all present in the type possessing them: sensation and intellect must be there, determining will, in however low a stage each may be. Let us take an elementary case: some action of an animal has caused a sensation of pleasure, or a sensation of pain; the intellect memories the succession between action and sensation; the remembrance of the pleasure, or of the pain, determines the organism to repeat, or to avoid, the action connected with the pleasure, or with the pain. This determination of the organism to action is what we call will. It is obvious that in the brutes it is determined by memory of pleasure and of pain. Is it otherwise in man?
A sane psychology answers this question in the negative. Pleasure and pain are the ultimate determining causes of all volitions, however they may be obscured by intervening notions. Even those who incur pain on religious grounds do it to "please God", so that even with them pleasure is the determining cause. As Herbert Spencer well says: "If there be any who believe that human beings were created to be unhappy, and that they ought to continue living to display their unhappiness for the satisfaction of their creator, such believers are obliged to use this standard of judgment; for the pleasure of their diabolical God is the end to be achieved" (Data of Ethics, p. 46).
Will is, then, determined by pleasure and pain, and hence was defined by Hobbes as merely "the last appetite", desires and aversions competing until one triumphs and emerges from the conflict as "will". But, it is alleged, we are "free" to choose. The word "free" is misleading in this connexion. Freedom means liberty of action, self-determination. It means absence of external restraint or compulsion, not absence of internal causation. A man is "free to choose" when his action is determined by his own volition and is unrestricted by any limitation imposed by others, when no outside power hinders or directs the current of his desire. But this freedom of action does not imply the non-determination of will. I am free to drop a weight on the table, if I choose to do so, but if there be lying on the table a delicate piece of china which I prize, I shall not choose to drop the weight on it: "I can if I like;" quite so, for my action is determined by my liking; but I cannot like to do so, because the breaking of my china would cause me pain, and avoidance
