The manner in which Leibnitz endeavours to reconcile liberty and
necessity.
Leibnitz censures the language of Descartes, in which he ascribes all the
thoughts and volitions of men to God, and complains that he thereby shuts
out free-agency from the world. It becomes a very curious question, then,
how Leibnitz himself, who was so deeply implicated in the scheme of
necessity, has been able to save the great interests of morality. He does
not, for a moment, call in question “the great demonstration from cause
and effect” in favour of necessity. It is well known that he has more than
once compared the human mind to a balance, in which reasons and
inclinations take the place of weights; he supposes it to be just as
impossible for the mind to depart from the direction given to it by “the
determining cause,” as it is for a balance to turn in opposition to the
influence of the greatest weight.
Nor is he pleased with Descartes’s appeal to consciousness to prove the
doctrine of liberty. In reply to this appeal, he says: “The chain of
causes connected one with another reaches very far. Wherefore the reason
alleged by Descartes, in order to prove the independence of our free
actions, by a pretended vigorous internal feeling, has no force.(20) We
cannot, strictly speaking, feel our independence; and we do not always
perceive the causes, frequently imperceptible, on which our resolution
depends. It is as if a needle touched with the loadstone were sensible of
and pleased with its turning toward the north. For it would believe that
it turned itself, independently of any other cause, not perceiving the
insensible motions of the magnetic matter.”(21) Thus, he seems to
represent the doctrine of liberty as a mere dream and delusion of the
mind, and the iron scheme of necessity as a stern reality. Is it in the
power of Leibnitz, then, any more than it was in that of Descartes, to
reconcile such a scheme with the free-agency and accountability of man?
Let us hear him and determine.
Leibnitz repudiates the notion of liberty given by Hobbes and Locke. In
his “Nouveaux Essais sur L’Entendement Humain,” a work in which he combats
many of the doctrines of Locke, the insignificance of his idea of the
freedom of the will is most clearly and triumphantly exposed. Philalethe,
or the representative of Locke, says: “Liberty is the power that a man has
to do or not to do an action _according to his will_.” Theophile, or the
representative of Leibnitz, replies: “If men understood only that by
liberty, when they ask whether the will is free, their question would be
truly absurd.” And again: “The question ought not to be asked,” says
Philalethe, “if the will is free: that is to speak in a very improper
manner: but if man is free. This granted, I say that, when any one can, by
the direction or choice of his mind, prefer the existence of one action to
the non-existence of that action and to the contrary, that is to say, when
he can make it exist or not exist, _according to his will_, then he is
free. _And we can scarcely see how it could be possible to conceive a
being more free than one who is capable of doing what he wills._”
Theophile rejoins: “When we reason concerning the liberty of the will, we
do not demand if the man can do what he wills, but if he has a sufficient
independence in the will itself; we do not ask if he has free limbs or
elbow-room, but if the mind is free, and in what that freedom
consists.”(22)
Having thus exploded the delusive notion of liberty which Locke had
borrowed from Hobbes, Leibnitz proceeds to take what seems to be higher
ground. He expressly declares, that in order to constitute man an
accountable agent, he must be free, not only from constraint, but also
from necessity. In the adoption of this language, Leibnitz seems to speak
with the advocates of free-agency; but does he think with them? The sound
is pleasant to the ear; but what sense is it intended to convey to the
mind? Leibnitz shall be his own interpreter. “All events have their
necessary causes,” says Hobbes. “Bad,” replies Leibnitz: “they have their
_determining_ causes, by which we can assign a reason for them; but they
have not necessary causes.” Now does this signify that an event, that a
volition, is not absolutely and indissolubly connected with its
“determining cause?” Is this the grand idea from which the light of
liberty is to beam on a darkened and enslaved world? By no means. We must
indulge no fond hopes or idle dreams of the kind. Volition is free from
necessity, adds Leibnitz; because “_the contrary could happen without
implying a contradiction_.” This is the signification which he attaches to
his own language; and it is the only meaning of which it is susceptible in
accordance with his system. Thus, Leibnitz saw and clearly exposed the
futility of speaking about a freedom from co-action or restraint, when the
question is, not whether the body is untrammelled, but whether the mind
itself is free in the act of willing. But he did not see, it seems, that
it is equally irrelevant to speak of a freedom from a mathematical
necessity in such a connexion; although this, as plainly as the other
sense of the word, has no conceivable bearing on the point in dispute. If
a volition were produced by the omnipotence of God, irresistibly acting on
the human mind, still it would not be necessary, in the sense of Leibnitz,
since it might and would have been different if God had so willed it; the
contrary volition implying no contradiction. Is it not evident, that to
suppose the mind may thus be bound to act, and yet be free because the
contrary act implies no contradiction, is merely to dream of liberty, and
to mistake a shadow for a substance?
As the opposite of a volition implies no contradiction, says Leibnitz, so
it is free from an absolute necessity; that is to say, it might have been
different, nay, it must have been different, from what it is, provided its
determining cause had been different. The same thing may be said of the
motions of matter. We may say that they are also free, because the
opposite motions imply no contradiction; and we only have to vary the
force in order to vary the motion. Hence, freedom in this sense of the
word is perfectly consistent with the absolute and uncontrolled dominion
of causes over the will; for what can be more completely necessitated than
the motions of the body?
The demand of his own nature, which so strongly impelled Leibnitz to seek
and cling to the freedom of the mind, as the basis of moral and
accountable agency, could not rest satisfied with so unsubstantial a
shadow. After all, he has felt constrained to have recourse to the
hypothesis of a preëstablished harmony in order to restore, if possible,
the liberty which his scheme of necessity had banished from the universe.
It is no part of our intention to examine this obsolete fiction; we merely
wish to show how essential Leibnitz regarded it to a solution of the
difficulty under consideration. “I come now,” says he, “to show how the
action of the will depends on causes; that there is nothing so agreeable
to human nature as this dependence of our actions, and that otherwise we
should fall into an absurd and insupportable fatality; that is to say,
into the _Mohammedan fate_, which is the worst of all, because it does
away with foresight and good counsel. However, it is well to explain how
this dependency of our voluntary actions does not prevent that there may
be at the bottom of things a marvellous spontaneity in us, which in a
certain sense renders the mind, in its resolutions, independent of the
physical influence of _all other creatures_. This spontaneity, _but little
known hitherto_, which raises our empire over our actions as much as it is
possible, _is a consequence of the system of preëstablished harmony_.”
Thus, in order to satisfy himself that our actions are really free and
independent of the physical influence of _other creatures_, he has
recourse to a fiction in which few persons ever concurred with him, and
which is now universally regarded as one of the vagaries and dreams of
philosophy. If we are to be saved from an insupportable fate only by such
means, our condition must indeed be one of forlorn hopelessness.
Before we take leave of Leibnitz, there is one view of the difficulty in
question which we wish to notice, not because it is peculiar to him, but
because it is very clearly stated and confidently relied on by him. It is
common to most of the advocates of necessity, and it is exceedingly
imposing in its appearance and effect. “Men of all times,” says he, “have
been troubled by a sophism, which the ancients called the ‘_raison
paresseuse_,’ because it induces them to do nothing, or at least to
concern themselves about nothing, and to follow only the present
inclination to pleasure. For, say they, if the future is necessary, that
which is to happen will happen whatever I may do. But the future, say
they, is necessary, either because the Divinity foresees all things, and
even preëstablishes them in governing the universe; or because all things
necessarily come to pass by a concatenation of causes.”(23) Leibnitz
illustrated the fallacy of this reasoning in the following manner: “By the
same reason (if it is valid) I could say—If it is written in the archives
of fate, that poison will kill me at present, or do me harm, this will
happen, though I should not take it; and if that is not written, it will
not happen, though I should take it; and, consequently, I can follow my
inclination to take whatever is agreeable with impunity, however
pernicious it may be; which involves a manifest absurdity.... This
objection staggers them a little, but they always come back to their
reasoning, turned in different points of view, until we cause them to
comprehend in what the defect of their sophism consists. It is this, that
it is false that the event will happen whatever we may do; it will happen,
because we do that which leads to it; and if the event is written, the
cause which will make it happen is also written. Thus the connexion
(_liaison_) of effects and their causes, so far from establishing the
doctrine of a necessity prejudicial to practice, serves to destroy
it.”(24) The same reply is found more than once in the course of the same
great work; and it is employed by all necessitarians in defence of their
system. But it is not a satisfactory answer. It overlooks the real
difficulty in the case, and seeks to remove an imaginary one. The question
is, not whether a necessary connexion between our volitions and their
_effects_ is a discouragement to practice, but whether a necessary
connexion between our volitions and their _causes_ is so. It is very true,
that no man would be accountable for his external actions or their
consequences, if there were no fixed relation between these and his
volitions. If, when a man willed one thing, another should happen to
follow which he did not will, of course he would not be responsible for
it. And if there were no certain or fixed connexion between his external
actions and their consequences, either as they affected himself or others,
he certainly would not be responsible for those consequences. This
connexion between causes and effects, this connexion between volitions and
their consequences, is indispensable to our accountability for such
consequences. But for such a connexion, nothing could be more idle and
ridiculous than to endeavour to do anything; for we might will one thing,
and another would take place.
