner sense, or vice versa. Fear of a 
 viper seen in the grass, for instance, is an affec- 
 tion of outer as well as of inner sense according to 
 the definitions which have just been suggested. I 
 am conscious of what I term my outer sense of 
 sight as being affected, in part, independently of the 
 movement of my thought, but I also feel a modi- 
 fication, called fear, taking place in what I term 
 my inner senses, and I recognise that change to be 
 immediately and wholly compounded of particular 
 phenomenal movements of that thought or, in other 
 words, to be the proximate result of the peculiar 
 manner in which my thought deals with that, in 
 part, given affection of my organ of sight. Music, 
 again, which is an affection of the organ of hearing, 
 and also in many cases produces pleasure, affords 
 an instance of a similar possible combination of the 
 two kinds of sense-affection, and, in fact, countless 
 other examples might be given in illustration of the 
 argument. 
 
 Bare memory of an event, however, such as the 
 Press announcement, a year ago, of the natural 
 death of some Chinese Viceroy unknown to me, or 
 the mere imagining of a thing, such as a quadri • 
 lateral figure in space, do not, it may be argued, 
 properly come under the head of either outer or 
 inner sense-affection, for the reason that, although 
 a conscious modification of the inner phenomenal 
 ego necessarily accompanies, or rather coincides
 
 INNER AND OUTER SENSE 229 
 
 with, the form of that mental activity known as an 
 act of memory or imagination, we are not conscious 
 of those particular acts, as such, as ordinary sense- 
 affections at all, but only as phenomenal thought- 
 movements barren of feeling. For sense-affection, 
 it may be urged, is a recognised or conscious modi- 
 fication of the object-ego's sentiency, and unless that 
 sensibility is felt to be modified in some manner, no 
 such thing as sensation can be said to be present. 
 When I recollect the announcement of the death of 
 the Chinese Viceroy, I do not, so it may be said, 
 feel my object-ego's sentiency to be in any way 
 affected. I am aware, it is true, of the bare thought- 
 movement of memory with its particular object, but 
 that is all, whether space be a condition, as in this 
 case, of that particular object or not. When, again, 
 I construct in imagination a geometrical figure, I do 
 not feel my object-ego to be sensibly affected, al- 
 though I am aware of the thought -movement which 
 has again for its object something in space. If, 
 however — so the argument may run — I carry my 
 thoughts back to the death of a dear friend in a 
 certain room a week since, I am not only aware 
 of the activity of my own thought in that act of 
 memory, which as an act of memory does not con- 
 sciously affect my sensibility at all, but I am also 
 aware that my object-ego is being strongly affected 
 by that remembered event in a certain manner, 
 which I call the inner sense of grief. Again, if I
 
 230 ON FREEDOM 
 
 picture to myself a summer's day in a garden full 
 of exquisite flowers, with a fountain of sparkling 
 water playing in the midst of it, I am aware of 
 the activity of thought which has for its object 
 something of which space is a presupposition, and 
 which as a mere act of the imagination does not 
 consciously affect my sensibility, but I also feel 
 that my object-ego is being affected by that ab- 
 stract conception in a certain manner, which I 
 call the inner sense of pleasure. But in reply to 
 this argument against a bare image of memory or 
 imagination involving an affection of inner sense, 
 it may be said that, although such an image may be 
 generally regarded as merely a bare thought-move- 
 ment, yet the very fact of our being conscious of 
 that movement proves that the internal sentiency 
 of the phenomenal ego is being consciously affected 
 in a certain manner. Therefore, although the desig- 
 nation of sense-affection in its ordinary applica- 
 tion may be considered hardly suited to so delicate 
 a modification of the phenomenal ego's inner senti- 
 ency as a fleeting image of memory or imagination, 
 yet the very consciousness of that modification 
 proves that, however faint it may be, it is just as 
 much an affection of inner sense as those other 
 modifications of the object-ego, such as fear or joy, 
 to which the term is usually accorded. 1 Now, it 
 
 1 There is corroboratory testimony on this last particular point in 
 Wilhelm Wundt's Sixth Lecture on Hitman and Animal Psychology.
 
 INNER AND OUTER SENSE 231 
 
 will be found that, broadly speaking, we are con- 
 scious of the affections of inner sense, as thus 
 defined , as in time alone (for although a memorial 
 image may be projected conceptually in space, the 
 actual memorial thought movement is an affection 
 of sensibility which the subject is conscious of as 
 in time only), and of the affections of outer sense, 
 as defined above, as in space as well as in time. 
 
 The argument, therefore, has reached so far, 
 namely, that when I am conscious of an affection 
 of my object-ego's sentiency as in time alone, I am 
 conscious of that affection as, in its entirety, proxi- 
 mately dependent upon and immediately constituted 
 by a particular phenomenal movement of my own 
 thought, in other words, as merely made up of and 
 consisting of the manner in which 1113' thought is 
 acting at the moment, and I name it inner sense. 
 When, on the contrar} r , I am conscious of an affec- 
 tion of my object-ego's sentiency as in space as 
 well as in time, I am conscious of that affection 
 as being largely independent of the activity of my 
 thought or, in other words, as, in part, given to me, 
 and I call it outer sense. Now, it will be seen, on 
 consideration, that the consciousness of any affection 
 of the object-ego's sensibility as in space necessarily 
 implies a localisation b}^ the subject of that affection ; 
 
 He ihere says: "Even the fainter pictorial ideas which constitute 
 abstract thinking are not wholly without this sense-accompaniment" 
 (translation by J. E. Creighton and E. B. Titchener).
 
 232 ON FREEDOM 
 
 whereas the consciousness of any affection of the 
 object-ego's sentiency as in time alone necessarily 
 implies a corresponding absence of such localisation . 
 In the same way, the localisation of a sense-affection 
 by the subject is equivalent to saying that the 
 subject is conscious of that affection as in space as 
 well as in time. But directly the subject (man) is 
 conscious of any sense-affection as in space, it means 
 that he is conscious of it as external, for in order 
 that the subject may be conscious of anything as 
 in space, he must be conscious of it as in spatial 
 relation to all other objects of his consciousness or 
 as external to them, and therefore to the whole of 
 the rest of his own conscious self. And being con- 
 scious of that affection as external, the law of the 
 understanding has to provide for it, as such, that 
 is, so far as that part of it which is felt to be given 
 is concerned, its external or spatial so-called cause, 
 of which it, the internal, spaceless, understanding, 
 can itself therefore consciously form no part. 
 Hence, to him, this localised sense-affection is not, 
 as such, proximately dependent upon or immedi- 
 ately constituted by a particular phenomenal move- 
 ment of his own thought, but, so far as that part 
 of it is concerned which is felt to be given, is the 
 effect of something external and spatial of which 
 a spaceless, internal thought-movement of his own 
 can consciously form no immediate portion. When, 
 on the contrary, the feeling of localisation of any
 
 INNER AND OUTER SENSE 233 
 
 sense-affection, such as of sympathy or malice, for 
 instance, is completely absent, the subject cannot 
 be conscious of that affection as in space, but only 
 as in time, and therefore the affection cannot be 
 for him external, but is regarded by him as proxi- 
 mately dependent upon and merely made up of a 
 particular internal, spaceless thought-movement of 
 his own, whatever the excitatory and natural con- 
 ditions of that constitutive phenomenal thought- 
 movement may happen to be. 
 
 Thus we, in part, localise an affection of the 
 organ of sight — indeed the statement itself is pleon- 
 astic — and the localisation results, in accordance 
 with the afore-mentioned dianoetic principle, in an 
 external object of perception for us (the sun, for 
 instance) as the spatial and proximately determin- 
 ing and constitutive " cause ' of that particular 
 affection ; but we altogether fail to localise that 
 peculiar affection of the object-ego's sentiency to 
 which we give the name of vanity, and therefore, 
 debarred from the consciousness of any external 
 conditions immediately and directly constitutive of 
 it, as such, that is, so far as that part of it is con- 
 cerned which we recognise to be not given, we cata- 
 logue the first as an affection of outer and the 
 second as an affection of inner sense. But they are 
 both of them affections of our sensibility, and were 
 it possible to localise in our consciousness that sense- 
 affection we term vanity, we should then necessarily
 
 234 ON FREEDOM 
 
 be conscious of that affection as partly in space. It 
 would consequently then be outer sense for us and, 
 in part, given, and, as such, therefore, not immedi- 
 ately made up, so far as our consciousness was con- 
 cerned, of the mere activity of our own thought. 
 Even as it is, we find at different times certain 
 modifications of the phenomenal ego that seem to 
 hover on the border-line between inner and outer 
 sense, and that even appear to belong sometimes 
 to one side of the domain of sense and sometimes 
 to the other. Thus that particular modification of 
 the ego's sentiency which takes the form of sound 
 is not always so clearly localised by the subject 
 as touch, sight, taste, or smell, for instance. A 
 single violent sound -shock, for example, is more 
 clearly localised in consciousness as an external 
 affection of the organ of hearing than certain suc- 
 cessions of notes forming a composite harmony, and 
 this is what may have led T. H. Green and Henry 
 Sidgwick and others to fall foul of Kant's dictum 
 that space is the condition of external and time 
 only the condition of internal phenomena, a dis- 
 tinction, it is true, which only holds good if the 
 terms outer and inner are restricted to the definitions 
 of them suggested in the second paragraph of this 
 Section. For there may be such a series of notes 
 as are not, perhaps, in their composition, always 
 easily localised in consciousness as a direct external 
 affection of the ego, and consequently the per-
 
 INNER AND OUTER SENSE 235 
 
 ceiving subject is probably the less inclined to be 
 conscious of that particular affection as partly in 
 space, especially, if an access of melancholy or 
 pleasurable sensation supervenes upon the harmony, 
 which inclines the subject to assimilate the con- 
 sciousness of the primary and external oral affection 
 to that of the spaceless affection of the inner sense 
 of sadness or pleasure, which latter, being unable 
 to localise in consciousness, he is only conscious 
 of as in time. 
 
