my prize-essay on _Moral Freedom_, that such freedom is to be sought,
not anywhere in nature, but outside of it. The only freedom that
exists is of a metaphysical character. In the physical world freedom
is an impossibility. Accordingly, while our several actions are in no
wise free, every man's individual character is to be regarded as a
free act. He is such and such a man, because once for all it is his
will to be that man. For the will itself, and in itself, and also in
so far as it is manifest in an individual, and accordingly constitutes
the original and fundamental desires of that individual, is
independent of all knowledge, because it is antecedent to such
knowledge. All that it receives from knowledge is the series of
motives by which it successively develops its nature and makes itself
cognisable or visible; but the will itself, as something that lies
beyond time, and so long as it exists at all, never changes. Therefore
every man, being what he is and placed in the circumstances which
for the moment obtain, but which on their part also arise by strict
necessity, can absolutely never do anything else than just what at
that moment he does do. Accordingly, the whole course of a man's life,
in all its incidents great and small, is as necessarily predetermined
as the course of a clock.
The main reason of this is that the kind of metaphysical free act
which I have described tends to become a knowing consciousness--a
perceptive intuition, which is subject to the forms of space and time.
By means of those forms the unity and indivisibility of the act are
represented as drawn asunder into a series of states and events,
which are subject to the Principle of Sufficient Reason in its four
forms--and it is this that is meant by _necessity_. But the result of
it all assumes a moral complexion. It amounts to this, that by what we
do we know what we are, and by what we suffer we know what we deserve.
Further, it follows from this that a man's _individuality_ does not
rest upon the principle of individuation alone, and therefore is not
altogether phenomenal in its nature. On the contrary, it has its roots
in the thing-in-itself, in the will which is the essence of each
individual. The character of this individual is itself individual. But
how deep the roots of individuality extend is one of the questions
which I do not undertake to answer.
In this connection it deserves to be mentioned that even Plato, in his
own way, represented the individuality of a man as a free act.[1] He
represented him as coming into the world with a given tendency, which
was the result of the feelings and character already attaching to
him in accordance with the doctrine of metempsychosis. The Brahmin
philosophers also express the unalterable fixity of innate character
in a mystical fashion. They say that Brahma, when a man is produced,
engraves his doings and sufferings in written characters on his skull,
and that his life must take shape in accordance therewith. They point
to the jagged edges in the sutures of the skull-bones as evidence of
this writing; and the purport of it, they say, depends on his previous
life and actions. The same view appears to underlie the Christian, or
rather, the Pauline, dogma of Predestination.
[Footnote 1: _Phaedrus_ and _Laws, bk_. x.]
But this truth, which is universally confirmed by experience, is
attended with another result. All genuine merit, moral as well as
intellectual, is not merely physical or empirical in its origin,
but metaphysical; that is to say, it is given _a priori_ and not _a
posteriori_; in other words, it lies innate and is not acquired,
and therefore its source is not a mere phenomenon, but the
thing-in-itself. Hence it is that every man achieves only that which
is irrevocably established in his nature, or is born with him.
Intellectual capacity needs, it is true, to be developed just as many
natural products need to be cultivated in order that we may enjoy or
use them; but just as in the case of a natural product no cultivation
can take the place of original material, neither can it do so in the
case of intellect. That is the reason why qualities which are merely
acquired, or learned, or enforced--that is, qualities _a posteriori_,
whether moral or intellectual--are not real or genuine, but
superficial only, and possessed of no value. This is a conclusion of
true metaphysics, and experience teaches the same lesson to all who
can look below the surface. Nay, it is proved by the great importance
which we all attach to such innate characteristics as physiognomy and
external appearance, in the case of a man who is at all distinguished;
and that is why we are so curious to see him. Superficial people, to
be sure,--and, for very good reasons, commonplace people too,--will be
of the opposite opinion; for if anything fails them they will thus be
enabled to console themselves by thinking that it is still to come.
The world, then, is not merely a battlefield where victory and defeat
receive their due recompense in a future state. No! the world is
itself the Last Judgment on it. Every man carries with him the reward
and the disgrace that he deserves; and this is no other than the
doctrine of the Brahmins and Buddhists as it is taught in the theory
of metempsychosis.
The question has been raised, What two men would do, who lived a
solitary life in the wilds and met each other for the first time.
Hobbes, Pufendorf, and Rousseau have given different answers.
Pufendorf believed that they would approach each other as friends;
Hobbes, on the contrary, as enemies; Rousseau, that they would pass
each other by In silence. All three are both right and wrong. This
is just a case in which the incalculable difference that there is in
innate moral disposition between one individual and another would make
its appearance. The difference is so strong that the question here
raised might be regarded as the standard and measure of it. For there
are men in whom the sight of another man at once rouses a feeling of
enmity, since their inmost nature exclaims at once: That is not me!
