ABSTRACT
Freedom is a negative notion connected with potentiality, actuality and time, and concerns the logical relations between what is potentially true of a thing at one time and what is actually true of it at another, or between what can be validly anticipated of something at one time and simply predicated of it at another. The vicissitudes of life certainly lead ordinary speakers and thinkers to form such a concept, and if ‘spontaneity’ be thought to be a better name for it than ‘freedom’, there need be no quarrel on this point. Spontaneous freedom is of course most interestingly displayed at the level of cool, conscious choice, rather than at the level of primary impulse, and much rather than at the level of unconscious or inorganic behaviour. The region of cool choice is also the region where higher, ever more abstract and generalized notions of value arise, and have a shaping influence on our conduct.
