VOLITION: LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.
In the opening paragraphs of the third part of the second book of the
_Treatise_, Hume gives a description of the will.
"Of all the immediate effects of pain and pleasure there is none
more remarkable than the _will_; and though, properly speaking, it
be not comprehended among the passions, yet as the full
understanding of its nature and properties is necessary to the
explanation of them, we shall here make it the subject of our
inquiry. I desire it may be observed, that, by the _will_, I mean
nothing but _the internal impression we feel, and are conscious of,
when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or new
perception of our mind_. This impression, like the preceding ones
of pride and humility, love and hatred, 'tis impossible to define,
and needless to describe any further."--(II. p. 150.)
This description of volition may be criticised on various grounds. More
especially does it seem defective in restricting the term "will" to that
feeling which arises when we act, or appear to act, as causes: for one
may will to strike, without striking; or to think of something which we
have forgotten.
Every volition is a complex idea composed of two elements: the one is
the idea of an action; the other is a desire for the occurrence of that
action. If I will to strike, I have an idea of a certain movement, and a
desire that that movement should take place; if I will to think of any
subject, or, in other words, to attend to that subject, I have an idea
of the subject and a strong desire that it should remain present to my
consciousness. And so far as I can discover, this combination of an idea
of an object with an emotion, is everything that can be directly
observed in an act of volition. So that Hume's definition may be amended
thus: Volition is the impression which arises when the idea of a bodily
or mental action is accompanied by the desire that the action should be
accomplished. It differs from other desires simply in the fact, that we
regard ourselves as possible causes of the action desired.
Two questions arise, in connexion with the observation of the phenomenon
of volition, as they arise out of the contemplation of all other natural
phenomena. Firstly, has it a cause; and, if so, what is its cause?
Secondly, is it followed by any effect, and if so, what effect does it
produce?
Hume points out, that the nature of the phenomena we consider can have
nothing to do with the origin of the conception that they are connected
by the relation of cause and effect. For that relation is nothing but an
order of succession, which, so far as our experience goes, is
invariable; and it is obvious that the nature of phenomena has nothing
to do with their order. Whatever it is that leads us to seek for a cause
for every event, in the case of the phenomena of the external world,
compels us, with equal cogency, to seek it in that of the mind.
The only meaning of the law of causation, in the physical world, is,
that it generalises universal experience of the order of that world;
and, if experience shows a similar order to obtain among states of
consciousness, the law of causation will properly express that order.
That such an order exists, however, is acknowledged by every sane man:
"Our idea, therefore, of necessity and causation, arises entirely
from the uniformity observable in the operations of nature, where
similar objects are constantly conjoined together, and the mind is
determined by custom to infer the one from the appearance of the
other. These two circumstances form the whole of that necessity
which we ascribe to matter. Beyond the constant _conjunction_ of
similar objects and the consequent _inference_ from one to the
other, we have no notion of any necessity of connexion.
"If it appear, therefore, what all mankind have ever allowed,
without any doubt or hesitation, that these two circumstances take
place in the voluntary actions of men, and in the operations of
mind, it must follow that all mankind have ever agreed in the
doctrine of necessity, and that they have hitherto disputed merely
from not understanding each other."--(IV. p. 97.)
But is this constant conjunction observable in human actions? A student
of history could give but one answer to this question:
"Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity,
public spirit: these passions, mixed in various degrees, and
distributed through society, have been, from the beginning of the
world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enterprizes
which have ever been observed among mankind. Would you know the
sentiments, inclinations, and course of life of the Greeks and
Romans? Study well the temper and actions of the French and
English. You cannot be much mistaken in transferring to the former
_most_ of the observations which you have made with regard to the
latter. Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that
history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular.
Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal
principles of human nature, by showing men in all varieties of
circumstances and situations, and furnishing us with materials from
which we may form our observations, and become acquainted with the
regular springs of human action and behaviour. These records of
wars, intrigues, factions, and revolutions are so many collections
of experiments, by which the politician or moral philosopher fixes
the principles of his science, in the same manner as the physician
or natural philosopher becomes acquainted with the nature of
plants, minerals, and other external objects, by the experiments
which he forms concerning them. Nor are the earth, air, water, and
other elements examined by Aristotle and Hippocrates more like to
those which at present lie under our observation, than the men
described by Polybius and Tacitus are to those who now govern the
world."--(IV. pp. 97-8.)
