The views of Locke, Tucker, Hartley, Priestley, Helvetius, and Diderot,
with respect to the relation between liberty and necessity.
Locke, it is well known, adopted the notions of free-agency given by
Hobbes. “In this,” says he, “consists freedom, viz., in our being able to
act or not to act, according as we shall choose or will.”(17) And this
notion of liberty, consisting in a freedom from external co-action, has
received an impetus and currency from the influence of Locke which it
would not otherwise have obtained. Neither Calvin nor Luther, as we have
seen, pretended to hold it up as the freedom of the will. This was
reserved for Hobbes and his immortal follower, John Locke, who has, in his
turn, been copied by a host of illustrious disciples who would have
recoiled from the more articulate and consistent development of this
doctrine by the philosopher of Malmsbury. It is only because Locke has
enveloped it in a cloud of inconsistencies that it has been able to secure
the veneration of the great and good.
It is remarkable, that although Locke adopted the definition of free-will
given by Hobbes, and which the latter so easily reconciled with the
omnipotence and omniscience of God; yet he expressly declares that he had
found it impossible to reconcile those attributes in the Divine Being with
the free-agency of man. Surely no such difficulty could have existed, if
his definition of free-agency, or free-will, be correct; for although
omnipotence itself might produce our volitions, we might still be free to
act, to move in accordance with our volitions. But the truth is, there was
something more in Locke’s thoughts and feelings, in the inmost working of
his nature, with respect to moral liberty, than there was in his
definition. The inconsistency and fluctuation of his views on this
all-important subject are fully reflected in his chapter on power.
Both in Great Britain and France, the most illustrious successors of Locke
soon delivered themselves from his inconsistencies and
self-contradictions. Hartley was not in all respects a follower of Locke,
it is true, though he admitted his definition of free-agency. “It appears
to me,” says Hartley, “that all the most complex ideas arise from
sensation, and that _reflection is not a distinct source_, as Mr. Locke
makes it.” By this mutilation of the philosophy of Locke, it was reduced
back to that dead level of materialism in which Hobbes had left it, and
from which the former had scarcely endeavoured to raise it. Hence arose
the rigid scheme of necessity, for which Hartley is so zealous an
advocate. In reading his treatise on the “Mechanism of the Human Mind,” we
are irresistibly compelled to feel the conviction that the only
circumstance which prevents the movements of the soul from being subjected
to mathematical calculation, and made a branch of dynamics, is the want of
a measure of the force of motives. If this want were supplied, then the
philosophy of the mind might be, according to his view of its nature and
operations, converted into a portion of mechanics. Yet this excellent man
did not imagine for a moment that he upheld a scheme which is at war with
the great moral interests of the world. He supposes it is no matter how we
come by our volitions, provided our bodies be left free to obey the
impulses of the will; this is amply sufficient to render us accountable
for our actions, and to vindicate the moral government of God. Thus did he
fall asleep with a specious, but most superficial dream of liberty, which
has no more to do with the real question concerning the moral agency of
man than if it related to the winds of heaven or to the waves of the sea.
Accordingly this is the view of liberty which he repeatedly holds up as
all-sufficient to secure the great moral interest of the human race.
His great disciple, Dr. Priestley, pursues precisely the same course. “If
a man,” says he, “be wholly a material being, and the power of thinking
the result of a certain organization of the brain, does it not follow that
all his functions must be regulated by the laws of mechanism, and that of
consequence his actions proceed from an irresistible necessity?” And
again, he observes, “the doctrine of necessity is the immediate result of
the materiality of man, for mechanism is the undoubted consequence of
materialism.”(18) Priestley, however, allows us to possess free-will as
defined by Hobbes, Locke, and Hartley.
Helvetius himself could easily admit such a liberty into his unmitigated
scheme of necessity, but he did not commit the blunder of Locke and
Hartley, in supposing that it bore on the great question concerning the
freedom of the mind. “It is true,” he says, “we can form a tolerably
distinct idea of the word _liberty_, understood in its common sense. _A
man is free who is neither loaded with irons nor confined in prison_, nor
intimidated like the slave with the dread of chastisement: in this sense
the liberty of man consists in the free exercise of his power; I say, of
his power, because it would be ridiculous to mistake for a want of liberty
the incapacity we are under to pierce the clouds like the eagle, to live
under the water like the whale, or to become king, emperor, or pope. We
have so far a sufficiently clear idea of the word. But this is no longer
the case when we come to apply liberty to the will. What must this liberty
then mean? We can only understand by it a free power of willing or not
willing a thing: but this power would imply that there may be a will
without motives, and consequently an effect without a cause. A
philosophical treatise on _the liberty of the will_ would be a treatise of
effects without a cause.”(19)
In like manner, Diderot had the sagacity to perceive that the idea of
liberty, as defined by Locke, did not at all come into conflict with his
portentous scheme of irreligion, which had grounded itself on the doctrine
of necessity. Having pronounced the term liberty, as applied to the will,
to be a word without meaning, he proceeds to justify the infliction of
punishment on the same grounds on which it is vindicated by Hobbes and
Spinoza. “But if there is no liberty,” says he, “there is no action that
merits either praise or blame, neither vice nor virtue, nothing that ought
to be either rewarded or punished. What then is the distinction among men?
The doing of good and the doing of evil! The doer of ill is one who must
be destroyed, not punished. The doer of good is lucky, not virtuous. But
though neither the doer of good nor of ill be free, man is, nevertheless,
a being to be modified; it is for this reason the doer of ill should be
destroyed upon the scaffold. From thence the good effects of education, of
pleasure, of grief, of grandeur, of poverty, &c.; from thence a philosophy
full of pity, strongly attached to the good, nor more angry with the
wicked than with the whirlwind which fills one’s eyes with dust.” ...
“Adopt these principles if you think them good, or show me that they are
bad. If you adopt them, they will reconcile you _too_ with others and with
yourself: you will neither be pleased nor angry with yourself for being
what you are. Reproach others for nothing, and repent of nothing, this is
the first step to wisdom. Besides this all is prejudice and false
philosophy.”
Though these consequences irresistibly flow from the doctrine of
necessity, yet the injury resulting from them would be far less if they
were maintained only by such men as Helvetius and Diderot. It is when such
errors receive the sanction of Christian philosophers, like Hartley and
Leibnitz, and are recommended to the human mind by a pious zeal for the
glory of God, that they are apt to obtain a frightful currency and become
far more desolating in their effects. “The doctrine of necessity,” says
Hartley, “has a tendency to abate all resentment against men: _since all
they do against us is by the appointment of God, it is rebellion against
him to be offended with them_.”