 Broad presents an argument in favour of a negative answer, i.e. in favour of the answer that it could very well be true that someone would have done an action if he had willed to do it, while it is nonetheless false that the action is obligable (and hence false that it is voluntarily substitutable). We are asked to consider a person who gradually becomes addicted to a drug like morphine. At the earlier stages he could have willed with sufficient strength to ensure that the temptation would have been resisted. At the later stages he could not. “Now at every stage, from the earliest to the latest, the hypothetical proposition would be true: ‘If he had willed with a certain degree of force and persistence to avoid taking morphine, he would have avoided taking it’. Yet we would say at the earlier stages that he ought to have resisted, whilst at the final stages we should be inclined to say that ‘ought’ and ‘ought not’ have ceased to apply” (1934, p. 200). In other words, in the later stages we are inclined to hold that the action of abstaining from morphine has ceased to be obligable, in spite of the fact that it remains true that if he had willed with sufficient force and persistence to abstain he would have abstained.