 Indeed, so closely allied do the subjectively 
 passive and the subjectively active seem to be, both 
 of them, as it were, enjoying a common base, that 
 the most distinctive characteristics of the one seem 
 to be able to melt and disappear into the most 
 distinctive features of the other. Thus certain 
 physical pains are an example of the occasional 
 transformation or convertibility of the character- 
 istics of subjective receptivity into those of creative 
 activity. When, for instance, anticipation or appre- 
 hension of more physical pain in the immediate 
 future constitutes a large and perhaps incalculable 
 part of the intensity or degree of present physical 
 pain ; that is to say, where an external or given 
 affection of the subject's sensibility can sometimes 
 be recognised by that subject to be after all, in 
 its whole or in a part of its degree, merely a change 
 in its internal state, and thus not given, but sub- 
 jectively generated. Or, again, in the case of
 
 236 ON FREEDOM 
 
 certain sounds. When, for instance, distant bells 
 have actually ceased to ring, the organ of hearing 
 may, at times, be distinctly affected by the sound 
 of their striking, until the reasoning subject may 
 become aware that this change in its external state 
 is after all nothing but that peculiar change in 
 its internal state, known as " recollection ' or 
 " memory," a modification of sense which is 
 avowedly constituted in its entirety by the peculiar 
 activity of the reproductive imagination. In this 
 latter case, therefore, as in the first, and indeed 
 in similar cases, the subject comes to recognise 
 that the particular affection of sense, which was 
 at first felt to be merely external and given, is now 
 no longer felt to be such, but, in its whole or in a 
 part of its degree, is, and could all along have been 
 interpreted as, internal and not given; in other 
 words, to that extent of degree or intensity, ex- 
 clusively constituted by the particular movement 
 of the subject's thought at the moment. 
 
 On the other hand, what is commonly regarded 
 as an affection of inner sense may sometimes seem 
 to be capable of partial localisation by the subject. 
 Extreme terror, for instance, is occasionally almost 
 equivalent to a direct, external feeling of abdominal 
 contraction or of sinking in the pit of the stomach, 
 and the subject on these occasions is consequently 
 less inclined to be conscious of that affection of its 
 sentiency as merely in time, but being able partially
 
 INNER AND OUTER SENSE 237 
 
 to localise that particular affection, is, as it were, 
 half conscious of it also as spatial, and thus feels 
 that it is not altogether immediately constituted 
 by or compounded of the mere activity of its own 
 thought ; — and illustrations of an analogous char- 
 acter might similarly be adduced in respect of 
 various other emotions to which the human race 
 is liable. 
 
 Let us now suppose, merely as a curious piece of 
 speculation, that the human faculty of localisation 
 of sense-affections were either so greatly developed 
 and intensified as to comprise a large number of 
 those affections which we now catalogue as inner 
 sense, or were almost completely taken from us. 
 In the former case, many of those inner affections 
 of our sentiency — such as pride, vanity, curiosity, 
 despair, fear, expectancy, joy, love — would, being 
 localised by our thinking subject, become, in part, 
 given or externalised for us, and thus, as such, 
 instead of being, in their entirety, as they are now, 
 immediately and wholly made up of, or constituted 
 in our consciousness by, the particular empirical 
 activity of our own thought at the moment, would, 
 like all other affections of outer sense, which cannot 
 as such be thus interpreted by the self as merely 
 compounded of the phenomenal movements of the 
 subject's thought, have to be necessarily supplied, 
 so far as that part of them which was felt to be 
 given was concerned, with external conditions proxi-
 
 238 ON FREEDOM 
 
 mately determinant and constitutive of them in 
 consciousness and taking their place beside the rest 
 of the world in space. In other words, instead of 
 being linked up by us in proximate or immediately 
 determinant and constitutive connection with the 
 particular movements of our own thought or way 
 of thinking, whatever external determinants there 
 might be of the particular conceptual activity, 
 they would then be linked up in proximately deter- 
 minant and constitutive connection with external 
 phenomena. There would then be for us hardly any 
 affection of inner sense or material for introspective 
 examination of our own internal states. We should 
 be almost exclusively conscious of an objectified uni- 
 verse in space, and almost every affection of our sen • 
 sibility would be perceived by us as external. In 
 fact, on this extreme and almost impossible supposi- 
 tion, hardly any affection of our sentiency .would be 
 felt by us to be immediately constituted by and 
 merely made up of the empirical activity of our own 
 thought, that is, of the manner solely in which we 
 happened to regard anything. Our lives indeed 
 would become animal and soulless, for the history 
 of our being would be forced upon us and we our- 
 selves should contribute to it nothing whatever. In 
 the event, on the contrary, of an almost complete loss 
 of our faculty of localisation of sense-affections, 
 there would be scarcely any objective world for us 
 in space at all. Almost every affection of our sen-
 
 INNER AND OUTER SENSE 239 
 
 sibility would be for us internal and spaceless, and 
 thus recognised by us in consciousness as proxi- 
 mately due to and wholly constituted by or made 
 up of the particular manner in which our thought 
 happened to be acting at the moment. In fact, we 
 should then every one of us be open and confessed 
 subjective idealists of what would perhaps to-day be 
 considered an exaggerated type, consciously spin- 
 ning the Universe out of our own thinking subject. 
 The result, therefore, of this latter alternative, an 
 apparently subordinate, but in reality momentous 
 modification in the laws of the phenomenal ego, 
 would be — and this is what the argument in the 
 present section has been leading up to — that we 
 should then be able to extend our present peculiar 
 kind of indirect or negatively generated conscious- 
 ness of the metempiric ground of our own object- 
 ego to the metempiric ground of almost every 
 object of our thought. That is to say, we should 
 thenceforward not only make a reflective reference 
 of all phenomenal objects of thought to their un- 
 known, non-phenomenal ground, or the totality of 
 their constitutive conditions, but we should also be 
 directly conscious of the fact of the antithesis 
 within us of nearly the whole of our phenomenal 
 Universe on the one side and its transcendent 
 substrate on the other. In other words, besides 
 the reflective reference of the whole phenomenal 
 content of our thought to an unknowable ground,
 
 240 ON FREEDOM - 
 
 we should also be conscious, in that elusive, anti- 
 thetically superinduced manner, of the metempiric 
 ground of nearly the whole of our sensuous world 
 as our own subject-ego on the one hand, whilst 
 directly conscious too of that same sensuous world 
 as our own object-ego on the other. In short, the 
 divine intellect would gradually become ours, and 
 the whole universe nothing but the conscious result 
 of its own creative activity.
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 
 
 In order to grapple satisfactorily with the parti- 
 cular problem undertaken in this Part (II), the 
 problem, namely, whence the feeling of free-will 
 arises ; that is to say, what is the natural reason, 
 if any, why we have the feeling of a free faculty 
 of determination, even where the subjective states 
 are admittedly unaffected by what is known as 
 the " moral imperative," we must secure a firm 
 foothold before proceeding further, and for this pur- 
 pose ask ourselves the following question — At what 
 psychological moment during the different sentient 
 states of the subject does this feeling of freedom 
 arise ? 
 
 Now, it is submitted, in the first place, that no 
 feeling of active free-will can exist within a thinking 
 subject during the actual conflict in that subject 
 between two sets of conscious impulses whose 
 strength for the time being is equally divided ; an im- 
 pulse being here defined as the result of the self-pre- 
 sentation by the subject of something regarded as 
 desirable and attainable by various means, this self- 
 presentation being itself in every case, without excep- 
 
 * 4 " Q
 
 242 ON FREEDOM 
 
 tion, linked up by the law of empirical necessity 
 with its sensuous and constitutive conditions in 
 time. This proposition may be tested either in a 
 supposititious case, where the conflicting impulses 
 are merely imagined, or, if the opportunity should 
 arise, in fact also, where the conflicting impulses 
 are real. Thus if, to take a fictitious case, two 
 equally beloved sisters were on the point of drown- 
 ing before a brother's eyes, and he knew that he 
 could save but one of them, such a conflict would 
 rage between the opposing affections of his being 
 that, until one side had proved the stronger through 
 the adhesion of some further and unilateral con- 
 sideration, he would, so far as this particular crisis 
 was concerned, be unconscious of any active faculty 
 of free determination whatsoever. In common 
 parlance, he would be " torn asunder " and with- 
 out the active faculty of volition, and only upon 
 one of the alternative sets of subjective forces pre- 
 dominating in favour of one of the sisters, and 
 action in accordance with that ascendant and 
 empirical summons following in due course, would 
 he be conscious at all of the possession of such an 
 active faculty. 
 
 Let another supposititious case be taken, where 
 equal conflicting impulses are again imagined. A 
 fond and upright father has a son who has com- 
 mitted a crime which, if discovered, will be de- 
 servedly punished by death^upon the gallows. On
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 243 
 
 finding out his son's secret by accident, a desperate 
 conflict immediately begins within him, whether he 
 shall follow the instincts of a devoted parent and 
 shield his son from the consequences of the deed, 
 or obey the law of the country of which he is a 
 citizen and surrender him to justice. If the two 
 impulses fighting against one another in the sub- 
 ject are of equal strength at any time during the 
 period of conflict, then, during the internecine 
 struggle, and as long as this equality endures, the 
 father is unconscious, so far as these particular 
 alternatives are in question, of the existence within 
 himself of any active power of free determination ; 
 and it is only when one or the other side obtains 
 the mastery through some additional consideration 
 joining one of them, and thus rendering one of the 
 alternative objects of the subject's self-presentation 
 the more desirable of the two and the impulse there- 
 fore which is consequent upon that self-presentation 
 the empirically predominant one — the feeling of a 
 religious man, perhaps, that his son is not in a fit 
 moral state to die — that he becomes indeed conscious 
 at all of an active free power of will. In fact, such 
 cases could be multiplied indefinitely, and may be 
 tested, although imperfectly, by means of abstract 
 concepts founded on experience, that is to say, in 
 the imagination ; whilst instances of less vital im- 
 port come under observation in the circumstances 
 of real life ; and it is submitted that, whenever the
 
 244 ON FREEDOM 
 
 conditions prevail of there being two alternative 
 objects of self-presentation regarded as equally 
 desirable, in other words, of there being two oppos- 
 ing sets of conscious impulses in the subject equally 
 divided in strength, the feeling of an active free 
 faculty of determination during the equal conflict 
 between them is non-existent in respect of them, 
 and only begins to assert itself when the ascendency 
 is decided on the one side or the other. 
 
