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For such reasons as these freewill important as it is must be conceived as a lower faculty than that of conscience. Because conscience operates solely in a higher realm, and because its operations are of a higher quality, I think of it as a superior function of the soul. If there is too much theory here, consider the matter for a moment in its practical aspect.
So then, conscience rather than freewill is the highest quality of the soul, because it deals with questions solely in the higher realm. Then, as I have said, there is another reason why we think of conscience as our highest faculty. That is, that it acts instinctively. It has a sensitiveness of feeling towards questions of right and wrong, and of truth and error.
To her alone, not to her two vassals, has God entrusted the two-edged sword of freewill, that gift which, as Scripture tells us, may be our salvation or our perdition. But, more than this, a trusty councillor has been assigned us, who is independent of our wills, and bears credentials from God Himself.
"So be it," he answered, after a moment's thought. "But this one word I say to thee: Thou hast been true and faithful to me and mine; wherefore my roof and my walls shall be thy shelter until thou goest forth of thine own freewill. Be not afraid to remain here with me. I will defend thee with every power I have until such time as thou mayest safely escape beyond the seas." He held out his hand.
The heart seemed to beat more slowly, the soul was benumbed, the character weakened; at last, all freewill, all power of discrimination, was extinguished, and the boarders, submitting to the same process of self-annihilation as the novices of the Company, became, like them, mere "corpses" in the hands of the brotherhood. The object of these manoeuvres was clear and simple.
He means that in the Greek drama the catastrophe is foreordained by an inexorable Destiny, while the element of Freewill, and consequently of choice, is the very axis of the modern. The definition is conveniently portable, but it has its limitations. Goethe's attention was too exclusively fixed on the Fate tragedies of the Greeks, and upon Shakespeare among the moderns.
Seeing him Philoctetes knows he is undone. Odysseus invites him to come to Troy of his own freewill, but is met with a curse; as he refuses to rejoin the Greeks, Odysseus and Neoptolemus depart bearing with them the bow for Teucer to use. Left without that which brought him his daily food Philoctetes bursts out into a wild lyric dialogue with the Chorus.
"I'm goin' now to visit with a Freewill lady. We was to a conference together once, same's you an' your friend, but 't was a state conference. She asked me to come some time an' make her a good visit, and I'm on my way now. I didn't seem to have nothin' to keep me to home." "We're all goin' visitin' to-day, ain't we?" said Mrs. Flagg sociably; but no one carried on the conversation.
Hence, if morality in any intelligible sense is to exist at all, we must be free; and only a personal and transcendent God could have conferred on us the faculty of freewill. We pass on to one or two final considerations.
The Rhodians, more by force constrained than of freewill, surrendered Iphigenia, weeping, to Cimon, who, seeing her in tears, said to her, 'Noble Lady, be not disconsolate; I am thy Cimon, who by long love have far better deserved to have thee than Pasimondas by plighted faith. Thereupon he caused carry her aboard his own ship and returning to his companions, let the Rhodians go, without touching aught else of theirs.
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