_To say that the performance of the action is the result of his free will is to say that he determines the cohesion of the psychical states which arouse the action; and as these psychical states constitute himself at the moment, this is to say that these psychical states determine their own cohesion, which is absurd. These cohesions have been determined by experiences—the greater part of them, constituting what we call his natural character, by the experiences of antecedent organisms, and the rest by his own experiences. The changes which at each moment take place in his consciousness are produced by this infinitude of previous experiences registered in his nervous structure, co-operating with the immediate impressions on his senses; the effects of these combined factors being in every sense qualified by the psychical state, general or local, of his organism._ HERMIA SUYDAM CHAPTER I. A SECOND AVENUE HOUSEHOLD. When Crosby Suydam died and left exactly enough money to bury himself, his widow returned to New York, and, taking her two little girls by the hand, presented herself at the old Suydam mansion on Second Avenue. “You must either take care of us or see us go to the poor-house,” she said to her brother-in-law; “I am not strong enough to work, and my relatives are as poor as myself.” And she sank into one of the library chairs with that air of indifference and physical weakness which makes a man more helpless than defiance or curse. Did John Suydam still, in his withered, yellow frame, carry a shrunken remnant of that pliable organ called the heart? His brother’s widow did not add this problem to the others of her vexed existence—she had done with problems forever—but in his little world the legend was whispered that, many years before, the last fragment had dried and crumbled to dust. It must be either dust or a fossil; and, if the latter, it would surely play a merry clack and rattle with its housing skeleton every time the old man drew a long breath or hobbled across the room.