Is man free in action and thought, or is he bound by an iron
necessity? There are few questions on which so much ingenuity has
been expended. The idea of freedom has found enthusiastic supporters
and stubborn opponents in plenty. There are those who, in their
moral fervour, label anyone a man of limited intelligence who can
deny so patent a fact as freedom. Opposed to them are others who
regard it as the acme of unscientific thinking for anyone to believe
that the uniformity of natural law is broken in the sphere of human
action and thought. One and the same thing is thus proclaimed, now
as the most precious possession of humanity, now as its most fatal
illusion. Infinite subtlety has been employed to explain how human
freedom can be consistent with determinism in nature of which man,
after all, is a part. Others have been at no less pains to explain
how such a delusion as this could have arisen. That we are dealing
here with one of the most important questions for life, religion,
conduct, science, must be clear to every one whose most prominent
trait of character is not the reverse of thoroughness. It is one
of the sad signs of the superficiality of present-day thought, that
a book which attempts to develop a new faith out of the results of
recent scientific research (David Friedrich Strauss, Der alte und
neue Glaube), has nothing more to say on this question than these
words: "With the question of the freedom of the human will we are
not concerned. The alleged freedom of indifferent choice has been
recognised as an empty illusion by every philosophy worthy of the
name. The determination of the moral value of human conduct and
character remains untouched by this problem." It is not because I
consider that the book in which it occurs has any special importance
that I quote this passage, but because it seems to me to express the
only view to which the thought of the majority of our contemporaries
is able to rise in this matter. Every one who has grown beyond the
kindergarten-stage of science appears to know nowadays that freedom
cannot consist in choosing, at one's pleasure, one or other of
two possible courses of action. There is always, so we are told,
a perfectly definite reason why, out of several possible actions,
we carry out just one and no other.
This seems quite obvious. Nevertheless, down to the present day, the
main attacks of the opponents of freedom are directed only against
freedom of choice. Even Herbert Spencer, in fact, whose doctrines are
gaining ground daily, says, "That every one is at liberty to desire or
not to desire, which is the real proposition involved in the dogma of
free will, is negatived as much by the analysis of consciousness, as by
the contents of the preceding chapters" (The Principles of Psychology,
Part IV, chap. ix, par. 219). Others, too, start from the same point
of view in combating the concept of free will. The germs of all the
relevant arguments are to be found as early as Spinoza. All that
he brought forward in clear and simple language against the idea of
freedom has since been repeated times without number, but as a rule
enveloped in the most sophisticated arguments, so that it is difficult
to recognise the straightforward train of thought which is alone in
question. Spinoza writes in a letter of October or November, 1674,
"I call a thing free which exists and acts from the pure necessity of
its nature, and I call that unfree, of which the being and action are
precisely and fixedly determined by something else. Thus, e.g., God,
though necessary, is free because he exists only through the necessity
of his own nature. Similarly, God knows himself and all else as free,
because it follows solely from the necessity of his nature that he
knows all. You see, therefore, that for me freedom consists not in
free decision, but in free necessity.
"But let us come down to created things which are all determined
by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite
manner. To perceive this more clearly, let us imagine a perfectly
simple case. A stone, for example, receives from an external cause
acting upon it a certain quantity of motion, by reason of which it
necessarily continues to move, after the impact of the external cause
has ceased. The continued motion of the stone is due to compulsion, not
to the necessity of its own nature, because it requires to be defined
by the impact of an external cause. What is true here for the stone
is true also for every other particular thing, however complicated and
many-sided it may be, namely, that everything is necessarily determined
by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite manner.
"Now, pray, assume that this stone during its motion thinks and
knows that it is striving to the best of its power to continue in
motion. This stone which is conscious only of its striving and is
by no means indifferent, will believe that it is absolutely free,
and that it continues in motion for no other reason than its own
will to continue. Now this is that human freedom which everybody
claims to possess and which consists in nothing but this, that men
are conscious of their desires, but ignorant of the causes by which
they are determined. Thus the child believes that he desires milk of
his own free will, the angry boy regards his desire for vengeance as
free, and the coward his desire for flight. Again, the drunken man
believes that he says of his own free will what, sober again, he would
fain have left unsaid, and as this prejudice is innate in all men,
it is difficult to free oneself from it. For, although experience
teaches us often enough that man least of all can temper his desires,
and that, moved by conflicting passions, he perceives the better and
pursues the worse, yet he considers himself free because there are
some things which he desires less strongly, and some desires which he
can easily inhibit through the recollection of something else which
it is often possible to recall."
