Why not give these conceptions rein? Doubtless the earth has undergone catastrophes enough; and we still see cyclone and earthquake, and, in the world of man, tempestuous revolutions. Yet nature makes no leap. Events are led up to and finally occasioned by antecedents, themselves as regular in their course as in their consequences. Catastrophes do not occur uncaused. We could predict them if we knew enough. So we imagine; and are even more certain that every living being is a process of growth and, next, of apparent disintegration and transformation into something else. Our convictions extend further-from individuals in their succeeding generations to the race or species, which likewise we conceive as a slower product of change and development, in fine, as an evolution. Whether or not these thoughts are doomed to future modification, they relate at present to every phase of energy and life, mechanical, chemical, biological, physiological, and psychological.

This being so, we are impelled to find subtly creative action within these processes of growth and evolution. Since life, as we know it, is possible only within conditions which the earth has not always afforded, there was a time when life was not. Therefore life must somehow through the aeons have become. Though an initial instant be inconceivable, nevertheless invisible beginnings, inscrutable becomings, lie behind the anatomies and the physiological functions of plants and animals.

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Intangible are the origins of their somehow generated instincts; and subtle the commencement of the further and more distinctive mentality which seems to evince itself in the higher animals, and unmistakably in homo sapiens. Hence, our best present knowledge and analysis point to a practical creativeness throughout these universal processes of growth and evolution. Indeed fragmentarily glimpsed vistas of an infinite past disclose to us an evolution fulfilling the functions of divine creation. It may be all divine: life may be God immanent. Creation need not spring from a loud fiat, nor yet be catastrophic. It may proceed through inscrutable gradation.

Moreover, through evolution, just as well as through original or interposed creation, a series of organisms may change beyond direct recognition, and slough off all similitude to far-off ancestral antecedents. If this be true of the visible structure and physiology of plants and animals, why should it not hold in the evolution of instinct and mentality? In either case, nature, or God, or evolution, makes no leap, yet reaches something as utterly different as if it had leapt.

Primitive instincts may change in the course of time, and show themselves in modes complex, advanced, and hardly recognizable. Somehow inscrutably, mentality begins to function in the higher animals, and manifests itself in man. The human mind develops; its range deepens and

enlarges, gaining in richness and complexity. It evolves faculties of deliberation and choice. It becomes capable of freedom. Henceforth it must seek its goal in a more perfect intellectual and moral freedom.

Many are the arguments, and portentous is the logic, brought against human freedom. Yet freedom of choice, freedom of attention and volition, are of the essence of the discriminating mind. Arguments against free will make also against mind, against the valid existence and functioning of mind. If it be held that a free human will introduces a new force, disturbs the assumed constancy of energy in nature, the argument drives against the essential functioning of mind itself.

Herein mind seems to separate from matter and physical force. Assume that force as well as matter is constant in the universe. Has any one applied this principle convincingly to organic life growing in intricacy through the successive stages of the world? Apparently it is not true of mind and its manifestations. Look far back over the geologic record, and will it not appear that the amount of mental efficiency increased between the age of trilobites and the age of mammals? Does not the record of the latter age show that the stupider mammals preceded the cleverer ones, and disappeared before them? And was there not still

more mind in homo incipiens and homo sapiens when he came ?

It is but natural that this approach through physics should lead to a conclusion of complete determinism, since it does not include the one factor in which freedom is most likely to be found, the human mind. Nor does it take full account of organic, though unthinking life, which shows whims of its own, and is not yet wholly predictable. If we regard the action of our own minds, or consider the conduct and achievements of the great men of history, we shall not abide by any such conclusion. Perhaps we shall find the human mind acting in freedom, even under the will of God.

Now since we are historians and humanists, and but casual amateurs of physics, our convictions are likely to be on the side of freedom. Only looking backward we recognize, in the spirit of our age, that the freedom of the human mind did not break forth with suddenness. Behind it lies admittedly the more automatic life of beasts and plants, the controlling qualities of the human germcells, and the mysterious pre-natal life of every human individual. Infused with masterful and plastic life, the human embryo makes its manifold and marvellous advance from the fertilized egg to the fully formed human being that emerges from the womb. One would not ascribe judgement and will to the embryo, nor much to babyhood. But something like judgement and free determination comes with the growth of body and mind and the impress of experience through the years of child

hood and youth. With the better individuals, the same declares itself through the coming years with ever clearer consciousness and purpose.

The data upon which the mind may act are given by man's inheritance and environment. Its action corresponds with the character and the entire instinctive and mental nature of the individual. Many of the problems are set, and the solutions suggested, if not compelled; yet complete slavery to suggestion and solicitation has not been demonstrated to our satisfaction. There is a residuum of freedom. While conceivably this might narrow down to a selection of alternatives, usually the conflicting dynamics of human nature do not adjust themselves to a simple "either-or," and human conduct is apt to flutter. Nevertheless, the wilful choices of the mind are the true human factors in human progress or retrogression. And sometimes these decisions of the free intelligence show themselves so apparently adverse to the leading of circumstance and material advantage, so disregardful of it all, as to make a true antinomy, a conflicting principle of will athwart the sequences of natural law.

Through the course of recorded history, the free will of the human mind, the whim, the arbitrary resolve or refusal, are seen to play their parts. The records may be superficial, or may speak with profound truth. The heroes of history are fettered by necessity, and yet are free. And each one of us