al terms according to their special
qualities. In this way the silly speculations with respect to the
freedom of the will which have wasted thousands of years are not only
entirely removed but are replaced by something positive, something
useful for practical life." So freedom of the will consists in this
that reason impels men to the right and irrationality to the left and
according to this parallelogram of forces the true direction is that
of the diagonal. Freedom would therefore be the average between
insight and impulse, between understanding and lack of understanding,
and its degree would to use an astronomical expression be empirically
established by the "personal equation." But a few pages later we read
"We establish moral responsibility upon freedom by which we only mean
susceptibility to known motives according to the measure of natural
and acquired reason. All such motives in spite of antagonism realise
themselves in action with the inevitability of natural law, but we
count upon this inevitable necessity when we deal with morals."

This second definition of freedom which is quite opposed to the first
is nothing but a very weak paraphrase of Hegel's notions on the
subject. Hegel was the first man to make a proper explanation of the
relations of freedom and necessity. In his eyes freedom is the
recognition of necessity. "Necessity is blind only in so far as it is
not understood." Freedom does not consist in an imaginary independence
of natural laws but in a knowledge of these laws and in the
possibility thence derived of applying them intelligently to given
ends. This is true both as regards the laws of nature and of those
which control the spiritual and physical existence of man
himself,--two classes of laws which we can distinguish as an
abstraction but not in reality. Freedom of the will consists in
nothing but the ability to come to a decision when one is in
possession of a knowledge of the facts. The freer the judgment of a
man then in relation to a given subject of discussion so much the more
necessity is there for his arrival at a positive decision. On the
other hand lack of certainty arising from ignorance which apparently
chooses voluntarily between many different and contradictory
possibilities of decision shows thereby its want of freedom, its
control by things which it should in reality control. Freedom,
therefore, consists in mastery over ourselves and external nature
founded upon knowledge of the