Note 12 — Chapter II

But the whole question concerning the freedom of the will has now come to be as to whether or not consciousness does give its verdict on the side of freedom. Supposing we grant that "we are warranted to rely on a deliverance of consciousness, when that deliverance is that a thing is, although we may be unable to think how it can be,"[12] in this case the question still remains, whether our opponents have rightly interpreted the deliverance of their consciousness. I, for one, am quite persuaded that I never perform any action without some appropriate motive, or set of motives, having induced me to perform it. However, I am not discussing this question, and I have merely made the above quotations for the purpose of showing that Sir W. Hamilton appears to identify the theory of Free-will with the fact that we possess a moral sense. He argues throughout as though the theory he advocates were the only one that can explain a given "fact of real actuality." But no one with whom we have to deal questions the fact of our having a moral sense; and to identify this "deliverance of consciousness" with belief in the theory that volitions are uncaused, is, or would now be, merely to abandon the only questions in dispute.