Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 15: Psychology and Scientific Methods
What is it to be free? You can not be free unless you are free from something; what Is it from which the will 1s free? It is free, first, from the necessity of deciding upon any one course of action, rather than its Opposite, or than no action at all. It is free, ante cedently, from the necessity of deciding at once, in advance of the most mature deliberation. In a word, we can choose, and take our time about it. We can weigh what it is we contemplate doing, and realize how our feelings and inclinations and previsions and deepest instincts bear upon it. We can make quite sure what we want before we speak the final word. So that, when the decision finally comes, it will be the expression of our innermost, our entire nature. Now this is what we originally and properly mean by our wills being free. And this is the only kind of freedom essential to morality. Moreover, it is an obvious and undeniable fact, a fact of experience; nobody can question that we are free in this sense. I propose to call this our empirical freedom. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
