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Freedom Of The Will Or The Extent Of Its Control


We have seen in this discussion that will is a mode of control--control

of our thoughts and, through our thoughts, of our actions. Will may be

looked upon, then, as the culmination of the mental life, the highest

form of directive agent within us. Beginning with the direction of the

simplest movements, it goes on until it governs the current of our life

in the pursuit of some distant ideal.



LIMITATIONS OF
THE WILL.--Just how far the will can go in its control,

just how far man is a free moral agent, has long been one of the mooted

questions among the philosophers. But some few facts are clear. If the

will can exercise full control over all our acts, it by this very fact

determines our character; and character spells destiny. There is not the

least doubt, however, that the will in thus directing us in the

achievement of a destiny works under two limitations: First, every

individual enters upon life with a large stock of inherited

tendencies, which go far to shape his interests and aspirations. And

these are important factors in the work of volition. Second, we all

have our setting in the midst of a great material and social

environment, which is largely beyond our power to modify, and whose

influences are constantly playing upon us and molding us according to

their type.



THESE LIMITATIONS THE CONDITIONS OF FREEDOM.--Yet there is nothing in

this thought to discourage us. For these very limitations have in them

our hope of a larger freedom. Man's heredity, coming to him through ages

of conflict with the forces of nature, with his brother man, and with

himself, has deeply instilled in him the spirit of independence and

self-control. It has trained him to deliberate, to choose, to achieve.

It has developed in him the power to will. Likewise man's environment,

in which he must live and work, furnishes the problems which his life

work is to solve, and out of whose solution will receives its only true

development.



It is through the action and interaction of these two factors, then,

that man is to work out his destiny. What he is, coupled with what he

may do, leads him to what he may become. Every man possesses in some

degree a spark of divinity, a sovereign individuality, a power of

independent initiative. This is all he needs to make him free--free to

do his best in whatever walk of life he finds himself. If he will but do

this, the doing of it will lead him into a constantly growing freedom,

and he can voice the cry of every earnest heart:



Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul!

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!



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