nification in
every-day life. We say that anything is free when it is not subject to
external constraint. We also know exactly what we mean when we say that
a man is free to do a certain act. We mean that if he chooses to do it
there is no external constraint acting to prevent him. In all cases a
relation of two things is implied in the word, some active agent or
power, and the presence or absence of another constraining agent. Now,
when we inquire whether the will itself is free, irrespective of
external constraints, the word free no longer has a meaning, because
one of the elements implied in it is ignored.

To inquire whether the will itself is free is like inquiring whether
fire itself is consumed by the burning, or whether clothing is itself
clad. It is not, therefore, at all surprising that both parties have
been able to dispute without end, but it is a most astonishing
phenomenon of the human intellect that the dispute should go on
generation after generation without the parties finding out whether
there was really any difference of opinion between them on the subject.
I venture to say that if there is any such difference, neither party
has ever analyzed the meaning of the words used sufficiently far to
show it. The daily experience of every man, from his cradle to his
grave, shows that human acts are as much the subject of external causal
influences as are the phenomena of nature. To dispute this would be
little short of the ludicrous. All that the opponents of freedom, as a
class, have ever claimed is the assertion of a causal connection
between the acts of the will and influences independent of the will.
True, propositions of this sort can be expressed in a variety of ways
connoting an endless number of more or less objectionable ideas, but
this is the substance of the matter.

To suppose that the advocates on the other side meant to take issue on
this proposition would be to assume that they did not know what they
were saying. The conclusion forced upon us is that though men spend
their whole lives in the study of the most elevated department of human
thought it does not guard them against the danger of using words
without meaning. It would be a mark of ignorance, rather than of
penetration, to hastily denounce propositions on subjects we are not
well acquainted with because we do not understand their meaning. I do
not mean to intimate that philosophy itself is subject to this
reproach. When we see a philos