 In both of the above supposititious instances, 
 however, and in any cases of a similar kind, we 
 must not be taken to deny that there is, even during 
 the equal conflict between different conscious im- 
 pulses in the subject, a feeling within it of a power 
 of free choice between the opposing alternatives. 
 But it is a feeling of a potential and not of an active 
 free faculty of volition, a feeling which can invariably 
 be produced in the subject whenever it pictures to 
 itself the performance on its part, or the abstention 
 from performance, of any conscious physical action. 
 The reason for this feeling will be dealt with later. 
 Here it is sufficient to remark that during each of 
 the above conscious and equal conflicts, which were 
 cited as examples, the thinking subject is continu- 
 ally aware of its own objects of self-presentation 
 with the conative phenomena or empirical impulses 
 attendant upon them, and the mind therefore frames 
 abstract conceptions of possible alternative physical 
 action in accordance with these impulses, which
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 245 
 
 necessarily produces in the subject a feeling of a 
 potential free faculty of determination in respect 
 of that imaginary action. But it will always be 
 found, whether the faculty of freedom of which 
 we are conscious be active or potential, that, in 
 every case, without exception, the particular feel- 
 ing of a free selective or determining faculty 
 depends in time either upon the imaginary per- 
 formance of the action to which that feeling im- 
 mediately refers, or upon the consciousness of the 
 real action to which it has immediate reference, 
 and consequently in the latter case upon the con- 
 sciousness of the immediately preceding predominant, 
 empirical state of the subject of which that real 
 action is the expression ; but that in no instance 
 does the imaginary performance of the action, or a 
 real action that can become conscious and linked 
 up in consciousness with the immediately preceding 
 predominant and empirical inclination thereto, de- 
 pend upon the particular feeling of freedom in regard 
 to it as its preceding condition in time. To put the 
 proposition even more plainly, and leaving out of 
 account for the moment the question of the merely 
 imaginary performance of an action — a real action, 
 of such a nature that it can become conscious and 
 linked up in consciousness with an empirically pre- 
 dominant inclination thereto, is not necessarily 
 dependent for its performance on the feeling of a 
 free faculty of volition in respect of itself as its
 
 246 ON FREEDOM 
 
 preceding condition in time, for the adequate reason 
 that it can be shown that such an action can take 
 place without any such feeling of freedom whatso- 
 ever ; but, on the other hand, the feeling of a free 
 faculty of volition in respect of such an action can 
 be proved to be dependent on the consciousness of 
 that action, and consequently on the consciousness of 
 the empirically predominant inclination thereto, for 
 the sufficient reason that instances can be adduced to 
 show that it is only when the subject becomes con- 
 scious of that natural predominance that the feeling 
 of freedom in regard to such an action arises at all. 
 A simple illustration can readily be found to 
 exemplify this truth, so far as real physical action 
 is concerned. For instance, I am walking rapidly, 
 along a familiar road as the result of a subjective 
 and predominant empirical impulse to reach some 
 particular destination, and my thought has become 
 strongly concentrated upon an attempt to solve 
 the problem of a crime committed in the neigh- 
 bourhood the day before. During this mental 
 effort I am not only without any feeling of free- 
 will in respect of my physical action of walking, 
 but am practically unconscious of the successive 
 movements of one leg after the other. That is 
 to say, my mind in popular language is " far away," 
 or, in other words, not accompanying, except in 
 a disjointed and feeble fashion, the phenomenal 
 motion of my body, which motion therefore for
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 247 
 
 the time being may be regarded as semi-mechanical 
 or automatic in character. Notwithstanding this, 
 the conditions by which the self-presentation, 
 with its afore-mentioned impulse to that parti- 
 cular physical motion, was constituted, must be 
 continuously present in the subject, unaccompanied 
 by the mind, and therefore unconscious though they 
 and their external expression may be, as otherwise 
 that motion could not take place. For in our 
 experience no physical change on the part of the 
 subject can be spontaneous ; every such change 
 necessarily requiring by the law of our understand- 
 ing some particular causal and empirical condition 
 or parcel of conditions which takes its place in the 
 temporal order of nature, and which must continue 
 throughout the whole of the change, whether that 
 condition is capable of becoming for the subject a 
 conscious predominant impulse in attendance upon 
 an empirically-conditioned self-presentation, as in 
 the case we have taken, or whether it be some 
 natural so-called cause pertaining to our being, 
 which, though the understanding may have cogni- 
 tion of it, cannot be immediately conjoined with its 
 effect in actual consciousness. In other words, there 
 is no justification for supposing that, because con- 
 sciousness happens to be temporarily withdrawn 
 from any such particular external activity of the 
 subject as, when conscious, can be connected by 
 the latter with the immediately preceding and pre-
 
 248 ON FREEDOM 
 
 dominant empirical inclination thereto, those same 
 natural conditions of the process of that activity, 
 as existed previously when the action was con- 
 scious, no longer apply in their entirety. Indeed, 
 the contrary must be the case. For the elimination 
 of consciousness in respect of such action does not 
 spell the elimination of the empirical conditions of 
 it as an actual event in nature. Those conditions 
 must remain in their unchangeable order, or the 
 event cannot take place. All that consciousness 
 does in the matter is to interpret for the subject 
 those previously and temporarily unfelt or un- 
 conscious conditions as a preponderant impulse or 
 inclination towards the phenomenal event. 
 
 Now, should my thought after a while abandon 
 the problem of the crime and become once more 
 centred in the fact of my physical activity, and in 
 particular of the successive movements of my legs ; 
 that is, should I become conscious of that physical 
 action, and, consequently, of the previously and 
 temporarily unfelt, but nevertheless throughout 
 necessarily existing empirical conditions constitu- 
 tive of the predominant subjective state of which 
 that action is the so-called effect and expression — 
 for I cannot be conscious of an action on my part 
 which can be connected in consciousness with the 
 immediately preceding empirical and predominant 
 inclination thereto, without also being in fact con- 
 scious of that predominant impulse to act in that
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 249 
 
 manner — there immediately arises within the sub- 
 ject a feeling of an active free faculty of determi- 
 nation in respect of each of my steps. Indeed, 
 during the period that my mind is directed to my 
 walking, that is, so long as I am conscious of that 
 action, and consequently of the empirically con- 
 ditioned self-presentation with the accompanying 
 predominant impulse of which that action is the 
 expression, I cannot, even if I wished it, avoid 
 this feeling of active free-will in respect of every 
 one of my strides, and the only way to get rid of 
 that feeling would be for my thought to become 
 diverted to some other object. Should my thought 
 stray back to the problem of the crime and become 
 once more strongly concentrated upon it, the feeling 
 of free-will in respect of the motion of my legs would 
 again disappear, and, although my steps would con- 
 tinue as regularly as before as the particular and 
 necessary expression of certain continuously present 
 but unconscious empirical conditions constitutive of 
 the predominant state of the subject, they would 
 to a large extent, being perfectly accompanied 
 by the mind, become once again semi-automatic 
 or mechanical in their character. 
 
 This, surely, is a clear proof that the feeling of 
 a free faculty of volition is generated in the subject, 
 in respect of such a physical action as can be linked 
 up in consciousness with the empirical and pre- 
 dominant inclination thereto, through the conscious-
 
 250 ON FREEDOM 
 
 ness of the, real action to which it immediately 
 refers, and consequently, as explained above, 
 through the consciousness of the immediately pre- 
 ceding empirical and predominant impulse of which 
 that action is the expression, and that such an 
 action consequently does not necessarily depend for 
 its performance upon the feeling of a free faculty of 
 volition in regard to it. Because, if an active free 
 faculty of determination were necessarily, as many 
 assert, the immediate and deciding cause of all that 
 class of human activity which the subject is not 
 only capable of becoming conscious of through the 
 direction of the mind to that activity, but also of 
 connecting in consciousness with an immediately 
 preceding predominant inclination thereto ; then 
 we should necessarily be always conscious of the 
 free causality of that will itself during the whole 
 course of that external activity. For, in the first 
 place, a causal, free, unconditioned faculty, unlike 
 a predominant empirical impulse which has to take 
 its place in the sensuous context of phenomena, 
 could not from its very nature, or rather non- 
 nature, be dependent in any way for its own con- 
 sciousness upon the sensuous and conscious con- 
 junction of the particular physical action which 
 was held to be the expression of that free faculty, 
 and the empirical stimulus thereto. And because, 
 secondly, if we were not conscious of that free 
 faculty of determination, whilst some external
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 251 
 
 action on the part of the subject was in progress 
 as the alleged result of it, we could not determine 
 that action by means of, and in accordance with, 
 the commands of that free causality, which its 
 advocates have always particularly asserted is our 
 conscious absolute will ; and not only would their 
 so-called conscious free-will therefore disappear, but 
 the action as the alleged phenomenal expression of 
 that faculty could not take effect. We often find, 
 however, as, for instance, in walking, that we have 
 in fact no feeling of a free faculty of determina- 
 tion in respect of the particular external action, 
 although such a class of action on the part of the 
 subject may be in progress as, when we do become 
 conscious of it, we also necessarily connect in con- 
 sciousness with a predominant empirical inclination 
 thereto. As soon, however, as our thought becomes 
 directed to the particular physical action, that is, 
 as soon as we do become conscious of it, and, con- 
 sequently, of the predominant empirical impulse 
 thereto which, though previously and temporarily 
 unfelt, must, as already pointed out, have never- 
 theless been present, so far as its constitutive 
 framework was concerned, as the conditioning pre- 
 dominant and empirical state of the subject through- 
 out the whole of that external activity, uninterpreted 
 as such by the subject though that framework may 
 have been, since without those empirical conditions 
 constituting in their temporal order each moment
 
 252 ON FREEDOM 
 
 of external action the phenomenal activity could 
 not have proceeded — we say, directly we become 
 conscious of these, that is, directly the mind ac- 
 companies them, the feeling also of free-will in con- 
 nection with the external action is produced within 
 the subject as a result of this accompaniment. 
 
 This, therefore, affords justification for submitting 
 — in those cases where physical action can be con- 
 nected in consciousness with the immediately pre- 
 ceding predominant empirical impulse thereto — that 
 such a physical action on the part of a subject of 
 the world of sense may be in progress as the result 
 of a predominant empirical state of that subject, 
 whose constitutive conditions take their place in the 
 order of Nature ; that this action may proceed as 
 a result of that predominance without any feeling 
 within the subject of a free faculty of volition in 
 regard to it, and without that subject being even 
 conscious of that action or predominance : but 
 that, as soon as the mind becomes directed to that 
 action, or, in other words, directly the subject 
 becomes conscious of it, it immediately becomes 
 also conscious of that predominant empirical state 
 and connects it in consciousness as a predominant 
 impulse, with the action as its immediate effect ; 
 and that the result of this consciousness of pre- 
 dominance is that a feeling of free-will in respect 
 of the action is produced in the subject. It may, 
 therefore, be said that the consciousness of the
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 253 
 
 empirical conditions constituting a predominant 
 inclination of the subject, that is to say, the con- 
 sciousness of the desirable object of an empirically 
 conditioned self-presentation, is the origin and neces- 
 sary condition of any feeling of active free-will within 
 a subject of the world of sense. 
 
