realize that taking Determinism in its most drastic form, and accepting
it in the most unequivocal manner, nothing can suffer, because
everything remains as it must be--including the facts, feelings, and
consequences of the moral life. Observe, it is part of Mr. Schiller's
case against Determinism that on determinist lines everything, down to
the minutest happenings, is the necessary result of all antecedent and
co-operating conditions. But this being the case, if Determinism leaves
no room for chance or absolute origination, how comes it that an
acceptance of Determinism initiates an absolutely new thing--the
destruction of morality? Surely it is coming very near the absurd to
charge Determinism with breaking an unbreakable sequence. It is surely
idle to credit Determinism with doing what is impossible for it to
accomplish. So far as morality is a real thing, so far as the facts of
the moral life are real things, Determinism must leave them
substantially unaltered. The problem is, as has been already said, to
find out for what exactly all these things stand. To read wrong meanings
into the facts of life, and then to declare that the facts cease to
exist if the meanings are corrected, is unphilosophical petulance.
It is, indeed, quite open to the Determinist to meet these grave fears
as to the consequences of Determinism with a denial that morality is
vitally concerned with the question of whether man's "will" be "free" or
not. The question of Determinism may enter into the subject of how to
develop character along desirable lines; and, apart from Determinism, it
is difficult to see how there can be anything like a scientific
cultivation of character. But the fact of morality and the value of
morality are not bound up with whether conduct be the expression of
theoretically calculable factors, or whether it is, on the one side,
determined by a self which originates its own impulses. Determinism or
no Determinism, murder, to take an extreme illustration, is never likely
to become an every-day occupation in human society. Neither can any
other action that is obviously injurious to the well-being of society be
practised beyond certain well-defined limits. The laws of social health
operate to check socially injurious actions, as the laws of individual
health operate to check injurious conduct in dietary or in hygiene.
Determinists and Indeterminists, as may easily be observed, manifest a
fairly uniform measure of conduct, and whatever variations from the
normal standard each displays cannot well be put down to their
acceptance or rejection of Determinism.
The real nature of morality is best seen if one asks oneself the
question, "What is morality?" Let us imagine the human race reduced to a
single individual. What would then be the scope and character of
morality? It is without question that a large part of our moral rules
would lose all meaning. Theft, murder, unchastity, slander, etc., would
be without meanings, for the simple reason that there would be none
against whom such offences could be committed. Would there be any moral
laws or moral feelings left? Would there even be a man left under such
conditions? One might safely query both statements. For if we take away
from this solitary individual all that social culture and intercourse
have given him--language, knowledge, habits both mental and moral, all,
in short, that has been developed through the agency of the social
medium--man, as we know him, disappears, and a mere animal is left in
his place. Even the feeling that a man has a duty to himself, and that
to realize his highest possibilities is the most imperative of moral
obligations, is only an illustration of the same truth. For very little
analysis serves to show that even this derives its value from the
significance of the individual to the social structure.
Morality, then, is wholly a question of relationship. Not whether my
actions spring from a self-determined "will" or even whether they are
the inevitable consequent of preceding conditions makes them moral or
immoral, but their influence in forwarding or retarding certain ideal
social relations. The rightness or wrongness of an action lies in its
consequences. Whether one is of the Utilitarian or other school of
morals does not substantially affect the truth of this statement. Action
without consequences--assuming its possibility--would have no moral
significance whatever. And consequences remain whether we accept or
reject Determinism. Determinism cannot alter or regulate the
consequences of actions, it can only indicate their causes and their
results. What a science of morals is really concerned with is,
objectively, the consequences of actions, and subjectively the feelings
that lead to their performance. When a science of morals has determined
what actions best promote desirable relations between human beings, and
what states of mind are most favourable to the performance of such
actions, its task as a science of morals is concluded. The genesis of
such states of mind belongs to psychology, just as to sociology belong
the creation and maintenance of such social conditions as will best give
them expression and actuality.
The question of the moral consequences of Determinism is not, therefore,
discussed because we believe there is any relevancy in the issue thus
raised, but solely because it is raised, and not to deal with it may
create a prejudice against Determinism. Many of those who quite admit
the scientific character of Determinism, yet insist on the necessity for
some sort of Indeterminism in the region of morals. Professor William
James, for instance, admits that a profitable study of mental phenomena
is impossible unless we postulate Determinism (_Prin. Psych._ ii. 573).
