freedom in a finite being. Perfect freedom
belongs only to infinity; finiteness implies limitations. Popular
theology usually assumes, or appears to assume, that every individual
is a perfectly free agent able at all times to distinguish and to
choose between the higher and the lower, and as liable to choose the
one as the other. There is another kind of theologising, of course,
which speaks of the weakened or corrupted will due to our fallen
nature, that I must let alone for the present. What I want to point
out is that there is not, and never has been, an act of the will in
which a man, without bias in either direction, has deliberately chosen
evil in the presence of good. Under such circumstances no being in his
sober senses would ever choose evil; enlightened self-interest alone
would forbid the possibility of such a choice. Freedom of the will in
this sense has never existed. The truth is that we should not be
conscious of the possession of a will but for the conflict between
desire and duty, or the necessity of choosing between one impulse and
another. After all, the moral choices of life are but few in number.
The things we go on doing day by day are the things that for the most
part we know we must do, and we scarcely reflect upon the matter. When
some question emerges which demands a moral choice we know it at once
by the fact that we have to take our limitations into account.
Something has to be overcome if the higher is chosen, and, without that
overcoming, there is no real assertion of the will. It is no heroism
in me to avoid getting drunk, but it may mean a tremendous assertion of
the moral reserves in some poor fellow who knows the power of the drink
craving. The same observation holds good of all human life. My weak
points are not my neighbour's, and his are not mine. Neither of us is
in a position to estimate the other's strength of will, but we both
know that in our own case an absolutely unfettered moral choice has
never been made. But for our limitations and imperfections we should
know nothing whatever of the choice between right and wrong. Free
will, in the sense of unlimited freedom of choice, does not exist. The
only freedom we possess is like that of a bird in a cage; we can choose
between the higher and the lower standing ground, a choice called for
by the very fact that we are in prison, but we cannot choose where the
cage shall go.

No doubt these considerations will meet wit