Commonsensically understood, humans are parts of nature. Their actions are free, yet natural processes are mechanical and predictable.  One pressing question then becomes: How do human actions and natural processes relate? If nature is the out-wrapping of force, and intelligent beings are products of the cosmos, how is their free action possible in a lawful natural matrix? In the New Elucidation, Kant argues for a compatibilist view—both human freedom and natural necessity are real, and neither is reducible to the other. As Kant’s thematic continued to develop, their seeming conflict finds a dynamic resolution. Everything in nature happens for a prior reason (1:396.8–9), and this rule applies to both necessary events and free actions. Both process-types share the fact of causal connectivity, but they connect to causes in different ways (1:400.30–7). Causation types concern the degree of power by which they are influenced, and this is what distinguishes between the two. The opposites, free acts and mechanical events harmonize over force. A free will is not something being pushed around, but is instead a “determining power” (determinandi potestas; 1:404.8). By its power, a will can withstand impulses (motivi) without being always forced by them (1:404.10–14, 34–9).  Those events that do not have sufficient power to withstand force are seen as natural and necessary consequents, those events that possess sufficient ability to withstand forces are seen as free acts. Thus freedom/ spontaneity is naturally possible.