as identical with
causality itself. Although it is true that volitions are caused by
motives, yet it is the mind which conditions the motives, and therefore
its own volitions. It is not true that the mind is always the passive
slave of causes, known to it as motives. The human mind is itself a
causal agent, having the same kind of priority within the microcosm as
the World-eject has in the macrocosm. Therefore its motives are in large
part matters of its own creation. In the intricate workings of its own
internal machinery innumerable patterns of thought are turned out, some
of which it selects as good, while others it rejects as bad; but no one
of which could have come into being at all without this causal agency of
the mind itself.

It will probably be objected that even though all this were granted, we
cannot thus save the doctrine of moral responsibility. For it may appear
that the liberty which is thus accorded to the Will is nothing better
than liberty to will at random, as argued in my previous essay. But here
we must observe that although we are thus shown free to will at random,
it does not follow that we are likewise free to act in accordance with
our volitions. And this is a most important distinction, which
libertarians have hitherto failed to notice. If we are free to will in
any direction, it follows, indeed, that we are free to will at random;
but it follows also, and for this very reason, that we are free to will
the _impossible_. True, when we will what is known to be impossible of
execution, we call the act an act of desire; but it is clearly the same
in kind as an act of will, and differs only in not admitting of being
translated into an act of body. Therefore I say that the restriction
which is imposed upon us by the conditions of causality, whether
external or internal, is not any restriction as to willing, but merely
as to doing. It is not in the subjective, but in the objective world
that we encounter the 'bondage of necessity.'

Now, the knowledge that we are thus restricted as to bodily action
imposes that kind of restraint upon volition which is termed rational.
There is nothing in the nature of things to prevent our willing anything
that we wish; but there is something in the nature of things to prevent
our doing everything that we will; and as the practical object of our
volition is that of determining bodily action, we find it expedient to
will only such things as we believe that we can do