Free will would imply that the human will, confronted by the choice of making voluntarily a certain determination, has the last decisive word under the pressure of circumstances contending for and against this decision; that it is free to decide for or against a certain course independently of internal and external circumstances, which play upon it, according to the laws of cause and effect.

This illusion of a free will has its source in our inner consciousness, and is due solely to the ignorance in which we find ourselves concerning the various motives and different external and internal conditions which press upon our mind at the moment of decision.

But since we do not know the internal and external causes in the majority of cases, we pretend that they are free phenomena, that is to say, that they are not determined necessarily by their causes.

Hence the spiritualistic conception of the free will implies that every human being, in spite of the fact that their internal and external conditions are necessarily predetermined, should be able to come to a deliberate decision by the mere fiat of his or her free will, so that, even though the sum of all the causes demands a no, he or she can decide in favor of yes, and vice versa.

And so if is the force of external and internal circumstances which determines the decision of our will at any given moment.

He fell down unconscious, was picked up, carried to the hospital, and cured of his external injury, but lost both his physical and moral health.

He himself, having the force to throw vitality and truth into what persons differently constituted might reckon a mere external ceremony, and an absurd one, would not have failed to see this necessity.

Profanity, drunkenness, and general recklessness as to money matters were everywhere prevailing vices; and this demoralization was, in the eyes of Washington, more to be dreaded than any external dangers that had thus far caused alarm and distress.

It is only the divine certitudes, which can exist under any external circumstances, that are of much account in our estimate of human happiness, and it is these which ordinarily escape the attention of historians when they paint the condition of society.

Nobody else seemed to perceive that this business of domesticity was not life itself, was at best the clumsy external machinery of life.

The disposition of the things on the desk seemed to indicate, sharply and incontrovertibly, that orderliness, that inexorable efficiency, which more than aught else she admired in the external conduct of life.

But you must remember that I have only the external appearance of a woman, and that in mind and heart I am a man.

Meanwhile, in view of the wild talk in which certain sections of the Press are already indulging, it cannot be too strongly emphasised that only the Germans can reform their political institutions, and that any attempt at external interference will not merely fail lamentably, but produce the very opposite effect from that which is intended.

Besides a gigantic foreign trade there is a domestic trade, which is on a larger scale than the external trade of these countries.

"The good side of it is the discipline; and the modern world, not having any power external to itself which it acknowledges, and no men (in masses) having yet succeeded in being a law to themselves, needs discipline above everything.

We shall probably be right if we regard the increase in this case as what the German philosophers call 'subjective,' that is, rather existent in the mind than in the external region of objective, palpable fact.

Accordingly, we find that imagination is active just in proportion as our senses are not excited by external objects.

However, if the imagination is to yield any real product, it must have received a great deal of material from the external world.

* Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within.

Concerning their external characteristics we know much; and our classifications, if not satisfactory to all, are at least eminently useful.

With that presumptive clairvoyance which appears to be an essential property of the French raconteur, he did not confine himself to external fact in his narratives, but always professed to report minutely the thoughts that flashed through the mind of such and such a person, on the particular occasion referred to.

The Herren Pagoda has three stories, with a pointed roof, and is distinguished for its external sculpture.

and others allied to it, and which differ little from the bird before us, have so many external relations with the Orioles, that they probably would be found to arrange themselves in the same family with them, were it not for the totally different structure of their tongue, and the consequent difference in their habits of life.

But general opinion places this bird among the groups that feed by suction; and as I have a second species hitherto undescribed, which is closely allied to it, I prefer forming both provisionally into a new genus, to referring them to one, from which, although they agree with it in external appearance, they may be totally remote, in consequence of their internal anatomy and habits of life.

Within an area on this extensive coast, not exceeding four degrees of longitude, on the parallel of 15 degrees South, a tree of very remarkable growth and habit, has been traced, having all the external form and bulk of Adansonia of the western shores of Africa.