Though I am only a cogwheel in a vast machine, yet I am conscious of my cogs, interested in my motions and the motions of the whole machine, though ignorant of who is turning, why he began, and whether he will stop, and why.
"If I saw the slightest loophole at which free-will might creep in, I would rush to it, but I do not; if man was created with a free will, he was also created with predispositions which made the acting of that will a matter of mathematical certainty.
"But the idea that it diminishes my interest in life or its issues is preposterous; I am inclined to credit God with larger ideas than my own, and His why and wherefore, and the part I bear in it, is extraordinarily fascinating to me because it is so hidden; and the least indication of law that I can seize upon--such as this law of necessity--is an entrancing glimpse into reality.

It may not be quite so delightful as some other theories, but it is true, and real, and therefore has an actual working in you and me and every one else, which can not fail to attach a certain interest to it which other systems lack." He gives a very graphic illustration of the phenomena of free-will.
He says-- "It seems to me closely to resemble a very ordinary phenomenon: the principle that things as they are farther off appear to us to be smaller.

Logical reflection assures us that they are not so, but the effect upon our senses is completely illusive; and, what is more, we act as though they were smaller; we act as if what they gained in distance they lost in size; we aim at a target which is many feet high and broad as if it was but a few inches; we say the sun is about as big as a soup-plate, and having once made these allowances the knowledge does not affect our conduct of life at all.
"Just so with free-will; we know by our reason that the thing is impossible; we act as though it were a prevailing possibility." His position with regard to Christianity was shortly as follows; it is settled by an extract from his diary: "I have often puzzled over this: Why in the Gospels did Christ say nothing about the whole fabric of nature which in His capacity as Creator ('through whom He made all things') He must have had the moulding of?
All His teaching was personal and individual, dealing with man alone, an infinitesimal part of His creation ...

for compare the shred, the span of being which man's existence represents with the countless aeons of animal and vegetable life which have preceded, and surround, and will in all probability succeed it--and not a word of all this from the Being who gave and supported their life, calling it out of the abyss for inscrutable and useless ends--to minister, as the theologians tell us, to the wants and animal cravings of pitiful mankind.
"Why is it that He there takes no cognizance of the whole frame of things of which I am a part, but only deals with human feelings and emotions as if they were the end of all these gigantic works--the Milky Way, the blazing sun, the teeming earth--only to raise thoughts of reverence in the heart of this pitiful being, and failing too, so hopelessly, so constantly to do so ?...
"'I will accept Christ,' said Herbert, 'as my superior, yes! as my master, yes! but not as my God.'" One sees, I think, where the difficulty lies; it must be felt by any man whose idea of God is very high, whose belief in humanity very low.
And again-- "I believe in a revelation which is coming, which may be among us now, though we do not suspect it, in the words and deeds of some simple-minded heroic man.
"No one who preceded the Christian revelation could possibly, from the fabric of the world as it then was, have anticipated the form it was about to take.

This revelation, too, will be as unexpected as it will be new--it will come in the night as a thief; the '_quo modo_' I can not even attempt to guess, except that it will take the form of some vast simplification of the myriad and complicated issues of human life." But such entries as these were left to his diaries and most private correspondence; he never attempted a crusade against ordinary forms of belief, mistaken though he deemed them, often putting a strong constraint upon himself in conversation.