, especially in relation to future acts, regards himself as
being free within certain limitations to make his own choice of
alternatives, many determinists go so far as to admit that there may be
in any action which is neither reflex nor determined by external causes
solely an element of freedom. This view is corroborated by the
phenomenon of remorse, in which the agent feels that he ought to, and
could, have chosen a different course of action. These two kinds of
determinism are sometimes distinguished as "hard" and "soft"
determinism. The controversy between determinism and libertarianism
hinges largely on the significance of the word "motive"; indeed in no
other philosophical controversy has so much difficulty been caused by
purely verbal disputation and ambiguity of expression. How far, and in
what sense, can action which is determined by motives be said to be
free? For a long time the advocates of free-will, in their eagerness to
preserve moral responsibility, went so far as to deny all motives as
influencing moral action. Such a contention, however, clearly defeats
its own object by reducing all action to chance. On the other hand, the
scientific doctrine of evolution has gone far towards obliterating the
distinction between external and internal compulsion, e.g. motives,
character and the like. In so far as man can be shown to be the product
of, and a link in, a long chain of causal development, so far does it
become impossible to regard him as self-determined. Even in his motives
and his impulses, in his mental attitude towards outward surroundings,
in his appetites and aversions, inherited tendency and environment have
been found to play a very large part; indeed many thinkers hold that the
whole of a man's development, mental as well as physical, is determined
by external conditions.

In the Bible the philosophical-religious problem is nowhere discussed,
but Christian ethics as set forth in the New Testament assumes
throughout the freedom of the human will. It has been argued by
theologians that the doctrine of divine fore-knowledge, coupled with
that of the divine origin of all things, necessarily implies that all
human action was fore-ordained from the beginning of the world. Such an
inference is, however, clearly at variance with the whole doctrine of
sin, repentance and the atonement, as also with that of eternal reward
and punishment, which postulates a real measure of human responsibility.

For the hist