Our choice is apparently most free, and we are least obviously driven to
determine our course, in those cases where the future is most obscure,
that is, when the balance of advantage appears most doubtful.
Where we have an opinion that assures us promptly which way the balance
of advantage will incline—whether it be an instinctive, hereditarily
acquired opinion or one rapidly and decisively formed as the result of
post-natal experience—then our action is determined at once by that
opinion, and freedom of choice practically vanishes.