Thus on every occasion where the Will is exercised, it has to act not only on the facts which are perceived but _as_ they are perceived. Now so far as the influence of what is called apperception is concerned we are in the realm of natural law. Each man, to that extent, is unquestionably under the dominion of his environment, that is to say of geographic, historic, social, and other influences which affect whole communities, and which vary but slowly when they vary at all. The Will, in fact, acts within the framework of nature and its laws exactly as does that directive agency to which, in the view of the writer, is to be attributed the phenomenon of progressive evolution from lower forms of life to higher forms, that is, from forms which admit of less life to those which admit of more. The Will is really this directive agency coming into consciousness in Mind.
In all life, whether human, animal, or material, there is an element of change and an element of constancy. Between these poles it moves and has its being, nor could life, as we know it, exist for a moment if either of these two opposing but complementary principles were withdrawn. We have now seen that with a full belief in the innovating and incalculable quality of the Will, with the infinite vistas which that belief opens up to human hope and effort, there is yet ample room for the opposing and equally necessary element in life, the element of constancy, uniformity, law. Human Will does not come into nature as a catastrophic force—it develops _pari passu_ with the development of consciousness; and it will naturally be found in its highest development where the whole nature is most wholesomely attuned to the purposes of the cosmic Will.
We have now to notice certain grave objections which every student of modern science and philosophy will expect to see dealt with by a defender of the principle of Free Will.
It has been objected from the evolutionist standpoint that, as no one attributes Free Will to the lower forms of animal life, it is impossible to conceive it as having arisen in man except by a miracle. At what point, it is asked, did it first appear? And if one cannot fix the point, the presumption is supposed to be that it has never appeared at all. It will be remembered that some scientific thinkers such as Mr. A. R. Wallace, and one may add Prof. Reinke, have been so much impressed by the mental difference between man and the beasts that they have assumed the gulf to have been bridged by a catastrophic or miraculous act and not by any evolutionary process.