Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/549

535 chosen, its roots lie to a great extent in the unseen region of instinctive and unreasoned impulses.

And this brings us to another aspect of the concept of freedom, which the determinist cannot afford to ignore. Man's liberty implies that, while his acts are, like all other natural events, determined by antecedent conditions, the immediate medium of determination is the self. What I shall be or do tomorrow, however imperfectly known to myself or others, is absolutely, certainly, and irrevocably fixed in the nature of things. But to a very large extent indeed, this 'I' of tomorrow is simply the outcome of the 'I' of today, as the latter is similarly the product of the 'I' of yesterday. The Ego is not a mere loose agglomeration of separate psychical particles, it has an organic unity of its own, however difficult it may be to describe this unity in terms of any other. In the adult human being the mental life has, as it were, solidified; the richer, the more complex the experience has been, the further has this process of individualization gone on. At the earliest and most plastic stage of existence the acts are but slightly colored by the peculiarities of the personal character. The stimulus gives rise to the motion spontaneously and almost immediately. But the act which is deliberately carried out after full reflection is the exponent of a formed and relatively stable character. It is when the principal cause of an action is to be found in its relation to the permanent core of thoughts and feelings, which form the substantial center round which the more transient experiences group themselves, that the action is truly the man's action,—that it is free. What we do is never undetermined, but in so far as we are free agents it is determined by ourselves. It is true of a human being, what Spinoza long ago said of God, that his freedom consists in this, that he acts always from the necessity of his own nature. Consequently, the individual whose nature is still so unformed and inchoate that the acts he calls his are only due to the direct influence of outside forces, and are not expressions of his own personal character, has not attained to freedom. Like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind