FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY
Theological thought is faced with a problem in ethics which presents the
greatest difficulties. It is the problem of Free Will.
Is man who perceives, judges, has volition and acts, a free being
inwardly? Can he, guided only by his own reasonable thoughts and
conclusions, determined entirely by his own inner impulses and
uninfluenced by outer circumstances, choose one or the other of two
conflicting possibilities? When he has to make a decision, is he always
like Hercules at the cross-roads who has to make up his mind alone as to
which path he shall take, whether he is to follow quiet, modest virtue,
or alluring, voluptuous vice? Does he do evil because he willed to do so
and not otherwise, although it was in his power to avoid it? Does he
decide for the good, because after due investigation and consideration
he recognized it as preferable, though he might have rejected it? Or is
man always subject to coercion from which at no time and no place he can
escape? Are all his actions determined by the law of Nature which
regulates every one of his movements just as mechanically as the course
of the stars or the fall of a body to our earth when its support is
removed? Is he an automaton, set going by cosmic forces, who possesses
the doubtful privilege consciously to be able to follow the turning of
his wheels, the action of his levers, rods and indicators and to listen
to their humming and knocking without being allowed to interfere in
their movements or to change the least thing in their functions or work?
Is he fettered by the chain of causes which have existed eternally and
continue to act immutably to all eternity?
Theological thought is condemned to find an answer to the question of
freedom or determinism, as it is the necessary condition for the
essential concepts of the theological doctrine of Morality, that is, the
concept of responsibility and those consequent upon this, namely, sin,
reward and punishment. For the true believer God is the source of
Morality. He Himself is Morality. What He ordains is good in itself and
cannot be otherwise, for there is no room for evil in His nature, since
if He could be conceived to do evil, it would by the very fact of His
doing it become good. A man, to be moral, must approximate to the nature
of God as nearly as it is granted to mortals to do. The moral law is
revealed by God's mercy to give man a light which shows him the right
path and lights him on his way. Thanks to Him the poor mortal is
relieved of the incertitude due to his limited mental powers and is
endowed with the priceless possession of a certain precept which he need
only obey in order to be sure of salvation.
However, granted the correctness of this assumption, it is not
comprehensible how evil came into the world. It contradicts all
attributes with which faith has endowed the deity. It cannot appear
without God's knowledge, for He is omniscient and nothing is hidden
from Him. It cannot occur against His will, for He is omnipotent and
nothing resists His bidding. But least of all can it rage with His
knowledge and consent, for He is infinitely good and therefore does not
permit his creatures to fall victims to evil. But experience teaches us
that evil has a permanent place in human life, and this forces one to
the conclusion that either God is hard and cruel, and therefore not
infinitely good and not Morality itself, or that He has no knowledge of
evil and therefore is not omniscient, but, on the contrary, blind as
well as stupid, or that He sees the evil but cannot prevent it, and
therefore is not omnipotent and must recognize the existence of higher
powers than Himself against whom He is impotent.
These terrifying conclusions have not escaped the notice of the devout,
and they have always made the most desperate efforts to evade them. Some
have chosen the easiest way out of the difficulty; they close their eyes
before the yawning abyss, fold their hands devoutly and invent pious
phrases about the inscrutable ways of Providence and its infinite
wisdom, which the weak intelligence of mortals cannot grasp. Others take
infinite pains; in the sweat of their brow they with difficulty evolve
tortuous and hypocritical explanations, which in reality explain
nothing, but in a mind which lends itself willingly to them give rise to
the illusion that the contradiction has been solved. Perhaps the most
astounding piece of work accomplished by this miserable juggling, or
this delusion of self by means of an exuberant flow of words, is
presented in the four volumes of the "Théodicée," by which Leibnitz
made himself a laughing-stock. Mazdeism has invented an alluring but at
the same time risky expedient. It lightly assumes that two principles
obtain in the universe, a good one and a bad one, the creator and the
destroyer, the merciful God and the cruel demon, Ormuzd and Ahriman. In
this way everything is easy to understand. Good is the work of radiant
Ormuzd, evil the deed of dark Ahriman. The two fight together with very
nearly equal forces, but this doctrine reveals the comforting prospect
of a distant future in which Ormuzd shall finally triumph over Ahriman,
and fills the trembling believer with elation at the thought that after
æons of the tragic struggle between good and evil, at the end of the
world the curtain will fall on the victory of good. By this victory
Mazdeism, which claims to be monotheistic, rescues its single god,
although the introduction of a second principle of very nearly equal
power, which holds the one god in check for an immeasurable period of
time, brings this system perilously close to polytheism.
To the purer monotheism of Christianity there is indeed something
repugnant in the assumption of a second, opposite principle of almost
equal power, but yet it has admitted the existence of the devil, who is
undoubtedly reminiscent of Ahriman. Only he lacks the independence of
the Mazdean demon. He is not on a footing of equality with God, but is
subject to Him as is every creature. He is not strong enough to oppose
God and can only do evil because God allows it. But why does He allow
it? Why does He tolerate the devil? Why can the latter proceed with his
evil work with God's consent? To this theology gives a crafty answer
which Goethe has clothed in the glorious beauty of inimitable poetry.
God has assigned to the devil the task of tempting man with all the arts
of seduction in order to give him the opportunity of testing and
developing his moral strength in resistance, of purging himself, of
attaining purity and salvation by his own efforts. In short, he exists
in order to give man a sort of Swedish gymnastics in virtue. The
struggle is not quite fair, for the devil is held by a halter and is
pulled up if he gets too big an advantage, and man is always assisted by
redeeming mercy, a hand being stretched out to him from the clouds which
sets him on his feet as often as he stumbles. But theology is not bound
by rules of sport. That is how the picture of the universe is presented
in "_Faust_." But he who painted it is the same Goethe who on another
occasion angrily complains: "You allow man to become guilty--and then
leave him to his suffering." Does the divinity allow man to fall a
victim to evil without turning it aside from him? Does he only try him
in order mercifully to rescue him at the moment when he is about to
succumb? Goethe does not answer this question without ambiguity. That is
not his business either. He may contradict himself. He is a poet who is
allowed to express contradictory views. He is not a theologian whose
duty it is, by means of a definite dogma, to support those who totter in
doubt.
All these attempts to reconcile the attributes of the deity with the
fact that there is evil in the world which continually leads man into
danger, emanate from the explicit or tacit assumption that man possesses
Free Will. For if his will is not free and he does evil, then he does it
because he must and because he cannot do otherwise. But this must can
only come from the deity who is almighty; it is the deity who condemns
man, who forces him to do evil. Man therefore does evil as God's tool
without volition; therefore, as a matter of fact, it is God Himself who
does evil. But if God is capable of doing evil He is not Morality
itself, or every distinction between good and evil is destroyed, and we
must recognize what seems evil to us to be just as moral as what seems
good, because the one is as much the work of God as the other. But if
this is admitted, and it is logically impossible not to admit it, then
the whole foundation of transcendental, that is, of theological, ethics
breaks down. The latter is therefore forced, on pain of suicide, to
maintain that man has Free Will.
But with this assertion theological ethics by no means disarms all the
objections which threaten its life. Renouvier's book on Free Will is
probably the most thorough and exhaustive work on this subject which has
been treated by thousands of thinkers and not a few babblers since the
time of the ancient Greeks, and he describes it as follows: "Will is
free and spontaneous if Reason cannot foretell its untrammelled action
at any time other than that at which it actually takes place." Renouvier
makes no limitation and no reservation. He does not say, "if human
reason cannot foretell its action," and this omission of the
particularizing adjective is not carelessness or a mistake on his part,
it is duly considered; for the prudent dialectician knows very well that
he would ruin his theory of Free Will if he only maintained that human
reason alone should be able to foretell its action. There are many
happenings which human reason cannot foretell, and which nevertheless
obey immutable laws and take place according to absolutely fixed rules
without the exercise of any inner freedom or authority on the part of
the individual. If human reason cannot foretell these happenings, it is
not because no external force of the universe determines them and they
are entirely spontaneous, but simply because the laws controlling them
are unknown. Therefore the impossibility of foretelling them is no proof
of their freedom, it is only a proof of the ignorance of the human mind.
There was a time when no human intellect could foretell the occurrence
of a solar or lunar eclipse. Was that because the heavenly bodies act
freely and are eclipsed only at their own spontaneous desire, when and
how they please? No, because man had not discovered and comprehended
their movements. To this very day we are unable to foretell the weather
on a particular day next year, or the result of the next harvest, or an
earthquake. Does this prove the freedom, the absolute independence of
these occurrences? No; it only proves the inadequacy of our knowledge.
Renouvier therefore would achieve nothing for his theory of Free Will,
if only human understanding were to be unable to foretell the actions of
the Will. That is why he does not say "human reason," but simply
"Reason." The essence of Free Will is that its actions altogether shall
be incapable of being foreseen; it is not in its nature to act in
accordance with some predetermination which must necessarily reckon with
outer circumstances and given forces; and the impossibility of
foretelling its actions exists not only for human Reason but for every
Reason--for Reason in general.