But must the same necessary connexion exist between the causes of our
volitions and the volitions themselves, before we can be accountable for
these volitions, for these effects? This is the question. Leibnitz has
lost sight of it, and deceived himself by a false application of his
doctrine. The doctrine of necessity, when applied to volitions and their
effects, is indispensable to build up man’s accountability for his
external conduct and its consequences. But the same doctrine, when applied
to establish a fixed and unalterable relation between the causes of
volition and volition itself, really demolishes all responsibility for
volition, and consequently for its external results. Leibnitz undertook to
show that a necessary connexion between volition and its causes does not
destroy man’s accountability for his volitions; and he has shown, what no
one ever doubted, that a necessary connexion between volition and its
effects does not destroy accountability for those effects! Strange as this
confusion of things is, it is made by the most celebrated advocates of the
doctrine of necessity; which shows, we think, that the doctrine hardly
admits of a solid defence. Thus Edwards, for example, insists that the
doctrine of necessity is so far from rendering our endeavours vain and
useless, that it is an indispensable condition or prerequisite to their
success. In illustration of this point, he says: “Let us suppose a real
and sure connexion between a man having his eyes open in the clear
daylight, with good organs of sight, and seeing; so that seeing is
connected with opening his eyes, and not seeing with his not opening his
eyes; and also the like connexion between such a man attempting to open
his eyes and his actually doing it: the supposed established connexion
between these antecedents and consequents, let the connexion be never so
sure and necessary, certainly does not prove that it is in vain for a man
in such circumstances to attempt to open his eyes, in order to seeing; his
aiming at that event, and the use of the means, being the effect of his
will, does not break the connexion, or hinder the success.”
“So that the objection we are upon does not lie against the doctrine of
the necessity of events by a certainty of connexion and consequence: on
the contrary, it is truly forcible against the _Arminian_ doctrine of
contingence and self-determination, which is inconsistent with such a
connexion. If there be no connexion between those events wherein virtue
and vice consist, and anything antecedent; then there is no connexion
between these events and any means or endeavours used in order to them:
and if so, then those means must be in vain. The less there is of
connexion between foregoing things and following ones, so much the less
there is between means and end, endeavours and success; and in the same
proportion are means and endeavours ineffectual and in vain.”
In like manner, Dr. Chalmers, in his defence of the doctrine of necessity,
has in all his illustrations confounded the connexion between a volition
and its antecedent, with the relation between a volition and its
consequent. To select one such illustration from many, it would be idle,
says he, for a man to labour and toil after wealth, if there were no fixed
connexion between such exertion and the accumulation of riches.
We reply to all such illustrations,—It is true, there must be a fixed
connexion between our endeavours or voluntary exertions and their
consequences, in order to render such endeavours or exertions of any
avail, or to render us accountable for such consequences. But it should be
forever borne in mind, that the question is not whether a fixed connexion
obtains between our volitions and their _sequents_, but whether a
necessary connexion exists between our volitions and their antecedents.
The question is, not whether the will be a power which is often followed
by necessitated effects; but whether there be a power behind the will by
which its volitions are necessitated. And this being the question, what
does it signify to tell us, that the will is a producing power? We deny
that volitions and their antecedents are necessarily connected; and our
opponents refute us by showing that volitions and their sequents are thus
connected! We deny that A and B are necessarily connected; and this
position is overthrown and demolished by showing that B and C are thus
connected! Is it not truly wonderful that such men as a Leibnitz, an
Edwards, and a Chalmers, should, in their zeal to maintain a favourite
dogma, commit so great an oversight, and so grievously deceive themselves?