origo_ of our mental causation, and thus restores to us the doctrine of Liberty with its attendant consequence of Moral Responsibility. It may help to elucidate this matter if we regard it from another point of view. According to Hobbes, 'Liberty is the absence of all impediments to action that are not contained in the nature and intrinsical qualities of the agent.' Now, if we accept this definition, it is easy to show that the theory of Monism is really at one with the doctrine of Liberty. For, in the first place, according to the theory of Monism, the neurosis of the brain could not be what it is without the psychosis of the mind. Consequently, as above shown, it would be equally incorrect to say that the neurosis governs the psychosis, as it would be to say that the psychosis governs the neurosis. But, if so, the Will is free in accordance with Hobbes' definition of freedom. Suppose, for example, that on seeing a bone I think of Professor Flower, then remember that a long time ago I lent his book on Osteology to a friend, and forthwith resolve to ask my friend what has become of it; here my ultimate volition would be unfree if it were the effect of physical processes going on in my brain. But the volition might be free if each of these mental processes were the result of the preceding one, seeing that there may then have been 'an absence of all impediments' to the occurrence of these processes. Of course it will be objected--as I have myself urged in the preceding chapter--that causal action of any kind is incompatible with freedom of volition--that if there be any such causal action, even though it be wholly restricted within the sphere of mind, the Will is really compelled to will as it does will, is determined to determine as it does determine, and hence that its apparent freedom is illusory. Hobbes' definition, it may be urged, when applied to the case of the Will, is equivocal. No doubt a man is free as to his _action_, if there be an 'absence of all impediments' to his action--or, in other words, if he is able to act as he wills to act. But it does not follow that he is free as to his _will_, even though there be an absence of all impediments to his willing as he wills to will. For here the very question is as to whether there are any impediments to his willing otherwise than he does will. The fact that he wills to will as he does will proves that there are no impediments to his willing in that direction; but is there a similar absence of impediments to his willing to will in any other direction? If so, we are still within the lines of determinism. Thus Hobbes' definition of freedom really applies only to freedom of bodily action; not to freedom of volition, seeing that if my will is caused I could not have willed to will otherwise than I did will. Now, the answer which Monism supplies to this objection is that the will itself is here the ultimate agent, and _therefore an agent which must be identified