 The example of breathing, perhaps, might have 
 been taken instead to illustrate the present argu- 
 ment. It is true that the conjunction in conscious- 
 ness between the predominant subjective impulse 
 and each separate external breathing action is not 
 nearly so easy or immediate as in the case of steps 
 in walking ; but, on the other hand, the example of 
 breathing is particularly fitted in other respects to 
 demonstrate the truth of the identity of the feeling of 
 active free-will with the conjunction in consciousness of 
 any particular phenomenal action with the predomi- 
 nant empirical inclination thereto. During almost the 
 whole of our lives we are completely unconscious 
 of the continuous and alternate respiratory action 
 of the lungs and of the natural subjective impulse 
 that prompts this external activity ; and it is only 
 when our thought becomes concentrated upon the 
 alternate intake and expulsion of breath that we 
 also become conscious of this powerful and almost 
 irresistible empirical inclination. It is not always 
 immediately, however, that we have a feeling of 
 active free-will in respect of this impulse and its 
 expression, even when we become conscious of the
 
 254 ON FREEDOM 
 
 former. The reason of this is that our thought has 
 so rarely been directed to our respiratory action, and, 
 therefore, to the natural impulse prompting it ; in 
 other words, our respiratory activity has been so 
 generally unconscious, and therefore automatic in 
 character, and thus from our point of view necessary, 
 that, when our mind does indeed become concen- 
 trated upon these particular external actions, and, 
 consequently, upon the successive subjective im- 
 pulses thereto which we are then immediately aware 
 of within us, the consciousness of these predominant 
 impulses does not at once give rise to the feeling of 
 a free faculty of determination in respect of their 
 external expression, by reason of the very fact that 
 the whole habit of our mind is averse to the feeling 
 of freedom in the matter, and has always been ac- 
 customed to regard this external action as some- 
 thing apart from will, and therefore as necessary 
 and automatic. Gradually, however, if our thought 
 should continue to be directed to our breathing, 
 we acquire a feeling of a free and active faculty of 
 volition in respect of every intake and expulsion of 
 breath during this mental concentration. That is 
 to say, we are distinctly conscious of each natural 
 and predominant subjective impulse to every one 
 of these external or spatial actions, and, at the same 
 time, we become possessed in an accessorial manner of 
 a feeling of active free-will in respect of each one of 
 them, and thus of every one of the actions which are
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 255 
 
 their external expression. In fact, the longer our 
 minds remain concentrated in this manner, the 
 stronger does the feeling of freedom become, because 
 the more distinctly do we become conscious of the 
 conjunction between the predominant natural im- 
 pulses within us and the particular external activity, 
 until at length the idea of automatism almost dis- 
 appears from our minds in respect of our breathing ; 
 the necessary action of each intake and expulsion of 
 breath becomes, as such, weaker in our conscious- 
 ness, and we are more and more left with the feeling 
 of active free-will in respect of every one of these 
 acts. Should our thought, however, abandon the 
 phenomenon of our breathing, the old state of 
 affairs would be resumed. The external action 
 and the impulse thereto would become unconscious, 
 the feeling of freedom would necessarily disappear, 
 and, as far as the thinking subject was concerned, 
 the successive respiratory acts would once again 
 become automatic and mechanical in character. 
 
 As we have admitted, however, many people may 
 find that, although they are fully conscious of the 
 external action of breathing, whenever their mind 
 accompanies it, they yet have considerable difficulty 
 in attaining the consciousness of the particular sub- 
 jective impulse to each respiratory act. Breathing 
 may thus be said to stand, in regard to the facility 
 with which the connection between external action 
 and the immediately preceding subjective impulse
 
 256 ON FREEDOM 
 
 thereto can be presented in consciousness, midway 
 between such action as that of walking, which has 
 been cited above as an example, and that activity 
 which invariably remains altogether unconscious, 
 such, for instance, as the normal activity of the diges- 
 tive organs or the circulation of the blood. In these 
 latter cases there is and can be practically no im- 
 mediate consciousness of the external action, what- 
 ever mental efforts we may make, and consequently 
 none whatever of the immediately preceding sub- 
 jective impulses thereto, and the feeling therefore of 
 an active free faculty of volition in respect of the 
 action is unable to be produced. In the case of 
 breathing, on the other hand, the subject can with 
 a little trouble become conscious of each subjective 
 impulse and connect it in consciousness with its 
 own particular outward expression, and this con- 
 sciousness becomes accentuated if the inhalation 
 or exhalation of breath should be experimentally 
 delayed at any particular point by a few seconds ; 
 this very delay proving indeed that the action of 
 breathing is not necessary in the sense of being un- 
 alterable through any other transient and conscious 
 inclination. When this delay takes place, the subjec- 
 tive impulse to inhale or exhale is much more 
 strongly appreciated, and the immediate connection 
 between the empirical inclination and its satisfaction 
 {i.e. the external action of breathing) being thus 
 vividly presented in consciousness, the feeling of
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 257 
 
 active free-will is also more distinctly set up in the 
 subject. 
 
 There appears in the second place (for the first, 
 see the second paragraph of this section) to be no 
 feeling in the subject of the possession of a free 
 faculty of determination either active or potential, 
 when there is neither any conscious real action in 
 progress on its part, external or internal, as a result of 
 conscious impulse, nor any imaginary external action; 
 that is to say, when the subject is inert, neither con- 
 sciously active physically or mentally, nor picturing 
 itself as performing any physical action. Thus, if I 
 am lying awake at night not consciously active physi- 
 cally, and my thought is in no way concerned, by 
 reason of a conscious inclination thereto, with any 
 idea or the performance of any intended or purely 
 imaginary action on my part, but is involuntarily, 
 that is, without any consciousness of an impelling 
 inclination, directed, perhaps, to the stillness of the 
 night — or black space about me ; then, as long as 
 this passivity of physical and mental state continues, 
 I am not immediately conscious of any faculty of 
 free causality, either active or potential. But, should I 
 happen to think of the phrase " free-will," and ask 
 myself whether in truth I am conscious of such a 
 faculty, I should immediately proceed, in order to test 
 my consciousness so as to answer this mental ques- 
 tion, either to exert my mind in some direction, irre- 
 spective of any imagined physical action of my own ; 
 
 R
 
 258 ON FREEDOM 
 
 or, secondly, to exert myself physically ; or else, 
 thirdly, to conjure up in my fancy some form of 
 conscious physical activity or action on my part, 
 and in this way I should be able to prove to my 
 own satisfaction that I did at any rate possess a 
 feeling of active freedom in the first two cases, and, 
 as regards the imagined performance of the physical 
 action itself apart from the mental energy devoted 
 to the imagining of it, a feeling of potential freedom 
 in the last. For directly I exert myself mentally, 
 as the result of conscious inclination, and irrespec- 
 tive of any imagined physical action by me ; or else 
 plrysically ; or, thirdly, imagine myself as con- 
 sciously active physically, I also of necessity feel 
 within me during the two former mental or physical 
 actions an active, and during the last mental action, 
 as regards the imaginery performance of that action, 
 a potential faculty of free determination, neither of 
 which feelings possessed me during my previous 
 state of subjective inertia. It seems, therefore, 
 that there is no feeling of the possession of so-called 
 free-will in the subject, either potential or active, 
 where there is no mental or physical activity on its 
 part as a result of conscious and natural inclination, 
 and where the mind, too, is not imagining the per- 
 formance of any conscious physical action on the 
 part of the subject. 
 
 There remain, therefore, two general states (a 

 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 259 
 
 and fS) of the thinking subject in which a feeling 
 of active free-will is possible. 
 
 (a) There is a feeling of an active free faculty 
 of determination when the struggle between two 
 equally divided sets of conscious empirical impulses 
 to physical action has been rendered unequal by 
 the unilateral accession of some additional empirical 
 inclination, and the more powerful conscious state 
 of the subject carries the day ; or again, whenever 
 a conflict arises between two sets of conscious im- 
 pulses, " moral " or material, to sensuous activity, 
 and where the sides are unequally divided from the 
 start, that is to say, where one of the conscious 
 states of the subject is more powerful than the 
 other ; the potency of this feeling va^dng in both 
 cases in proportion to the empirical inequality exist- 
 ing between the two parties to the contest. 
 
 (/5) Secondly, there is a feeling of an active free 
 faculty of volition when conscious impulses prompt 
 the subject to purely mental activity, irrespective 
 of whether the imaginary performance of any phy- 
 sical action by the subject forms any part of the 
 object of that mental exertion. 
 
 Lastly (7), there is a feeling of a potential free 
 faculty of determination, whenever, through the 
 medium of an abstract concept, we imagine our- 
 selves as consciously doing or refraining from any 
 physical action, and where no inclinations need
 
 260 ON FREEDOM 
 
 even be pictured as prompting or resisting that 
 imaginary activity ; the feeling of freedom here 
 being merely the result of experience. 
 
 These three cases (a, ft, and 7) may now be dealt 
 with in their order : — 
 
 (a) In the previous illustration of the sisters 
 who were on the point of drowning, we should 
 have found, had we been the brother with all 
 the natural emotions that beset him in that crisis, 
 that directly the conflict of antagonistic forces 
 had become unequal, there would have emerged 
 in the subject a feeling of an active free power 
 of determination. The contest was terminated 
 in the above fictitious instance by one of the 
 two opposing subjective forces becoming empirically 
 stronger than the other ; in this particular case, 
 we may suppose, through the supervening considera- 
 tion that one of the sisters was married and a 
 mother. Directly one of the sides was reinforced 
 by this additional and empirical emotion being 
 added to the balance, that side or constitutive part 
 of the subject's whole conscious state outweighed 
 the rest, and its active and external expression took 
 the form of the saving of the married sister. In 
 that moment, and simultaneously with the deflec- 
 tion of the balance, there would have arisen within 
 the subject the feeling of an active free faculty of 
 determination on the side of the most powerful 
 empirical impulse. During the earlier part of the
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 261 
 
 conflict the subject felt himself deprived of active 
 will power, and it was only the access of a further 
 natural stimulus in favour of one of the sisters that 
 impelled him to save her life. And yet, in spite of 
 the fact that it was clearly only an empirical inter- 
 position which turned the scale, he would never- 
 theless in all probability maintain that, although 
 the accession of a further natural stimulus had 
 certainly influenced his decision, it had not necessi- 
 tated any physical action on his part, but that he 
 had been conscious of making a free choice between 
 two sets of natural forces independently of coercion 
 by any empirical causes whatsoever. If free will, 
 however, were an unconditioned volitional faculty, 
 as the advocates of freedom so confidently assert, 
 freely exercising its selective powers amid the em- 
 pirical conditions with which it is surrounded, and 
 through the medium of which it is only possible for 
 it to find expression, would it not sometimes select 
 one of two equal empirical impulses and act upon 
 it, rather than wait, as it always does, until some 
 additional empirical motive has joined the ranks of 
 one of the conflicting sides, in order to join it too ? 
 
