the law of causality, because it discovered the causes which enable us to foresee their course.  Thus weather prognosis has made wonderful progress by the help of a network of telegraphically connected meteorological stations, which succeeded in demonstrating the connection between cause and effect in the case of hurricanes, as well as of any other physical phenomenon.  It is evident that the idea of accident, applied to physical nature, is unscientific.  Every physical phenomenon is the necessary effect of the causes that determined it beforehand.  If those causes are known to us, we have the conviction that that phenomenon is necessary, is fate, and, if we do not know them, we think it is accidental.  The same is true of human phenomena.  But since we do not know the internal and external causes in the majority of cases, we pretend that they are free phenomena, that is to say, that they are not determined necessarily by their causes.  Hence the spiritualistic conception of the free will implies that every human being, in spite of the fact that their internal and external conditions are necessarily predetermined, should be able to come to a deliberate decision by the mere fiat of his or her free will, so that, even though the sum of all the causes demands a no, he or she can decide in favor of yes, and vice versa.  Now, who is there that thinks, when deliberating some action, what are the causes that determine his choice?  We can justly say that the greater part of our actions are determined by habit, that we make up our minds almost from custom, without considering the reason for or against.  When we get up in the morning we go about our customary business quite automatically, we perform it as a function in which we do not think of a free will.  We think of that only in unusual and grave cases, when we are called upon to make some special choice, the so-called voluntary deliberation, and then we weigh the reasons for or against; we ponder, we hesitate what to do.  Well, even in such cases, so little depends on our will in the deliberations which we are about to take that if any one were to ask us one minute before we have decided what we are going to do, we should not know what we were going to decide.  So long as we are undecided, we cannot foresee what we are going to decide; for under the conditions in which we live that part of the psychic process takes place outside of our consciousness.  And since we do not know its causes, we cannot tell what will be its effects.  Only after we have come to a certain decision can we imagine that it was due to our voluntary action.  But shortly before we could not tell, and that proves that it did not depend on us alone.  Suppose, for instance, that you have decided to play a joke on a fellow-student, and that you carry it out.  He takes it unkindly.  You are surprised, because that is contrary to his habits and your expectations.  But after a while you learn that your friend had received bad news from home on the preceding morning and was