ABSTRACT
The traditional formulations of the problem of human freedom are so abstract that they have neither substance nor meaning. Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that they have substance and meaning only as it is lent to them by the personal interests and assumptions of individuals, so that they change from generation to generation, from country to country, from circumstance to circumstance. The traditional dilemma of free will or determinism is entirely artificial, like most exclusive alternatives of a high order of abstraction. Freedom is subjectively illusory, if the absence of any experience of constraint depends upon the absence of a desire to do what one would be prevented from doing. It is the instinctive recognition of this truth that links the experience of a lack of freedom with the idea of oppression and tyranny. When men feel the loss of freedom they behave as though someone were responsible.
