have next to consider the ulterior
question whether upon this theory the Will may be properly regarded as a
free agent.

By a free agent is understood an agent that is able to act without
restraint, or spontaneously. The word 'free,' therefore, bears a very
different meaning when applied exclusively to the Will, and when
applied more generally to the living organism. For we may properly say
that a man, or an animal, is free when he, or it, is at liberty to act
in accordance with desire. Touching the fact of freedom in this sense
there is, of course, no question. We have not to consider the possible
freedom of man, but the possible freedom of Will; we have not to
contemplate whether a man may be free to do what he wills, but whether
he can be free to will what he wills. Such being the question, we have
to consider it in relation to the three philosophical theories already
stated--Materialism, Spiritualism, and Monism.

For the theory of Materialism the present question has no existence. If
this announcement appears startling, it can only be because no
materialist has ever taken the trouble to formulate his own theory with
distinctness. For, as previously shown, Materialism necessarily involves
the doctrine of conscious automatism; but, if so, the Will is concluded
not to be an agent at all, and therefore it becomes idle to discuss
whether, in any impossible exercise of its agency, it is free or subject
to restraint. The most that in this connexion could logically stand to
be considered by the advocates of Materialism would be whether or not
the adventitious and inefficacious feelings of subjectivity which are
associated with cerebral activity are determinate or free; but this
would probably be regarded on all hands as a somewhat useless topic of
discussion, and certainly in any case would have no reference to the
question of free _agency_. The point to be clearly understood is that,
according to the materialistic theory, a motor is distinct from a
motive, although in some unaccountable manner the motor is able to cause
the motive. But the motive, when thus caused, is not supposed to exert
any causal influence on bodily action; it is supposed to begin and end
as a motive, or never itself to become a motor. In other words, as
before stated, the Will is not supposed to be an agent; and, therefore,
to this theory the doctrine of free-will and of determinism are alike
irrelevant. We need not wait to prove that this importan