For every Reason and therefore for the divine Reason as well. And now
theological ethics must find a way out of this dilemma: either God does
not foresee the decisions of free human Will, then this is a denial of
his omniscience, that is, of one of His essential attributes; or God
foresees the decisions of free human Will, then this is a denial of the
Freedom of the Will, the essence of which, according to Renouvier, lies
in the fact that it cannot be foreseen. For this impossibility of being
foreseen is indeed the quality by which Free Will stands or falls. Let
us realize the significance of this concept. Nothing can be foreseen
which will not with certainty occur. But whatever at some future time
will become a reality, must even now be virtually a reality for an
omniscient Reason not bound by the human categories of time and space,
since for this Reason neither proximity nor distance exists, but
everything is on one plane, and there is no future or past, but
everything is present. So if the divine Reason foresees now how the free
Will of man will act in the future, that is equivalent to saying that
this free Will is forced to act in the particular way which God foresees
and not otherwise. Therefore the Will is not free but, on the contrary,
strictly bound. It is obliged to make the event foreseen by God a fact,
as God can only foresee what must certainly come to pass, and a foreseen
event that does not happen would mean a mistake, a false assumption, of
which one cannot believe God capable without denying Him. This apparent
free Will is coercion at sight. As its action is foreseen by God, the
Will is subject to the law of fate, but a period of delay is granted.
Every movement of the supposedly free Will becomes a part of the order
of the universe which has been unalterably laid down from eternity, and
which the human Will cannot upset without burying God in the ruins. Man
may imagine that his Will is free. But that is self-deception, and he
can only indulge in it because what God sees clearly is hidden from him,
namely, the goal towards which, though he does not realize it, he is
inevitably led along strictly defined paths by the iron hand of fate.
It would be unjust towards theology to say that it has never seen the
incompatibility of Free Will with divine omniscience. This has not
escaped its notice, but it has attempted by the use of familiar formulæ
to get out of the difficulty. In his book _De libero Arbitrio_ Saint
Augustine stoutly maintains that the human Will is free, but he tries to
rescue the attributes of the deity by reserving to it the right or the
power to intervene by its mercy in the actions of the Will, if in its
freedom it comes to a decision which endangers the salvation of the
soul. Saint Thomas Aquinas takes good care not to differ in opinion from
the Bishop of Hippo. The reformers, Calvin, Luther and Bishop Jansen,
too, were better logicians than the patristic writers, and
unhesitatingly denied the freedom of the Will, but they did not notice
that they made God responsible for all the misdeeds of man, lacking
freedom and acting with God's foreknowledge and at His behest. The
Council of Trent scorned all these contradictions and unintelligible
points, and declared with infallible authority that man's Will is free
and that at the same time God is omniscient. The Catholic Church at the
time was in some countries still in a position to meet Reason, if it
raised objections, with an unanswerable argument: the stake.
That is the peculiarity of theological as distinguished from scientific
thought, the purest form of which is mathematics. The former never
follows a train of thought to its strictly logical conclusion, but only
follows a certain distance, to a point where it loses itself in an
impenetrable black fog, or in a cloud of glory which dazzles the
beholder. Mathematical thought, on the contrary, develops the train of
thought to the bitter end, to its ultimate conclusions. These are
necessarily absurd if the premises are erroneous, and their absurdity is
so clear that it convincingly proves the mistake in the point of
departure. Such a scrupulous confutation of self is to be expected as
little from mystic visions as from arrogant dogmatism. The former obey
the laws of dreams, in which the association of ideas, unfettered by
logic, holds sway and strings together the most incompatible ideas to
form an apparently connected series; the latter demands the privilege of
being independent of the judgment of Reason, and of being tried by
Faith, a judge who always decides in its favour.
Those who believe in Free Will adduce a proof of it which they derive by
the method of introspection. Man, they say, will never be convinced that
he is not free, that his actions are not determined by his own will
alone, for he has the incontrovertible consciousness of the contrary. He
is quite clear on the point that he does a thing because it is his will
to do so, that he had the choice of doing it or not, that he does what
he wants, that he comes to his decision owing to considerations,
inclinations, moods or intentions which are perfectly known to him, if
to him only. At the Sorbonne in Paris they still remember the
professor--when the anecdote was told me Victor Cousin was named as the
hero, but I cannot guarantee that it was he and no other--who used to
say in his lecture on Free Will: "Man's will is free. There is no need
to prove this by giving reasons. We feel it immediately as a truth. I
will show you. I will raise my right arm. I raise it"--here he raised
his right arm with a commanding gesture, kept it for a short time in
this position, and added triumphantly: "You see that my will is free."
His hearers broke into enthusiastic applause at this triumphant
demonstration. To-day they would receive it with loud laughter.
We have learnt to seek the roots of most, perhaps of all, human actions
in the subconsciousness. There they are worked out under influences
which cannot be perceived by introspection and in which inborn and
acquired inclinations, experiences, organic conditions at the time,
instincts, attractions and repulsions play a decisive part. They rise
ready made into consciousness, and the latter, not having seen them
being formed, persuades itself that it has produced them spontaneously,
and imagines reasons why it willed to do actions that were determined
outside its sphere. The professor who authoritatively states, "I wish to
raise my right arm and therefore I do it," certainly says this in all
good faith, but equally certainly he is ignorant. He is not aware of the
play of forces which end in his gesture. He raises his right arm, which
he believes he chooses with complete freedom, because he is in the habit
of using his right arm by preference; if he had been left-handed he
would have announced his wish to raise his left arm, and would have been
equally convinced that he had decided, with complete freedom, for his
left arm. If he suffered from chronic muscular rheumatism in one of his
arms, so that it would trouble him or hurt him to move it, he would
unconsciously choose the other, sound arm, and maintain just as
positively that he had done so with complete freedom. I have mentioned
as instances two particularly crude and therefore very obvious reasons
which may determine the action of this simple-minded professor without
his being aware of it. But each one of our more complicated, and even of
our simplest, movements is the outcome of numberless subtle causes which
are partly due to the organized experiences and habits of our individual
life, partly a necessary consequence of our inherited qualities, our
bodily and intellectual constitution, and their origin goes back to the
far distant past of our species, to the beginnings of life, we may even
say to eternity. Our consciousness can tell nothing of these causes.
They elude our observation and investigation and remain ever unknown to
us. Renouvier is quite right when he says no understanding--and I say
without his ambiguity no human understanding of the present time--can
foretell the actions of another, nor indeed his own, but not because
they come to pass independently of inevitable causes, but simply because
these causes cannot be descried by our ignorance.
It is vain labour to try and derive the solution of the question of
Free Will, or even a contribution towards it, from introspection.
It is a method unsuitable for this purpose. The Greek sage well knew
what a great and difficult task he set man when he admonished him:
"[Greek: gnôthi seauton]." That is easy to say but difficult if not
impossible to do. Spinoza very happily characterized the self-deception
in which the individual is plunged with regard to the part played in
determining his actions by his conscious Will aided by Reason; he says
that if a stone, flung by some hand, had consciousness, it would imagine
it was flying of its own free will; and in another place he points out
without any illustrative metaphor, that a drunk man and a child, who
certainly do not act on their own initiative, also believe in the
freedom of their will. It has been possible to prove experimentally how
ignorant of the real motives of his actions the individual may be. It is
suggested to a person who has been hypnotized that on awakening he is to
carry out a certain action, something particularly absurd, unjustified
and aimless being intentionally chosen. The subject of the experiment
on awaking faithfully carries out the suggestion, and as he has no
memory of what happened while he was in the hypnotic state, he is
convinced that he is yielding to a sudden idea, a whim, but that in any
case his action is determined by his own will. But since he must realize
the absurdity of what he is doing, he seeks for some sufficient motive
to explain it, and always finds one to his own satisfaction.
All the efforts of anguished sophists to prove their thesis of the
Freedom of the Will from data supplied by introspection have failed
miserably. But they were forced to undertake them, for theology cannot
give up the contention that man acts with free Will. It is an important
part of the religious conception of the universe and of the relation in
which, according to this, man stands to God.
To put it shortly, religion sees in man's life on earth a preparation
for eternity. It gives him the opportunity of coming nearer to God by
his own efforts and thus making himself worthy of the salvation which
secures him a place in the sight of God to the end of time. Thus the
life of the flesh is made a method of selection by which the sheep are
sundered from the goats. God provides man with free Will for this
special purpose, so that he may make use of it to choose good of his own
accord and to avoid evil. This undoubtedly wearisome task is made much
easier for him, because God in His goodness has given him laws,
doctrines of Morality and examples which point out the way of salvation.
If man makes proper use of his gifts, if in pursuance of divine
admonition, he treads of his own free will the path of virtue, he
acquires merit which gives him a legitimate claim to the reward of
finding favour in God's eyes and to be admitted to the company of the
just and pure. But if man purposely turns to evil, of which he is warned
by revelation and which he has been given the power to avoid, then he is
a sinner and deserves the punishment of damnation, which, however, he
may yet escape if God in His mercy forgives him his sin. Therefore man
holds in his hand the fate of his immortal soul. It depends on him
whether this fate be salvation or damnation. He is responsible for
directing it to the former or the latter. Of course, God has the power
to force him to virtue and to stop him from vice. But it is not His plan
to condemn man to be the slave of virtue. He wants man to choose virtue
of his own accord, He wants noble souls about Him who by freedom have
attained Morality.
