But the modern problem of Determinism and Free Will has meaning enough for us all, without bringing any transcendental relation into the question. Let us state briefly the position of the Determinists. It is held by them that every human thought—in fact, every mental change whether of the nature of volition, thought, or emotion—is a necessary effect of certain antecedent causes, just like every change in the material world. Every act of will is, on this view, the mechanically accurate resultant of two forces: (_a_) the particular nature of the man who wills; (_b_) the circumstances which supplied the occasion for the volition. It would seem to follow from this that no man can be held morally accountable for his actions. Were we sufficiently acquainted with his nature and with the course of external circumstances, we could predict his action throughout his whole lifetime as surely as we can foretell an eclipse. He is what he has been made by the circumstances of his life acting on the whole mental and temperamental make-up which he inherited from his parents. He does good or ill as a tree bears good fruit or bad according to its nature and to the treatment it has received. The old theory of Free Will, which was content to declare that each man’s choice in any ethical situation presented to him by life was not imposed on him by the will of a Deity but was _his own_ choice, thus making him responsible to God and man for his acts, evidently requires to be restated in view of the conception of scientific Determinism just described, which does not seek to impose on man the will of any other personal being. But when we come to restate it, the distinction between Free Will and Determinism appears to be by no means so clear and intelligible as it seemed at first sight. The essence of the Determinist theory is simply that the same man will always, under the same set of external circumstances, act in exactly the same way. But how far does the advocate of Free Will really deny this? Imagine a man whom we regard as a type of honour and integrity, a General Gordon, for instance, in the position of being offered a bribe to betray a trust reposed in him. We are quite assured that he would reject it, and that he would reject it again and again to the end of the chapter. So long as his mind and character remained unchanged, his action would never vary. Was his will therefore not free? And if so, how do we distinguish its freedom from scientific Determinism?