s free to do anything
it pleases. That at least is certain. For without some limitation,
without something resistant to exert itself upon, the will could not
be known. An absolutely free will is unthinkable. The very nature of
the will implies a struggle with some sort of resistance.

The will is, therefore, by the terms of its original definition and by
the original feeling which the soul experiences in regard to it,
limited in its freedom. The problem resolves itself, therefore, if once
we grant the existence of the will, into the question of how much
freedom the will has or how far it is limited. Is it, for instance, when
we know all the conditions of its activity, entirely limited? Is the
freedom of the will an illusion?

It is just at this point that the logical reason makes a savage attempt
to dominate the situation. The logical reason arrives step by step at
the inevitable conclusion that the will has no freedom at all but is
absolutely limited.

On the other hand emotion, instinct, imagination, intuition, and
conscience, all assume that the limitation of the will is not absolute
but that within certain boundaries, which themselves are by no
means fixed or permanent, the will is free.

Consciousness itself must be added to this list. For whatever
arguments may be used in the realm of thought, when the moment
of choice arrives in the realm of action, we are always conscious of
the will as free. If the reason is justified in regarding the freedom
of the will as an illusion, we are justified in denying the existence
of the will altogether. For a will with only an illusion of freedom is
not a will at all. In that ease it were better to eliminate the will
and regard the soul as a thing which acts and reacts under the stimuli
of motives like a helpless automaton endowed with consciousness.

But the wiser course is to experiment with the will and let it prove
its freedom to the sceptical reason by helping that same reason to
retire into its proper place and associate itself with the apex-thought
of the complex vision.

Leaving the will then, as a thing limited and yet free, let us pass to
a consideration of what I call "taste." This is the aesthetic sense, an
original activity of the human soul, associated with that universal
tendency in life and nature which we name the beautiful. I use the
word "taste" at this moment in preference to "aesthetic sense,"
because I feel that this particular original activity of th