that the will must be free, he nevertheless allowed--nay, insisted--that he was unable to conceive how it could be so. Such inability in itself does not of course show the Free-will theory to be untrue; and I merely point out the circumstance that Hamilton allowed the supposed fact unthinkable, in order to show how very precarious, even in his eyes, the argument which we are considering must have appeared. Let us then, for this purpose, contemplate his attitude with regard to it a little more closely. He says, "It would have been better to show articulately that Liberty and Necessity are both incomprehensible, as beyond the limits of legitimate thought; but that though the Free-agency of Man cannot be speculatively proved, so neither can it be speculatively disproved; while we may claim for it as a fact of real actuality, though of inconceivable possibility, the testimony of consciousness, that we are morally free, as we are morally accountable for our actions. In this manner the whole question of free- and bond-will is in theory abolished, leaving, however, practically our Liberty, and all the moral instincts of Man entire."[11] From this passage it is clear that Sir W. Hamilton regarded these two counter-theories as of precisely equivalent value in everything save "the testimony of consciousness;" or, as he elsewhere states it, "as equally unthinkable, the two counter, the two one-sided, schemes are thus theoretically balanced. But, practically, our consciousness of the moral law ... gives a decisive preponderance to the doctrine of freedom over the doctrine of fate." But the whole question concerning the freedom of the will has now come to be as to whether or not consciousness _does_ give its verdict on the side of freedom. Supposing we grant that "we are warranted to rely on a deliverance of consciousness, when that deliverance is _that_ a thing is, although we may be unable to think _how_ it can be,"[12] in this case the question still remains, whether our opponents have rightly interpreted the deliverance of their consciousness. I, for one, am quite persuaded that I never perform any action without some appropriate motive, or set of motives, having induced me to perform it. However, I am not discussing this question, and I have merely made the above quotations for the purpose of showing that Sir W. Hamilton appears to identify the _theory_ of Free-will with the _fact_ that we possess a moral sense. He argues throughout as though the theory he advocates were the only one that can explain a given "fact of real actuality." But no one with whom we have to deal questions the fact of our having a moral sense; and to identify this "deliverance of consciousness" with belief in the theory that volitions are uncaused, is, or would now be, merely to abandon the only questions in dispute.