Hume proceeds to point out that the value set upon experience in the
conduct of affairs, whether of business or of politics, involves the
acknowledgment that we base our expectation of what men will do, upon
our observation of what they have done; and, that we are as firmly
convinced of the fixed order of thoughts as we are of that of things.
And, if it be urged that human actions not unfrequently appear
unaccountable and capricious, his reply is prompt:--
"I grant it possible to find some actions which seem to have no
regular connexion with any known motives, and are exceptions to all
the measures of conduct which have ever been established for the
government of men. But if one could willingly know what judgment
should be formed of such irregular and extraordinary actions, we
may consider the sentiments commonly entertained with regard to
those irregular events which appear in the course of nature, and
the operations of external objects. All causes are not conjoined to
their usual effects with like uniformity. An artificer, who handles
only dead matter, may be disappointed in his aim, as well as the
politician who directs the conduct of sensible and intelligent
agents.
"The vulgar, who take things according to their first appearance,
attribute the uncertainty of events to such an uncertainty in the
causes as make the latter often fail of their usual influence,
though they meet with no impediment to their operation. But
philosophers, observing that, almost in every part of nature, there
is contained a vast variety of springs and principles, which are
hid, by reason of their minuteness or remoteness, find that it is
at least possible the contrariety of events may not proceed from
any contingency in the cause, but from the secret operation of
contrary causes. This possibility is converted into certainty by
further observation, when they remark that, upon an exact scrutiny,
a contrariety of effects always betrays a contrariety of causes,
and proceeds from their mutual opposition. A peasant can give no
better reason for the stopping of any clock or watch, than to say
that it does not commonly go right. But an artist easily perceives
that the same force in the spring or pendulum has always the same
influence on the wheels; but fails of its usual effect, perhaps by
reason of a grain of dust, which puts a stop to the whole movement.
From the observation of several parallel instances, philosophers
form a maxim, that the connexion between all causes and effects is
equally necessary, and that its seeming uncertainty in some
instances proceeds from the secret opposition of contrary
causes."--(IV. pp. 101-2.)
So with regard to human actions:--
"The internal principles and motives may operate in a uniform
manner, notwithstanding these seeming irregularities; in the same
manner as the winds, rains, clouds, and other variations of the
weather are supposed to be governed by steady principles; though
not easily discoverable by human sagacity and inquiry."--(IV. p.
103.)
Meteorology, as a science, was not in existence in Hume's time, or he
would have left out the "supposed to be." In practice, again, what
difference does any one make between natural and moral evidence?
"A prisoner who has neither money nor interest, discovers the
impossibility of his escape, as well when he considers the
obstinacy of the gaoler, as the walls and bars with which he is
surrounded; and, in all attempts for his freedom, chooses rather to
work upon the stone and iron of the one, than upon the inflexible
nature of the other. The same prisoner, when conducted to the
scaffold, foresees his death as certainly from the constancy and
fidelity of his guards, as from the operation of the axe or wheel.
His mind runs along a certain train of ideas: The refusal of the
soldiers to consent to his escape; the action of the executioner;
the separation of the head and body; bleeding, convulsive motions,
and death. Here is a connected chain of natural causes and
voluntary actions; but the mind feels no difference between them,
in passing from one link to another, nor is less certain of the
future event, than if it were connected with the objects presented
to the memory or senses, by a train of causes cemented together by
what we are pleased to call a _physical_ necessity. The same
experienced union has the same effect on the mind, whether the
united objects be motives, volition, and actions; or figure and
motion. We may change the names of things, but their nature and
their operation on the understanding never change."--(IV. pp.
105-6.)
But, if the necessary connexion of our acts with our ideas has always
been acknowledged in practice, why the proclivity of mankind to deny it
words?
"If we examine the operations of body, and the production of
effects from their causes, we shall find that all our faculties can
never carry us further in our knowledge of this relation, than
barely to observe, that particular objects are _constantly
conjoined_ together, and that the mind is carried, by a _customary
transition_, from the appearance of the one to the belief of the
other. But though this conclusion concerning human ignorance be the
result of the strictest scrutiny of this subject, men still
entertain a strong propensity to believe, that they penetrate
further into the province of nature, and perceive something like a
necessary connexion between cause and effect. When, again, they
turn their reflections towards the operations of their own minds,
and _feel_ no such connexion between the motive and the action;
they are thence apt to suppose, that there is a difference between
the effects which result from material force, and those which arise
from thought and intelligence. But, being once convinced, that we
know nothing of causation of any kind, than merely the _constant
conjunction_ of objects, and the consequent _inference_ of the mind
from one to another, and finding that these two circumstances are
universally allowed to have place in voluntary actions; we may be
more easily led to own the same necessity common to all
causes."--(IV. pp. 107, 8.)