This religious view of the universe, which deals in assertions and
disdains on principle to prove even one of them to Reason by facts that
can be tested, contrasts with the scientific view of the universe which
asserts nothing but what can be objectively ascertained to be true,
which distinguishes sharply between the account of what has been
observed and can be tested by everyone and hypotheses for which it
demands no belief, but only the recognition of their possibility or
probability, and which it discards as soon as an ascertained fact
definitely disproves them. No compromise is possible between these two
views of the universe. Nothing can bridge the chasm between them. It
would be superficial to say that the theme of the scientific view is
realities and that of the religious one imagination. Imagination is also
a reality, only of a different order to that which is called so in
common parlance. It is a subjective reality; it exists only in the mind
that conceives it. Reality itself is for the thinking mind only a state
of consciousness, but it is an image of conditions which have an
objective existence, though in another form, outside the consciousness.
The supporters of religion maintain that there is an objective reality
corresponding to their concepts, but this cannot be ascertained by any
of the senses which the living organism has developed in order to
establish a relation between the world, of which it is a part, and
itself. It is perfectly useless for supporters of the one view of the
universe to try and convince those of the other. Each of them moves on a
different plane and is unapproachable to the other. All that can be done
is to define both the one and the other as clearly as possible and prove
their incompatibility.
For the scientific view of the Universe the problem of Free Will does
not exist and cannot exist. All facts that science has observed force it
to the assumption of causation, which does not only mean that every
phenomenon is produced by a cause, is the effect of a cause and could
never have occurred but for this cause, but also means that the effect
represents the exact equivalent of the energy which was its cause. Thus
the hypothesis of the indestructibility of the total energy in the
universe is an essential part of the concept of causation, the
fundamental hypothesis without which the phenomenon of the universe and
the things which occur in it are simply unintelligible to Reason; and
everything in and outside ourselves, everything that we perceive,
becomes chaos, chance, lawless whim or miracle in the theological sense
of the word.
It is inconceivable that an effect should be anything other than the
reappearance in a different form of the exact quantity of energy that
caused it; for if the energy of the effect exceeded that of its cause,
then part of the effect would have been produced without cause; and if
the energy of the effect fell short of that of the cause, then part of
the energy of the cause would have been expended without producing an
effect. That, however, would be the negation of causation, it would be
an admission that part of the effect (i.e. an effect) could be produced
without sufficient cause, i.e. out of nothing, and that a part of the
cause (i.e. energy) could disappear (into nothing) without producing an
equivalent effect, which is obviously absurd.
The human Will manifests itself by an action or the prevention of an
action according to the impulse felt by our organism. Both these are an
exercise of force, the amount of which can be measured. Indeed,
inhibition, too, is a dynamical effort which represents the exact
equivalent of the force with which the impulse which it has checked
acted on the motory centres. The Will, therefore, expends energy which
does work that can be measured. But the Will must derive this energy
from some source. It therefore also only converts energy derived from
the energy of the universe, the total amount of which can neither be
augmented nor diminished; the Will consequently is a part of the dynamic
energy of the universe, and must necessarily be subject to its
mechanical law; that is, to the law of causation. It is therefore not
free, but dependent, as is every phenomenon in the universe. Whoever
maintains its freedom maintains that it is independent, that it is not
subject to the law of causation, that it has no cause of which the
elements, if they could be fully known to us, would be measurable, that
it expends energy which it derives from nowhere, that it produces energy
out of nothing. Whoever maintains this contradicts all experience from
which the knowledge of Nature and her laws has been built up; it is
obviously hopeless to expect a reasonable discussion with such a person.
Now the supporters of free Will may reply that they do not deny that the
Will derives its energy from the organism and therefore from the
universal source of cosmic energy, and that it makes use of it according
to the laws of mechanics; but they assert that the direction in which
energy is expended by the Will is freely determined by it; further, that
the direction does not affect the amount of energy used, and
consequently the Will can act absolutely in accordance with the
mechanical laws of the universe and yet can, independently of outside
causes, determine the manner in which the energy shall be expended; that
is to say, the Will can be free. But this objection is pure sophistry,
for the determination of the direction, in so far as it is not mere
imagination and therefore ineffective and sterile, but really controls
the action, is an expenditure of energy. The controlling power uses up
energy and obeys a cause, so we have arrived at the same dilemma
again--either the controlling Will is subject to the law of causation,
then it is not free; or it is free and is determined by no outside
cause, then we must ascribe to it motion without driving power and
energy derived from nothing--which is absurd.
No. There is no such thing as Free Will. The concept of freedom itself
is an illusion of thought which cannot survey sufficiently extensive
connexions. Nothing in the universe is free; all things mutually
determine each other. All are cause and effect, and they fit into one
another like cog wheels. Everything is linked up and dovetailed. The
philosopher's phrase, "Everything is in flux," is the description of the
outward appearance of things. Against it we must set the reality which
is: "Everything is eternally at rest." For a circumscribed system of
motion without beginning or end may mean motion for every individual
point which describes the course, but is, as a whole, virtually at rest.
