There is no such thing as an act of pure will. Peters, Willenswelt, 126—“Jedes Wollen ist ein Etwas wollen”—“all willing is a willing of some thing”; it has an object which the mind conceives, which awakens the sensibility, and which the will strives to realize. Cause without alternative is not true cause. J. F. Watts: “We know causality only as we know will, _i. e._, where of two possibles it makes one actual. A cause may therefore have more than one certain effect. In the external material world we cannot find _cause_, but only _antecedent_. To construct a theory of the will from a study of the material universe is to seek the living among the dead. Will is power to _make_ a decision, not to _be made_ by decisions, to decide between motives, and not to be determined by motives. Who conducts the trial between motives? Only the self.” While we agree with the above in its assertion of the certainty of nature’s sequences, we object to its attribution even to nature of anything like necessity. Since nature’s laws are merely the habits of God, God’s causality in nature is the regularity, not of necessity, but of freedom. We too are free at the strategic points. Automatic as most of our action is, there are times when we know ourselves to have power of initiative; when we put under our feet the motives which have dominated us in the past; when we mark out new courses of action. In these critical times we assert our manhood; but for them we would be no better than the beasts that perish. “Unless above himself he can erect himself, How mean a thing is man!”