There are, others in whom the sight awakens immediate sympathy; their
inmost nature says: _That is me over again_! Between the two there
are countless degrees. That in this most important matter we are so
totally different is a great problem, nay, a mystery.
In regard to this _a priori_ nature of moral character there is matter
for varied reflection in a work by Bastholm, a Danish writer, entitled
_Historical Contributions to the Knowledge of Man in the Savage
State_. He is struck by the fact that intellectual culture and moral
excellence are shown to be entirely independent of each other,
inasmuch as one is often found without the other. The reason of this,
as we shall find, is simply that moral excellence in no wise springs
from reflection, which is developed by intellectual culture, but
from the will itself, the constitution of which is innate and not
susceptible in itself of any improvement by means of education.
Bastholm represents most nations as very vicious and immoral; and on
the other hand he reports that excellent traits of character are found
amongst some savage peoples; as, for instance, amongst the Orotchyses,
the inhabitants of the island Savu, the Tunguses, and the Pelew
islanders. He thus attempts to solve the problem, How it is that some
tribes are so remarkably good, when their neighbours are all bad,
It seems to me that the difficulty may be explained as follows: Moral
qualities, as we know, are heritable, and an isolated tribe, such as
is described, might take its rise in some one family, and ultimately
in a single ancestor who happened to be a good man, and then maintain
its purity. Is it not the case, for instance, that on many unpleasant
occasions, such as repudiation of public debts, filibustering raids
and so on, the English have often reminded the North Americans of
their descent from English penal colonists? It is a reproach, however,
which can apply only to a small part of the population.
It is marvellous how _every man's individuality_ (that is to say, the
union of a definite character with a definite intellect) accurately
determines all his actions and thoughts down to the most unimportant
details, as though it were a dye which pervaded them; and how, in
consequence, one man's whole course of life, in other words, his inner
and outer history, turns out so absolutely different from another's.
As a botanist knows a plant in its entirety from a single leaf; as
Cuvier from a single bone constructed the whole animal, so an accurate
knowledge of a man's whole character may be attained from a single
characteristic act; that is to say, he himself may to some extent
be constructed from it, even though the act in question is of very
trifling consequence. Nay, that is the most perfect test of all, for
in a matter of importance people are on their guard; in trifles
they follow their natural bent without much reflection. That is
why Seneca's remark, that even the smallest things may be taken as
evidence of character, is so true: _argumenta morum ex minimis quoque
licet capere_.[1] If a man shows by his absolutely unscrupulous and
selfish behaviour in small things that a sentiment of justice is
foreign to his disposition, he should not be trusted with a penny
unless on due security. For who will believe that the man who every
day shows that he is unjust in all matters other than those which
concern property, and whose boundless selfishness everywhere protrudes
through the small affairs of ordinary life which are subject to
no scrutiny, like a dirty shirt through the holes of a ragged
jacket--who, I ask, will believe that such a man will act honourably
in matters of _meum_ and _tuum_ without any other incentive but that
of justice? The man who has no conscience in small things will be a
scoundrel in big things. If we neglect small traits of character,
we have only ourselves to blame if we afterwards learn to our
disadvantage what this character is in the great affairs of life. On
the same principle, we ought to break with so-called friends even in
matters of trifling moment, if they show a character that is malicious
or bad or vulgar, so that we may avoid the bad turn which only waits
for an opportunity of being done us. The same thing applies to
servants. Let it always be our maxim: Better alone than amongst
traitors.
[Footnote 1: _Ep_., 52.]
Of a truth the first and foremost step in all knowledge of mankind is
the conviction that a man's conduct, taken as a whole, and in all its
essential particulars, is not governed by his reason or by any of the
resolutions which he may make in virtue of it. No man becomes this or
that by wishing to be it, however earnestly. His acts proceed from his
innate and unalterable character, and they are more immediately and
particularly determined by motives. A man's conduct, therefore, is the
necessary product of both character and motive. It may be illustrated
by the course of a planet, which is the result of the combined effect
of the tangential energy with which it is endowed, and the centripetal
energy which operates from the sun. In this simile the former energy
represents character, and the latter the influence of motive. It is
almost more than a mere simile. The tangential energy which properly
speaking is the source of the planet's motion, whilst on the
other hand the motion is kept in check by gravitation, is, from a
metaphysical point of view, the will manifesting itself in that body.
To grasp this fact is to see that we really never form anything more
than a conjecture of what we shall do under circumstances which are
still to happen; although we often take our conjecture for a resolve.
