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itself, in its freedom, is the sufficient and entire reason of the volition that follows.

The mind, in the act of choice, is no more ruled by its own states than by external conditions. If it were, liberty would as certainly disappear, as if, in the outset, we placed the will within reach of physical forces. We should do with two steps what we had refused to do with one. The present state of the sensibilities would be determined by previous states, and these by constitutional endowments and external circumstances, and thus the threads of influence, the lines of causation, be at length lodged elsewhere than in the will. Each volition would be the fruit of conditions which it itself had not determined, and thus be as certainly interlocked with the flow of forces as is the mill wheel which revolves in the stream. The one theory evades this result by saying, that the stronger motive does control the will, yet not necessarily. The choice may be, though it never is, against it. The other denies the applicability of the conception, greater and less, and affirms an absolute, unqualified freedom, finding and seeking no explanation in forces expressed in motives.

This admission, that the will may choose the line of action supported by what is termed the weaker motive, involves philosophically all the difficulties of the view which represents it as alike independent of both incentives, and making either a true alternative to the other. There is no philosophical obstacle to supposing that the will does sometimes do what it is admitted that it may do. The statement of an action as possible involves the concession of grounds sufficient to render it intelligible, if it should actually occur. No law of mind can be violated by the happening of that which these laws suffer us to regard as possible. "We must rely on special reasons, not on general principles, to establish the impossibility in given cases of that which