which we shall touch, stands that tremendous word--_will_.

Have you ever attempted to gauge the mystery, to sound the depth of
meaning implied in the simple sentence "I will"?

First of all what is the significance of "I"? You are the only one who
can say it of yourself. Any other must speak of you as "he" or "she";
but "I" is your own inalienable possession.

This is the mystery of personality. That accumulation of experience,
that consciousness of identity which you possess as absolutely, uniquely
your own; which none other can share with you in the remotest degree. "A
thing we consider to be unconscious, an animal to be conscious, a person
to be self-conscious."

This leads on to a further mystery, alike concerned with so apparently
simple a matter that its real complexity escapes us.

"I _will_": I, the self-conscious person, have made up my mind what
I am going to do, and, physical obstacles excepted, I will do it.

The freedom of man's will has been the subject of endless dispute from
every point of view, theistic, atheistic, Christian and non-Christian.

Merely as a philosophic controversy it has but little bearing upon daily
life. The staunchest necessitarian, who argues _theoretically_ that
even when he says "I will" he is under the compulsion of external force,
yet acts _practically_ in exactly the same fashion as the rest of
mankind.