But having admitted this, and in fact illustrated it through the whole
of his two volumes, his next endeavour is to find a place for
"free-will" as a "moral postulate." The region of morals is thus made to
play the part of a haven of refuge for illegitimate and unscientific
theories, a kind of workhouse for all mental vagrants found at large
without visible means of support. The moral postulate which is to
reinstate "Free-Will," is that "What ought to be can be, and that bad
acts cannot be fated, but that good ones must be possible in their
place." In a writer usually so clear this somewhat ambiguous deliverance
is far more indicative of a desire to befriend an oppressed theory than
of the possession of any good evidence in its behalf.
The matter really turns upon what is meant by "ought" and "possible." It
has already been pointed out that if by "possible" it is meant that
although one thing actually occurs, another thing--a different
thing--might have occurred without any alteration in the accompanying
conditions, the statement is not only untrue in fact, but it is
inconceivable as possibly true. And if it does not mean this, then
Professor James is merely stating what every Determinist most cheerfully
endorses. But in that case the "possibility" gives no support whatever
to the Indeterminist. Further, Professor James says that Determinism is
a clear and seductive conception so long as one "stands by the great
scientific postulate that the world must be one unbroken fact, and that
prediction of all things without exception must be ideally, even if not
actually, possible." On which one may enquire, how prediction could be
at all possible unless, given the co-operating conditions, a definite
and particular result is inevitable? But if prediction be possible--and
the whole power of science lies in its power of prediction--what becomes
of the value of "possibility" to the Indeterminist? Is it any more than
an expression of our ignorance of the power of particular factors, and a
consequent ignorance of their resultant?
To say that certain things "ought" to be, or that one "ought" to act in
this or that particular manner, are common expressions, and within
limits, relevant and intelligible expressions. But "ought" here clearly
stands for no more than ideal conception. Its reference is to the
future, not to the past. It does not imply a belief that things could
have resulted other than those which actually did result, but a belief
that given a suitable alteration in the conditions different results
might ensue in the future. When, for example, I say that men ought to
think wisely, I do not affirm either that all men do think wisely, or
that foolish men can do so without some change in their mental make-up.
I merely eliminate all those conditions that make for unwise thinking,
leaving wise thinking as the only possible result. That is, recognizing
that from different conditions different consequences will follow, in
imagination, all forces that are inimical to the ideal end are
eliminated. We say that no man ought to commit murder, and yet if we
take as an illustration the congenital homicide, no one can assert that
in his case, at least, anything but murder is possible, given favourable
conditions for its perpetration. Or if it is said that congenital
homicide is a purely pathological case, it may surely be asserted that
the same general considerations apply to cases that are not classified
as pathological. The more we know of the criminal's heredity,
environment, and education, the more clearly it is seen that his deeds
result from the inter-action of these factors, and that these must be
modified if we are reasonably to expect any alteration in his conduct.
In fact, the criminal--or the saint--being what he is as the result of
the inter-action of possibly calculable factors is the essential
condition towards making "the prediction of all things" ideally, if not
actually possible. In saying, then, that a man ought not to do wrong,
we are only saying that our ideal of a perfect man eliminates the idea
of wrong-doing, and that our imagination is powerful enough to construct
a human character to which wrong-doing shall be alien.
The fallacy here is due to a confusion of the actual with the desirable.
If we are looking to the past we are bound to say that "ought" is
meaningless, because what has been is the only thing that could have
been. Thus it is meaningless to say that a piece of string capable of
withstanding a strain of half a hundredweight ought to have withstood a
strain of half a ton. It is equally absurd to say that a man ought to
have withstood the germ of malarial fever, when his constitution
rendered him susceptible to attack. Both of these instances will be
readily admitted. Is it, then, any more reasonable to say that a man
ought to have withstood a temptation to drunkenness, or theft, or
cruelty--in the sense that given his nature he _could_ have withstood
it--when all the circumstances of character, heredity, and environment
made for his downfall? We say that certain considerations "ought" to
have restrained Jones because they were enough to restrain Smith. Are
we, then, to conclude that Smith and Jones are so much alike--are, in
fact, identical in character--that the same forces will influence each
in the same manner and to the same degree? The assumption is obviously
absurd. What ought to have happened with Smith and Jones, bearing in
mind all the conditions of the problem, is what did happen. What ought
to happen to Smith and Jones in the future will be equally dependent
upon the extent to which the character of the two becomes modified. In
this sense our conception of what "ought" to be in the future will guide
us as to the nature of the influences we bring to bear upon Smith and
Jones. We believe that good actions may be possible in the future where
bad ones occurred in the past, because we see that a change of
conditions may produce the desired result. The "moral postulate,"
therefore, does not contain anything, or imply anything, in favour of
Indeterminism. It does assert that certain things ought to be, but it
can only realize this by recognizing, and acting upon the recognition,
that just as certain forces in the past have issued in certain results,
so a modification in the nature or incidence of these forces will
produce a corresponding modification of conduct in the future. Whatever
else there appears to be in the "ought" is a mere trick of the
imagination; and the surprising thing is that a writer of the calibre of
Professor James should not have been perfectly alive to this.