It is easy to detect the fundamental error of this view, because it
is so clearly and definitely expressed. The same necessity by which
a stone makes a definite movement as the result of an impact, is
said to compel a man to carry out an action when impelled thereto by
any cause. It is only because man is conscious of his action, that he
thinks himself to be its originator. In doing so, he overlooks the fact
that he is driven by a cause which he must obey unconditionally. The
error in this train of thought is easily brought to light. Spinoza,
and all who think like him, overlook the fact that man not only is
conscious of his action, but also may become conscious of the cause
which guides him. Anyone can see that a child is not free when he
desires milk, nor the drunken man when he says things which he later
regrets. Neither knows anything of the causes, working deep within
their organisms, which exercise irresistible control over them. But
is it justifiable to lump together actions of this kind with those
in which a man is conscious not only of his actions but also of their
causes? Are the actions of men really all of one kind? Should the act
of a soldier on the field of battle, of the scientific researcher in
his laboratory, of the statesman in the most complicated diplomatic
negotiations, be placed on the same level with that of the child
when he desires milk? It is, no doubt, true that it is best to seek
the solution of a problem where the conditions are simplest. But
lack of ability to see distinctions has before now caused endless
confusion. There is, after all, a profound difference between
knowing the motive of my action and not knowing it. At first sight
this seems a self-evident truth. And yet the opponents of freedom
never ask themselves whether a motive of action which I recognise
and understand, is to be regarded as compulsory for me in the same
sense as the organic process which causes the child to cry for milk.
Eduard von Hartmann, in his Phänomenologie des Sittlichen Bewusstseins
(p. 451), asserts that the human will depends on two chief factors,
the motives and the character. If one regards men as all alike, or at
any rate the differences between them as negligible, then their will
appears as determined from without, viz., by the circumstances with
which they come in contact. But if one bears in mind that men adopt an
idea as the motive of their conduct, only if their character is such
that this idea arouses a desire in them, then men appear as determined
from within and not from without. Now, because an idea, given to us
from without, must first in accordance with our characters be adopted
as a motive, men believe that they are free, i.e., independent of
external influences. The truth, however, according to Eduard von
Hartmann, is that "even though we must first adopt an idea as a
motive, we do so not arbitrarily, but according to the disposition
of our characters, that is, we are anything but free." Here again
the difference between motives, which I allow to influence me only
after I have consciously made them my own, and those which I follow
without any clear knowledge of them, is absolutely ignored.
This leads us straight to the standpoint from which the subject will
be treated here. Have we any right to consider the question of the
freedom of the will by itself at all? And if not, with what other
question must it necessarily be connected?
If there is a difference between conscious and unconscious motives of
action, then the action in which the former issue should be judged
differently from the action which springs from blind impulse. Hence
our first question will concern this difference, and on the result
of this inquiry will depend what attitude we ought to take up towards
the question of freedom proper.
What does it mean to have knowledge of the motives of one's
actions? Too little attention has been paid to this question, because,
unfortunately, man who is an indivisible whole has always been torn
asunder by us. The agent has been divorced from the knower, whilst he
who matters more than everything else, viz., the man who acts because
he knows, has been utterly overlooked.
It is said that man is free when he is controlled only by his reason,
and not by his animal passions. Or, again, that to be free means to
be able to determine one's life and action by purposes and deliberate
decisions.
Nothing is gained by assertions of this sort. For the question is just
whether reason, purposes, and decisions exercise the same kind of
compulsion over a man as his animal passions. If, without my doing,
a rational decision occurs in me with the same necessity with which
hunger and thirst happen to me, then I must needs obey it, and my
freedom is an illusion.
Another form of expression runs: to be free means, not that we can will
what we will, but that we can do what we will. This thought has been
expressed with great clearness by the poet-philosopher Robert Hamerling
in his Atomistik des Willens. "Man can, it is true, do what he wills,
but he cannot will what he wills, because his will is determined by
motives! He cannot will what he wills? Let us consider these phrases
more closely. Have they any intelligible meaning? Does freedom of will,
then, mean being able to will without ground, without motive? What
does willing mean if not to have grounds for doing, or striving to do,
this rather than that? To will anything without ground or motive would
mean to will something without willing it. The concept of motive is
indissolubly bound up with that of will. Without the determining
motive the will is an empty faculty; it is the motive which makes
it active and real. It is, therefore, quite true that the human will
is not 'free,' inasmuch as its direction is always determined by the
strongest motive. But, on the other hand, it must be admitted that it
is absurd to speak, in contrast with this 'unfreedom,' of a conceivable
'freedom' of the will, which would consist in being able to will what
one does not will" (Atomistik des Willens, p. 213 ff.).