The last asylum of the hard-pressed advocate of the doctrine of uncaused
volition is usually, that, argue as you like, he has a profound and
ineradicable consciousness of what he calls the freedom of his will. But
Hume follows him even here, though only in a note, as if he thought the
extinction of so transparent a sophism hardly worthy of the dignity of
his text.
"The prevalence of the doctrine of liberty may be accounted for
from another cause, viz. a false sensation, or seeming experience,
which we have, or may have, of liberty or indifference in many of
our actions. The necessity of any action, whether of matter or of
mind, is not, properly speaking, a quality in the agent, but in any
thinking or intelligent being who may consider the action; and it
consists chiefly in the determination of his thoughts to infer the
existence of that action from some preceding objects; as liberty,
when opposed to necessity, is nothing but the want of that
determination, and a certain looseness or indifference which we
feel, in passing or not passing, from the idea of any object to the
idea of any succeeding one. Now we may observe that though, in
_reflecting_ on human actions, we seldom feel such looseness or
indifference, but are commonly able to infer them with considerable
certainty from their motives, and from the dispositions of the
agent; yet it frequently happens, that in _performing_ the actions
themselves, we are sensible of something like it: And as all
resembling objects are taken for each other, this has been employed
as demonstrative and even intuitive proof of human liberty. We feel
that our actions are subject to our will on most occasions; and
imagine we feel, that the will itself is subject to nothing,
because, when by a denial of it we are provoked to try, we feel
that it moves easily every way, and produces an image of itself (or
a _Velleity_ as it is called in the schools), even on that side on
which it did not settle. This image or faint notion, we persuade
ourselves, could at that time have been completed into the thing
itself; because, should that be denied, we find upon a second trial
that at present it can. We consider not that the fantastical desire
of showing liberty is here the motive of our actions."--(IV. p.
110, _note_.)
Moreover, the moment the attempt is made to give a definite meaning to
the words, the supposed opposition between free will and necessity turns
out to be a mere verbal dispute.
"For what is meant by liberty, when applied to voluntary actions?
We cannot surely mean, that actions have so little connexion with
motive, inclinations, and circumstances, that one does not follow
with a certain degree of uniformity from the other, and that one
affords no inference by which we can conclude the existence of the
other. For these are plain and acknowledged matters of fact. By
liberty, then, we can only mean _a power of acting or not acting
according to the determinations of the will_; that is, if we choose
to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may. Now
this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every
one who is not a prisoner and in chains. Here then is no subject of
dispute."--(IV. p. 111.)
Half the controversies about the freedom of the will would have had no
existence, if this pithy paragraph had been well pondered by those who
oppose the doctrine of necessity. For they rest upon the absurd
presumption that the proposition, "I can do as I like," is contradictory
to the doctrine of necessity. The answer is; nobody doubts that, at any
rate within certain limits, you can do as you like. But what determines
your likings and dislikings? Did you make your own constitution? Is it
your contrivance that one thing is pleasant and another is painful? And
even if it were, why did you prefer to make it after the one fashion
rather than the other? The passionate assertion of the consciousness of
their freedom, which is the favourite refuge of the opponents of the
doctrine of necessity, is mere futility, for nobody denies it. What they
really have to do, if they would upset the necessarian argument, is to
prove that they are free to associate any emotion whatever with any idea
whatever; to like pain as much as pleasure; vice as much as virtue; in
short, to prove, that, whatever may be the fixity of order of the
universe of things, that of thought is given over to chance.
In the second part of this remarkable essay, Hume considers the real, or
supposed, immoral consequences of the doctrine of necessity, premising
the weighty observation that
"When any opinion leads to absurdity, it is certainly false; but it
is not certain that an opinion is false because it is of dangerous
consequence."--(IV. p. 112.)
And, therefore, that the attempt to refute an opinion by a picture of
its dangerous consequences to religion and morality, is as illogical as
it is reprehensible.
