all? or may we assume that he does so because it seems to him at least a plausible one? If he says what he does just 'because he does,' it is, of course, useless to argue with him. He is not what we call a rational being, and is not moved to embrace this or that conviction by evidence. But being myself a determinist, I will be more generous with him than he is with himself, and will maintain that he is not so wholly unreasonable as he represents himself to be. I will look for some motive which may explain why he takes so strange a position.
A very little reflection upon what 'free-willists' have written reveals that that motive is not far to seek. It is the old confusion of indeterminism, or 'freedom' in a special sense of the word, with freedom in the usual sense, freedom from compulsion. No man in his senses thinks of praising or blaming any one for acts performed under compulsion. If a stronger than Tommy seizes his small hand, forces his fingers to close upon a key and turn it, pries open his mouth and fills it with jam, no sane parent would dream of punishing the involuntary offender. And if a stronger hand catches the boy as his fingers are stealing towards the lock, and drags him forcibly away from the fascinating spot, no one but a fool would regard the precipitate retreat as a triumph of virtue that calls for the crown of some substantial reward. It may or may not be a desirable thing to be born with red hair, but surely no one will maintain that it is a creditable thing. When he is acting under compulsion, Tommy's actions are no more a matter of choice than is the color of his hair, and we recognize this fact in judging him. On this point all classes of moralists are agreed—actions can be creditable or discreditable only if they are voluntary, or only if the actor is free.
We ought never to forget, however, that freedom in this sense of the word means only freedom from compulsion, a freedom to act out the impulses inherent in one's own nature. It is a totally different thing from 'freedom,' that philosophical fiction that has played so large a part in polemical literature. But it is easy to confuse things that pass by the same name, and when the 'free-willist' hurls at us the contemptuous question: 'Do you mean to assert that there can be any credit for actions which we do not freely do?' we too often make haste to affirm that there cannot be, without stopping to ask him whether he means the word freely to be understood with or without the quotation marks. He himself fails to perceive that the word is ambiguous; and seeing, as we all do, that only free actions are deserving of credit, he makes this true of 'free' actions. He thus comes to deny credit to every action that is not causeless. It is evident that he has no good reason for such an assertion, but he has at least a reason; he has simply fallen into a confusion, and to do this is human, while to embrace a doctrine 'freely,' or for no reason at all, appears positively inhuman.
