§ 3. Against the formidable array of cumulative evidence offered for Determinism there is to be set the immediate affirmation of consciousness in the moment of deliberate action. Certainly when I have a distinct consciousness of choosing between alternatives of conduct, one of which I conceive as right or reasonable, I find it impossible not to think that I can now choose to do what I so conceive,--supposing that there is no obstacle to my doing it other than the condition of my desires and voluntary habits,--however strong may be my inclination to act unreasonably, and however uniformly I may have yielded to such inclinations in the past.[61] I recognise that each concession to vicious desire makes the difficulty of resisting it greater when the desire recurs: but the difficulty always seems to remain separated from impossibility by an impassable gulf. I do not deny that the experience of mankind includes cases in which certain impulses--such as aversion to death or extreme pain, or morbid appetite for alcohol or opium--have reached a point of intensity at which they have been felt as irresistibly overmastering voluntary choice. I think we commonly judge that when this point is reached the individual ceases to be morally responsible for the act done under such overmastering impulse: but at any rate the moral problem thus presented is very exceptional; in ordinary cases of yielding to temptation this consciousness of the irresistibility of impulse does not come in. Ordinarily, however strong may be the rush of appetite or anger that comes over me, it does not present itself as irresistible; and, if I deliberate at such a moment, I cannot regard the mere force of the impulse as a reason for doing what I otherwise judge to be unreasonable. I can suppose that my conviction of free choice _may_ be illusory: that if I knew my own nature I _might_ see it to be predetermined that, being so constituted and in such circumstances, I should act on the occasion in question contrary to my rational judgment. But I cannot conceive myself seeing this, without at the same time conceiving my whole conception of what I now call “my” action fundamentally altered: I cannot conceive that if I contemplated the actions of my organism in this light I should refer them to my “self”--_i.e._ to the mind so contemplating--in the sense in which I now refer them. In this conflict of arguments, it is not surprising that the theoretical question as to the Freedom of the Will is still differently decided by thinkers of repute; and I do not myself wish at present to pronounce any decision on it. But I think it possible and useful to show that the ethical importance of deciding it one way or another is liable to be exaggerated; and that any one who will consider the matter soberly and carefully will find this importance to be of a strictly limited kind.