When, for instance, in pursuance of a proposal, a man with the
greatest sincerity, and even eagerness, accepts an engagement to do
this or that on the occurrence of a certain future event, it is by
no means certain that he will fulfil the engagement; unless he is so
constituted that the promise which he gives, in itself and as such, is
always and everywhere a motive sufficient for him, by acting upon him,
through considerations of honour, like some external compulsion. But
above and beyond this, what he will do on the occurrence of that event
may be foretold from true and accurate knowledge of his character and
the external circumstances under the influence of which he will fall;
and it may with complete certainty be foretold from this alone. Nay,
it is a very easy prophecy if he has been already seen in a like
position; for he will inevitably do the same thing a second time,
provided that on the first occasion he had a true and complete
knowledge of the facts of the case. For, as I have often remarked, a
final cause does not impel a man by being real, but by being known;
_causa finalis non movet secundum suum esse reale, sed secundum esse
cognitum_.[1] Whatever he failed to recognise or understand the first
time could have no influence upon his will; just as an electric
current stops when some isolating body hinders the action of the
conductor. This unalterable nature of character, and the consequent
necessity of our actions, are made very clear to a man who has not,
on any given occasion, behaved as he ought to have done, by showing
a lack either of resolution or endurance or courage, or some other
quality demanded at the moment. Afterwards he recognises what it is
that he ought to have done; and, sincerely repenting of his incorrect
behaviour, he thinks to himself, _If the opportunity were offered to
me again, I should act differently_. It is offered once more; the same
occasion recurs; and to his great astonishment he does precisely the
same thing over again.[2]
[Footnote 1: Suarez, _Disp. Metaph_., xxiii.; §§7 and 8.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. _World as Will_, ii., pp. 251 ff. _sqq_. (third
edition).]
The best examples of the truth in question are in every way furnished
by Shakespeare's plays. It is a truth with which he was thoroughly
imbued, and his intuitive wisdom expressed it in a concrete shape on
every page. I shall here, however, give an instance of it in a case in
which he makes it remarkably clear, without exhibiting any design or
affectation in the matter; for he was a real artist and never set
out from general ideas. His method was obviously to work up to the
psychological truth which he grasped directly and intuitively,
regardless of the fact that few would notice or understand it, and
without the smallest idea that some dull and shallow fellows in
Germany would one day proclaim far and wide that he wrote his works to
illustrate moral commonplaces. I allude to the character of the Earl
of Northumberland, whom we find in three plays in succession, although
he does not take a leading part in any one of them; nay, he appears
only in a few scenes distributed over fifteen acts. Consequently, if
the reader is not very attentive, a character exhibited at such great
intervals, and its moral identity, may easily escape his notice, even
though it has by no means escaped the poet's. He makes the earl appear
everywhere with a noble and knightly grace, and talk in language
suitable to it; nay, he sometimes puts very beautiful and even
elevated passages, into his mouth. At the same time he is very far
from writing after the manner of Schiller, who was fond of painting
the devil black, and whose moral approval or disapproval of the
characters which he presented could be heard in their own words. With
Shakespeare, and also with Goethe, every character, as long as he is
on the stage and speaking, seems to be absolutely in the right, even
though it were the devil himself. In this respect let the reader
compare Duke Alba as he appears in Goethe with the same character in
Schiller.
We make the acquaintance of the Earl of Northumberland in the play of
_Richard II_., where he is the first to hatch a plot against the King
in favour of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV., to whom he even offers
some personal flattery (Act II., Sc. 3). In the following act he
suffers a reprimand because, in speaking of the King he talks of him
as "Richard," without more ado, but protests that he did it only for
brevity's sake. A little later his insidious words induce the King to
surrender. In the following act, when the King renounces the crown,
Northumberland treats him with such harshness and contempt that the
unlucky monarch is quite broken, and losing all patience once more
exclaims to him: _Fiend, thou torment'st me ere I come to hell_! At
the close, Northumberland announces to the new King that he has sent
the heads of the former King's adherents to London.
In the following tragedy, _Henry IV_., he hatches a plot against the
new King in just the same way. In the fourth act we see the rebels
united, making preparations for the decisive battle on the morrow, and
only waiting impatiently for Northumberland and his division. At last
there arrives a letter from him, saying that he is ill, and that he
cannot entrust his force to any one else; but that nevertheless the
others should go forward with courage and make a brave fight. They
do so, but, greatly weakened by his absence, they are completely
defeated; most of their leaders are captured, and his own son, the
valorous Hotspur, falls by the hand of the Prince of Wales.
Again, in the following play, the _Second Part of Henry IV_., we see
him reduced to a state of the fiercest wrath by the death of his son,
and maddened by the thirst for revenge. Accordingly he kindles another
rebellion, and the heads of it assemble once more. In the fourth act,
just as they are about to give battle, and are only waiting for him to
join them, there comes a letter saying that he cannot collect a proper
force, and will therefore seek safety for the present in Scotland;
that, nevertheless, he heartily wishes their heroic undertaking the
best success. Thereupon they surrender to the King under a treaty
which is not kept, and so perish.
