Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/387

No. 4.] with the limitations imposed by environment or external influences. Responsibility may be limited by such forces, but not freedom.

Moreover the burden of the discussion will fall upon the last three points enumerated under the ratio cognoscendi, and this for two reasons. First, the testimony of consciousness is thrown out of court by the advocates of necessitarianism. Second, although the absence of all external agencies affecting choice would prove its freedom, we cannot prove the fact that such a condition of things ever exists, and so must maintain freedom, if it be true at all, in spite of the existence pf environment and its influence. It is also to be noticed that free volition would be proved most decisively if no motives existed to produce it and if volition actually occurred as a fact. It was probably the temptation to consider it in this way which led to the famous illustration of the ass (asinus Buridani) between the two bundles of hay. Undoubtedly, this conception of the case, if it represented the facts, would prove freedom. But no such absence of dominant preferences seems to exist, or even if it be possible, it is so seldom that we cannot reckon with it in the explanation of the majority of our volitions. Besides we have long ago given up the task of proving freedom by showing the absence of motives to volition. We must make it compatible with the existence and influence of motives. Nevertheless the incident of the ass between two bundles of hay is valuable for its suggestion of deliberation between alternatives, which is an important incident in the proof of freedom. There may be no such balance between motives as this story implies, but there may be such a condition as this balance was supposed to imply; namely, one of deliberation, and this will prove an evidence of freedom.

Deliberation implies hesitation between two or more alternatives, and most persons would perhaps assert or suppose that it implied an equilibrium between two equal and opposite inclinations, in which the impulse of one motive neutralized the opposing influence of the other. If we suppose the latter assumption and its applications to be true, we have precisely the