The answer will be clear to those who accept the foregoing analysis of the elements of choice. The Will is neither a faculty of perception nor a faculty of judgment, but a power of free choice. Free as it is, _it can only act on what is presented to it_; and here, beyond question, it is subject to serious limitations. Every man has round his soul, as it were, a refracting medium, through which the external objects that excite the Will to action must normally pass before they reach the centres of decision and control. And this medium is probably never quite the same in any two individuals. Often it is very widely different. The sight of an unguarded heap of treasure may appear to one man simply in the aspect of a perfectly legitimate opportunity for enriching himself. To another man it may come as a violent temptation to do what he knows in his soul to be wrong. A third, equally needy, equally capable of enjoying all that wealth represents, may never have a thought on the subject except that of protecting the treasure for its true owner. The object is the same, the physical perception of it is the same, but the ‘apperception’ in each case is as different as Peter Bell’s perception of the “primrose by the river’s brim” was from that of Wordsworth. This difference is caused by the modifying influence of temperament, training, all that forms a man’s disposition, whether acquired or inherited. It is as though each man moved in an atmosphere, an _aura_ of his own which colours all the objects of his thought. Whether _every_ invitation to action that can be presented to the Will must necessarily pass through this _aura_ is a very obscure question and one on which I do not at present wish to dogmatize. But it is certain that the great majority pass through it. Thus on every occasion where the Will is exercised, it has to act not only on the facts which are perceived but _as_ they are perceived. Now so far as the influence of what is called apperception is concerned we are in the realm of natural law. Each man, to that extent, is unquestionably under the dominion of his environment, that is to say of geographic, historic, social, and other influences which affect whole communities, and which vary but slowly when they vary at all. The Will, in fact, acts within the framework of nature and its laws exactly as does that directive agency to which, in the view of the writer, is to be attributed the phenomenon of progressive evolution from lower forms of life to higher forms, that is, from forms which admit of less life to those which admit of more. The Will is really this directive agency coming into consciousness in Mind.