OF THE LIBERTY OF INDIFFERENCE.
IF, as I have endeavoured to show, the appetites and passions exert no
positive influence in the production of volition, if they do not sustain
the relation of cause to the acts of the will; then is the doctrine of
the liberty of indifference placed in a clear and strong light having
admitted that the sensitive part of our nature always tends to produce
volition, and in some cases irresistibly produces it, the advocates of
free agency have not been able to maintain the doctrine of a perfect
liberty in regard to all human actions. They have been compelled to
retire from the broad and open field of the controverted territory, and
to take their stand in a dark corner, in order to contend for that
perfect liberty, without which there cannot be a perfect and unclouded
accountability. Hence, it has been no uncommon thing, even for those who
have been the most disposed to sympathize with them, to feel a
dissatisfaction in reading what they have written on the subject of a
liberty of indifference. This they have placed in a perfect freedom to
choose between a few insignificant things, in regard to which we have no
feeling; while, in regard to the great objects which relate to our
eternal destiny, we have been supposed to enjoy no such freedom.
The true liberty of indifference does not consist, as I have endeavoured
to show, in a power to resist the influence of the appetites and
passions struggling to produce volition; because there is no such
influence in existence. This notion is encumbered with insuperable
difficulties; it supposes two powers struggling for the mastery--the
desires on the one hand, and the will on the other; and that when the
desires are so strong as to prevail, and bear us away in spite of
ourselves, we cease to be free agents. It supposes that at no time we
have a perfect liberty, unless we are perfectly destitute of feeling;
and that at some of the most trying, and critical, and awful moments of
our existence, we have no liberty at all; the whole man being passive to
the power and dominion of the passions. What a wound is thus given to
the cause of free-agency and accountability! What scope is thus allowed
for the sophistry of the passions! Every man who can persuade himself
that his appetites, his desires, or his passions, have been too strong
for him, may blind his mind to a sense of his guilt, and lull his
conscience into a fatal repose.
The necessitarian, like a skilful general, is not slow to attack this
weak point in the philosophy of free-agency. If our emotions operate to
produce volition, says he, then the strongest must prevail; to say
otherwise, is to say that it is not the strongest. This is the ground
uniformly occupied by President Day. And it is urged by President
Edwards, that if a great degree of such influence destroys free agency,
as it is supposed to do, then every smaller degree of it must impair
free agency; and hence, according to the principles and scheme of its
advocates, it cannot be perfect. Is not this inference well drawn?
Indeed, it seems to me, that while the notion that our desires possess a
real power and efficacy, which are exerted over the will, maintains its
hold upon the mind, the great doctrine of liberty can never be seen in
the brightness of its full-orbed glory; and that it must, at times,
suffer a total eclipse.
The liberty which we really possess, then, does not consist in an
indifference of the desires and affections, but in that of the will
itself. We are perfectly free, says the libertarian, in regard to all
those things about which our feelings are in a state of indifference;
such as touching one of two spots, or choosing one of two objects that
are perfectly alike. To this the necessitarian replies, what does it
signify that a man has a perfect liberty in regard to the choice of "one
of two peppercorns?" Are not such things perfectly insignificant, and
unworthy "the grave attention of the philosopher," while treating of the
great questions of moral good and evil?
There is some truth in this reply, and some injustice. It truly
signifies nothing, that we are at perfect liberty to choose between two
pepper-corns, if we are not so to choose between good and evil, life and
death. But in making this attack upon the position of his opponent, when
viewed as designed to serve the cause of free-agency, the necessitarian
overlooks its bearing upon his own scheme. He contends, that the mind
cannot act unless it is made to act by some extraneous influence: this
is a universal proposition, extending to all our mental acts; and hence,
if it can be shown that, in a single instance, the mind can and does put
forth a volition, without being made to do so, his doctrine is subverted
from its foundations. If this can be shown, by a reference to the case
of "two pepper-corns," it may be made to serve an important purpose in
philosophy, how much soever it may be despised by the philosopher.
If we keep the distinction between the will and the sensibility in mind,
it will throw much light on what has been written in regard to the
subject of indifference. If you offer a guinea and a penny to a man's
choice, asks President Day, which will he choose? Will the one exert as
great an influence over him as the other? President Day may assert, if
he pleases, that the guinea will exert the greater influence over his
feelings; but this does not destroy the equilibrium of the will. The
feelings and the will are different. By the one we feel, by the other we
act; by the one we _suffer_, by the other we _do_. Why, then, will the
man be certain to choose the guinea, all other things being equal? Not
because its influence acts upon the will, either directly or indirectly
through the passions, and compels him to choose it, but because he has a
purpose to accomplish; and, as a rational being, he sees that the guinea
will answer his purpose better than the penny. He is not made to act,
therefore, by a blind impulse; he acts freely in the light of reason.
The philosophy of the necessitarian overlooks the slight circumstance,
that the will of man is not a ball to be set a-going by external
impulse; but that man is a rational being, made in the image of his
Maker, and can act as a designing cause. Hence, when we affirm that the
will of man acts without being made to do so by the action of any thing
upon _the will itself_, he imagines that we dethrone the Almighty, and
"place chance upon the throne of the moral universe." Day on the Will,
p. 195. But I would remind him, once for all, that the act of a free
designing cause, no less than that of a necessitated act, proceeding
from an efficient cause, (if such a thing can be conceived,) is utterly
inconsistent with the idea of accident. Choice in its very nature is
opposed to chance.
The doctrine of the indifference of the will has been subjected to
another mode of attack. This doctrine implies that we have a power to
choose one thing or another; or, as it is sometimes called, a power of
choice to the contrary. For, if the will is not controlled by any
extraneous influence, it is evident that we may choose a thing, or let
it alone--that we may put forth a volition, or refuse to put it forth.
