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While spontaneity is the cardinal fact of mind, so much so as to be essential to any apprehension of mind as mind, it has more frequently been discussed as liberty. Proof of the actual possession of liberty by man as a voluntary agent, and a precise statement of what is involved therein, will be presented later. Liberty is to be distinguished on the one side from those necessary connections which are causal in character, and on the other from chance, the denial of all dependence on antecedents. Indeed, strictly construed, there can be no chance events. The positive notions of causation and liberty, which cover the entire phenomenal field, do not permit them. It is only under a qualified form, as events with unknown or incalculable causes, that chance ever appears in the field of facts. Liberty allows the influence of motives, but not their measured, definite, irresistible influence. We admit and deny in the same instant the application of the word influence, admit the word in its substance, deny it in the form which its connection with causal events has given it. Herein is the peculiar and primitive character of the conception, that of a connection which is not necessary, of persuasion which is not imperative in either branch of the alternative, of influence which does not push with a fixed, determinative force towards a given volition. The will is neither capricious, nor mathematically calculable in its action. It is free, and submits freely, so far as it submits to the motives before it. There is no great difficulty in this conception so long as we let it alone. It is when we begin to compare it with other conceptions, that its peculiarity appears, and this we are liable to mistake for intrinsic absurdity, falsity.

This idea of liberty the motives lying before the will, not back of it; persuading, not impelling it is primitive, and brought by the mind to the explanation of a class