without at the same time appreciating that he is free to choose whether
he will obey. I may see a storm sweeping toward me and know that behind
it is resistless force, and know, also, that to step outside the track
of that storm is impossible; and it is conceivable that a soul may know
itself as able to think, feel, act, and, at the same time, be under the
dominion of forces before which it is powerless. The practical question,
therefore, for all in this human world is not, are there spiritual
laws? but, may we choose for ourselves whether we will obey or disobey
them? Until the soul knows itself to be free to choose, there will be no
deep feeling of obligation, without which there can be no motive
impelling toward the heights. Here also we walk in the dark. The genesis
of the consciousness of freedom has never been observed. DuBois-Reymond
has called it one of "the seven riddles of science." We are no nearer
the solution of the problem than were our fathers a thousand years ago.
But one thing at least we do know: He who believes himself to be a
puppet in the hands of unseen forces will never fight them. If freedom
is a fiction the universe is not only unmoral, but immoral. The final
argument for freedom is consciousness. I know I could have chosen
differently from what I did. But how do I know? The process cannot be
pushed farther back. Consciousness is ultimate and authoritative. But
what then shall be said of heredity? A child when first born is little
but a bundle of sensibilities. Its growth seems to be but the unfolding
of inherited tendencies. Every man is what his ancestors have made him
plus what he has absorbed from his environment. How can we say then that
any are free? That man who is surly, uncomfortable, ugly, as hard to
endure as a March wind, is but the extension of his father. When one
knows the elder it is difficult to do otherwise than pity the younger.
He is but living the tendencies which were born in him and which are an
inseparable part of his nature. He cannot be genial and urbane. Are not
some born moral cripples as others are born with physical deformities?