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HUGO MUNSTERBERG 
artificial or constructed object, but it means above all that we con¬ 
sider as an object something which in reality is not an object at all. 
The will which the psychologist describes and jnust describe, the 
will which has causes and which is thus not free, is a will conceived as 
an object found in our mind like an idea, something of which we are 
aware, something whose happening we perceive, and yet if anything 
is sure it is the immediate experience that we are aware of our will in 
a way which is absolutely different from the way in which we perceive 
objects. We do not perceive our will at all, we will it, we strive it, we 
fight it; yes, we feel ourselves, only in so far as we are the subjects of 
will. Our will is our personality, which we do not find but which 
we are, and which stands opposed and separated by the deepest 
gulf from the world of objects. Those objects are means and pur¬ 
poses of our will, are ends and aims and instruments; but they come 
in question for us only as we will them, as we like and dislike them, 
as we approve and reject them. And if we take this world of objects 
and reconstruct it into the artificial world of physical and psychical 
things connected by causality, in this very act of reconstruction we 
feel ourselves as willing, deciding, approving, aiming personalities, 
whose wills decide, who think the world as causally connected, 
whose freedom guarantees the value of our conception of a world 
not free. There is no knowledge but in our judgments; there is no 
judgment but in our affirming and denying; there is no affirming 
and denying but in our will. Our will chooses for its purposes to con¬ 
ceive reality as if it were unfree. What a climax of confusion to think 
that this conception of an unfree world, the conception of science, 
can itself now condemn the freedom of the will which has chosen. 
“Freedom is necessary,” said Emerson. We can add, necessity itself 
is merely a purpose determined by freedom. “Intellect annuls fate,” 
Emerson says. We may add, fate is merely an idea of intellect. Let 
us be psychologists if we want to analyze, to calculate, to explain 
the unfree man; but let us be philosophers to understand what it 
means to be a psychologist. Now the synthesis is reached; the real 
world is free, but we choose for our purposes to conceive the world 
as unfree, and thus to construct causal sciences. 
And if we understand that in reality man is free and that the 
psychological aspect of man as unfree is a special way of looking 
on man for special purposes, then suddenly there opens itself before 
us the vast field of history, and the historical life, which seemed 
deprived of all interest by the psychological, iconoclastic mood, sud¬ 
denly wins again a new importance. We feel instinctively that this