As I am tidying up, and the following beginning of a paper on the above
subject has been littering about my table since December 1889, which is
the date on the top of page i, I will shoot it on to this dust-heap and
bury it out of my sight. It runs:
The difficulty has arisen from our forgetting that contradiction in terms
lies at the foundation of all our thoughts as a condition and _sine qua
non_ of our being able to think at all. We imagine that we must either
have all free-will and no necessity, or all necessity and no free-will,
and, it being obvious that our free-will is often overridden by force of
circumstances while the evidence that necessity is overridden by
free-will is harder to find (if indeed it can be found, for I have not
fully considered the matter), most people who theorise upon this question
will deny in theory that there is any free-will at all, though in
practice they take care to act as if there was. For if we admit that
like causes are followed by like effects (and everything that we do is
based upon this hypothesis), it follows that every combination of causes
must have some one consequent which can alone follow it and which
free-will cannot touch.
(Yes, but it will generally be found that free-will entered into the
original combination and the repetition of the combination will not be
exact unless a like free-will is repeated along with all the other
factors.)
From which it follows that free-will is apparent only, and that, as I
said years ago in _Erewhon_, we are not free to choose what seems best on
each occasion but bound to do so, being fettered to the freedom of our
wills throughout our lives.
But to deny free-will is to deny moral responsibility, and we are landed
in absurdity at once—for there is nothing more patent than that moral
responsibility exists. Nevertheless, at first sight, it would seem as
though we ought not to hang a man for murder if there was no escape for
him but that he must commit one. Of course the answer to one who makes
this objection is that our hanging him is as much a matter of necessity
as his committing the murder.
If, again, necessity, as involved in the certainty that like combinations
will be followed by like consequence, is a basis on which all our actions
are founded, so also is freewill. This is quite as much a _sine qua non_
for action as necessity is; for who would try to act if he did not think
that his trying would influence the result?
We have therefore two apparently incompatible and mutually destructive
faiths, each equally and self-evidently demonstrable, each equally
necessary for salvation of any kind, and each equally entering into every
thought and action of our whole lives, yet utterly contradictory and
irreconcilable.
Can any dilemma seem more hopeless? It is not a case of being able to
live happily with either were t’other dear charmer away; it is
indispensable that we should embrace both, and embrace them with equal
cordiality at the same time, though each annihilates the other. It is as
though it were indispensable to our existence to be equally dead and
equally alive at one and the same moment.
Here we have an illustration which may help us. For, after all, we are
both dead and alive at one and the same moment. There is no life without
a taint of death and no death that is not instinct with a residuum of
past life and with germs of the new that is to succeed it. Let those who
deny this show us an example of pure life and pure death. Any one who
has considered these matters will know this to be impossible. And yet in
spite of this, the cases where we are in doubt whether a thing is to be
more fitly called dead or alive are so few that they may be disregarded.
I take it, then, that as, though alive, we are in part dead and, though
dead, in part alive, so, though bound by necessity, we are in part free,
and, though free, yet in part bound by necessity. At least I can think
of no case of such absolute necessity in human affairs as that free-will
should have no part in it, nor of such absolute free-will that no part of
the action should be limited and controlled by necessity.
Thus, when a man walks to the gallows, he is under large necessity, yet
he retains much small freedom; when pinioned, he is less free, but he can
open his eyes and mouth and pray aloud or no as he pleases; even when the
drop has fallen, so long as he is “he” at all, he can exercise some,
though infinitely small, choice.
It may be answered that throughout the foregoing chain of actions, the
freedom, what little there is of it, is apparent only, and that even in
the small freedoms, which are not so obviously controlled by necessity,
the necessity is still present as effectually as when the man, though
apparently free to walk to the gallows, is in reality bound to do so.
For in respect of the small details of his manner of walking to the
gallows, which compulsion does not so glaringly reach, what is it that
the man is free to do? He is free to do as he likes, but he is not free
to do as he does not like; and a man’s likings are determined by outside
things and by antecedents, pre-natal and post-natal, whose effect is so
powerful that the individual who makes the choice proves to be only the
resultant of certain forces which have been brought to bear upon him but
which are not the man. So that it seems there is no detail, no nook or
corner of action, into which necessity does not penetrate.
This seems logical, but it is as logical to follow instinct and common
sense as to follow logic, and both instinct and common sense assure us
that there is no nook or corner of action into which free-will does not
penetrate, unless it be those into which mind does not enter at all, as
when a man is struck by lightning or is overwhelmed suddenly by an
avalanche.
Besides, those who maintain that action is bound to follow choice, while
choice can only follow opinion as to advantage, neglect the very
considerable number of cases in which opinion as to advantage does not
exist—when, for instance, a man feels, as we all of us sometimes do, that
he is utterly incapable of forming any opinion whatever as to his most
advantageous course.
But this again is fallacious. For suppose he decides to toss up and be
guided by the result, this is still what he has chosen to do, and his
action, therefore, is following his choice. Or suppose, again, that he
remains passive and does nothing—his passivity is his choice.
I can see no way out of it unless either frankly to admit that
contradiction in terms is the bedrock on which all our thoughts and deeds
are founded, and to acquiesce cheerfully in the fact that whenever we try
to go below the surface of any enquiry we find ourselves utterly
baffled—or to redefine freedom and necessity, admitting each as a potent
factor of the other. And this I do not see my way to doing. I am
therefore necessitated to choose freely the admission that our
understanding can burrow but a very small way into the foundations of our
beliefs, and can only weaken rather than strengthen them by burrowing at
all.