Those who believe in Free Will adduce a proof of it which they derive by the method of introspection. Man, they say, will never be convinced that he is not free, that his actions are not determined by his own will alone, for he has the incontrovertible consciousness of the contrary. He is quite clear on the point that he does a thing because it is his will to do so, that he had the choice of doing it or not, that he does what he wants, that he comes to his decision owing to considerations, inclinations, moods or intentions which are perfectly known to him, if to him only. At the Sorbonne in Paris they still remember the professor--when the anecdote was told me Victor Cousin was named as the hero, but I cannot guarantee that it was he and no other--who used to say in his lecture on Free Will: "Man's will is free. There is no need to prove this by giving reasons. We feel it immediately as a truth. I will show you. I will raise my right arm. I raise it"--here he raised his right arm with a commanding gesture, kept it for a short time in this position, and added triumphantly: "You see that my will is free." His hearers broke into enthusiastic applause at this triumphant demonstration. To-day they would receive it with loud laughter. We have learnt to seek the roots of most, perhaps of all, human actions in the subconsciousness. There they are worked out under influences which cannot be perceived by introspection and in which inborn and acquired inclinations, experiences, organic conditions at the time, instincts, attractions and repulsions play a decisive part. They rise ready made into consciousness, and the latter, not having seen them being formed, persuades itself that it has produced them spontaneously, and imagines reasons why it willed to do actions that were determined outside its sphere. The professor who authoritatively states, "I wish to raise my right arm and therefore I do it," certainly says this in all good faith, but equally certainly he is ignorant. He is not aware of the play of forces which end in his gesture. He raises his right arm, which he believes he chooses with complete freedom, because he is in the habit of using his right arm by preference; if he had been left-handed he would have announced his wish to raise his left arm, and would have been equally convinced that he had decided, with complete freedom, for his left arm. If he suffered from chronic muscular rheumatism in one of his arms, so that it would trouble him or hurt him to move it, he would unconsciously choose the other, sound arm, and maintain just as positively that he had done so with complete freedom. I have mentioned as instances two particularly crude and therefore very obvious reasons which may determine the action of this simple-minded professor without his being aware of it. But each one of our more complicated, and even of our simplest, movements is the outcome of numberless subtle causes which