Everything that exists, or ever will exist, has its necessary and
sufficient cause in that which has always been; the sequence of
phenomena has been unalterably determined since all eternity for all
eternity; what we call chance is an occurrence for which our ignorance
cannot perceive the necessary causes and conditions; past and future
would be in the same plane, therefore would be present for an
omniscience, which knew and understood the machine of the universe down
to its smallest wheel and pin.
One of the logical consequences of this is that, without any miracle or
the assumption of any supernatural influences, it would be possible to
foretell the most distant events in all their smallest details. An
intelligence sufficiently wide and penetrating would, following the
strict law of causation, be able to produce all lines of the present
with absolute certainty immeasurably far into the future. As everything
that ever will be necessarily must be, it virtually exists at present
and has always existed; therefore it is only a question of clarity of
vision, which however, is denied to man, to see it at any time and to
any extent.
The illusion of flux is explicable. Life, which like all world processes
is a cyclical motion, is passed in an endless alternation between the
shining forth and extinction of consciousness, the bearers of which are
an everlasting series of organisms following one another. Every organism
lasts a limited time, during which it is carried along an inconceivably
small fraction of the tremendous cycle. It sees all the points of this
short stretch but once, and does not learn that they are eternally the
same. It gathers the false impression that they fly past it, whereas
they are at rest and it passes them, until it ceases to be a suitable
bearer of consciousness and disappears, making room for a successor.
This rigid immutability of the whole Universe is certainly intolerably
gruesome to the imagination, but then, every time we look beyond the
narrow confines of life and human circumstances, to peep into the
infinity and eternity which surrounds us, do not terrifying vistas open
up before us?
Not only the religious minded, but many free thinkers, too, have Free
Will at heart, though the latter are otherwise guiltless of any
mysticism. They claim it in the name of man's dignity, which would be
deeply humiliated if we had to confess ourselves the slaves of outside
influences, automata moved by universal causation without our having any
say in the matter. We are not entitled to such trumpery pride. Let us
seek our dignity in our striving for knowledge, in the subjection of our
own instincts to the control of our Reason, but not in an imaginary
independence of the laws of Nature, whose commands we should oppose in
vain.
With Free Will responsibility also disappears. That is obvious. But that
means a collapse only for theological Morality. Scientific ethics can
manage very well without responsibility. Nay, more; there is no room in
it for this concept. In the system of theological Morality
responsibility has a transcendental significance. To sum up once more
shortly what has been dealt with in detail above: according to this
system Morality is a divine command, obedience to, or disregard of which
results in salvation or damnation; in order that reward and punishment
may be just, one as well as the other must be merited; that implies the
assumption that virtue is practised or vice chosen intentionally and
with forethought; but this mode of action must be freely willed if man
is to be responsible for it before his divine Judge.
Scientific ethics knows nothing of this supernatural dream. In its view
Morality is an immanent phenomenon which occurs only within humanity--or
to define it more accurately, within humanity organized as a society.
It arose from a definite necessity; from the undeniable need of men to
unite, so as to be able, in company with one another, shoulder to
shoulder, to succeed more easily, or indeed to succeed at all, in the
struggle for existence which is too hard for the solitary individual. It
has a clearly recognizable aim: to teach man to curb his selfish
instincts and to practise consideration for his neighbour, by which
means alone peaceable life in common and productive co-operation are
possible. The instinct of self-preservation supplies society with the
laws of Morality which it imperiously imposes on all its members, and
unconditional obedience to which it demands. Society does not dream of
saying to the individual: "You are free; you must yourself decide
whether you will follow the path of virtue or that of vice." On the
contrary, it says to him: "Whether you wish it or not, you must do that
which my doctrine of Morality indicates as good and eschew that which it
declares to be evil. You have no choice. I tolerate you in my midst only
if you submit to the laws of Morality. If you transgress them I shall
draw your teeth and claws or destroy you altogether." By discipline
lasting many thousands of years society has developed in the individual,
though not in all, an organ that watches that his conduct is moral, and
this is the conscience. But this is only supplementary to, and
representative of, society, which in the main exercises police
supervision itself, and sees that in general the moral law is obeyed. It
judges all the actions of the individual that come to its knowledge.
Conscience only is the competent authority where occurrences are
concerned which take place simply in the consciousness of the
individual, and which he alone is aware of. Conscience is only too often
a lenient judge who acquits the individual too easily and nearly always
admits extenuating circumstances. Society does not let him off so
lightly; his punishment is certain if he cannot prevent his sin from
becoming known.
Responsibility therefore also exists in Morality as understood by
sociologists. As far as his intentions are concerned the individual must
come to terms with his conscience, which, as a rule, he does not find
difficult. For his deeds he must account to society, and it does not ask
what took place in his consciousness, but only how his spiritual
impulses were manifested. For his deeds, then, he is summoned before
society's court of justice and must answer for them without having
recourse to the excuse that he acted as he was forced to do by his
disposition and the pressure of circumstances, and that he had no choice
and could not act otherwise. Though Morality has always been necessary
for the life of the community, and though the latter has, under the
pressure of the law of self-preservation, always had to make its members
strictly subservient to Morality, it has ever had a dim idea that the
responsibility of the individual for his actions is only of practical,
not of fundamental or ideal significance. It has never pushed
investigation as to how far the individual acted freely or not to any
great lengths, never attempted to trace it to the foundations of his
consciousness, to the inception of the impulses of his Will. Where the
lack of freedom was obvious, for instance, where every layman could see
there was insanity, the Moral law has been disregarded ever since
ancient times, and society has contented itself with protecting itself
from the intolerable actions of the lunatic by rendering him harmless.
Since positive Law, made concrete in the laws with penal sanctions, was
evolved from the universal Moral law, it has admitted the plea of
irresponsibility and refrained from exercising its coercive powers where
such irresponsibility has been established. In addition to madness,
demonstrable coercion and self-defence relieve the individual from
responsibility for the crime and render him immune from punishment.
In the course of evolution society has conceded still further
limitations of individual responsibility. It willingly admits new
knowledge gained by scientific psychology and concedes limited
responsibility, not only in case of madness, but in such cases, too,
where experts can convincingly prove to the judges, the guardians of its
Law, that the individual was in an abnormal condition and affected by
morbid influences at the time of the crime. Farther society cannot go,
if it does not want to put an end to Moral law and do away altogether
with positive law. Concern for its continued existence forbids this. It
must leave it to the philosophers to continue the investigation. They
must show that the Will is never free, always fettered, not only in the
extreme cases of madness or when under the influence of suggestion. They
must make it clear that there is only a difference of degree and not of
kind between the determining influences under which the individual is
constrained to act, and that the causation which binds him proceeds by
imperceptible degrees from the delirium of the maniac and the obsession
of the abnormal man to the passion, lust and desire of the man with
strongly developed instincts, and to the slight stimulus of habits, the
colourless judgment and shallow considerations of the ordinary man with
a deformed character and no definite features. Society can draw no
practical conclusion from the theoretical recognition of the lasting
limitation and lack of freedom of the Will, because moral law by its
very nature implies coercion, and therefore excludes freedom. Whether
the individual submits to the Moral law of his own accord, or because he
is forced thereto by the community's powers of coercion, is of no
account to society. It deals only with the visible results.
But it is not merely a matter of flat utilitarianism, it is not even
unjust, if society, without inquiring whether the Will is free or not,
makes the individual responsible for his actions and only makes an
exception from this universal rule in extreme cases. Even though his
will is subject to the law of causation, and the individual always acts
as he must, he nevertheless has a means of keeping within the moral law
despite inner impulses and outer pressure, and that is by his judgment
and its instrument, inhibition. Like every organic function which is not
purely vegetative and therefore beyond the influence of the Will,
judgment and inhibition can be strengthened and perfected by methodical
exercise, while total neglect of them will weaken and finally atrophy
them. The community may demand that each of its members shall devote
attention to the development of the natural functions which permit him
to discriminate and to suppress any inclination to evil which may
appear. It facilitates this duty towards itself and himself for the
individual--for it is a question of the increase of his organic
efficiency and of his personal worth--by the institutions it founds for
the education of youth, by schools which not only impart knowledge, but
also form the character, by instruction after the school age, by the
honours with which it distinguishes especially excellent persons,
thereby holding them up to example. The community prescribes that
everyone should acquire a certain minimum of knowledge, and for this
purpose forces each individual by law to go to school for a certain
number of years. It may and ought to force him also to render himself
more capable of obeying the moral law by methodical exercise of his
will. Every citizen is responsible to the state for being able to read
and write. In this sense the individual is also responsible for
sufficiently strengthening his faculty of inhibition to be able to
control his selfish, anti-social and immoral desires.
The particular purpose for which he is to employ his faculty of
inhibition depends on the current moral law of the age, which is
determined not by the individual, but by the community. The individual
does quite enough and is free of blame if he strives with all his might
to approximate his actions to the ideal which the community demands at a
given time for the life of its members in common and for their mutual
relations. To alter and perfect this ideal is the business of a few
select men with wider judgment, stronger will and warmer sympathies than
the average. In these exceptional cases it is not the community which
imposes its ideal on the individual, but, on the contrary, the
individual who works out a new ideal for the community, and, so to
speak, thanks to his personal qualities, establishes a new record in the
gymnastic of the Will which beats all earlier ones.
Finally, it is true, the individual is dependent on his natural
disposition. To say that he can be, and is to be, raised above himself
is a very impressive, but really nonsensical, phrase. He can get out of
himself only what is in him by nature, and however hard he may try to
reach out beyond the boundaries drawn by his organic disposition, he
finds it impossible to overstep them. But, as a rule, they are far wider
than the individual has any idea of until he attempts to reach them, and
he will find many surprises if he labours untiringly to develop to their
fullest extent all the possibilities latent in him. Even a born weakling
can, by dint of methodical practice, harden his flaccid muscles
sufficiently to become a gymnast of average skill, though he is hardly
likely to become a first-class athlete.
In just the same way a weak-willed or simple person can by earnest
endeavours rise to a consistent morality; if, nevertheless, there appear
in him, continually or occasionally, organic impulses which carry him
away, it is not his fault but his misfortune. In that case he is
subjectively not responsible for his immorality. But the community can,
all the same, not liberate him from responsibility, because the law of
self-preservation forces it to insist on observance of the moral law,
and it has no means of accurately measuring how strong the pressure of
instincts and the power of inhibition is in any individual, and to what
extent he has fulfilled the duty of exercising and strengthening the
latter. The phrase "To understand everything is to forgive everything"
shows insight, but is only true in the sense that one must not blame an
individual for his natural imperfection. It comprehends recognition of
the Will's lack of freedom, and the inadmissibility, from the
philosophical point of view, of the concept of responsibility, but it
does not affect the right and the duty of the community to demand moral
conduct regardless of this lack of freedom. It is not permitted to
forgive because it understands. Moreover, there would be no sense in
forgiveness by the community, for the concept of forgiveness implies
feeling and kindly forgetfulness of an injury inflicted of malice
prepense; but insult and offence play no part in the punishment by
society of transgressions of the moral law, and indulgence due to
sensibility would endanger its existence.
The certainty possessed by the individual that his evil deeds, if they
become known, will have evil consequences for him is one of the
determining factors which is indispensable in helping him to make a
decision. It is an inadmissible affectation to condemn the fear of
punishment as a motive for moral action, because it ought to be the
result of the conviction that it is absolutely right. It is a powerful
aid to self-discipline, as also are the thought and the foretaste of
the satisfaction upon which self-respect may count if general respect
and praise are to be the reward of exemplary conduct.
The great weakness of the Kantian doctrine of Morality lies in the fact
that it retains Free Will, even though it gives it another name. It is
called autonomy of Will and is contrasted with heteronomy. This doctrine
demands, and considers it possible, that the Will should be its own
lawgiver and should not allow others to lay down laws for it; but it
fails to examine how the Will comes to make laws for itself, of what
hypothesis these laws are the necessary conclusions, by what means the
Will secures respect for its law, and whether this seemingly
self-imposed law is not really the inner realization of a ready-made law
of extraneous origin. The dogma of the autonomy of the Will is a
consequence of the preliminary error of excluding utility from Morality
and of declaring its imperative to be categorical, that is, not
dependent on the aim, but independent and regardless of any aim. The
whole tomfoolery of the categorical imperative and of the autonomy of
the Will is transcendental mysticism, and is all the more surprising as
it is the result of an investigation which claims to be the work of pure
Reason. It is the shadow of the ghostly bogies of religious conceptions
in the daylight of "pure Reason."
From the point of view of the community we may speak of merit and sin,
but not from the subjective point of view. For the community the moral
conduct of the individual is useful, immoral conduct is disadvantageous,
therefore it praises the one and condemns and punishes the other. That
is opportunism, but not moral philosophy. Considered subjectively, moral
conduct is just as little meritorious as beauty, great stature, muscular
strength, keen intelligence, health, a good memory, prompt reactions of
consciousness and all other advantages that the individual has received
without his personal intervention as a gift of nature. And immoral
conduct is just as little blameworthy as ugliness, stupidity, sickness
and other misfortunes which the individual is burdened with by heredity
or which a hard fate has imposed on him. Happy is the favoured man!
Pitiable the unfortunate one! Both are the work of forces which are
absolutely beyond the control of their wills. In the same way the good
man acts morally because he possesses insight and restraining
will-power, and the bad man acts immorally because these perfections
have been denied him, and neither the one nor the other can do anything
in the matter.
That does not relieve man of the duty of labouring assiduously at his
moral development, but it does relieve him of responsibility for the
result of his efforts. On one point the sociological, the biological and
the theological moralists agree: they all bow down humbly before Grace.