Theologians tell and repeat to us that man is free, while all their
teachings conspire to destroy his liberty. Trying to justify Divinity,
they accuse him really of the blackest injustice. They suppose that,
without grace, man is compelled to do evil: and they maintain that God
will punish him for not having been given the grace to do good! With a
little reflection, we will be obliged to see that man in all things acts
by compulsion, and that his free will is a chimera, even according to
the theological system. Does it depend upon man whether or not he shall
be born of such or such parents? Does it depend upon man to accept or
not to accept the opinions of his parents and of his teachers? If I were
born of idolatrous or Mohammedan parents, would it have depended upon me
to become a Christian? However, grave Doctors of Divinity assure us that
a just God will damn without mercy all those to whom He has not given
the grace to know the religion of the Christians.
Man's birth does not depend upon his choice; he was not asked if he
would or would not come into the world; nature did not consult him upon
the country and the parents that she gave him; the ideas he acquired,
his opinions, his true or false notions are the necessary fruits of the
education which he has received, and of which he has not been the
master; his passions and his desires are the necessary results of the
temperament which nature has given him, and of the ideas with which he
has been inspired; during the whole course of his life, his wishes and
his actions are determined by his surroundings, his habits, his
occupations, his pleasures, his conversations, and by the thoughts which
present themselves involuntarily to him; in short, by a multitude of
events and accidents which are beyond his control. Incapable of
foreseeing the future, he knows neither what he will wish, nor what he
will do in the time which must immediately follow the present. Man
passes his life, from the moment of his birth to that of his death,
without having been free one instant. Man, you say, wishes, deliberates,
chooses, determines; hence you conclude that his actions are free. It is
true that man intends, but he is not master of his will or of his
desires. He can desire and wish only what he judges advantageous for
himself; he can not love pain nor detest pleasure. Man, it will be said,
sometimes prefers pain to pleasure; but then, he prefers a passing pain
in the hope of procuring a greater and more durable pleasure. In this
case, the idea of a greater good determines him to deprive himself of
one less desirable.
It is not the lover who gives to his mistress the features by which he
is enchanted; he is not then the master to love or not to love the
object of his tenderness; he is not the master of the imagination or the
temperament which dominates him; from which it follows, evidently, that
man is not the master of the wishes and desires which rise in his soul,
independently of him. But man, say you, can resist his desires; then he
is free. Man resists his desires when the motives which turn him from an
object are stronger than those which draw him toward it; but then, his
resistance is necessary. A man who fears dishonor and punishment more
than he loves money, resists necessarily the desire to take possession
of another's money. Are we not free when we deliberate?--but has one the
power to know or not to know, to be uncertain or to be assured?
Deliberation is the necessary effect of the uncertainty in which we find
ourselves with reference to the results of our actions. As soon as we
believe ourselves certain of these results, we necessarily decide; and
then we act necessarily according as we shall have judged right or
wrong. Our judgments, true or false, are not free; they are necessarily
determined by ideas which we have received, or which our mind has
formed. Man is not free in his choice; he is evidently compelled to
choose what he judges the most useful or the most agreeable for himself.
When he suspends his choice, he is not more free; he is forced to
suspend it till he knows or believes he knows the qualities of the
objects presented to him, or until he has weighed the consequence of his
actions. Man, you will say, decides every moment on actions which he
knows will endanger him; man kills himself sometimes, then he is free. I
deny it! Has man the ability to reason correctly or incorrectly? Do not
his reason and his wisdom depend either upon opinions that he has
formed, or upon his mental constitution? As neither the one nor the
other depends upon his will, they can not in any wise prove his liberty.
If I make the wager to do or not to do a thing, am I not free? Does it
not depend upon me to do or not to do it? No; I will answer you, the
desire to win the wager will necessarily determine you to do or not to
do the thing in question. "But if I consent to lose the wager?" Then the
desire to prove to me that you are free will have become to you a
stronger motive than the desire to win the wager; and this motive will
necessarily have determined you to do or not to do what was understood
between us. But you will say, "I feel myself free." It is an illusion
which may be compared to that of the fly in the fable, which, lighting
on the shaft of a heavy wagon, applauded itself as driver of the vehicle
which carried it. Man who believes himself free, is a fly who believes
himself the master-motor in the machine of the universe, while he
himself, without his own volition, is carried on by it. The feeling
which makes us believe that we are free to do or not to do a thing, is
but a pure illusion. When we come to the veritable principle of our
actions, we will find that they are nothing but the necessary results of
our wills and of our desires, which are never within our power. You
believe yourselves free because you do as you choose; but are you really
free to will or not to will, to desire or not to desire? Your wills and
your desires, are they not necessarily excited by objects or by
qualities which do not depend upon you at all?
LXXXI.--WE SHOULD NOT CONCLUDE FROM THIS THAT SOCIETY HAS NOT THE RIGHT
TO CHASTISE THE WICKED.
If the actions of men are necessary, if men are not free, what right has
society to punish the wicked who infest it? Is it not very unjust to
chastise beings who could not act otherwise than they did? If the wicked
act from the impulse of their corrupt nature, society in punishing them
acts necessarily on its side from the desire to preserve itself. Certain
objects produce in us the feeling of pain; therefore our nature compels
us to hate them, and incites us to remove them. A tiger pressed by
hunger, attacks the man whom he wishes to devour; but the man is not the
master of his fear of the tiger, and seeks necessarily the means of
exterminating it.