m, Determinism, and
Indeterminism.]

Sect. 97. The question of the _freedom of the will_ furnishes a favorite
controversial topic in philosophy. For the interest at stake is no less
than the individual's responsibility before man and God for his good or
bad works. It bears alike upon science, religion, and philosophy, and is
at the same time a question of most fundamental practical importance.
But this diffusion of the problem has led to so considerable a
complication of it that it becomes necessary in outlining it to define
two issues. In the first place, the concept of freedom is designed to
express generally the distinction between man and the rest of nature. To
make man in all respects _the product and creature of his natural
environment_ would be to deny freedom and accept the radically
_necessitarian_ doctrine. The question still remains, however, as to the
causes which dominate man. He may be free from nature, and yet be ruled
by God, or by distinctively spiritual causes, such as ideas or
character. Where in general the will is regarded as submitting only to a
_spiritual causation_ proper to its own realm, the conception is best
named _determinism_; though in the tradition of philosophy it is held to
be a doctrine of freedom, because contrasted with the necessitarianism
above defined. There remains _indeterminism_, which attributes to the
will a spontaneity that makes possible the _direct presence to it of
genuine alternatives_. The issue may here coincide with that between
intellectualism and voluntarism. If, _e.g._, in God's act of creation,
his ideals and standards are prior to his fiat, his conduct is
determined; whereas it is free in the radical or indeterministic sense
if his ideals themselves are due to his sheer will. This theory involves
at a certain point in action the absence of cause. On this account the
free will is often identified with _chance_, in which case it loses its
distinction from nature, and we have swung round the circle.

[Sidenote: Immortality. Survival and Eternalism.]

Sect. 98. There is similar complexity in the problem concerning
_immortality_. Were the extreme claims of naturalism to be established,
there would be no ground whatsoever upon which to maintain the
immortality of man, mere dust returning unto dust. The philosophical
concept of immortality is due to the supposition that the quintessence
of the individual's nature is divine.[213:18] But several possibilities
are at th