There are, however, those to whom human freedom presents itself, not as a contradiction to Divine omniscience, but as a contradiction in terms. Man's choice of a course of conduct, they argue, cannot be thought of as other than { 157} determined by an efficient cause; but if it is so determined, in what sense can it be free? An uncaused act is strictly speaking unthinkable; but do we not affirm that acts are uncaused when we speak of them as free--in other words, is not the only alternative to Determinism what might be called _in_determinism? The answer is (_a_) that every choice is certainly the result of an efficient cause; but (_b_) the fact of this being so interferes in no wise with the reality of liberty, nor does it contradict the universality of the law of causation. For _the efficient cause is the man himself_, and the fact that he can choose is attested in the very act of choice--which would not be "choice" if there were not at least two real alternatives. We do not quarrel with the obvious truth, stated by Mill, that the will is determined by motives; we contest the assumption that a "free" act is an "uncaused" act. The act is caused or determined by the free choice of a causal self; in strict parlance, indeed, we should have to say that neither acts nor wills, but only human selves, are free. The will is not self-determined, but determined by a self; and this self is able not only to choose between different motives, but to attend to one set of motives to the neglect of others, and even to create motives in order to become able to make a difficult decision.
Let us, however, guard against a possible misconstruction by saying that there is all the difference between this conception of _freedom_ { 158} and the mere _spontaneity_ which is recognised by the followers both of Spinoza and Hegel, a difference which was luminously brought out by Martineau.[10] The Spinozist doctrine of spontaneity, as Mr. Picton points out, means that the individual follows an impulse which "has its antecedents . . . in the chain of invariable sequences." [11] Man, in this view, is "free" to do what he wants, because he wants it; he is _not_ free in the sense that he _could_ have wanted something different.[12] Nothing could be more frank than Mr. Picton's statements on this point--as when he speaks of the "_free_ man's" sense that "all things are of God, and _could not have been otherwise_:"