ll only in such ways as the body can
act--i. e. to conform in _its_ action to the external system of
causation. If this condition of all action is held to be compatible with
freedom in the one case, so in consistency must it be held in the other.
Equally in either case the agent can only be properly said to be unfree,
if he be subject to causal restraint from without. And in neither case
does the universal condition of acting under the law of causation
constitute bondage, in any other sense than that of furnishing the agent
with his conditions to acting in any way at all. Therefore, unless it be
said that a man is not free to do as he wills because he wills to do the
impossible, it cannot be denied that he is free to will as he wills
because he wills according to law. For no action of any kind is possible
contrary to law--a general fact which goes to constitute an argument _a
posteriori_ for the rationality of the World-eject--and if volition
constituted an exception to this general statement, it could only do so
by becoming no-action. Now, it is by thus willing according to law--or
with due reference to those external conditions of causality with which
the executive capacity has to do--that volition is rendered rational.
The restraint laid upon volition is not laid upon it _as_ volition, but
only in respect of execution. A man may will to marry as long and as
hard as he chooses; but only if he further wills to take the necessary
means can his volition become rational; it is irrational if he wills to
marry, and at the same time wills not to go through the marriage
ceremony. But although irrational, it is none the less free. Considered
merely as an act of volition it is equally free, whether it be rational
or irrational.

And, similarly, it is equally free whether it be moral or immoral. The
objection that an uncaused volition cannot be a responsible volition
depends for its validity on the meaning which we attach to the term
'uncaused.' If it be meant that the volition arises without any regard
at all to the surrounding conditions of life, and is carried into effect
without the agent being able to control it by means of any other
voluntary act; then, indeed, whatever else such an agent may be, he
certainly is not moral. But if it be meant that among a number of
uncompleted volitions drawing in different directions--and all
'uncaused' in the sense of belonging immediately to the Ego--one of
them gains an advantage by a c