view which insists upon the uniformity, not merely of nature, but also
of human nature. We rejected the idea that there is no science of man,
and has been no evolution of mind, as a patent absurdity, and a violent
contradiction of admitted facts. Any theory of evolution and any
definition of science which fails to comprehend human nature is thereby
condemned as inadequate and inaccurate. For those, then, who with us
accept the continuity and uniformity between nature and man there will
be no difficulty in arguing from the one to the other: which of the two
we shall start from will depend mainly upon circumstances, upon which is
the more accessible in any particular inquiry, and which is likely to
afford the best "take-off." In the present case the action of inanimate
objects upon one another can be accounted for on either hypothesis,
_i.e._ that such action is willed by some superior power or that it is
necessitated by some previous action, which is necessitated by some
other previous action, and so on for ever, without ever reaching any
original or originating necessity. Both hypotheses will fit all the
facts of all the physical sciences; both _are_ hypotheses; and science
can do and does do without either one or the other. Nor does our
observation of the observed facts of nature enable us to say, with
regard to any actual fact of this kind, either that it could or that it
could not have happened otherwise than it did. In fine, as long as we
confine ourselves to the subject-matter of the physical sciences, as
long as we start in this case from nature, we cannot find anything to
disturb the equal balance of the two hypotheses, which are two
hypotheses and nothing more. But when we turn from nature to human
nature, when we consult our own experience of our own actions, the case
is notoriously different. Our experience in that case is that of two or
more suggested and possible actions we are free to choose whichever we
will; and our memory of past acts of choice testifies that though we
actually chose one particular course, we might have abstained from it in
favour of some other alternative. Here, too, as in the case of purely
physical causation, the fact that a thing happened is proof conclusive
that, in accordance with the law of universal causation, the conditions
necessary to its occurrence were fulfilled; but it constitutes no proof
or probability that the conditions were bound to be fulfilled. The fact
that we chose to act in a certain way does not in the least convince us
that we were bound to choose that action and that action alone. On the
contrary, our memory is clear and our conviction is certain that our
choice was free. In the physical and the spiritual spheres alike it is
true that, when all the conditions requisite for a given effect are
combined, the result must ensue. And in both spheres it is equally true
that until the conditions are effectively combined no such necessity
exists. In the case of our own actions we are directly and immediately
conscious of the fact that it is our own will which effects this
combination. For us, therefore, who hold, with Professor Huxley, that
the uniformity and continuity of nature with human nature is essential
to any rational and scientific view of the universe and to every
comprehensive theory of evolution, it is natural to interpret physical
by spiritual causation. We know from direct and personal experience of
certain cases of causation that, though a particular effect necessarily
ensued from a certain combination of conditions, the conditions might
have been combined differently and with a different result. There is,
therefore, nothing unreasonable in the inference that with regard to the
events in nature the conditions which produced them might have combined
differently and with different results; and that the determining factor
was a will (not our own) conscious of its own freedom.
Thus far, then, the case stands thus, that in the observed facts of
nature there is nothing to incline the balance in favour either of
Necessity or Free-will; and that if those facts constituted the whole
of our experience we should have no reason to believe the one rather
than the other. But when we turn to the consideration of events of which
we are the cause, we know that our contribution to the sum of conditions
on which the event depends is a free-will offering which we make or
decline to make as we like. That consideration would not in itself be
sufficient to warrant us in inferring a similar absence of necessity in
the combination of the conditions which produce natural events. If, for
instance, we had reason to believe or evidence to show an absolute chasm
between nature and human nature, an impossibility of their being subject
to any common laws or conceptions; or if, like primitive man or the
savage, we had not the accumulated observations of science to
demonstrate the truth of evolution and the law of continuity--then we
should have no reason or little reason, as the case might be, for
interpreting nature's action and human action by one another.
