indubitably the doing of all the
known participants, but with a more remote event we already see its
inevitable results which prevent our considering anything else possible.
And the farther we go back in examining events the less arbitrary do
they appear.

The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the result of the
crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Napoleonic wars still seem
to us, though already questionably, to be the outcome of their heroes'
will. But in the Crusades we already see an event occupying its definite
place in history and without which we cannot imagine the modern history
of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the Crusades that event appeared
as merely due to the will of certain people. In regard to the migration
of the peoples it does not enter anyone's head today to suppose that
the renovation of the European world depended on Attila's caprice. The
farther back in history the object of our observation lies, the more
doubtful does the free will of those concerned in the event become and
the more manifest the law of inevitability.

The third consideration is the degree to which we apprehend that
endless chain of causation inevitably demanded by reason, in which each
phenomenon comprehended, and therefore man's every action, must have
its definite place as a result of what has gone before and as a cause of
what will follow.

The better we are acquainted with the physiological, psychological, and
historical laws deduced by observation and by which man is controlled,
and the more correctly we perceive the physiological, psychological,
and historical causes of the action, and the simpler the action we are
observing and the less complex the character and mind of the man in
question, the more subject to inevitability and the less free do our
actions and those of others appear.

When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a
crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we ascribe a
greater amount of freedom to it. In the case of a crime we most urgently
demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of a virtuous act we
rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case we recognize in it
more individuality, originality, and independence. But if even one of
the innumerable causes of the act is known to us we recognize a certain
element of necessity and are less insistent on punishment for the crime,
or the acknowledgment of the merit of the virtuous act