 It should here be added, however, that as two 
 sets of conscious impulses are rarely equally divided 
 in actual experience for a sufficient length of time 
 for consciousness to test this law, but as one of 
 them generally predominates almost immediately 
 over the other ; as, moreover, the subject can be
 
 262 ON FREEDOM 
 
 conscious of a potential free faculty of determination, 
 even during a struggle between two equal sets of 
 conscious impulses, whenever the mind by means 
 of an abstract concept imagines any conscious phy- 
 sical action on the part of the subject in conformity 
 with the impulses of one side or the other, it follows 
 that the feeling of freedom, although sometimes 
 very feeble, is nearly always present in the subject 
 in some degree of power. 
 
 The same general argument applies, where the 
 feeling of an active free faculty of determination is 
 not confined, as in the previous illustration, to the 
 latter part of a more or less prolonged conflict 
 between two conscious sets of impulses, but is 
 present immediately, the strength of this feeling, 
 as . before, being exactly proportionate to the em- 
 pirical inequality between the opposing inclinations. 
 A dishonourable athlete, for example, who is engaged 
 to fight an inferior adversary for a valuable prize, is, 
 other things being equal, strongly conscious of pos- 
 sessing an active free faculty of refusal when an 
 insignificant bribe is offered to him to allow himself 
 to be defeated early in the contest. But if he had 
 been offered an inducement approaching in his eyes 
 much more nearly in value the rich prize and the 
 reputation to be gained by a victory, as well as 
 any other advantage he might place on the side of 
 defeating his opponent, there would have been a 
 far keener struggle between the two sets of impulses,
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 263 
 
 and his feeling of an active free faculty of refusal 
 would have been proportionately weak to the com- 
 paratively slender margin of empirical inequality 
 between the opposing inclinations. 
 
 (/?) There is not only a feeling of an active free 
 faculty of volition when a dominant empirical state 
 of the subject prompts the latter to external or 
 physical action, there is a similar feeling when the 
 dominant empirical state of that subject impels it 
 to purely mental activity, irrespective of whether 
 the imaginary performance of any conscious phy- 
 sical action by the subject forms any part of the 
 object of that mental exertion. We say " irre- 
 spective of whether, &c," because, although there 
 is no feeling in the subject of an active free faculty 
 of determination in respect of the performance of a 
 physical action on its part, when such performance 
 is merely imagined, but only the feeling of a potential 
 free faculty in respect of it ; there is, nevertheless, 
 a feeling in the subject of an active free faculty in 
 all mental exertion, without exception, consciously 
 promoted by a predominant empirical inclination , 
 and therefore a feeling of an active free faculty of 
 determination does most certainly exist in the sub- 
 ject in respect of its purely mental activity, irre- 
 spective of the particular character or product of 
 that activity, even when a predominant natural 
 inclination prompts it to direct its thought to the 
 mere imagining of any physical action on its part,
 
 264 ON FREEDOM 
 
 although, as regards the imaginary performance 
 itself of the physical action, as thought, there is 
 only a feeling of potential freedom. Thus, to return 
 to the argument, I may, as the result of a conscious 
 impulse, direct my thought to the form of a 
 rhomboid in space ; if I then similarly proceed to 
 think of a square, then of a circle, and lastly of an 
 isosceles triangle, I feel in each of these successive 
 mental actions an active faculty of free-will in 
 respect of it. In fact, the subjective conditions, 
 psychical or otherwise, that prompt me to think of 
 a rhomboid, a square, a circle, and lastly of a 
 particular kind of triangle in that order and no 
 other, are governed by precisely the same law as the 
 empirical impulses towards physical action in the 
 world of external phenomena. For, were it possible 
 to catalogue a sufficient number of those internal 
 phenomenal conditions which constituted the several 
 acts of thinking of these consecutive figures, the 
 mental order of those figures would be found to 
 have been the natural and necessary result of 
 predominant associations of ideas and an empirical 
 series controlled and conditioned by its sensuous 
 causes in time. 
 
 Any one can examine the general validity of the 
 argument in his own subject by means of test cases, 
 where the constitutive conditions can be more easily 
 explored and investigated than in the one quoted 
 above. One more simple example, however, may be
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 265 
 
 given in further illustration. A mathematician, for 
 instance, may be concentrating his thought upon 
 some difficult problem, and a man may pass before 
 him whose face seems familiar. If his mind had 
 been occupied instead with some less absorbing 
 matter, he would probably have relinquished it, 
 and his thought would have become directed to 
 an attempt to recall when he had last seen the 
 man. But on this occasion the empirical impulse 
 to solve the problem is supposed to be stronger 
 than his passing curiosity, and in the transient 
 conflict between the two he will find that he has 
 no feeling of an active free faculty of determination 
 to interrupt his meditation, that feeling of an active 
 free force being wholly upon the side of the impulse 
 to continue his reasoning. Had the passer-by, how- 
 ever, borne a striking resemblance to his dead son, 
 the mathematician, other things remaining equal, 
 would in all probability have relinquished the pro- 
 blem and exerted his mind upon the strange coin- 
 cidence, in which case he would have had no feeling 
 of an active free faculty of determination to continue 
 his mathematical calculations, that feeling of free- 
 dom being wholly on the side of the more powerful 
 empirical impulse to think of the remarkable like- 
 ness between the men and to compare in his imagina- 
 tion the features of the two. 
 
 And here it is not out of place to remark that 
 there is necessarily a less potent feeling of freedom
 
 266 ON FREEDOM 
 
 in the case of impulses to purely mental activity 
 than in that of impulses to external or physical 
 action. The reason for this is that in the case of 
 inclinations to purely mental exertion, where no 
 imaginary external action on the part of the subject 
 forms any portion of that mental activity, the 
 feeling of an active free faculty of volition is never 
 supplemented by that of a potential free-will. We 
 can imagine the performance on the part of the 
 subject of some conscious external or physical action 
 which does not in reality take place at the moment, 
 and perhaps never will, but which results in a feeling 
 within us of a potential faculty of free action in 
 respect of it ; but we cannot imagine thinking any 
 object of thought without thinking it in reality and 
 therefore producing in our subject the feeling of an 
 active power of free volition in regard to it. In the 
 conflict, therefore, between opposing impulses to 
 purely mental exertion, where that mental activity 
 does not involve the imaginary performance of any 
 conscious external action on the part of the subject, 
 we have, contrary to what occurs in the case of 
 conflicting impulses to physical action, only the 
 feeling of active free-will to depend upon for any 
 feeling of freedom we may possess. Moreover, as 
 the rapidity of action of impulses to purely mental 
 exertion is incomparably greater than that of con- 
 scious impulses to external or physical activity, the 
 period during which such an active free faculty can
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 267 
 
 be felt within the subject in respect of any parti- 
 cular mental action is by so much the less prolonged, 
 and the feeling itself therefore by so much the less 
 distinct. 
 
 (7) In this third case, there is a feeling in the 
 subject of a potential faculty of free determination; 
 whenever it imagines a conscious physical action on 
 its part. Thus a man may conjure up in his ima- 
 gination, for purposes of psychological experiment, 
 but without the remotest intention or desire ever 
 to commit such a crime, and without even calling 
 to mind any natural reasons which might prompt 
 or oppose it as an external experience, the murder 
 by him of his own father, and will feel conscious 
 of a potential free faculty of action when imagining 
 the deed. As it is merely an effort of the fancy, 
 an abstract concept framed for the reason stated 
 above, there can be no immediate and conscious 
 impulse in the case either on the side of or in fierce 
 opposition to such an enormity as an external 
 experience, which is here merely imagined and 
 therefore a purely fictitious action. In fact, the 
 feeling of a potential free faculty of volition is here, 
 in the absence of any predominant and empirical 
 impulse to the real and external deed, or even of 
 the calling to mind of any natural reasons for and 
 against such a deed in its externality, merely the 
 result of experience. For in every external action 
 that we may consciously, and not merely mechanic-
 
 268 ON FREEDOM 
 
 ally or automatically perform, that is, in every 
 physical action on our part which is connected by 
 us in immediate consciousness with the predominant 
 empirical impulse thereto, we always have the feel- 
 ing of an active faculty of free determination having 
 exerted itself within us. Thus — to take an extreme 
 example to illustrate the argument — a man in tor- 
 ment may control himself for a time so as not to 
 utter a single sound, and is conscious of an active 
 free-will in this physical action of self-restraint. 
 Gradually, however, his powers of endurance grow 
 weaker, that is to say, the states of his subject 
 undergo modification through the receptivity of 
 his senses, and he begins to groan. Although he 
 would probably confess to his friends, when the 
 ordeal was over, that his will to remain silent had 
 been overpowered, he would also probably have to 
 admit, if he questioned himself closely, that in the 
 action of groaning, after his will on one side had 
 been defeated, he was conscious (so far as he felt an 
 internal inclination as the immediately preceding 
 cause of his groaning and not merely a coercive, 
 non-subjective force) of an active faculty of free 
 determination exerting itself upon the other side 
 in favour of groaning in order to obtain for him a 
 certain physical relief by it. It is true that if, soon 
 after the commencement of his groans, the agony 
 had become so intense as actually to force him to 
 shriek aloud, the balance of mind and body being
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 269 
 
 by that time in all probability temporarily upset, 
 the former would have been totally unable to 
 connect in consciousness the predominant subjec- 
 tive impulse with the external phenomenal changes 
 in the subject as its expression. Those external 
 changes — in this case, the physical action of shriek- 
 ing — might thus have become purely, or partly, 
 automatic. The mind would not have accompanied 
 the preponderance of the subjective impulse to 
 shriek over any opposite inclination, and the feeling 
 of active free-will in respect of that action of shriek- 
 ing would have been unable to be present, because 
 the causal conjunction of the action with the em- 
 pirical impulse thereto would have been unable to 
 be thought. 
 