So far is character from being the work of reasoned choice and
consideration that in any action the intellect has nothing to do but
to present motives to the will. Thereafter it looks on as a mere
spectator and witness at the course which life takes, in accordance
with the influence of motive on the given character. All the incidents
of life occur, strictly speaking, with the same necessity as the
movement of a clock. On this point let me refer to my prize-essay on
_The Freedom of the Will_. I have there explained the true meaning and
origin of the persistent illusion that the will is entirely free in
every single action; and I have indicated the cause to which it is
due. I will only add here the following teleological explanation of
this natural illusion.
Since every single action of a man's life seems to possess the freedom
and originality which in truth only belong to his character as he
apprehends it, and the mere apprehension of it by his intellect is
what constitutes his career; and since what is original in every
single action seems to the empirical consciousness to be always being
performed anew, a man thus receives in the course of his career the
strongest possible moral lesson. Then, and not before, he becomes
thoroughly conscious of all the bad sides of his character. Conscience
accompanies every act with the comment: _You should act differently_,
although its true sense is: _You could be other than you are_. As the
result of this immutability of character on the one hand, and, on the
other, of the strict necessity which attends all the circumstances in
which character is successively placed, every man's course of life
is precisely determined from Alpha right through to Omega. But,
nevertheless, one man's course of life turns out immeasurably happier,
nobler and more worthy than another's, whether it be regarded from a
subjective or an objective point of view, and unless we are to exclude
all ideas of justice, we are led to the doctrine which is well
accepted in Brahmanism and Buddhism, that the subjective conditions in
which, as well as the objective conditions under which, every man is
born, are the moral consequences of a previous existence.
Macchiavelli, who seems to have taken no interest whatever in
philosophical speculations, is drawn by the keen subtlety of his very
unique understanding into the following observation, which possesses
a really deep meaning. It shows that he had an intuitive knowledge of
the entire necessity with which, characters and motives being given,
all actions take place. He makes it at the beginning of the prologue
to his comedy _Clitia_. _If_, he says, _the same men were to recur
in the world in the way that the same circumstances recur, a hundred
years would never elapse without our finding ourselves together once
more, and doing the same things as we are doing now--Se nel mondo
tornassino i medesimi uomini, como tornano i medesimi casi, non
passarebbono mai cento anni che noi non ci trovassimo un altra volta
insieme, a fare le medesime cose che hora_. He seems however to have
been drawn into the remark by a reminiscence of what Augustine says in
his _De Civitate Dei_, bk. xii., ch. xiii.
Again, Fate, or the [Greek: eimarmenae] of the ancients, is nothing
but the conscious certainty that all that happens is fast bound by a
chain of causes, and therefore takes place with a strict necessity;
that the future is already ordained with absolute certainty and can
undergo as little alteration as the past. In the fatalistic myths of
the ancients all that can be regarded as fabulous is the prediction
of the future; that is, if we refuse to consider the possibility of
magnetic clairvoyance and second sight. Instead of trying to explain
away the fundamental truth of Fatalism by superficial twaddle and
foolish evasion, a man should attempt to get a clear knowledge and
comprehension of it; for it is demonstrably true, and it helps us in a
very important way to an understanding of the mysterious riddle of
our life. Predestination and Fatalism do not differ in the main. They
differ only in this, that with Predestination the given character and
external determination of human action proceed from a rational Being,
and with Fatalism from an irrational one. But in either case the
result is the same: that happens which must happen.
On the other hand the conception of _Moral Freedom_ is inseparable
from that of _Originality_. A man may be said, but he cannot be
conceived, to be the work of another, and at the same time be free in
respect of his desires and acts. He who called him into existence out
of nothing in the same process created and determined his nature--in
other words, the whole of his qualities. For no one can create without
creating a something, that is to say, a being determined throughout
and in all its qualities. But all that a man says and does necessarily
proceeds from the qualities so determined; for it is only the
qualities themselves set in motion. It is only some external impulse
that they require to make their appearance. As a man is, so must he
act; and praise or blame attaches, not to his separate acts, but to
his nature and being.
That is the reason why Theism and the moral responsibility of man are
incompatible; because responsibility always reverts to the creator of
man and it is there that it has its centre. Vain attempts have been
made to make a bridge from one of these incompatibles to the other by
means of the conception of moral freedom; but it always breaks down
again. What is _free_ must also be _original_. If our will is _free_,
our will is also _the original element_, and conversely. Pre-Kantian
dogmatism tried to separate these two predicaments. It was thereby
compelled to assume two kinds of freedom, one cosmological, of the
first cause, and the other moral and theological, of human will. These
are represented in Kant by the third as well as the fourth antimony of
freedom.