The savage, as is well known, does, without any scientific authority
whatever, assume straight off an entire uniformity of nature with human
nature. He jumps at conclusions: he takes it for granted that everything
which moves has a will of its own, like himself. But though the savage
shares with the savant the impulse to believe in an essential continuity
binding together man and nature, that impulse is about all they have in
common. In the savage it expresses itself in an absolute identification,
entirely ignoring all differences, between the two: the tree or the
river has to be a conscious, rational creature, though its behaviour
bears more difference from than resemblance to that of a human being. In
the savant, the same impulse is trained to fertility by being constantly
subjected to the guidance of observed facts: man as an animal organism
is subject to the same physiological laws as other similar organisms; as
an organic compound, to the same chemical changes; as a body possessing
inertia, to the same physical laws. The savant's belief, however, in the
continuity of nature and human nature is consistent with or rather
implies points of difference between the two; _e.g._ man possesses a
consciousness which the river does not, man is, the river is not, a
conscious cause. Great though these differences be, still they are not
in the eyes of science and from the point of view of evolution great
enough to constitute a breach of continuity, for human actions are with
the growth of science increasingly seen to be part of the uniformity of
nature: the human cause only produces its effect provided that all the
requisite conditions are forthcoming. Indeed, there is a danger, in some
tendencies of modern thought, of ignoring the differences and of
confounding continuity with identity. The distinction between the
animate and the inanimate, which was hardly reached by the savage, is
in danger of being overlooked by the modern materialist--an error which
would be paralleled in religion by a relapse from monotheism into
nature-worship. And as in the pathology of religion there is a constant
tendency to substitute for religious faith a trust in the automatic
efficacy of rites and ceremonies, which is a falling away into mere
magic, so in metaphysic there is a tendency, in the name of science
falsely invoked, to substitute for the actions of agents consciously
free the operation of an automatic and magical necessity. Freedom of the
will is constantly taken, or rather mistaken, both by its supporters and
opponents, to mean the power of acting without a motive, and to imply
that from identically the same combination of conditions one result can
ensue at one time and quite a different one at another; and freedom of
the will in this sense, and with this implication, is rightly rejected
as inconsistent with the uniformity of nature. Freedom, however, means
not the absence of motive, but the presence of more motives than one,
for where there is no alternative there is no freedom, and where there
is an alternative there is a choice between two things. The fact that
conscious action is always action with a motive has nothing in it
repugnant to the uniformity of nature, unless uniformity of nature is
arbitrarily assumed to be identical with necessity. Nor has the
uniformity of nature, _i.e._ the fact that the same action issues from
the same combination of conditions, anything in it inconsistent with the
freedom of the will, unless the occurrence of an event proves that it
was bound to occur. The laws of science--whether physical science or
mental and moral science--are hypothetical statements: if the love of
gain predominates in men, then all the consequences predicted by the
science of Political Economy will ensue. But this proves neither that
the love of gain must nor even that it does prevail. The uniformity
which marks the actions of men as often as this motive prevails is
sufficient for the purposes of science, and is consistent with the
freedom of the will; it does not imply that men act without a motive,
nor that the same conditions produce now one effect and now another.
Until the conditions which are necessary for the production of a
physical event are effectively combined, physical science knows no
necessity to make them combine in that particular way; if they combine
in some other way, and with some other result, that combination will
equally illustrate the truth of science (which says, if A then B, if A₁
then B₁), and the result will equally accord with the uniformity of
nature. The same considerations apply to human nature, and if applied
will be found consistent with the freedom of the will. Until the mind is
made up, _i.e._ so long as there are alternative courses open to it,
the man is free, just in the same way as in physical science, until the
combination of conditions is effected, the result may or may not follow.
If one alternative is adopted one set of consequences will ensue, if
another, another; but whichever is adopted the results will be in
accordance with the uniformity of nature, the law of cause and effect
will not have been violated, the mind will not have acted without a
motive, or under the influence of necessity. In fine, the universality
of the law of causation lies in the fact that, however the conditions
combine, each combination can only produce its peculiar effect; and
whatever effect occurs can be the result only of its appropriate
conditions. To say with the necessitarian that, unless at the beginning
of things the course of events was unalterably fixed once and for ever,
there can be no science, is to deny the universality of the laws of
science, to maintain that they are true only of one particular
succession of events, and would not be true of any other. In point of
fact, however, the laws of science, by their hypothetical form, are
adapted to cope with what is at least as striking as the uniformity of
nature, that is, the diversity of nature: they apply not merely to one,
but to all possible combinations of circumstances. In what way a body
will move depends upon the conditions at work; but Science is not such a
maimed and crippled thing that she refuses to consider its motion until
she has been assured that, of the various conceivable conditions that
might be brought to bear on the body, only one can, as a matter of fact,
be brought to bear. On the contrary, the universality of her laws lies
in the fact that they apply to all possible combinations, not merely to
combination A producing B, but to A₁ producing B₁, A₂ producing B₂,
and so on. The origin of all terrestrial life may be traced back, let us
say, to the fortuitous combination of chemicals which constituted the
first speck of protoplasm; and sundry important consequences can be
shown by science to have flowed from that fortuitous concurrence. The
origin of any particular species may be traced back to the accidental
appearance of a sport or variety which happened to be better adapted to
the environment than the parent forms were.
But, if these accidental and fortuitous occurrences had not taken place,
the subsequent course of things upon earth, though there might have been
no life, would still have been just as much in accordance with the
uniformity (and the diversity) of nature, and equally amenable to
scientific explanation. The theory that the first speck of protoplasm or
the ancestral variety of a species was bound by a metaphysical necessity
to occur just when and where it did, is of no use to science: if A had
not happened, A₁ or A₂ or A₃ would have done, and the resulting B or
B₁ or B₂ or B₃ would have been equally in accordance with the
uniformity of nature and equally explicable by science.
If, then, in the physical world neither science nor the uniformity of
nature requires us to believe in necessity, there is no antecedent
presumption that necessity must be the law of the spiritual world: we
may examine the facts of our own inner experience without prejudice.
What the freedom of the will implies is that the mind has present to it
more alternatives or motives than one, and that they are real
alternatives and real motives, _i.e._ motives which may really in this
particular case influence action, alternatives any one of which may be
adopted in this case. The circumstances or conditions in which a man
makes up his mind are, until he has made up his mind, so to speak, held
in solution, and may be precipitated this way or that at his choice, or
not precipitated at all, unless he chooses. The fact that in the same
circumstances the same result ensues is no argument against the freedom
of the will, if it be remembered that the will is itself one of the
circumstances which contribute to the result, just as the mass of a
body, as well as the force applied to it, helps to determine its
velocity. The statement of the case then becomes this: if all the
circumstances of the case be the same, and the will be the same, the
consequences (_i.e._ the determination of the will) also will be the
same. But the necessitarian position requires the statement that if all
the circumstances be the same, then without any further proviso the will
is determined by the circumstances; or, to put it another way, that the
will does not in any way contribute to the result, which is just as
though we were to say that the mass of a body had nothing to do with its
velocity. But if the will does contribute to the result, _i.e._ to the
determination of itself, it is in part self-determining.
That there must be some circumstances present, if there is to be any
self-determination on the part of the will, we have already admitted;
the freedom of the will implies the presence of more alternatives or
motives than one--and we always have the alternative of acting or
abstaining from action. But this admission only limits the powers of the
will; it does not lessen its liberty. The mind can only choose between
the alternatives offered to it; but as long as it has real alternatives
it is free. That there must be definite circumstances if there is to be
any definite determination of the will is in accordance with the fact
that a cause is not some one individual thing, but a sum of conditions,
every one of which is necessary to the effect, and the absence of any
one of which is enough to prevent the occurrence of the result. It is a
vulgar error to single out some one of the conditions (_e.g._ the force
acting on a body) and dub it the cause, to the neglect of all the other
conditions (_e.g._ the body's mass) which are equally necessary to the
effect. It is the error committed by the necessitarian who calls the
circumstances the cause, in the case of a determination of the will, and
neglects the part played by the will itself.
This point of view illustrates the untenability of another objection to
the freedom of the will, viz. that it implies that under the same
conditions different results can ensue, or, to put it in other words,
that without any change in the conditions either this or that
consequence may issue. Freedom of the will is thus alleged to be
inconsistent with the uniformity of nature, with the law that a cause
must produce its effect. The fallacy here obviously lies in assuming
that, in a modification of the will, the circumstances by themselves
constitute the cause, whereas in point of fact the cause consists of the
sum of the conditions, _i.e._, in this case, of the circumstances and
the will taken in combination. Alter any one of the conditions, and the
effect will be changed--whether the condition which is changed be one of
the circumstances or be the will, matters not. Conversely, if under the
same circumstances a man acts one way one time and another another, the
inference is not that the uniformity of nature has been violated, and
that the same conditions produce different effects, but that one of the
conditions was different; and as _ex hypothesi_ the circumstances
(_i.e._ all the conditions except the will) were in this case the same,
it remains that the condition which was different in this case was the
will.
Really, it is the theory of necessity which violates the uniformity of
nature, for it requires us to believe that provided certain of the
conditions (viz. all the circumstances except the will) are the same,
then the result must be the same, no matter how much the remaining
condition (the will) changes. We may, indeed, evade this conclusion by
simply denying that the will is one of the conditions of its own
modifications, and we may say that the wax contributes nothing to the
form which it takes on when impressed by the seal. The truth is that if
the will or the wax appears in the result, it must have been present and
active as one of the conditions: it contributes to its own
determination, and is in part self-determining.
If it be in accordance with the uniformity of nature and with our
experience of what actually happens, that the circumstances should be
the same and the will different on two different occasions, then the
theory of necessity breaks down: if we can will and act differently
under the same circumstances, we have all the freedom we want. But
if--all the circumstances, save the will, being the same--the resulting
modification or determination of the will is different, then the
difference of result must be due to some difference in the conditions;
all the conditions save one were _ex hypothesi_ the same; the remaining
condition, therefore, viz. the will, must have changed. What caused the
change? Not the circumstances: one attempt to explode a barrel of
gunpowder may resemble another in all the circumstances save one (the
dampness of the powder), but the circumstances which remain the same
(application of the spark, etc.) are not the cause of the difference in
the remaining condition.
If, then, we do as a matter of fact at times under the same
circumstances will different things, and if the circumstances are not
the cause of the change of will, then the will changes itself, _i.e._ is
self-determining, self-modifying. And, as we all know from experience,
it determines itself at the moment of choice, not before. Until all the
conditions requisite for the effect are combined, neither physical nor
mental science requires us to assume that they must combine in this
particular way--that the light must be applied to the powder because an
explosion will take place if it is applied, that the motive of gain must
be adopted because it will be gratified if it is obeyed.
Whether the conditions combine so as to produce A, or so as to produce
B, the uniformity of nature is equally obeyed in either case, the law
that a cause must produce its effect is equally fulfilled, and either
sequence is as amenable to scientific explanation as the other. But
though science and the uniformity of nature both require us to believe
that when the conditions are combined the result will follow, neither
requires us to assume that the combination is fixed before it is
effected. And this is true equally of purely physical events and of
human actions. This truth, in the case of the latter class of actions,
is expressed by the statement that alternative courses of action are
open to the agent, and that they are real alternatives, alternatives
such that any one of them may in this particular instance be followed.
From the point of view of science and of the uniformity of nature, we do
not conceive that there is any difference in this respect between human
actions and physical events: if science is to include both kinds of
sequence and to render a rational account of them, we must assume that
the principles on which conditions combine or fail to combine are the
same in both cases. If physical events and human actions are both
constituents in the process of evolution, there must be a continuity
between them. It follows, therefore, that, in the case of physical
events as well as of human actions, until the conditions are combined in
such a way as to involve one determinate result to the exclusion of all
others, they might combine in other ways with other results--in fine,
that before the combination is effected there are always other
alternatives.
At this point it becomes necessary to take into account the diversity as
well as the uniformity of nature--in this case a diversity which will
lead us to a higher uniformity. To the human agent alternative courses
of action are open in the sense that he is conscious of their
possibility and that after deliberation he adopts one or other of them.
With purely physical phenomena and material things the case is
different: they may be combined in this way _or_ in that; the
alternative is indeed open, so long as the combination is not effected,
but it is not open to them nor is it adopted, when adopted, by them. It
is adopted for them. In some cases by man. In all cases by that by which
alone alternative courses of action can be contemplated and adopted--a
conscious will. The course and form which man imparts to material
things--to his implements or his works of art--make them so far the
expression of his will; for the rest they are equally an expression of
will, though of a will not his.
For those at the present day who unfeignedly accept the general
principles of evolution and philosophise from them, a dualistic
philosophy is impossible. They cannot hold that matter is subject to
evolution and that mind is not; and the continuity of the process of
evolution forbids us to suppose that there is any real discontinuity
between that which appears at one stage as matter and at another as
mind. There is no discontinuity if material things (_i.e._ the things of
which we have sense-perception, but which differ from our sensations in
being permanent) are on the one side the permanent expressions of Will
and on the other are the transient impressions made on us in the shape
of sense-phenomena.
What is true thus of the content of evolution, of that which is in
process of evolution, is true also of the law of the process. We cannot
suppose that it extends only to matter--that the behaviour of matter is
susceptible of a rational explanation and the behaviour of mind is not.
The continuity of the process excludes the possibility of a dual
control: either the power which manifests itself in all things is
intelligent throughout or it is not. If there is no reason in the
behaviour of things, but only necessity, then those human actions and
conceptions which man considers to be the result of his reason are
really the result of unintelligent necessity.
It is the latter hypothesis which is expressed by the necessitarian
theory. The ordinary belief of mankind--a belief which it is impossible
to resist at the moment when you are making up your mind whether you
will do this or not--is that you _can_ do the thing or not, that the
alternatives are real and the motives such that either of them may be
acted on. The necessitarian hypothesis is that the alternatives are not
real, that even before you have made up your mind there is only one
alternative which you can follow--the other courses are only apparent
alternatives, because you cannot choose or act on any of them; the
other motives are not real motives, because by a necessity dating from
the beginning of things they cannot possibly influence you on this
occasion. Your action is as automatic as that of a piano which responds
to the touch. The difference is that you think about the stimulus
received and the piano does not. Consequently the piano makes no
mistakes; you make two. You think of various possible consequences of
the stimulus--which are all impossible--and you imagine that the one
which you choose is the consequence of your intelligent choice, whereas
it is the automatic outcome of that iron law of necessity which binds
together the whole process of evolution.
It will be readily understood that a hypothesis of this kind, which is
apparently in violent conflict with the plainest facts of our daily
personal experience, and gives the lie to that consciousness of freedom
which we all possess, would not be held in theory--it cannot be acted on
in practice--unless it appeared to be the consequence of some
well-established facts. It is, of course, held by its supporters to be a
logical consequence from the uniformity of nature and the law of
universal causation, and to be a necessary pre-supposition if we are to
give any scientific account of human nature and its evolution. If, as we
have argued at length in this chapter, that is not the case, if the law
of universal causation only requires that a thing cannot take place
unless the requisite conditions combine--and not that conditions, which
did or may combine, were or are bound to combine--the question still
remains, what if any value the hypothesis has on its own intrinsic
merits.
In the first place it is a hypothesis which can never either be proved
or disproved. The hypothesis is that our supposed consciousness of
freedom is an illusion, that if we imagine we are free to choose what we
will do, or that we could in the past have chosen otherwise than we did,
we are deceived. The hypothesis is not based on any facts of
consciousness: it is a suggestion that consciousness may be deceptive.
It may: there is no means of proving or disproving the suggestion, for
any reply must proceed from one consciousness to another, both of which
are suspected by the maker of the suggestion to be not wholly
trustworthy. We cannot ask him to concede to us, in order that we may
convince him by argument, the very point which is in dispute.