at least as susceptible of the opposite view--viz. that it is subsuming
the natural into the super-natural, or spiritualizing the material: and
a pure agnostic, least of all, should have anything to say as against
either of these alternative points of view. Or we may state the matter
thus: in as far as pure reason can have anything to say in the matter,
she ought to incline towards the view of my doctrine spiritualizing the
material, because it is pretty certain that we could know nothing about
natural causation--even so much as its existence--but for our own
volitions.


_Free Will_[52].

Having read all that is said to be worth reading on the Free Will
controversy, it appears to me that the main issues and their logical
conclusions admit of being summed up in a very few words, thus:--

1. A writer, before he undertakes to deal with this subject at all,
should be conscious of fully perceiving the fundamental distinction
between responsibility as merely legal and as also moral; otherwise he
cannot but miss the very essence of the question in debate. No one
questions the patent fact of responsibility as legal; the only question
is touching responsibility as moral. Yet the principal bulk of
literature on Free Will and Necessity arises from disputants on both
sides failing to perceive this basal distinction. Even such able writers
as Spencer, Huxley and Clifford are in this position.

2. The root question is as to whether the will is caused or un-caused.
For however much this root-question may be obscured by its own abundant
foliage, the latter can have no existence but that which it derives