NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

and argument. Each subserves a feasible, practical purpose.

It may be farther objected, that liberty so defined is synonymous with chance. It is not. The ground of action and there remains a most adequate and complete ground is simply transferred from the motives to the will, from the outside to the inside, from secondary and causal agents to a primary and independent one. "We must, indeed, give up all hope of conceiving this under forms of the imagination, or, of the understanding through analogical judgments; but let alone, it is just as intelligible as red, or sweet, or hard, or as causation itself, which, for some inscrutable reason, seems to be thought by many to be so perfectly translucent a notion as to be the only proper solvent for everything else. If we could get over the futile feeling that everything must be like something else, a habit of mind confirmed by physical inquiry, we should have no more theoretical, than we have practical difficulty with liberty, claiming hourly its fullest consequences from child and adult, from friend and foe.

Lesson 105 - 8. Proof of liberty -- Not found in consciousness - p.411

8. "What are the proofs of the existence of the power of choice as now defined? Our analysis, our rejection of this and that explanation as insufficient, have proceeded on the claims of an intuitive notion. We have denied the conclusions which seemed incompatible with perfect freedom, which furtively subjected the mind once more to the same forces which drive the world. Our proof of the existence of this power is not found directly in consciousness. If it were, the question would hardly admit of dispute. The evidence of consciousness is negative rather than positive.

We are conscious of the presence of motives, we are conscious of volitions, these are phenomenal; we are not conscious of the connection between the two, this is not phenomenal. We are negatively, indeed, aware of no restraint;