some great depression. Such writers are
like the man in Hogarth's picture occupying himself in the debtors'
prison with plans for the payment of the National Debt. There are
moments when all of us feel the force of the words of Voltaire:
'Travaillons sans raisonner, c'est le seul moyen de rendre la vie
supportable.'

That there is much truth in such considerations is incontestable, and it
is only within a restricted sphere that the province of reasoning
extends. Man comes into the world with mental and moral characteristics
which he can only very imperfectly influence, and a large proportion of
the external circumstances of his life lie wholly or mainly beyond his
control. At the same time, every one recognises the power of skill,
industry and perseverance to modify surrounding circumstances; the power
of temperance and prudence to strengthen a naturally weak constitution,
prolong life, and diminish the chances of disease; the power of
education and private study to develop, sharpen and employ to the best
advantage our intellectual faculties. Every one also recognises how
large a part of the unhappiness of most men may be directly traced to
their own voluntary and deliberate acts. The power each man possesses in
the education and management of his character, and especially in the
cultivation of the dispositions and tendencies which most largely
contribute to happiness, is less recognised and is perhaps less
extensive, but it is not less real.

The eternal question of free will and determinism here naturally meets
us, but on such a subject it is idle to suppose that a modern writer can
do more than define the question and state his own side. The
Determinist says that the real question is not whether a man can do
what he desires, but whether he can do what he does not desire; whether
the will can act without a motive; whether that motive can in the last
analysis be other than the strongest pleasure. The illusion of free
will, he maintains, is only due to the conflict of our motives. Under
many forms and disguises pleasure and pain have an absolute empire over
conduct. The will is nothing more than the last and strongest desire; or
it is like a piece of iron surrounded by magnets and necessarily drawn
by the most powerful; or (as has been ingeniously imagined) like a
weathercock, conscious of its own motion, but not conscious of the winds
that are moving it. The law of compulsory causation applies to the world
of mind as