Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ... II. FREEWILL OME passages from various writers on the' subject of freewill, will be found in a note to my lectures on Personality (p. 227); collected partly to show how strong a consensus of opinion there is upon the point, among writers of very various schools, and partly to emphasize the identity of doctrine contained in their different phraseology. But here, too, as in the case of self-identity, we are met with objections drawn from physiological psychology, which may justify a few further remarks upon the subject. In the first place, one must recall the fact that freewill (like personal identity, of which it is a function) is defended on grounds of experience, and denied on grounds of antecedent improbability. As Dr. Johnson once put it when irritated with the argument, 'all theory is against freewill, but all experience is in its favour.' This is important to notice, because it is the exact converse of what is often supposed to be the case, and of what has always been the case, whenever physical science has permanently altered popular opinion. For science is based upon facts of experience, and when in conflict with popular prejudice the whole secret of its success has always lain in its power of appeal to those facts. But in the present instance this is not the case. The consciousness of freedom is a fact of practically universal experience; not of reported experience in the past, but of present and past experience alike. While its opponents ground their opposition, not upon a refutation of the fact, nor even upon its inconsistency with other facts, but upon its inconsistency with a theory which they have drawn from other facts, and can only so draw by previously ruling the fact in question out of court. In other words, they beg the...