 Man, then, knows no exception to the rule of 
 the feeling of -potential freedom which governs all 
 those physical actions on his part the performance 
 of which he merely imagines, and which, when real 
 and external, are capable of being connected by 
 him in immediate consciousness with the pre- 
 dominant empirical impulses thereto, for the good 
 reason that he can never, when conscious of them, 
 have experienced anything but freedom in regard 
 to those external ones. For in all external actions 
 on the part of the subject which can and conse- 
 quently always must be connected in immediate 
 consciousness with predominant impulses, whenever 
 the former are themselves conscious or, in other
 
 270 ON FREEDOM 
 
 words, accompanied by thought, there is always the 
 feeling of an active faculty of free determination in 
 the thinking subject in respect of those actions, 
 and no such action on its part can consciously take 
 place without the feeling of the exertion of this free 
 faculty. Therefore when we picture to ourselves 
 the conscious performance by us of some purely 
 supposititious physical action of this kind, we can- 
 not imagine it as taking place apart from the 
 feeling of freedom, which has invariably accom- 
 panied every such external and conscious action of 
 ours in nature as has been of a kind to be con- 
 sciously linked up with an immediately preceding 
 predominant and subjective impulse thereto. In 
 fact, to do so would be to imagine contrary to the 
 whole range of our past external experience. It is 
 for this reason, therefore, that we possess the feeling 
 of a -potential faculty of free determination, when- 
 ever, out of the materials at our disposal, we are 
 creating imaginary physical actions on our part 
 in our brain. 
 
 But although, in the example that was given a 
 little while ago, a man full of filial sentiment is 
 conscious of a potential free faculty of volition in the 
 imaginary murder by him of his father, where not 
 only no immediately active and conscious impulses 
 beset him on either side in respect of the external 
 act, but no reasons for or against such a deed in its 
 externality are even supposed by him, he would not
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 271 
 
 be conscious of an active free faculty of determina- 
 tion to commit the external deed, if some one hap- 
 pened to suggest it to him, arguing that thereby he 
 would secure his patrimony the sooner. Habit of 
 mind, engendered by the laws and customs of the 
 country in which he lives, combined with the vastly 
 predominant state of acquired love for his father 
 and the filial piety with which we may suppose 
 early parental and pedagogic moral training to 
 have suffused his being, would here overwhelm 
 any lesser empirical impulse to the contrary, and 
 an active faculty of free determination would be 
 felt by him in what, in his case, would hardly 
 deserve the name of a conflict, as well as during 
 his subsequent action, as exerting itself on the side 
 of indignant refusal. As, therefore, the feeling of 
 potential free-will in the imaginary performance of 
 physical actions on our part is owing to the fact 
 that every one of our external actions, when it is 
 conscious and of the kind described above, never 
 fails in our experience to be accompanied by the 
 feeling of an active faculty of free determination ; 
 and as the strength of the feeling of that active 
 faculty in those external actions of our experience 
 is dependent upon the degree of inequality between 
 the opposing and conscious impulses present in the 
 subject, a man who is conscious of possessing a 
 strong, though, at the time, only potential will, is 
 a man, therefore, who in his external actions has
 
 272 ON FREEDOM 
 
 experience of great inequalities between the opposing 
 impulses which from time to time possess his being ; 
 that is to say, whose inclination, maybe, to cruelty, 
 revenge, or vice, or to social reform, erudition, or 
 personal aggrandisement, predominates by a large 
 margin of conscious power over any other lesser 
 impulses that may temporarily invade him. 
 
 Although the distinction may appear to be an 
 unnecessarily fine one, it should nevertheless be 
 borne in mind that there is not only in the subject 
 a feeling of a potential faculty of free determination, 
 when it imagines the performance of some conscious 
 physical action on its part such as has just been 
 described, and where the subject at the same time 
 is without any immediate conscious impulses on 
 either side in respect of such an action in its ex- 
 ternality, and where too no such immediate incli- 
 nations are even supposed ; but that it possesses 
 a similar feeling, whenever a conflict between two 
 equal sets of conscious impulses to external activity 
 on its part is actually in progress within it. For 
 during such an equal combat, and before either one 
 side or the other has gained the ascendency, the 
 subject, although bereft, as already explained, of 
 any feeling of an active faculty of free determination, 
 continues to be conscious of its states, or, in other 
 words, the mind continues to move in accompani- 
 ment with the subject's opposite impulses to ex- 
 ternal action. But there can be no consciousness
 
 GENESIS OF THE FEELING 273 
 
 of a subjective impulse to external activity without 
 the imagination creating for itself at the same time 
 some physical action on the part of the subject in 
 conformity with that particular inclination, and 
 directly this takes place there arises of necessity 
 within the subject the feeling of a potential faculty 
 of free determination in respect of the imaginary 
 performance of that action. During the equal con- 
 flict between the conscious impulses of the subject 
 the mind is necessarily in a constant flux between 
 them, and is therefore perpetually imagining phy- 
 sical activity on the part of that subject in accord- 
 ance with one set of inclinations or the other. It 
 follows, therefore, that the subject during that un- 
 decided conflict of impulses is never without the 
 feeling of potential free-will. Directly, however, the 
 struggle is rendered unequal by one of the conscious 
 sets of subjective impulses becoming empirically 
 preponderant, a feeling of an active free faculty of 
 volition is set up in respect of it, and the feeling 
 of potential freedom perforce disappears. It is 
 for this reason, to which a brief reference has 
 already been made, that during every conflict 
 between discordant and conscious impulses to 
 physical action, the subject, whether that conflict 
 be equal or not, is never without some feeling 
 of freedom either of the active or else of the 
 potential kind.
 
 H 
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE FEELING 
 
 Sufficient has now been said to show that what 
 is known as free-will need not be, as it were, a 
 tertium quid or third party which, when a conflict 
 arises between two antagonistic sets of conscious 
 impulses, is able to step in as a deus ex machind or 
 absolute arbitrator, and decide the struggle one way 
 or the other without any enforced regard to the com- 
 parative empirical strength of the two sides engaged. 
 For it is not that I freely will not to do something, 
 that is, that I determine negatively as regards some 
 alternative possible action, and that I then proceed 
 to the opposing set of sensuous impulses and, by 
 means of my absolute faculty of choice, freely deter- 
 mine to pursue the opposite course suggested by 
 them ; but what happens is this, that the more 
 powerful set of conscious impulses prevails over the 
 weaker by a naturally preponderating impetus, and 
 without the help, because without the need, of any 
 absolute third party at all. Thus, if the alternatives 
 of an honourable or dishonourable line of conduct 
 present themselves to a man, one of which it will be 
 necessary for him to follow, it is not that an absolute 
 
 faculty of choice within him enables him freely to 
 
 274
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE FEELING 275 
 
 reject the bad, and then proceeds to enable him 
 freely to indulge the good impulse ; but it rather 
 is, that the dictates of the " moral law," working 
 within him empirically as the natural and direct 
 result of the conscious limitations of his finitude, 
 strengthened and systematised, as that result may 
 be, by the assimilated precepts of early moral in- 
 culcation sensuously imparted, combined, maybe 
 with the daily example of those among whom he has 
 always lived, have set an almost ineffaceable seal 
 upon the particular kind of temperament and ner- 
 vous system with which he was born and has perhaps 
 inherited, and impregnated him with a well-nigh 
 irresistible set of inclinations to particular kinds of 
 action ; and this empirical state of the thinking 
 subject is so pronounced, that it outweighs by the 
 law of nature alone any feebler impulses that may 
 oppose it, and, in forcing the latter to succumb, 
 impels the man at the same time to follow what is 
 regarded as the more honourable course of conduct. 
 But, although there is no justification for maintain- 
 ing the existence in man of an absolute, metempiric 
 faculty of choice, a liberum arbitrium indiffer entice, 
 which, without any causal and constitutive condi- 
 tions itself, and independently and regardless of the 
 comparative strength of his natural impulses, can 
 enable him freely to select and to engage in physical 
 or mental action ; it may nevertheless be said with 
 perfect truth that in a conflict between opposing
 
 276 ON FREEDOM 
 
 sets of conscious impulses the more powerful or 
 naturally predominant side or constituent portion 
 of the whole conscious state of the subject, in so 
 far and by so much as it empirically outweighs the 
 rest, is unencumbered, and, though not free in the 
 sense of being unconditioned, is free, however, be- 
 cause uncumbered, to express itself in action in 
 accordance with the law of those natural conditions, 
 such as heredity, training, or the " moral " dictates 
 empirically generated through the consciousness of 
 human rinitude, that themselves in turn constitute 
 it and gave it birth. 
 
 It has already been submitted that the feeling 
 in the subject of a faculty of free determination 
 is strong in proportion to the inequality existing 
 between the conscious and conflicting empirical im- 
 pulses of that subject, and, in the same way, it is 
 easy to perceive that the more pronounced this 
 disproportion in any given case, that is, the greater 
 ascendency any one side may happen to have over 
 the other, the less must that predominating side 
 be consciously embarrassed by opposing subjective 
 forces, and the greater facility or disengagement 
 must it therefore experience in expressing itself in 
 sensuous action in accordance with the momentum 
 of its constitutive conditions. As also the conflict- 
 ing and conscious impulses of the subject are in 
 themselves, in their turn, at any moment, nothing 
 but the in part constitutive framework itself of the
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE FEELING 277 
 
 whole sensuous state of inner consciousness in which 
 the ego empirically finds itself, a conflict between 
 these impulses is necessarily one which must begin 
 and end within the subject — subjectively, that is, 
 as far as our whole ego is concerned, and not 
 objectively. In fact the duel, so to speak, is an 
 internecine struggle for the mastery between con- 
 stituent and empirically compounded parts of the 
 same conscious subject. We have therefore arrived 
 at this point, namely, that whenever one set of 
 conscious impulses has become predominant, not 
 only does it act, in so far and by so much as it is 
 actually predominant, unencumbered by the presence 
 of any conscious antagonistic impulses in the same 
 subject, but, being itself a constituent part of the 
 ego as thinking subject, that subject not only there- 
 fore feels that it is acting freely on its own account 
 on the side of that ascendant impulse, but most 
 undoubtedly is acting freely, not, however, in the 
 sense of being unconditioned, but in the afore- 
 mentioned sense that the empirically dominant part 
 of its own inner state is, by the amount of the 
 predominance, exerting itself unencumbered by and 
 freed from any other subjective controlling force, 
 and thus able freely to express itself in sensuous 
 action in accordance with the empirical ordering of 
 the conditions which constitute its being in time. 
 We are, in fact, conscious of freedom at one end of 
 the scale, and not at the other. The feeling of
 
 278 ON FREEDOM 
 
 freedom, in other words, is not the feeling of it as 
 transcendent, but the feeling of it as empirical. It 
 is the freedom of disengagement, not that of arbitra- 
 tion. For, if we examine our consciousness closely, 
 we shall find that we are conscious, not of an 
 absolute, arbitrary will or independent power of de- 
 termination, ungoverned by the comparative insist- 
 ence of empirical conditions, but of a subjectively 
 unthwarted, unencumbered will ; that is to say, not 
 of a will which is spontaneous or free to initiate 
 of itself, but a will which, when it has once been 
 empirically determined, is free to act. 
 
