Lastly, with respect to the old riddle of the freedom of the will. In
the only sense in which the word freedom is intelligible to me--that is
to say, the absence of any restraint upon doing what one likes within
certain limits--physical science certainly gives no more ground for
doubting it than the common sense of mankind does. And if physical
science, in strengthening our belief in the universality of causation
and abolishing chance as an absurdity, leads to the conclusion of
determinism, it does no more than follow the track of consistent and
logical thinkers in philosophy and in theology, before it existed or was
thought of. Whoever accepts the universality of the law of causation as
a dogma of philosophy, denies the existence of uncaused phenomena. And
the essence of that which is improperly called the freewill doctrine is
that occasionally, at any rate, human volition is self-caused, that is
to say, not caused at all; for to cause oneself one must have anteceded
oneself--which is, to say the least of it, difficult to imagine.