It is now customary with the advocates of the doctrine of necessity to express it by a different word, and call it the doctrine of determinism.  The purpose of changing the word is to get rid of all associations with the idea of compulsion; just so in Science it is thought better to get rid of the words cause and effect, and substitute invariable sequence, in order to get rid of the notion of some compulsion recognisable by us in the cause to produce the effect.  Determinism does not say to a man ‘you will be forced to act in a particular way;’ but ’you will assuredly do so.’  There will be no compulsion; but the action is absolutely certain.  Just as on a given day the moon will eclipse the sun, so in given circumstances you will do the precise thing which it is your character in such circumstances to do.  And your sense of freedom is simply the sense that the action proceeds from yourself and not from any force put upon you from without.

But this too does not solve the problem.  It is true that in regard to a very large proportion of our actions the sense of freedom seems to be no more than negative.  We do what it is our custom, our inclination, our character to do.  We are not conscious of any force being put upon us; but neither are we conscious of using any force ourselves.  We float as it were down the stream, or hurry along with a determined aim, but having no desire nor purpose to the contrary, the question of freedom or necessity never seems to arise.  It is even possible and common for us not to know ourselves as well as others know us, and to do many things which an observer would predict as sure to be our actions, but which we ourselves fancy to be by no means certain.  Even in these cases we sometimes awake to the fact that what we are thus allowing in our lives is not consistent with the law of duty, and, do what we may, we cannot then escape the conviction that we are to blame, and that we had power to act otherwise if only we had chosen to exert the power.  But it is when a conflict arises between duty and inclination that our inner certainty of our own freedom of will becomes clear and unconquerable.  In the great conflicts of the soul between the call of duty and the power of temptation there are two forces at work upon us.  We are never for a moment in doubt which is ourselves and which is not ourselves; which is the free agent and which is the blind force; which is responsible for the issue, and which is incapable of responsibility.  There is in this case a real sense of compulsion from without, and a real sense of resistance to that compulsion from within.  It is impossible in this case to account for the sense of being a free agent, by saying that this merely means that we are conscious of no external force.  We are conscious of an external force and we are conscious that this will of ours which struggles against it is not an external force, but our very selves, and this distinction between the will and the forces against which the will is