hibited activity of "the
lower course of thought," a disconnected "dreaming," a confused automatic
movement of thoughts and feelings according to purely associative laws.
Then suddenly we pull ourselves together, rouse ourselves out of this
state of distraction. Something new comes into the course of our thoughts.
It is the will. Now there is control and definite guidance of our thoughts
and rejection of subsidiary association--ideas that thrust themselves upon
us. Particular thoughts can be selected, particular feelings or mental
contents kept in focus as long as we desire. In thus selecting and guiding
ideas, in keeping them in mind or letting them go, we see the will in
action.

This brings us to freedom of thought. This lies in the fact, not merely
that we can think, but that we can and desire to think rightly, and that
we are able to measure our thoughts by the standard of "true" or "false."
Naturalism is proud of the fact that it desires nothing more than to
search after truth. To this it is ready to sacrifice all expressions of
feeling or sentiment, and all prejudices. The truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth is its ideal, even if all pet ideas have to give way
before it. It usually saddles itself with the idea of the good and the
beautiful along with this "idea of truth," but is resolved, since it must
soon see for itself that it is able to secure only a very doubtful basis
for these, to sacrifice them to truth if need be. This is worthy of
honour,(107) but it implies a curious self-deception. For if naturalism be
in the right, thought is not free, and if thought be not free there can be
no such thing as truth, for there can be no establishing of what truth is.

Let us attempt to make this plain in the following manner: According to
the naturalistic-psychological theory, the play of our thoughts, our
impressions of things and properties, their combination in judgments or in
"perceptions," are dependent on physiological processes of the brain, and
therefore upon natural laws, or, according to some, on peculiar
attractions and repulsions among the impressions themselves, regulated by
the laws of association. If that and that only were the case, I should be
able to say that such a conception was present in my mind, or that this or
that thought had arisen in me, and I might perhaps be able to trace the
connection which made it necessary that it should arise at that particular
time. But every thought wou