This power, which results from the idea of indifference as just
explained, is regarded as in the highest degree absurd; and a torrent of
impetuous questions is poured forth to sweep it away. "When Satan, as a
roaring lion," asks President Day, "goeth about, seeking whom he may
devour, is he equally inclined to promote the salvation of mankind?" &c.
&c. &c. Now, I freely admit, that when Satan is inclined to do evil, and
is actually doing it, he is not inclined to the contrary. I freely admit
that a thing is not different from itself; and the learned author is
welcome to all such triumphant positions.
In the same easy way, President Edwards, as he imagines, demolishes the
doctrine of indifference. He supposes that, according to this doctrine,
the will does not choose when it does choose; and, having supposed this,
he proceeds to demolish it, as if he were contending with a thousand
adversaries; and yet, I will venture to affirm, that no man in his
senses ever maintained such a position. The most contemptible advocate
of free-agency that ever lived, has maintained nothing so absurd as that
the mind ever chooses without choosing. This is the light in which the
doctrine of indifference is frequently represented by Edwards, but it is
a gross misrepresentation.
"The question is," says Edwards, "whether ever the soul of man puts
forth an act of will, while it yet remains in a state of liberty, viz:
as implying a state of indifference; or whether the soul ever exerts an
act of preference, while at the very time _the will_ is in a perfect
equilibrium, not inclining one way more than another," p. 72. If this be
the point in dispute, he may well add, that "the very putting of the
question is sufficient to show the absurdity of the affirmative answer;"
and he might have added, the utter futility of the negative reply. "How
ridiculous," he continues, "for any body to insist that the soul chooses
one thing before another, when, at the very same instant, it is
perfectly indifferent with respect to each! This is the same thing as to
say, we shall prefer one thing to another, at the very same time that it
has no preference. Choice and preference can no more be in a state of
indifference than motion can be in a state of rest," &c. p. 72. And he
repeats it over and over again, that this is to put "the soul in a state
of choice, and in a state of equilibrium at the same time;" "choosing
one way, while it remains in a state of perfect indifference, and has no
choice of one way more than the other;" p. 74. "To suppose the will to
act at all in a state of indifference, is to assert that the mind
chooses without choosing," p. 64; and so in various other places.
Now, if the doctrine of the indifference of the will, as commonly
understood, amounts to this, that the will does not choose when it
chooses, then Edwards was certainly right in opposing it; but how could
he have expected to correct such incorrigible blockheads as the authors
of such a doctrine must have been, by the force of logic?
Edwards has not always, though frequently, mis-stated the doctrine of
his adversaries. The liberty of indifference, says he, in one place,
consists in this, "that the will, in choosing, is subject to _no
prevailing_ influence," p. 64. Now this is a fair statement of the
doctrine in question. Why did not Edwards, then, combat this idea? Why
transform it into the monstrous absurdity, that "the will chooses
without choosing," or exerts an act of choice at the same time that it
exerts no act of choice; and then proceed to demolish it? Was it because
he did not wish to march up, fairly and squarely, in the face of the
enemy, and contend with them in their strongholds and fastnesses? By no
means. There never was a more honest reasoner than Edwards. But his
psychology is false; and hence, he has not only misrepresented the
doctrine of his opponents, but also his own. He confounds the sensitive
part of our nature with the will, expressly in his definitions, though
he frequently distinguishes them in his arguments. This is the reason
why he sometimes asserts, that the choice of the mind is always as the
sense of the most agreeable; and, at others, throws this fundamental
doctrine into the form, as we have seen in our third section, that the
choice of the mind is always as the choice of the mind; and holds that
to deny it is a plain contradiction. By reason of the same confusion of
things, the doctrine of his opponents, that "the will, in choosing, is
subject to no prevailing influence," seemed to him to mean that the
will, in choosing, does not choose. In both cases, he confounds the most
agreeable impression upon the sensibility with the choice of the mind;
and thus misrepresents both his own doctrine, and that of his opponents,
by reducing the one to an insignificant truism, and the other to a
glaring absurdity. President Day should have avoided the error of
Edwards, in thus misconceiving the doctrine of his opponents; for he
expressly distinguishes the sensibility from the will. But there is this
difference between Edwards and Day; the first expressly confounds these
two parts of our nature, and then proceeds to reason, in many cases, as
if they were distinct; while the last most explicitly distinguishes
them, and then frequently proceeds to reason as if they were one and the
same. It is in this way that he also gravely teaches that the mind
chooses when it chooses; and makes his adversaries assert that the mind
chooses without choosing, or that the will is inclined without being
inclined. Start from whatever point he will, the necessitarian never
feels so strong, as when he finds himself securely intrenched in the
truism, that a thing is always as itself; there manfully contending
against those who assert that a thing is different from itself.
The doctrine of the liberty of indifference, as usually held, is
this--that the will is not determined by any prevailing influence. This
is not a perfect liberty, it is true, wherever the will is partially
influenced by an extraneous cause; but it is not equivalent to the gross
absurdity of the position, that the will chooses without choosing. Nor
can we possibly reduce it to this form, unless we forget that the
authors of it did not confound that which is supposed to exert the
influence over the will, with the act of the will itself. They contended
for a partial indifference of the will only; and, consequently, they
could only contend for a partial, and not a perfect liberty. On the
contrary, I think we should contend for a perfect indifference, not in
regard to feeling, but in regard to the will. Standing on this high
ground, we need not retire from the broad and open field, in order to
set up the empire of a perfect liberty in a dark corner, extending to a
few insignificant things only: we may establish it over the whole range
of human activity, bringing out into a clear and full light, the great
fact of man's perfect accountability, for all his _actions_, under all
the circumstances of his life.