Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/87

 same necessity. For motivation is only causality passing through knowledge ; the intellect is the medium of the motives, because it is the highest degree of receptivity. By this, however, the law of causality loses nothing whatever of its rigour and certainty; for motives are causes and operate with the same necessity which all causes bring with them. This necessity is easy to perceive in animals because of the greater simplicity of their intellect, which is limited to the perception of what is present. Man's intellect is double : for not only has he intuitive, but abstract, knowledge, which last is not limited to what is present. Man possesses Reason ; he therefore has a power of elective decision with clear consciousness : that is, he is able to weigh against one another motives which exclude each other, as such ; in other terms, he can let them try their strength on his will. The most powerful motive then decides him, and his actions ensue with just the same necessity as the rolling of a ball after it has been struck. Freedom of Will means (not professorial twaddle but) "that a given human being, in a given situation, can act in two different ways." But the utter absurdity of this assertion is a truth as certain and as clearly proved, as any truth can be which passes the limits of pure mathematics. In my Essay on Free Will, to which the Norwegian Society awarded the prize, this truth is demonstrated more clearly, methodically, and thoroughly than has been done before by anyone else, and this moreover with special reference to those facts of our consciousness by which ignorant people imagine that absurdity to be confirmed. In all that is essential however, Hobbes, Spinoza, Priestley, Voltaire,