But psychologists have assured us that the giving or withholding of this consent is automatic; that physical forces are still at work; that a man has a mob inside of his head even when there is no mob without; and that what he does seemingly of his own volition is but the net result of the pullings and haulings of this interior horde of instincts, desires and stimulators. Moreover, these forces themselves came either from parents or environment, and the man himself is but their sum--he is his own inner mob. Nor can it be denied that the law of the Conservation of Energy gave psychologists the right of the argument. Since Newton, only the very wisest of men have had any intellectual excuse for believing themselves either real or free. “Analysis, in tracing down the sources of [physical action],” says Lillie, “seems always to restate determinism; it shows the will to be motivated; motives have their natural origins; actions not consciously motivated are either habitual and referable to past motivation, or are instinctive and determined by heredity. In either case we seem to have a mechanistic determination.” Having thus fairly stated the enemy’s argument, he goes further and admits that “although voluntary action affects mechanical change and seems free, the ‘energy balance sheet’ of a man shows no conflict with the law of conservation, indicating that there is no creation of energy within the organism.... Classical physics thus seems definitely incompatible with the idea of freedom. Accordingly, scientific men--and somewhat curiously biologists in larger proportion than physicists--have commonly regarded freedom as a delusion. In so doing they have created more difficulties than they have resolved; certainly the inner conviction of freedom has not been abolished in the minds of most thinking men.” There are one or two points to be noted here. “Somewhat curiously, biologists in larger proportion than physicists” have been willing to abandon the free-will hypothesis. He doubtless means comparatively recent biologists, men who have taken their foundation physics from the books regarded as authoritative in their school days. Or perhaps there is another reason. Following the Idol of the Tribe, they look below them for their models, and seem to feel obliged to make their subjects as much like the machinist’s subjects as possible. And when they deal with man they are shut off from the corrective influences of free experiment. Mistakes in speculative biology are not at once apparent. They are not immediately applied, and returns are slow in coming in. But I am willing that the enemy should take what comfort he can from the biologists. He may say, if he likes, that biologists are the ones who call life mechanical because biologists are the ones who work closest to life. Lillie happens to be a biologist himself--a biologist of details, not of generalities.