A cruder form of the same position, although introducing other issues,
was upheld by Dr. Martineau in the categorical statement, "either
free-will is a fact, or moral judgment a delusion." His reason for this
remarkable statement is:--
"We could never condemn one turn of act or thought did we not
believe the agent to have command of another; and just in
proportion as we perceive, in his temperament or education or
circumstances, the certain preponderance of particular
suggestions, and the near approach to an inner necessity, do we
criticize him rather as a natural object than as a responsible
being, and deal with his aberrations as maladies instead of
sins."[5]
[5] _Types of Ethical Theory_, vol. ii. p. 41.
Well, human nature might easily have been nearer perfection than it is
had moral aberrations been treated as maladies rather than sins, and one
certainly would not have felt greater regret had judges and critics
always been capable of rising to this level of judgment. Social,
political, and religious malevolence might not have received the
gratification and support it has received had this been the rule of
judgment and the guide to methods of treatment, but our social
consciousness would have been of a superior texture than is now the
case. And one may ask whether there is any human action conceivable for
which an adequate cause cannot be found in temperament or education or
circumstances, or in a combination of the three? It would tax any one's
ingenuity to name an action that lies outside the scope of these
influences. Temperament, education, circumstances, are the great and
controlling conditions of human action, and only in proportion as this
is recognized and acted upon do we approach a science of human nature
and begin to realize methods of profitable modification.
Against Determinism Dr. Martineau argues that "the moral life dwells
exclusively in the voluntary sphere," and also that "impulses of
spontaneous action do not constitute character." The first of these
statements is at least very debatable, although it may turn upon a
matter of definition. But the second statement is distinctly inaccurate.
One may assert the exact opposite, and instead of saying that the
impulses of spontaneous action do not constitute character, argue that
they are the truest indications of character. Of course, from one point
of view, all that a man does, whether it be spontaneous or reflective,
must be equally the expression of the whole man. But from another point
of view the more permanent and enduring characteristics of a man may be
overborne by a passing flood of emotion or by a casual combination of
unusual circumstances. By these means an habitually mean man may be
roused to acts of generosity, an habitual thief roused to acts of
honesty. Long reflection may cause a person to decide this or that, when
his spontaneous impulses are in the contrary direction. And while these
reflections and floods of emotion are equally with the spontaneous
impulses part of a given personality, yet it will hardly be disputed
that the latter are the more deeply seated, will express themselves in a
more uniform manner, and are thus a truer and more reliable index to the
character of the person with whom we are dealing.
How far we are to accept morality as dwelling exclusively in the
voluntary, that is the intentional, sphere, is, as I have said, largely
a matter of definition. We may so define morality that it shall cover
only intentional acts, in which case the statement must be accepted, or
we can define morality in a wider sense, as covering all action by means
of which desirable relations between people are maintained, in which
case the statement is not true. For we should then be committed to the
curious position that all moral development tends to make man less
moral. To have the quality of voluntariness an act must be consciously
performed with a particular end in view. But a large part of the more
important functions of life do not come under this category, while a
still larger portion are only semi-voluntary. The whole set of instincts
that cluster round the family, the feelings which urge human beings to
seek others' society, and which are the essential conditions of all
social phenomena, do not properly come under the head of volition. Our
conduct in any of these directions may easily be justified by reason,
but it would be absurd to argue that there is any intentional choice
involved.
Moreover, the chief aim of education, of the moralization of character,
is to divest actions of their quality of reflectiveness or intention.
Our aim here is so to fashion character that it will unquestioningly and
instinctively place itself on the right side. This is a force that
operates on all individuals more or less, and from the cradle to the
grave. Family influences curb and fashion the egotism of the child until
there is an unconscious and often unreasoning adherence to the family
circle. Social influences continue the work and train the individual
into an instinctive harmony, more or less complete with the structure of
the society to which he belongs. The mere repetition of a particular
action involves the formation of a habit, and habit is meaningless in
the absence of a modified nerve structure which reacts in a special
manner. Persistence in right action, therefore, no matter how
consciously it may be performed in its initial stages, inevitably passes
over into unconscious or instinctive action. And let it be noted, too,
that it is only when this change has been brought about that a person
can be said to be a thoroughly moralized character. It is not the man
who does right after a long internal struggle that is most moral, but
the one with whom doing right is the most imperative of organic
necessities. We praise the man who does right after struggle, but
chiefly because of our admiration at the triumph of right over wrong, or
because his weakness cries for support, or because he has in him the
making of a more perfect character. But to place him as the superior of
one whose right doing is the efflorescence of his whole nature is to
misunderstand the ethical problem. And equally to confine morality to
merely voluntary or intentional action is to truncate the sphere of
morals to an extent that would meet with the approval of very few
writers on ethics. In brief, one may not merely say with Lessing,
"Determinism has nothing to fear from the side of morals," one may add
that it is only on the theory of Determinism that the moralization of
character becomes a rational possibility.