Here, again, only motives in general are mentioned, without taking into
account the difference between unconscious and conscious motives. If
a motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves
to be the "strongest" of its kind, then the idea of freedom ceases to
have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing
or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it? The primary question
is, not whether I can do a thing or not when impelled by a motive,
but whether the only motives are such as impel me with absolute
necessity. If I must will something, then I may well be absolutely
indifferent as to whether I can also do it. And if, through my
character, or through circumstances prevailing in my environment,
a motive is forced on me which to my thinking is unreasonable, then
I should even have to be glad if I could not do what I will.
The question is, not whether I can carry out a decision once made,
but how I come to make the decision.
What distinguishes man from all other organic beings is his rational
thought. Activity is common to him with other organisms. Nothing is
gained by seeking analogies in the animal world to clear up the concept
of freedom as applied to the actions of human beings. Modern science
loves these analogies. When scientists have succeeded in finding among
animals something similar to human behaviour, they believe they have
touched on the most important question of the science of man. To what
misunderstandings this view leads is seen, for example, in the book
Die Illusion der Willensfreiheit, by P. Ree, 1885, where, on Page 5,
the following remark on freedom appears: "It is easy to explain why
the movement of a stone seems to us necessary, while the volition
of a donkey does not. The causes which set the stone in motion are
external and visible, while the causes which determine the donkey's
volition are internal and invisible. Between us and the place of their
activity there is the skull cap of the ass.... The causal nexus is
not visible and is therefore thought to be non-existent. The volition,
it is explained, is, indeed, the cause of the donkey's turning round,
but is itself unconditioned; it is an absolute beginning." Here again
human actions in which there is a consciousness of the motives are
simply ignored, for Ree declares, "that between us and the sphere of
their activity there is the skull cap of the ass." As these words
show, it has not so much as dawned on Ree that there are actions,
not indeed of the ass, but of human beings, in which the motive,
become conscious, lies between us and the action. Ree demonstrates
his blindness once again a few pages further on, when he says,
"We do not perceive the causes by which our will is determined,
hence we think it is not causally determined at all."
But enough of examples which prove that many argue against freedom
without knowing in the least what freedom is.
That an action of which the agent does not know why he performs
it, cannot be free goes without saying. But what of the freedom
of an action about the motives of which we reflect? This leads us
to the question of the origin and meaning of thought. For without
the recognition of the activity of mind which is called thought,
it is impossible to understand what is meant either by knowledge of
something or by action. When we know what thought in general means,
it will be easier to see clearly the role which thought plays in human
action. As Hegel rightly says, "It is thought which turns the soul,
common to us and animals, into spirit." Hence it is thought which we
may expect to give to human action its characteristic stamp.
I do not mean to imply that all our actions spring only from the sober
deliberations of our reason. I am very far from calling only those
actions "human" in the highest sense, which proceed from abstract
judgments. But as soon as our conduct rises above the sphere of the
satisfaction of purely animal desires, our motives are always shaped by
thoughts. Love, pity, and patriotism are motives of action which cannot
be analysed away into cold concepts of the understanding. It is said
that here the heart, the soul, hold sway. This is no doubt true. But
the heart and the soul create no motives. They presuppose them. Pity
enters my heart when the thought of a person who arouses pity had
appeared in my consciousness. The way to the heart is through the
head. Love is no exception. Whenever it is not merely the expression
of bare sexual instinct, it depends on the thoughts we form of the
loved one. And the more we idealise the loved one in our thoughts,
the more blessed is our love. Here, too, thought is the father of
feeling. It is said that love makes us blind to the failings of the
loved one. But the opposite view can be taken, namely that it is
precisely for the good points that love opens the eyes. Many pass
by these good points without notice. One, however, perceives them,
and just because he does, love awakens in his soul. What else has he
done except perceive what hundreds have failed to see? Love is not
theirs, because they lack the perception.
From whatever point we regard the subject, it becomes more and more
clear that the question of the nature of human action presupposes
that of the origin of thought. I shall, therefore, turn next to
this question.