Let us first consider what are the implications of the determinist view. If our acts depend entirely on our present circumstances and character, and our characters on past circumstances and the circumstances of our parents, it is evident that all things are perfectly determined. For the past cannot be changed, and as the future flows out of the past by a necessary law, the future is itself equally fixed and immutable. Why then, it may be said, should we waste effort in trying to accomplish that which, if not settled already, can never come about? If all things spring necessarily from the seeds sown in the beginning, what need is there that we should till the field of life with our labor or water it with our tears? Let us watch and be patient! we shall reap as much as if we worked. But this is not an inevitable conclusion; on the contrary, that very law which decrees that all things shall follow necessarily from their causes, decrees that our least effort, our most trifling act, shall not lack its proportionate effect. True, all future events are determined, but only because their antecedents were determined first: and so far from the truth is it that we cannot change our destiny, that in fact we cannot but change it. If we work, we turn the current of our lives in one direction; if we do not work, we turn it in the other.

And let it not be said that the zest of life is gone when we know that all is fixed. Do we read a story with less interest because the last page was written long ago? Indeed, the man of clear vision, who can estimate the forces at work in him and around him, is encouraged and emboldened when he feels that he knows what he is to accomplish. To him an opportunity is more than an exhortation, it is a prophecy. Yes, it may be said, very good, so long as the future he can forsee is pleasant, and the action he can forecast is noble; but if he thinks he is fated to be miserable, will that not extinguish his hopes, will that not break his spirit? Certainly, I might answer, and he must have a spirit broken already, who would not rather be sobered by truth than tickled by self-deception. Living is like going to the theatre: if the play is good, it is enjoyed all the more for having been previously read; while if it be known to be poor, at least it does not prove disappointing.

Granting, then, that fatalism does not take away the zest of life let us inquire how much it modifies our notions of right and wrong. It is plain that no possible answer to the problem of freewill can change the experience men have had of what is good for them. Such conduct as has proved useful in the past, cannot but be thought wise for the future. In so far, therefore, as our notion of right and wrong is founded on experience, it would not seem to be at all effected by fatalism; and we have seen that fatalism does not discourage us in working out our purposes. The case is different, however, if we reject experience as the sole test of right conduct. For if right conduct be that which is intrinsically consistent and harmonious with our nature and the nature of our relations to all things, then any change in our idea of these relations will change our idea of right and wrong. In this way fatalism may have an influence on conduct such as is exercised by all religious and philosophical beliefs. It may sanction certain acts and practices and condemn others; it may encourage certain states of mind. Thus we can conceive that if all the world turned fatalist, we might see our good people face life with a little more calmness and intrepidity; we might expect to find less self-accusation and less of what is called righteous indignation. For if we came to regard wickedness as misfortune and monstrosity rather than sin, we should not find it necessary to be so vehement in our condemnation of wrong doing, since we should not feel so much secret sympathy with it. Even now, who of us in his heart would not be a rake rather than a hunchback, a villain rather than a fool? In spite of all the moralists, we cannot admire desert or merit as much as the gifts of nature and fortune. There is nothing of which we are so proud as of a good family, a handsome face, a strong body, a ready wit,-of all those things, indeed, for which we are not responsible; but no one is ever proud of trying hard. We may decree as much as we like that trying hard is the sum total of virtue, yet no one will ever want a prize for faithful endeavor. To be able to do easily what other people do with difficulty, or what they cannot do at all, that is what we are proud of and what we admire.

Apart, then, from these considerations, fatalism does not change our notion of what things are right and what wrong. But what it does change completely is our notion of the nature of right and wrong, of the nature of sin. We sometimes feel that we have thoughts and desires which are profoundly shameful; we have moments and seasons in which we feel very wretched and guilty. There is an anarchy in our souls which seems somehow to accuse us of treason and rebellion. But what does all this become in the scheme of fatalism? A delusion, a disease. Guilt cannot slip in through the network of necessary causation. If my ancestors were vicious, if my bringing up was bad, if my temptations were strong, why should I up-braid myself? Yet how am I to account for this consciousness of sin, which is wholly different from the consciousness of folly or misfortune? I may have done myself all the harm imaginable through mere folly and stupidity; but however mortified or sullen I may be, I can never feel guilty or penitent. It is as hard to argue us out of the consciousness of guilt, as it is to argue us into the consciousness of real desert: for while virtue is too wise and humble to claim any merit, sin is so proud and foolish that it will be always bragging.

Let us go back now and see if the theory of free will can help us out of our difficulty. If a man, solicited by given motives in a given emergency, may act in various ways; if a new force, springing uncaused into existence, becomes an agent or factor in his choice; will not the consciousness of guilt be explained? I think not. For if the same man in the same circumstances can make various decisions, how does his decision tell us anything about the true, permanent nature of he man? Whence the significance of his choice if, without being other than he is, he might choose differently? If a new force, springing uncaused into existence, becomes an agent or fact in his choice, is he not there by relieved of all responsibility? Surely, this new force, if such there be, must not be uncaused; not only is such a supposition contrary to reason, but it defeats the very object for which it was framed. We want to prove that the man himself is the cause of his acts: this supposed new force must therefore be evolved, according to some law, out of the man's inmost nature, if it is to be the true expression of the man or if the man is to be held responsible for its decisions.

The old difficulty, however, recurs here. If the will is evolved out of the man's nature and this nature is necessarily what it is, how does he choose his act, how is he free? A man's acts depend on his character, which includes his will, reacting on his circumstances. His character is itself the result of circumstances and of the characters of his parents. The question now arises: if we carry our inquiry back far enough, shall we arrive at a point where intellect and will are swallowed up in mechanical forces of which they are the slowly evolved product? If so, I know not how we can explain responsibility. But if we say that intellect and will are the ultimate elements, the way lies open for an explanation. Let us suppose a will solicited by no motives, and therefore free as a stream is free when it flows unobstructed, yet whose essence, like the essence of the stream, is motion and action. Now this will, by its free activity might enslave itself to passion or ambition, somewhat as the stream, by the force of its own current, might heap up obstacles in its way; yet with this difference, that the stream gathers these obstacles from its bed, while the will finds its dangers only in the intellect of which it is the expression. And as the stream, choked by what it has collected, is stemmed and blocked, until the rains swell its torrent and burst the barrier; so the will, enslaved by its own surrender, frets impotently in its captivity, until the rain of grace from heaven floods the heart and sets it at liberty. For a free man, because he is free, may make himself a slave; but once a slave, because he is a slave, he cannot make himself free. Perhaps in this way we may be able to reconcile individual liberty with universal law. For if the will, being a spiritual activity, can attach itself, by virtue of its native strength and energy, to any of the things presented to it by the intellect, before any of these things has power to draw or coerce it at all,-then is the will free and answerable for its choice: then may we understand why we should feel guilty when we fall and grateful when we are saved.

Whether this explanation be a good one or not, the facts remain the same. No theory about free will can alter the teaching of experience or take from us our energies and desires. But if we believe that our actions and characters are wholly determined by physical causation, we must regard sin as a disease or deformity, which may make us dangerous and disgusting, but cannot make us guilty. If we believe, on the contrary, that the law of our being is a spiritual law whose essence is freedom; if we believe that this natural freedom is abdicated when it is abused (and would that be freedom which could not be abused and abdicated?)-if we believe this, not only do we save our conscience by showing a rational ground for our consciousness of guilt; but we save our dignity as well, by showing that the soul's protest