But grant that mind exists in fullest play: How does it work and what its modes of thought? Here consciousness may act, and hold to view A dim outline of powers, contraposed. In such a conflict, every one may seize The doctrine suits him best. Hence different creeds-- Desire battling reason, reason will, And will the weathercock of motive’s wind; Motive the cringing slave of circumstance. And here Charybdis rises; no control Has man o’er circumstance, but circumstance Begets the motive governing the will; Then how can man be free? Yet some may say, Man can obey the motive, or can not. He can, but only when a stronger rules. That we without a motive never act, I do declare, though in the face of Reid. That that is strongest which impels, a child Might know, although Jouffroy exclaims, “You’re reasoning in a circle.” Let us place An iron fragment ’twixt two magnet-bars, What one attracts is thereby stronger proved. Or it may be the really weaker one, But yet, because of nearness to the steel, Possess a relatively greater force. And so of motives, howe’er trivial they, The one that moves is strongest to the mind. To illustrate: Suppose I pare a peach; A friend near by me banteringly asserts That I can not refrain from eating it. Two motives now arise--the appetite, And the desire to prove my self-control. I hesitate awhile, then laughing say, “I would not give the peach to prove you wrong.” But as my teeth press on it, pride springs up, And bids me show that I am not the slave Of appetite, and far away I hurl The tinted, fragrant sphere. Was not each thought Spontaneous? Could I control their rise? How perfectly absurd to talk of choice Between two motives offered to the mind! As if the motive was a horse we’d choose To pull our minds about. There is no choice Until the motive makes it; then we choose, Not ’tween the motives, but the acts. If, then, The spring of action is the motive’s power, The motive being far beyond our sway, Where is our freedom? But a fabled myth! And man but differs from a star in this,-- The laws of stars are fixed and definite, And every movement there can be foretold; Of man, no deed can be foreseen till done. At most we can but form a general guess How he will act, at such a time and place. Even if we knew the motives that would rise, We could not prophesy unless we knew Our subject’s frame of mind; for differently, On different minds, same motives often act. Hence, we can tell the conduct of a friend More surely than a stranger’s, since we know, By long acquaintance, how his motives work. But should new motives rise, we cannot tell Until experience gives us data new.