V.
PROFESSOR JAMES ON "THE DILEMMA OF DETERMINISM."
We have seen in what has gone before how much of the case for Free-Will
is based upon the wrong use of language, and upon a display of petulance
arising from the degree to which it is assumed that the universe ought
to fulfil certain _a priori_ expectations. In this last respect the
Volitionist behaves as if he were on a kind of shopping excursion, with
full liberty to purchase or reject the goods brought out for inspection.
Both of these points are well illustrated in an apology for
Indeterminism offered by Professor William James, and although in
examining his argument it may be necessary to repeat in substance some
of the arguments already used, this will not be without its value in
enabling the reader to realize the shifts to which the defender of
Free-Will is compelled to resort. In justice to Professor James,
however, it is only fair to point out that it is not quite clear that he
is thoroughly convinced of the position he sees fit to state. Much of
his argument reads as though he were merely stating a speculation that
might prove valuable, but which might also turn out valueless. Still,
whatever conviction he has, or had, appears to lean to the side of
Indeterminism, and I shall accordingly deal with his argument as though
he were quite convinced of its soundness.
In his chief work, _The Principles of Psychology_, Professor James took
up the perfectly sane position that a man would be foolish not to
espouse "the great scientific postulate" that the prediction of all
things without exception must be possible, and drew a proper distinction
between what is ideally possible--that is to complete knowledge--and
what is actually possible to incomplete knowledge. In a later
deliverance he, for the time at least, forsakes this position and
champions a case which rests for its coherence very largely upon the
neglect of those precautions previously insisted on.[6] To suit the
necessities of the argument the Determinist is made to say things that I
think few, if any, determinists ever dreamed of saying, while certain
leading words are used with a meaning obviously framed to meet the
requirements of the case.
[6] See the lecture on "The Dilemma of
Determinism" in the volume _The Will to Believe,
and other Essays_. London; 1903.
At the outset of his essay Professor James remarks that if a certain
formula--in this case the Determinist formula--"for expressing the
nature of the world violates my moral demands, I shall feel as free to
throw it overboard, or at least to doubt it, as if it disappointed my
demand for uniformity of sequence." And he proceeds to argue that all
our scientific "laws" are ideal constructions, built up in order to
satisfy certain demands of our nature. Uniformity in nature is thus as
much a formula framed to this end as is Free-Will. "If this be
admitted," he says, "we can debate on even terms."
Unfortunately for the Professor's argument the two instances are not
analogous--not, at least, in the direction required. The sense of
causality is not something that is innate in human nature. Children at
an early age hardly possess it, and primitive man has it in only a very
vague manner. The conviction that all things are bound together in terms
of causation is one that belongs, even to-day, to the educated,
thoughtful mind. At any rate it is a conviction that has been forced
upon the human mind by the sheer pressure of experience. It is a growth
consequent upon the mind's intercourse with the objective universe. And
its validity is not called into question. On the other hand, this
assumed "moral demand" for "Free-Will" is the very point in dispute.
Whether there is such a demand, and if so is it a legitimate one, are
the questions upon which the discussion turns. And it will not do for
Professor James to claim Free-Will in the name of certain "moral
demands" and reserve the right to throw overboard any theory that does
not grant them. Man's moral nature, equally with his intellectual
nature, must in the last resort yield to facts. It will not do to exalt
into a moral instinct what may be no more than a personal idiosyncrasy.
There is certainly no more than this in such expressions as "something
must be fatally unreasonable, absurd, and wrong in the world," or "I
deliberately refuse to keep on terms of loyalty with the universe," if
certain things turn out to be true. Such phrases are completely out of
place in a scientific enquiry. The universe will remain what it is
whether we call it absurd or rational, and may even survive the raising
of the standard of revolt by so eminent a psychologist as Professor
James, to whom we would commend, were he still alive, Schopenhauer's
profound remark that there are no moral phenomena, only moral
interpretations of phenomena.