 It is, however, important to realise that the whole 
 of the foregoing arguments in this Part (II), touching 
 the question of the feeling of freedom, are only valid, 
 so far as the phenomenal changes in a subject of the 
 world of sense are concerned, where those changes, 
 internal or external, are the immediate result in 
 consciousness of inclinations within the subject, and 
 do not apply to any such changes as are the im- 
 mediate effect in consciousness of objective forces 
 outside the ego, and thus independent of any con- 
 scious intermediate subjective state of the latter. 
 That is to say, it is only when natural conditions 
 give birth to predominant and conscious impulses 
 in the subject, and these in their turn give rise to 
 conscious internal or external phenomenal changes 
 on its part, that the feeling of an active faculty of 
 free determination can exist. If, on the contrary, any
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE FEELING 279 
 
 objective force outside the ego produces conscious 
 phenomenal alteration in the subject without previ- 
 ously giving rise to an intermediate subjective im- 
 pulse thereto which becomes conscious, and which 
 is therefore immediately connected in consciousness 
 with that phenomenal change as its expression, then, 
 in this case, there can be no feeling of an active 
 faculty of free determination in respect of the 
 change, since an essential part of the groundwork 
 of any possible feeling of freedom is not there. 
 For the phenomenal change is here the immediate 
 effect in consciousness of that non-subjective coercion 
 outside the ego, instead of being the immediate re- 
 sult in consciousness of an intermediate subjective 
 impulse thereto, which itself indeed may well have 
 followed on the heels of a determining non-subjec- 
 tive force. 1 
 
 Thus, if some one insults me, and then leaves 
 the room directly he has done so, two sets of dis- 
 cordant impulses may spring up within me ; one 
 of which exhorts me to treat the incident with 
 contempt, and the other to rush after him and 
 inflict the castigation he deserves. If, then, the 
 latter is in the ascendant, I make for the door to 
 
 1 Spinoza does not seem to have realised this distinction, for he main- 
 tained that if a stone which had been projected and was flying through 
 the air had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of 
 its own free-will. The same may be inferred with regard to Leibnitz, 
 who suggested that if the magnetic needle had consciousness, it 
 would consider its direction to the North as a determination of its 
 own free-will.
 
 280 ON FREEDOM 
 
 carry out its commands. If, however, some one 
 hurries up, and forces me back from the door, 
 whilst I struggle to get free, I am still conscious of 
 an active faculty of free determination to dash after 
 my enemy, because of the predominating impulse 
 that possesses me, and which, though thwarted for 
 the time being in respect of its full external expres- 
 sion by a non-subjective force, is actively and 
 consciously striving to attain its ends. For the 
 external and phenomenal change which takes the 
 form of the backward movement of my body from 
 the door is not the result of any conscious pre- 
 dominant impulse or internal state of my thinking 
 subject ; because, although the strongest empirical 
 force present is certainly the one through which 
 that external alteration in my object-ego is taking 
 place, that force is not the conscious predominating 
 inclination within me, or, in other words, the 
 ascendant and subjective state of my ego, but a 
 non-subjective force outside that ego, which, more- 
 over, has failed to give rise in the subject to any 
 conscious predominant impulse in sympathy with 
 it ; and, this being the case, that force cannot 
 carry the feeling of freedom with it, nor can I 
 therefore connect any feeling of an active faculty 
 of free determination with its resulting external 
 change. In fact, to maintain that I could do so 
 would imply that I could feel a faculty of free 
 determination acting in respect of some external
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE FEELING 281 
 
 change in my ego that I did not consciously bring 
 about, that is, which I did not freely will to effect, 
 and which did not follow as a consequence any 
 conscious inclination or determination of my own, 
 which is contradictory and impossible. The argu- 
 ments, therefore, employed in this Part (II) in con- 
 nection with any feeling of freedom we may have 
 are exclusively confined, so far as phenomenal 
 changes in the subject are concerned, to those 
 modifications which are able to be immediately 
 connected in its consciousness with the predomi- 
 nating subjective impulses thereto. 
 
 In this manner, then, it is submitted, may the 
 feeling within every man of the possession of a 
 faculty of free determination be accounted for as 
 the result of empirical and discoverable causes, 
 without our having recourse for a solution to a 
 violation of the laws of nature. And those who 
 believe in the perfect freedom of the will have no 
 reason to be afraid lest an empirical interpretation 
 of the feeling of such a faculty should uproot a 
 sacred doctrine which is necessary to them in the 
 conduct of their daily lives. For, although the 
 speculative theory of an absolute facult}^ of volition 
 is neither permissible nor conceivable in this em- 
 pirical explanation of our undoubted feeling of 
 freedom, the dominating conscious impulses of every 
 thinking subject of the world of sense do certainly 
 express themselves in action, and in so far and, by
 
 282 ON FREEDOM 
 
 so much as they are not encumbered or thwarted 
 by other conscious and subjective forces, may 
 indeed be said to be expressing themselves freely 
 in exact accordance with the masterful laws of 
 their constitutive conditions in time. In other 
 words, these empirically constituted impulses give 
 rise to different kinds of internal and external 
 action on the part of the subject, and, so far as 
 that portion of them which is predominant may 
 go, without being hampered by a sense of subjective 
 opposition. Moreover, as they are part and parcel 
 of the ego, nothing less, in fact, than sensuously 
 compounded phases of it, the subject is conscious 
 of itself producing the action, and producing it 
 freely, because, as explained in the above argument, 
 its ascendant inclinations are unencumbered by 
 sufficiently powerful and conscious antagonistic 
 impulses in the same subject, and therefore able, 
 unfettered, as it were, so far as their actual em- 
 pirical superiority is concerned, to give expression 
 to the laws of their own constitutive conditions in 
 the world of nature.
 
 I 
 
 THE JUSTIFICATION OF HUMAN EFFORT 
 
 Those, indeed, who have always upheld the trans- 
 cendent doctrine of a spontaneous faculty of deter- 
 mination, far from having any real justification for 
 a feeling of depression, would have every cause for 
 exaltation, if they could lay aside those prejudices 
 which are the necessary result of lifelong habit and 
 early inculcation, and realise that an empirical inter- 
 pretation of their feeling of freedom is not only 
 possible, but far more satisfying than this ancient 
 but illusory article of faith. For, up to now, the 
 apostles of indeterminism have had to contend with 
 the insuperable difficulty of endeavouring to realise 
 in thought that which lies outside the possible powers 
 of the human mind, and of reconciling a contradic- 
 tion the absurdity of which is only too evident, as 
 soon as the understanding tries to grasp it. More- 
 over, what is infinitely more serious for them from 
 a practical point of view, should they happen to be 
 social reformers, parents, teachers, or any others in 
 authority, they are obliged, if they wish to per- 
 severe in their theory of an absolute will and put 
 themselves to the pains of honestly examining the 
 
 question, to abandon all hope of ever being able to 
 
 283
 
 284 ON FREEDOM 
 
 guide such a faculty along the path they may wish 
 to see it follow. Because no absolute causality can 
 be trained by human or any other agency in nature 
 to confine itself within the grooves of particular 
 courses of action ; that is to say, its metempiric 
 freedom cannot be moulded by empirical circum- 
 stances, for, if this were possible, it would then no 
 longer be the unconditioned faculty, as is popularly 
 supposed, but a causality which, like all other things 
 in nature that are sensuously conditioned, would 
 have to take its place in the series of natural events 
 which are all linked together in one vast system of 
 necessary connection. Those, therefore, who persist 
 in maintaining that such freedom appertains to the 
 human will, open up for themselves such a vista of 
 hopelessness in respect of all those influences that 
 can affect our being in this life, that it is their 
 transcendent doctrine, rather than an}/ natural solu- 
 tion of the problem, which must render it for ever 
 impossible to expect that the human race can arrive 
 at any future period, except by accident, at a social 
 state of existence much more perfect than that in 
 which it finds itself at the present day. 
 
 What has been suggested, on the contrary, in the 
 second part of this volume discloses quite a different 
 landscape, a panorama of hope and probability 
 that in the distant future, and in the phenomenal 
 world, there may be a state of man as far exceeding 
 our own present state in social perfection and know-
 
 JUSTIFICATION OF HUMAN EFFORT 285 
 
 ledge, as the winged and brilliant insect of to-day 
 is superior in beauty to the grub of yesterday. For 
 if we accept the explanation that what we term 
 " free-will " is nothing but the feeling of the pre- 
 dominance of subjective impulses, themselves con- 
 stituted in their entirety by empirical condi- 
 tions, we must also agree to the conclusion which 
 necessarily follows, namely, that, in that case, 
 the members of successive generations can so be 
 trained from their youth up by those in authority, 
 whose own strongest propensities are on the side of 
 social progress, that the inclinations which, in turn, 
 shall consciously possess the pupils and impel them 
 most powerfully to action, shall of a surety likewise 
 be upon the side of the general welfare of the com- 
 munity. In fact, given sufficient and systematic 
 training of the members of any particular stock 
 through a long series of succeeding generations under 
 the most favourable conditions, and it is possible to 
 go even further and to assert that at the end of the 
 period the general course of action of an individual 
 member of that family under any set of circumstances 
 could be foretold with almost apodictic certainty. 
 To the circle of relations, acquainted with all the facts 
 of the man's careful training and the hereditary in- 
 fluences present in his blood, those actions of his 
 capable of being connected by him in consciousness 
 with the various subjective inclinations thereto, 
 would appear as naturally taking place according to
 
 286 ON FREEDOM 
 
 irresistible laws and as the expression of his 
 predominant impulses, themselves the transparent 
 result of their familiar and constitutive empirical 
 conditions, and obviously following upon these so- 
 called causes as their necessary and certain effect ; 
 whilst the man himself would nevertheless feel 
 working within him a perfectly free faculty of deter- 
 mination in respect of every one of those conscious 
 actions without exception. 
 
