Word: understanded
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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...attach itself, by virtue of its native strength and energy, to any of the things presented to it by the intellect, before any of these things has power to draw or coerce it at all,-then is the will free and answerable for its choice: then may we understand why we should feel guilty when we fall and grateful when we are saved...
When we speak of freedom of the will, we usually understand a kind of freedom different from all these. We mean by freedom, that a man, solicited by given motives in a given emergency, may act in various ways. For instance: the fact that I am enjoying a walk does not prove that I went out, or am walking now, of my own free-will; on the contrary, my enjoyment, in so far as it has any bearing at all on my freedom, tends to discredit it; since it would be harder to assign a reason for my action...
...hard to understand the nature of such a force; and perhaps on this account people are apt, in discussing the freedom of the will, to confuse this special kind of freedom with those others which I have tried to explain. Another source of confusion is the prevailing feeling that the very existence of right and wrong is involved in this question; and therefore men approach the subject with their minds already made up, and in doot take the trouble to analyze the problem and see in what sense right and wrong really depend on the answer we give...
...attitude of the committee upon this matter is not difficult to understand. They felt that the experiment of a students' executive committee would be a very doubtful one. It had also to be considered that asking the faculty for too much might lead to the rejection of the whole plan of having conferences. Under these circumstances the decision of the meeting was probably a wise one. It leaves the question of executive power still open; and the probability is that, if the committee is established, and shows itself worthy of confidence, it will have executive power conferred upon...
...third excellency of the proposed scheme is the provision for special representatives to be called to each conference, men with a large knowledge of the subject to be discussed. In a university as large as Harvard has grown to be, every man cannot be expected to understand thoroughly every question of the day, and the special representation at these conferences is like the employment of specialists at important trials, a feature of modern civilization which has come to play a recognized part in all great law cases...