d his own son, the
valorous Hotspur, falls by the hand of the Prince of Wales.

Again, in the following play, the _Second Part of Henry IV_., we see
him reduced to a state of the fiercest wrath by the death of his son,
and maddened by the thirst for revenge. Accordingly he kindles another
rebellion, and the heads of it assemble once more. In the fourth act,
just as they are about to give battle, and are only waiting for him to
join them, there comes a letter saying that he cannot collect a proper
force, and will therefore seek safety for the present in Scotland;
that, nevertheless, he heartily wishes their heroic undertaking the
best success. Thereupon they surrender to the King under a treaty
which is not kept, and so perish.

So far is character from being the work of reasoned choice and
consideration that in any action the intellect has nothing to do but
to present motives to the will. Thereafter it looks on as a mere
spectator and witness at the course which life takes, in accordance
with the influence of motive on the given character. All the incidents
of life occur, strictly speaking, with the same necessity as the
movement of a clock. On this point let me refer to my prize-essay on
_The Freedom of the Will_. I have there explained the true meaning and
origin of the persistent illusion that the will is entirely free in
every single action; and I have indicated the cause to which it is
due. I will only add here the following teleological explanation of
this natural illusion.

Since every single action of a man's life seems to possess the freedom
and originality which in truth only belong to his character as he
apprehends it, and the mere apprehension of it by his intellect is
what constitutes his career; and since what is original in every
single action seems to the empirical consciousness to be always being
performed anew, a man thus receives in the course of his career the
strongest possible moral lesson. Then, and not before, he becomes
thoroughly conscious of all the bad sides of his character. Conscience
accompanies every act with the comment: _You should act differently_,
although its true sense is: _You could be other than you are_. As the
result of this immutability of character on the one hand, and, on the
other, of the strict necessity which attends all the circumstances in
which character is successively placed, every man's course of life
is precisely determined from Alpha right through to Omega. But,