3. But to change a resistance requires force, which (in motion) must act in “the direction of the least resistance,” and hence it is entirely determined from without, and governed by the disposition of the forces it meets. 4. Hence, of _will_, it is an absurdity to talk; _freedom_ or _moral agency_ is an impossible phantom. 5. That there is self-determination in self-consciousness—that it is “self-created”—is to Mr. Spencer the absurd alternative which at once turns the scale in favor of the doctrine that mental phenomena are the productions of external forces. After this, what are we to say of the following? (P. 501): “Notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary, there will probably have arisen in not a few minds the conviction that the solutions which have been given, along with those to be derived from them, are essentially materialistic. Let none persist in these misconceptions.” (P. 502): “Their implications are no more materialistic than they are spiritualistic, and no more spiritualistic than they are materialistic.” If we hold these positions by the side of Kant’s Third Antinomy, we shall see that they all belong to the proof of the “Antithesis,” viz: “There is no freedom, but everything in the world happens according to the laws of nature.” The “Thesis,” viz: “That a causality of freedom is necessary to account fully for the phenomena of the world,” he has not anywhere supported. We find, in fact, only those thinkers who have in some measure mastered the third phase of culture in thought, standing upon the basis presented by Kant in the Thesis. The chief point in the Thesis may be stated as follows: 1. If everything that happens presupposes a previous condition, (which the law of causality states,) 2. This previous condition cannot be a permanent (or have been always in existence); for, if so, its consequence, or the effect, would have always existed. Thus the previous condition must be a thing which has happened. 3. With this the whole law of causality collapses; for (_a_) since each cause is an effect, (_b_) its determining power escapes into a higher member of the series, and, (_c_) unless the law changes, wholly vanishes; there result an indefinite series of effects with no cause; each member of the series is a dependent, has its being in another, which again has its being in another, and hence cannot support the subsequent term. Hence it is evident that this Antinomy consists, first: in the setting up of the law of causality as having absolute validity, which is the antithesis. Secondly, the experience is made that such absolute law of causality is a self-nugatory one, and thus it is to be inferred that causality, to be at all, presupposes an origination in a “self-moved,” as Plato calls it. Aristotle (Metaphysics, xi. 6-7, and ix. 8) exhibits this ultimate as the “self-active,” and the Scholastics take the same, under the designation “_actus purus_,” for the definition of God. The Antinomy thus reduced gives: