'THE MIRACLE OF THE WILL'
Closely connected with the conscience as a moral capacity is the power of
self-determination, or as it is popularly called--free-will. If
conscience is the manifestation of man as knowing, will is more
especially his manifestation as a being who acts. The subject which we
now approach presents at once a problem and a task. The nature of
freedom has been keenly debated from the earliest times, and the history
of the problem of the will is almost the history of philosophy. The
practical question which arises is whether the individual has any power
by which the gulf between the natural and the spiritual can be
transcended. Can man choose and decide for a spiritual world above that
in which he is by nature involved? The revelation of the good must,
indeed, precede the activity of man. But at the same time the change
cannot merely happen to him. He cannot simply be a passive recipient.
The new life must be taken up by his own activity, and be made his by his
own decision and acceptance. This responsive activity on the part of man
is the task which life presents to the will.
Much obviously depends upon the answer we are able to give to this
question. If man has no power of choice, no capacity of
self-determination, and is nothing more than a part of the natural world,
then the ethical life is at once ruled out of court.
The difficulties connected with the problem of moral freedom resolve
themselves mainly into three: a scientific, a psychological, and a
theological.
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I. On the part of natural science it is claimed that man is subject,
like everything else, to physical necessity.
II. From the psychological standpoint it is urged that man's actions are
always determined by the strongest motive.
III. On the theological side it is alleged that human freedom is
incompatible with divine Sovereignty. A complete doctrine of freedom
would require to be examined in the light of these three objections. For
our purpose it will be sufficient to indicate briefly the value of these
difficulties, and the manner in which they may be met.
I
The wonderful progress of the natural sciences in the second half of the
nineteenth century has tended to banish the old idea of freedom from the
realm of experience. Science, it is maintained, clearly shows that man
belongs to a great world-movement, in relation to which his whole life
and work are completely determined. Though even in earlier ages, and
especially in Stoic philosophy, this conception of life was not ignored,
it is more particularly in recent times, under the influence of the
evolutionary theory, that the idea of determination has been applied with
relentless insistence to the structure of the soul. There is, it is
alleged, no room for change or spontaneity. Everything, down to the
minutest impulse, depends upon something else, and proceeds from a
definite cause. The idea of choice is simply the remnant of an
unscientific mode of thinking. It might be sufficient to reply that in
thus reducing life and experience to a necessary part of a world-whole,
more is surrendered than even science is willing to yield. The freedom
which some writers reject in the interests of science they attempt to
introduce in an altered form. Why are these philosophers so anxious to
conserve the ethical consequences of life? Is it not because they feel
that there is something in man which will not fit into a rigid
world-mechanism, and that conduct would cease {84} to have moral worth if
life were reduced to a causal series of happenings? But it may be
further argued that, if the mechanical conception of life, which reduces
the spiritual to the natural, were consistently carried out it would lead
not merely to the destruction of the moral life, but to the destruction
of science itself. If man is merely a part of nature, subject entirely
to nature's law, then the realities of the higher life--love,
self-sacrifice, devotion to ends beyond ourselves--must be radically
re-interpreted or regarded simply as illusions. But it is also true that
from this standpoint science itself is an illusion. For if reality lies
only in the passing impressions of our sensible nature, the claim of
science to find valid truth must end in the denial of the very
possibility of knowledge. Does not the very existence of physical
science imply the priority of thought? While in one sense it may be
conceded that man is a part of nature, does not the truth, which cannot
be gainsaid, that he is aware of the fact, prove a certain priority and
power which differentiates him from all other phenomena of the universe?
If he is a link in the chain of being, he is at least a link which is
conscious of what he is. He is a being who knows himself, indeed,
through the objective world, but also realises himself only as he makes
himself its master and the agent of a divine purpose to which all things
are contributing, and for which all things exist. In all our reasoning
and endeavour we must start from the unity of the self-conscious soul.
Whatever we can either know or achieve, is _our_ truth, _our_ act
presented in and through our self-consciousness. It is impossible for us
to conceive any standard of truth or object of desire outside of our
experience. As a thinking and acting being man pursues ends, and has the
consciousness that they are his own ends, subject to his own choice and
control. It is always the self that the soul seeks; and the will is
nothing else than the man making and finding for himself another world.
The attempt has recently been made to measure mental states by their
physical stimuli and explain mental {85} processes by cerebral reaction.
It is true that certain physical phenomena seem to be invariably
antecedent to thought, but so far science has been unable to exhibit the
form of nexus between these physical antecedents and ideas. Even if the
knowledge of the topography of the brain were immeasurably more advanced
than it now is, even though we could observe the vast network of
nerve-fibres and filaments of which the brain is composed, and could
discern the actual changes in brain-cells under nerve stimulations, we
should still be a long way off from understanding the nature and genesis
of ideas which can only be known to us as immediate in their own quality.
All that we can ever affirm is that a certain physical excitation is the
antecedent of thought. It is illegitimate to say that it is the 'cause'
of thought; unless, indeed, the word 'cause' be invested with no other
meaning than that which is involved in such a conception. It is,
however, in a very general way only, and within an exceedingly narrow
range, that such measurement is possible. We do not even know at present
what nerves correspond to the sensations of heat and cold, pain and joy;
and all attempts to localise will-centres have proved unavailing.
The finer and more delicate feelings cannot be gauged. But even though
the alleged parallelism were entirely demonstrated, the immediate and
pertinent question would still remain, Who or what is the investigator?
Is it an ego, a thinking self? or is it only a complex of vibrations or
mechanical impressions bound together in a particular body which, for
convenience, is called an ego? Are the so-called entities--personality,
consciousness, self--but symbols, as Professor Mach says, useful in so
far as they help us to express our physical sensations, but which with
further research must be pronounced illusions?[1] Monistic naturalism,
which would explain all psychical experiences in terms of cerebral
action, must not be allowed to arrogate to itself powers which it does
not possess, and quietly brush {86} aside facts which do not fit into its
system. The moral sanctions so universally and deeply rooted in the
consciousness of mankind, the feelings of responsibility, of guilt and
regret; the soul's fidelities and heroisms, its hopes and fears, its aims
and ideals--the poetry, art, and religion that have made man what he is,
all that has contributed to the uplifting of the world--are, to say the
least, unaccounted for, if it must be held that 'man is born in chains.'
Primary facts must not be surrendered nor ultimate experiences sacrificed
in the interests of theoretic simplicity. In the recent
anti-metaphysical movement of Germany, of which Haeckel, Avenarius,
Oswald and Mach are representatives, there is presented the final
conflict. It is not freedom of will only that is at stake, it is the
very existence of a spiritual world. 'Es ist der Kampf um die Seele.'[2]
If the world forms a closed and 'given' system in which every particular
is determined completely by its position in the whole, then there can be
no place for spontaneity, initiative, creation, which all investigation
shows to be the distinctive feature in human progress and upward
movement. So far from its being true that the world makes man, it would
be nearer the truth to say that man makes the world. A 'given' world can
never be primary.[3] There must be a mind behind it. We fall back,
therefore, upon the principle which must be postulated in the whole
discussion--the unity and self-determining activity of the self-conscious
mind.
II
We may now proceed to the second problem of the will, the objection that
human action is determined by motives, and that what we call freedom is
nothing else than the necessary result of the pressure of motives upon
the will. In other words, the conduct of the individual is always
determined by the strongest motive. It will be seen on examination that
this objection is just another form of that which we have already
considered. Indeed, the {87} analogy of mechanical power is frequently
applied to the motives of the will. Diverse motives have been compared
to different forces which meet in one centre, and it is supposed that the
result in action is determined by the united pressure of these various
motives. Now it may be freely admitted at the outset that the individual
never acts except under certain influences. An uninfluenced man, an
unbiassed character cannot exist. Not for one moment do we escape the
environment, material and moral, which stimulates our inner life to
reaction and response. It is not contended that a man is independent of
all motives. What we do affirm is that the self-realising potentiality
of personality is present throughout. Much of the confusion of thought
in connection with this subject arises from a false and inadequate notion
of personality. Personality is the whole man, all that his past history,
present circumstances and future aims have made him, the result of all
that the world of which he is a part has contributed to his experience.
His bodily sensations, his mental acts, his desires and motives are not
detached and extraneous forces acting on him from without, but elements
which constitute his whole being. The person, in other words, is the
visible or tangible phenomenon of something inward--the phase or function
by which an individual agent takes his place in the common world of human
intercourse and interaction, and plays his peculiar and definite part in
life.[4] But this totality of consciousness, so far from reducing man to
a 'mere manufactured article,' gives to personality its unique
distinction. By personality all things are dominated. 'Other things
exist, so to speak, for the sake of their kind and for the sake of other
things: a person is never a mere means to something beyond, but always at
the same time an end in himself. He has the royal and divine right of
creating law, of starting by his exception a new law which shall
henceforth be a canon and a standard.'[5]
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The objection to the freedom of the will which we are now considering may
be best appreciated if we examine briefly the two extreme theories which
have been maintained on the subject. On the one hand, _determinism_ or,
as it is sometimes called, necessitarianism, holds that all our actions
are conditioned by law--the so-called motive that influences a man's
conduct is simply a link in a chain of occurrences of which his act is
the last. The future has no possibilities hidden in its womb. I am
simply what the past has made me. My circumstances are given, and my
character is simply the necessary resultant of the natural forces that
act upon me. On the other hand, _indeterminism_, or libertarianism,
insists upon absolute liberty of choice of the individual, and denies
that necessity or continuity determines conduct. Of two alternatives
both may now be really possible. You can never predict what will be, nor
lay down absolutely what a man will do. The world is not a finished and
fixed whole. It admits of infinite possibilities, and instead of the
volition I have actually made, I could just as easily have made a
different one.
Without entering upon a detailed criticism of these two positions, it may
be said that both contain an element of truth and are not so
contradictory as they seem. On the one hand, all the various factors of
the complex will may seem to be determined by something that lies beyond
our control, and thus our will itself be really determined. But, on the
other hand, moral continuity in its last analysis is only a half truth,
and must find its complement in the recognition of the possibilities of
new beginnings. The very nature of moral action implies, as Lotze has
said, that new factors may enter into the stream of causal sequence, and
that even though a man's life may be, and must be, largely conditioned by
his circumstances, his activity may be really originative and free. What
the determinists seem to forget is, as Green says, that 'character is
only formed through a man's conscious presentation to himself of objects
as _his_ good, as that in which his self-satisfaction is found.'[6] {89}
Desires are always for objects which have a value for the individual. A
man's real character is reflected in his desires, and it is not that he
is moved by some outside abstract force, which, being the strongest, he
cannot resist, but it is because he puts _himself_ into the desire or
motive that it becomes the strongest, the one which he chooses to follow.
My motives are really part of myself, of which all my actions are the
outcome. Human desires, in short, are not merely external tendencies
forcing a man this way or that way. They are a part of the man himself,
and are always directed towards objects related to a self; and it is the
satisfaction of self that makes them desirable.
On the other hand, the fallacy lurking in the libertarian view arises
from the fact that it also makes a hard and fast distinction between the
self and the will. The indeterminists speak as if the self had amongst
its several faculties a will which is free in the sense of being able to
act independently of all desires and motives. But, as a matter of fact,
the will, as we have said, is simply the man, and it cannot be separated
from his history, his character, and the objects which his character
desires. To speak, as people sometimes do in popular language, of being
free to do as they like--that is, to be influenced by no motive whatever,
is not only an idea absurd in itself, but one which, if pushed to its
consequences, would be subversive of all freedom, and consequently of all
moral value. 'The liberty of indifference,' if the phrase means anything
at all, implies not merely that the agent is free from all external
compulsion, but that he is free from himself, not determined even by his
own character. And if we ask what it really is that causes him to act,
it must be answered, some caprice of the moment, some accidental impulse
or arbitrary freak of fancy. The late Professor James makes a valiant
attempt to solve the 'dilemma of determinism' by resorting to the idea of
'chance' which he defines as a 'purely relative term, giving us no
information about that which is predicated, except that it happens to be
disconnected with something else--not controlled, secured or {90}
necessitated by other things in advance of its own actual presence.'[7]
'On my way home,' he says, 'I can choose either of two ways'; and suppose
'the choice is made twice over and each time falls on a different
street.' 'Imagine that I first walk through Divinity Avenue, and then am
set again at the door of this hall just as I was before the choice was
made. Imagine then that, _everything else being the same_,[8] I now make
a different choice and traverse Oxford Street. Looking outwardly at
these universes of which my two acts are a part, can you say which is the
impossible and accidental one and which the rational and necessary one?'
Perhaps an outsider could not say, but Professor James, if he examined
his reasons, could say. He assumes that 'everything else is the same.'
But that is just what cannot be. A new factor has been introduced, it
may be a whim, a sudden impulse, perhaps even a desire to upset
calculation--a something in his character in virtue of which his second
choice is different from his first. It is an utter misnomer to call it
'chance.' Even though he had tossed a coin and acted on the throw, his
action would still be determined by the kind of man he was.
Let us not seek to defend freedom on inadequate grounds, or contend for a
spurious liberty. No view of the subject should indeed debar us from
acknowledging 'changes in heart and life,' but a misunderstanding of the
doctrine of freedom may tend to paralyse moral initiative. The attempt
to sunder the will and the understanding and discover the source of
freedom in the realm of the emotions, as the voluntarists seek to do,
cannot be regarded as satisfactory or sound philosophy. In separating
faith and knowledge the Ritschlian school tends to make subjective
feeling the measure of truth and life; while recent psychological
experiments in America with the phenomena of faith-healing, hypnotism and
suggestion, claim to have discovered hitherto unsuspected potencies of
the will. This line of thought has been welcomed by many as a relief
from the mechanical theory of life and as a witness to moral {91} freedom
and Christian hope. But so far from proving the sovereignty and autonomy
of the will, it discloses rather the possibilities of its abject bondage
and thraldom.
No one can doubt the facts which Professor James and others, working from
the side of religious psychology, have recently established, or discredit
the instances of conversion to which the annals of the Christian life so
abundantly testify. But even conversion must not be regarded as a change
without motives. There must be some connection between motive, character
and act, otherwise the new spiritual experience would be simply a magical
happening lacking all moral significance. If there were no continuity of
consciousness, if I could be something to-day irrespective of what I was
yesterday, then all we signify by contrition, penitence, and shame would
have no real meaning. Even the grace of God works through natural
channels and human influences. The past is not so much obliterated, as
taken up into the new life and transfigured with a new value.
The truth of spontaneity and initiative in life has lately found in M.
Bergson a fresh and vigorous advocacy, and we cannot be too grateful to
that profound thinker for his reassertion of some neglected aspects of
freedom and his philosophical vindication of the doctrine which puts it
in a new position of prominence and security. 'Life is Creation.'
'Reality is a perpetual growth, a Creation pursued without end.' 'Our
will performs this miracle.' 'Every human work in which there is
invention, every movement that manifests spontaneity brings something new
into the world. In the composition of the work of genius, as in a simple
free decision, we create what no mere assemblage of materials could have
given.'[9] But yet he says that 'life cannot create absolutely because
it is confronted with matter. . . . But it seizes upon this matter which
is necessity itself, and strives to introduce into it the greatest
possible amount of indetermination and liberty.'[10] Even Bergson,
though he emphasises so strongly immediacy and incalculableness in {92}
all human action, cannot deny that the bodily arrangements and mechanisms
are at least the basis of the working of the soul. Man cannot produce
any change in the world except in strict co-ordination with the forces
and qualities of material things. The idea in his consciousness is
powerless save in so far as it is a guide to combinations and
modifications which are latent in reality. The man who works with his
hands does not create out of nothing a new totality. Even genius is
conditioned by the elements he works with and upon. He can do nothing
with his materials beyond what it is in themselves to yield. This sense
of co-operation is strongly marked in the higher grades of activity. The
world may be in the making, as Bergson says, but it is being made of
possibilities already inherent in it. Life may be incalculable, and you
can never know beforehand what a great man, indeed, what any man may
achieve, but even the originality of a Leonardo or a Beethoven cannot
effect the impossible or contradict the order of nature. The sculptor
feels that the statue is already lying in the marble awaiting only his
creative touch to bring it forth. The metal is alive in the worker's
hands, coaxing him to make of it something beautiful.[11] Purpose does
not come out of an empty mind. Freedom and initiative never begin
entirely _de novo_. Life is a 'creation,' but it is also, as M. Bergson
labours to prove, an 'evolution.' Our ideals are made out of realities.
Our heaven must be shaped out of the materials of our earth.
A moral personality is a self-conscious, self-determining being. But
that is only half the reality. The other half is that it is a
self-determining consciousness _in a world_. As Bergson is careful to
tell us, the shape and extent of self-consciousness are determined by our
relation to a world which acts upon us and upon which we act. Without a
world in which we had personal business we should have no
self-consciousness.
The co-operation of spontaneity and necessity is implied {93} in every
true idea of freedom. If a man were the subject of necessity alone he
would be merely the creature of mechanical causation. If he had the
power of spontaneity only his so-called freedom would be a thing of
caprice. Necessity means simply that man is conditioned by the world in
which he lives. Spontaneity means, not that he can conjure up at a wish
a dream-world of no conditions, but that he is not determined by anything
outside of himself, since the very conditions amid which he is placed may
be transmuted by him into elements of his own character. Moral decisions
are never isolated from ideals and tasks presented by our surroundings.
The self cannot act on any impulse however external till the impulse has
transplanted itself within and become our motive.
'Our life,' says Eucken, 'is a conflict between fate and freedom, between
being "given" and spontaneity. Spiritual individuality does not come to
any one, but has first to be won by the work of life, elevating that
which destiny brings. . . . The idea of freedom calls man to independent
co-operation in the conflict of the worlds. It gives to the simply human
and apparently commonplace an incomparable greatness. However powerful
destiny may be, it does not determine man entirely: for even in
opposition to it there is liberation from it.'[12]
III
It will not be necessary to dwell at any length on the third
difficulty--the incompatibility of divine sovereignty and grace with
moral personality.
How to reconcile divine power and human freedom is the great problem
which meets us on the very threshold of the study of man's relation to
God. The solution, in so far as it is possible for the mind, must be
sought in the divine immanence. God works through man, and man acts
through God. Reason, conscience, and will are equally the testimony to
God's indwelling in man and man's {94} indwelling in God. It is, as St.
Paul says, God who worketh in us both to will and to do. But just
because of that inherent power, it is we who work out our own character
and destiny. The divine is not introduced into human life at particular
points or in exceptional crises only. Every man has something of the
divine in him, and when he is truest to himself he is most at one with
God. The whole meaning of human personality is a growing realisation of
the divine personality. God's sovereignty has no meaning except in
relation to a world of which He is sovereign, and His purposes can only
be fulfilled through human agency. While His thoughts far transcend in
wisdom and sublimity those of His creatures they must be in a sense of
the same kind--thoughts, in other words, which beings made in His image
can receive, love and, in a measure, share. And though God cannot be
conceived as the author of evil, He may permit it and work through it,
bringing order out of chaos, and evolving through suffering and conflict
His sovereign purposes.
The problem becomes acutest when we endeavour to harmonise the antinomy
of man's moral freedom and the doctrine of grace. However insoluble the
mystery, it is not lessened by denying one side in the interest of unity.
Scripture boldly affirms both truths. No writer insists more strenuously
than the Apostle Paul on the sovereign election of God, yet none presents
with greater fervour the free offer of salvation. In his ethical
teaching, at least, Paul is no determinist. Freedom is the distinctive
note of his conception of life. Life is a great and solemn trust
committed to each by God, for the use or abuse of which every man will be
called to account. His missionary zeal would have no meaning if he did
not believe that men were free to accept or refuse his message. Paul's
own example, indeed, is typical, and while he knew that he was 'called,'
he knew, too, that it lay with him to yield himself and present his life
as a living sacrifice to God. Jesus, too, throughout His ministry,
assumed the ability of man freely to accept His call to righteousness,
and though He speaks {95} of the change as a 'new birth,' a creation from
above, beyond the strength of man to effect, He invariably makes His
appeal to the will--'Follow Me,' 'Come unto Me.' He assumes in all His
dealings with individuals that they have the power of decision. And so
far from admitting that the past could not be undone, and no chain of
habit broken, the whole purpose of His message and lifework was to
proclaim the need and possibility of a radical change in life. So full
of hope was He for man that He despaired of none, not even of those who
had most grievously failed, or most utterly turned their back on purity.
The parables in the Third Gospel of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and
the lost son lay emphasis upon the possibility of recovery, and, in the
case of the prodigal, specially on the ability to return for those who
have gone astray.
The teaching of Scripture implies that while God is the source of all
spiritual good, and divine grace must be present with and precede all
rightful action of the human will, it rests with man to respond to the
divine love. No human soul is left destitute of the visiting of God's
spirit, and however rudimentary the moral life may be, no bounds can be
set to the growth which may, and which God intends should, result
wherever the human will is consentient. While, therefore, no man can
claim merit in the sight of God, but must acknowledge his absolute
dependency upon divine grace, no one can escape loss or blame if he
wilfully frustrates God's design of mercy. Whatever mystery may attend
the subject of God's sovereign grace, the Bible never presents it as
negating the entire freedom of man to give or withhold response to the
gift and leading of the divine spirit.
In the deepest New Testament sense to be free is to have the power of
acting according to one's true nature. A man's ideal is his true self,
and all short of that is for him a limitation of freedom. Inasmuch as no
ideal is ever completely realised, true freedom is not so much a
possession as a progressive appropriation. It is at once a gift and a
task. It contains the twofold idea of emancipation {96} and submission.
Mere deliverance from the lower self is not liberty. Freedom must be
completed by the appropriation of the higher self and the acceptance of
the obligations which that self involves. It is to be acquired through
submission to the truth. 'Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free.' A man is never so free as when he is the bondsman of
Christ. The saying of St. Paul sums up the secret and essence of all
true freedom: 'The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me
free from the law of sin and death.'
[1] Mach, _Erkenntniss und Irrtum_. Vorwort. See also _Die Analyse der
Empfindungen_, p. 20. 'Das Sich ist unrettbar,' he says.
[2] Cf. W. Schmidt, _Der Kampf um die Seele_, p. 13.
[3] Cf. Eucken.
[4] Cf. Wallace, _Logic of Hegel, Proleg._, p. 233.
[5] Wallace, _Idem_, p. 235. Cf. Aristotle's wise man whose conduct is
not _kata logon_ but _meta logon_.
[6] _Proleg._, section 108.
[7] _The Will to Believe_, p. 154.
[8] _The italics are ours_.
[9] _Creative Evolution_ (Eng. trans.), p. 252.
[10] _Idem_, p. 265.
[11] Cf. Morris, _Lects. on Art_, p. 195; Bosanquet, _Hist. of
Aesthetic_, p. 445; also _Individuality and Value_, p. 166.
[12] _Life's Basis and Life's Ideals_, p. 181 f.
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