Spontaneous is derived from the Latin _spons_, “will,” which as a noun was obsolete at the classical period of Roman literature and occurred only in such forms as _sponte_, “of one’s own will, of one’s own accord.” If a man acts of his own will, free from and not biassed by the influence of other men, his action is spontaneous. A free man’s action is not arbitrary, unless arbitrariness[15] be the character of the man; it is not an exception to law; it is, if the character of the man is known, calculable in advance, for every free action is spontaneous: it springs immediately from the character of the man; it is the direct expression of his will; it reveals the nature of his very being, thus showing the man himself, and not something beyond or outside of him. Taking the word spontaneity in this sense, we say: Masses gravitate spontaneously; they are self-moving; their motion is due to their gravity, and gravity is their intrinsic nature. Exactly as the laws of mechanics explain the “how” of motions but not why there is motion at all, the “why” depending upon the nature of each moving body, so the “how” of the brain-motions is explicable by mechanical laws, but the “why” depends upon the nature of the moving material. The brain-atoms are possessed of the same spontaneity as the atoms of a gravitating stone. Yet there is present an additional feature; there are present states of awareness, and these states of awareness possess meaning, both of which are items which the chemist cannot find by chemical analysis. Neither states of awareness nor their meanings can be weighed on any scales, be they ever so delicate, nor are they determinable in foot-pounds. Yet while mechanics is not applicable to mental facts, the realm of mentality is by no means to be surrendered to indeterminism. Mr. Peirce describes the domain of mind as the absence of law and the prevalence of absolute chance, of an indetermined and indeterminable sporting. This is not so. While the fact must be recognised that the nature of the mind is not something mechanical, its action is nevertheless determined by laws—not by mechanical laws, but by psychical and mental laws. These psychical and mental laws are in one respect of exactly the same nature as mechanical laws; they describe the samenesses of certain facts of reality. And the facts of the ideal domain of thought, the facts of subjectivity, are no less real than the grosser facts of mechanical motion, which are the facts of objectivity.