action proceed from a rational Being,
and with Fatalism from an irrational one. But in either case the
result is the same: that happens which must happen.

On the other hand the conception of _Moral Freedom_ is inseparable
from that of _Originality_. A man may be said, but he cannot be
conceived, to be the work of another, and at the same time be free in
respect of his desires and acts. He who called him into existence out
of nothing in the same process created and determined his nature--in
other words, the whole of his qualities. For no one can create without
creating a something, that is to say, a being determined throughout
and in all its qualities. But all that a man says and does necessarily
proceeds from the qualities so determined; for it is only the
qualities themselves set in motion. It is only some external impulse
that they require to make their appearance. As a man is, so must he
act; and praise or blame attaches, not to his separate acts, but to
his nature and being.

That is the reason why Theism and the moral responsibility of man are
incompatible; because responsibility always reverts to the creator of
man and it is there that it has its centre. Vain attempts have been
made to make a bridge from one of these incompatibles to the other by
means of the conception of moral freedom; but it always breaks down
again. What is _free_ must also be _original_. If our will is _free_,
our will is also _the original element_, and conversely. Pre-Kantian
dogmatism tried to separate these two predicaments. It was thereby
compelled to assume two kinds of freedom, one cosmological, of the
first cause, and the other moral and theological, of human will. These
are represented in Kant by the third as well as the fourth antimony of
freedom.

On the other hand, in my philosophy the plain recognition of the
strictly necessary character of all action is in accordance with the
doctrine that what manifests itself even in the organic and irrational
world is _will_. If this were not so, the necessity under which
irrational beings obviously act would place their action in conflict
with will; if, I mean, there were really such a thing as the freedom
of individual action, and this were not as strictly necessitated as
every other kind of action. But, as I have just shown, it is this same
doctrine of the necessary character of all acts of will which makes it
needful to regard a man's existence and being as itself the work of
his fre