 The importance therefore of education lies entirely 
 in the fact, that human beings who in their early 
 vears happen to fall under the influence of those 
 whose own dominant natural proclivities are upon 
 the side of the general social welfare, will them- 
 selves, if trained sufficiently under that authoritative 
 influence, and fortunately exempt from the con- 
 genital dominion of overpoweringly adverse here- 
 ditary tastes and habits, develop of necessity in their 
 turn social inclinations which, under favourable 
 external conditions, will gradually predominate over 
 the anti-social impulses of their nature. For early 
 inculcation during the most impressionable years 
 of a man's life will, if not impeded by stronger 
 hereditary or other natural forces, never fail to 
 develop and fortify a particular set of inclinations 
 in the subject which by degrees will prevail over 
 the antagonistic influences that may from time to 
 time be brought to bear against them. Inherited 
 influences are indeed among the most powerful of 

 
 JUSTIFICATION OF HUMAN EFFORT 287 
 
 the forces that may be arrayed against the efforts 
 of those who undertake the instruction and discipline 
 of the young, for what is already in the nerves and 
 tissues of a human being is not to be counteracted 
 at once even by the most drastic sj-stem that could 
 be set up. But under a persistent method of 
 sagacious parental and institutional training all 
 but the most obdurate hereditary anti-social traits 
 and impulses would show signs of surrender ; the 
 inclinations in favour of opposite courses of action 
 would in the course of generations become little 
 by little hereditary in their turn, until what would 
 then be the new hereditary disposition, combined 
 with the inclinations resulting in each individual from 
 the particular influence of the home and the educa- 
 tional system of the day, would be able to vanquish 
 and overcome the greater part of its opponents. 
 
 This thought should be a matter of encouragement 
 to all those whose own strongest impulses are 
 fighting on the side of the progress of humanity, 
 and who, having long held to the opinion that there 
 could be no good without " free-will," may have 
 tardily begun to realise the inextricable contradic- 
 tion in which that theory involves them. Especially 
 should it be of help to them, if their position in life 
 is such as to enable them to influence the youth of 
 their country in the direction which they believe to 
 be the best ; if, for example, they happen to be 
 parents, teachers, or others in authority. For, in
 
 288 
 
 ON FREEDOM 
 
 permitting this empirical interpretation of our feel- 
 ing of freedom to take the place of the doctrine 
 which up till now they may have verbally held and 
 asserted, but can never have posited in thought or 
 even reconciled with itself, when once they began to 
 ponder upon the problem, they may well maintain, 
 without fear of disproof, that in continuing their 
 efforts to train others in the path they wish them 
 to follow, they are enabling those under their 
 authority to lay up such a store of natural strength 
 as will stand them in good stead when any impulses 
 invade them in later life in opposition to the pre- 
 cepts they have learnt. 
 
 But even this, at the best, would be a somewhat 
 empty and colourless satisfaction, were it all. If 
 it can be proved that transcendental freedom is 
 not contradictory to the necessity observable in 
 nature, a mighty advance has indeed been made 
 against the sensualistic doctrines of those who would 
 reduce the whole mystery of human endeavour to 
 the bare clockwork of psycho-physics. But if, this 
 once accomplished, it can be subsequently shown 
 that the feeling in every human breast of a free 
 faculty of volition is to be attributed to the side of 
 necessity and not to that of transcendental freedom, 
 a step would then assuredly seem to have been lost. 
 No gain, however, would in reality have been wrested 
 from us, for although necessity rules paramount in 
 the physical and psychical life of man, we may yet
 
 JUSTIFICATION OF HUMAN EFFORT 289 
 
 consistently with the laws of thought believe that 
 it is nothing but an aspect of freedom, empirical 
 and truncated though that aspect may be. We 
 may further believe, with equal right, that human 
 effort can so become directed by natural means in 
 those various forms of energy which characterise 
 human existence, that the personality of the in- 
 dividual shall more and more be brought into con- 
 scious harmony with the world of things in their 
 aspect of totality, and hence become by patient 
 degrees ever less sharply estranged from that ulti- 
 mate metempiric freedom that belongs to the 
 Universe only as a whole ; that, in fact, such progress 
 to perfection is, in the very nature of humanity, itself 
 the sufficient and all-satisfying destiny of mankind. 
 For the complete truth of anything, as we have 
 already seen in one of the previous sections of this 
 Part (II), can only be discovered through the 
 abrogation of its relativity, that is to say, in the 
 totality of its constitutive conditions. The more 
 comprehensively, therefore, we may find ourselves 
 able at any time to envisage these conditions, by so 
 much the nearer shall we be to the envisagement of 
 the totality itself ; that is, by so much the closer 
 shall we have approximated to an appreciation of 
 what anything is in the entirety of its truth and 
 reality. Thus, a few dozen bricks, forming part of 
 a building that peeps from behind a hill, can give 
 us but little, if any, idea of the size and contours of
 
 290 ON FREEDOM 
 
 the fabric to which they belong ; but let a far larger 
 and more important part of it be made visible, and 
 it takes upon itself in the imagination the structure 
 of the whole. We cannot, however, gather up these 
 constitutive conditions into our own consciousness 
 in any extended degree without practising the habit 
 and attitude of self-denial. In other words, this 
 progress in knowledge of the vast and inexhaustible 
 inter-relationship between ourselves and the world, 
 and between the things of that world among them- 
 selves ; this insight into the universal interdepen- 
 dence which reigns among phenomena ; this step 
 forward, in short, whereby we see ourselves mirrored 
 in other things and the universe mirrored in our- 
 selves, cannot take place so long as we are inclined 
 to regard our objective world merely or chiefly from 
 the point of view of our own personality or the 
 possibilities of the relation of that world to our 
 own will, that is to say, one-sidedly or egoistically. 
 To put it in another way, it is not possible to pro- 
 gress in the engagement of ourselves and the world, 
 that is, to embrace them more and more in their 
 complete totality, unless there is a catholic and 
 encircling sympathy for all Nature — a sympathy 
 which can only thrive in an atmosphere of never- 
 ceasing communion with the interests of humanity 
 and by unselfish participation in that great cosmic 
 movement which is always going on around us. 
 But another consideration now forces itself to
 
 JUSTIFICATION OF HUMAN EFFORT 291 
 
 the front ; namely, that the nearer we approach an 
 envisagement of the totality of the constitutive 
 conditions of ourselves and those things of the 
 world that fall within our purview ; that is to say, 
 the nearer we attain to an aspect of the Universe 
 in its entirety and truth, so much the more shall 
 we necessarily feel ourselves to be in harmony with 
 the truth of that totality ; so much the nearer, 
 therefore, shall we draw to a consciousness of 
 freedom ; so much the closer to a just apprecia- 
 tion of what we are in our ultimate or complete 
 reality. In other words, the more clearly shall we 
 become conscious of the inwardness and secret of 
 our destiny, and therefore the more in harmony 
 with the truth of it. The argument comes to this, 
 then, that the more unfaltering our altruism and 
 self-denial, the less shall we feel ourselves to be 
 fettered by the law of our particular temperament 
 or the circumstances of our particular environ- 
 ment ; the more shall we be brought into conscious 
 harmony with the ultimate freedom and purpose 
 of the Universe. But the more in harmony we find 
 ourselves with the freedom and purpose of the 
 Universe in its totality, the happier shall we of 
 necessity be, since it will mean nothing less than 
 that we shall be conscious of the fact that we are 
 in unity with the truth of all things, and that our 
 destiny, therefore, is in conformity with the truth 
 and destiny of the whole. Since, however, the
 
 2 9 2 ON FREEDOM 
 
 destiny and purpose of a transcendent and un- 
 imaginable whole must be the destiny and purpose 
 of something which cannot fall within the empirical 
 range of the understanding, or for that reason be 
 tainted with the imperfection of sensuous nature, 
 but must of necessity be the destiny and purpose 
 of a perfect unity, free and self-sufhcient, and thus 
 teleologically at one with itself, we shall be conscious 
 of our own destiny and purpose as bearing some- 
 thing of the nature of the destiny and purpose of 
 that totality, and therefore, in that aspect of it, as 
 free and self-sufficient and an end in itself. 
 
 Hence we see that, apart from all those manifold 
 considerations which religion and ethics may urge 
 with the assistance of arguments more peculiarly 
 their own, we may confidently assume without 
 violating the laws of finite thought, that the more our 
 natural impulses lead us to deny ourselves in this 
 life ; the more we eschew that self-centred and 
 egoistic attitude of existence, which, like a bandage 
 over the eyes, blinds us to reality and hides the 
 destination of our journey from us, the greater will 
 be our happiness or mental satisfaction ; the more 
 will our thought become clothed in the vesture of 
 the Infinite, and the more shall we have every 
 Right to Believe that we are progressing towards 
 perfection, and thus fulfilling the destiny of our 
 being ; a destiny which, were we able to see it in 
 its perfect truth, would undoubtedly be revealed
 
 JUSTIFICATION OF HUMAN EFFORT 293 
 
 to us, as indeed it can partially be disclosed to us 
 under a certain aspect even in the present state of 
 human limitation, as the free and perfect purpose 
 of an absolute, self-sufficient unity, whose end is in 
 itself. This indeed was the secret of the great 
 Nazarene. His was not the case of a mother 
 sacrificing herself for her child, or a general for 
 his army, or a scientist for the sake of a particular 
 experiment. But he offered himself up for blind 
 and groping humanity, in the belief that he was 
 thereby obtaining absolution for the vast catalogue 
 of human finitude, past, present, and to come. 
 This is the profoundest act of self-abnegation in 
 the pages of the book of life, and being thus the 
 least tainted with abstraction of any recorded 
 in the history of men, is justly regarded as the 
 nearest approach to the truth of things, the 
 most divine achievement that the world has 
 ever known. 
 
 It is the recognition of this Right of Belief that 
 supplies the true hope and consolation of mankind. 
 For, as the necessity of the world is but the sensuous 
 veil that freedom wears, the contours of that cover- 
 ing cannot fail to betray the teleological and spiritual 
 lineaments of the face that lies behind it. Though 
 but a coarse wrapper for that God-like freedom, it 
 cannot entirely conceal the evidence of its origin 
 or office, and therefore, bound down, as we are, 
 to the laws of natural necessity, we may yet believe
 
 294 ON FREEDOM 
 
 that we are carrying out the purpose of a free and 
 absolute Spirit, and that as finite beings we form a 
 part — an essential, maybe, a mighty and tremendous 
 part — of the great scheme of the Universe. Such 
 a conviction alone must tend to purify the aims of 
 man and ennoble his ideals, rendering him, in the 
 " fitful fever " of this life, and amid all the necessity 
 and heart-aches of the world, reconciled to his lot 
 and a believer in his divine destiny. 
 
 Printed by Ballantvne, Hanson &> Co. 
 Edinburgh & London
 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 5 a 198 
 
 NOV 71983 
 
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