we shall be confronted by a fatalism that will allow to us no moral being at all.  If we shall all reach the same place in the end—­if inevitably we shall all do so—­it is quite plain that our freedom to choose in the matter is a freedom that is apparent only.  Mr. Leslie Stephen, it seems, sees this clearly enough.  Once give morality its spiritual and supernatural meaning, and there is, he holds, ’some underlying logical necessity which binds [a belief in hell] indissolubly with the primary articles of the faith.’  Such a system of retribution, he adds, is ‘created spontaneously’ by the ’conscience.  Heaven and hell are corollaries that rise and fall together....  Whatever the meaning of [Greek:  aionios], the fearful emotion which is symbolised, is eternal or independent of time, by the same right as the ecstatic emotion.’  He sees this clearly enough; but the strange thing is that he does not see the converse.  He sees that the Christian conception of morality necessitates the affirmation of hell.  He does not see that the denial of hell is the denial of Christian morality, and that in calling the former a dream, as he does, he does not call the latter a dream likewise.

We can close our eyes to none of these perplexities.  The only way to resist their power is not to ignore them, but to realise to the full their magnitude, and to see how, if we let them take away from us anything, they will in another moment take everything; to see that we must either set our foot upon their necks, or that they will set their feet on ours; to see that we can look them down, but that we can never look them through; to see that we can make them impotent if we will, but that if they are not impotent they will be omnipotent.

But the strongest example of this is yet to come:  and this is not any special belief either as to religion or morals, but a belief underlying both of these, and without which neither of them were possible.  It is a belief which from one point of view we have already touched upon—­the belief in the freedom of the will.  But we have as yet only considered it in relation to physical science.  What we have now to do is to consider it in relation to itself.

What, then, let us ask, is the nature of the belief?  To a certain extent the answer is very easy.  When we speak and think of free-will ordinarily, we know quite well what we mean by it; and we one and all of us mean exactly the same thing.  It is true that when professors speak upon this question, they make countless efforts to distinguish between the meaning which they attach to the belief, and the meaning which the world attaches to it.  And it is possible that in their studies or their lecture-rooms they may contrive for the time being to distort or to confuse for themselves the common view of the matter.  But let the professor once forget his theories, and be forced to buffet against his life’s importunate and stern realities:  let him quarrel with his