to act otherwise if only we had chosen to exert the power. But it is
when a conflict arises between duty and inclination that our inner
certainty of our own freedom of will becomes clear and unconquerable. In
the great conflicts of the soul between the call of duty and the power
of temptation there are two forces at work upon us. We are never for a
moment in doubt which is ourselves and which is not ourselves; which is
the free agent and which is the blind force; which is responsible for
the issue, and which is incapable of responsibility. There is in this
case a real sense of compulsion from without, and a real sense of
resistance to that compulsion from within. It is impossible in this case
to account for the sense of being a free agent, by saying that this
merely means that we are conscious of no external force. We are
conscious of an external force and we are conscious that this will of
ours which struggles against it is not an external force, but our very
selves, and this distinction between the will and the forces against
which the will is striving is ineffaceable from our minds. That the will
is often weak and on that account overpowered, and that after a hard
struggle our actions are often determined, not by our wills but by our
passions or our appetites, is unquestionable. Often has the believer to
pray to God for strength to hold fast to right purpose, and often will
he feel that without that strength he must inevitably fall. But he knows
that whatever source may supply the strength, it is he that will have to
use it, and he that will be responsible for using it or neglecting to do
so.

The advocates of determinism urge that every action must have a motive,
and that the man always acts on that motive which is the stronger. The
first proposition may be granted at once. The freedom of the will is
certainly not shown in acting without any motive at all. If there be
any human action which appears to be without any motive, it is not in