It is said, in the first place, that necessity destroys responsibility;
that, as it is usually put, we have no right to praise or blame actions
that cannot be helped. Hume's reply amounts to this, that the very idea
of responsibility implies the belief in the necessary connexion of
certain actions with certain states of the mind. A person is held
responsible only for those acts which are preceded by a certain
intention; and, as we cannot see, or hear, or feel, an intention, we can
only reason out its existence on the principle that like effects have
like causes.
If a man is found by the police busy with "jemmy" and dark lantern at a
jeweller's shop door over night, the magistrate before whom he is
brought the next morning, reasons from those effects to their causes in
the fellow's "burglarious" ideas and volitions, with perfect confidence,
and punishes him accordingly. And it is quite clear that such a
proceeding would be grossly unjust, if the links of the logical process
were other than necessarily connected together. The advocate who should
attempt to get the man off on the plea that his client need not
necessarily have had a felonious intent, would hardly waste his time
more, if he tried to prove that the sum of all the angles of a triangle
is not two right angles, but three.
A man's moral responsibility for his acts has, in fact, nothing to do
with the causation of these acts, but depends on the frame of mind which
accompanies them. Common language tells us this, when it uses
"well-disposed" as the equivalent of "good," and "evil-minded" as that
of "wicked." If A does something which puts B in a violent passion, it
is quite possible to admit that B's passion is the necessary consequence
of A's act, and yet to believe that B's fury is morally wrong, or that
he ought to control it. In fact, a calm bystander would reason with both
on the assumption of moral necessity. He would say to A, "You were wrong
in doing a thing which you knew (that is, of the necessity of which you
were convinced) would irritate B." And he would say to B, "You are wrong
to give way to passion, for you know its evil effects"--that is the
necessary connection between yielding to passion and evil.
So far, therefore, from necessity destroying moral responsibility, it is
the foundation of all praise and blame; and moral admiration reaches its
climax in the ascription of necessary goodness to the Deity.
To the statement of another consequence of the necessarian doctrine,
that, if there be a God, he must be the cause of all evil as well as of
all good, Hume gives no real reply--probably because none is possible.
But then, if this conclusion is distinctly and unquestionably deducible
from the doctrine of necessity, it is no less unquestionably a direct
consequence of every known form of monotheism. If God is the cause of
all things, he must be the cause of evil among the rest; if he is
omniscient, he must have the fore-knowledge of evil; if he is almighty,
he must possess the power of preventing, or of extinguishing evil. And
to say that an all-knowing and all-powerful being is not responsible for
what happens, because he only permits it, is, under its intellectual
aspect, a piece of childish sophistry; while, as to the moral look of
it, one has only to ask any decently honourable man, whether, under like
circumstances, he would try to get rid of his responsibility by such a
plea.
Hume's _Inquiry_ appeared in 1748. He does not refer to Anthony Collins'
essay on Liberty, published thirty-three years before, in which the same
question is treated to the same effect, with singular force and
lucidity. It may be said, perhaps, that it is not wonderful that the two
freethinkers should follow the same line of reasoning; but no such
theory will account for the fact that in 1754, the famous Calvinistic
divine, Jonathan Edwards, President of the College of New Jersey,
produced, in the interests of the straitest orthodoxy, a demonstration
of the necessarian thesis, which has never been equalled in power, and
certainly has never been refuted.
In the ninth section of the fourth part of Edwards' _Inquiry_, he has to
deal with the Arminian objection to the Calvinistic doctrine that "it
makes God the author of sin"; and it is curious to watch the struggle
between the theological controversialist, striving to ward off an
admission which he knows will be employed to damage his side, and the
acute logician, conscious that, in some shape or other, the admission
must be made. Beginning with a _tu quoque_, that the Arminian doctrine
involves consequences as bad as the Calvinistic view, he proceeds to
object to the term "author of sin," though he ends by admitting that, in
a certain sense, it is applicable; he proves from Scripture, that God is
the disposer and orderer of sin; and then, by an elaborate false analogy
with the darkness resulting from the absence of the sun, endeavours to
suggest that he is only the author of it in a negative sense; and,
finally, he takes refuge in the conclusion that, though God is the
orderer and disposer of those deeds which, considered in relation to
their agents, are morally evil, yet, inasmuch as His purpose has all
along been infinitely good, they are not evil relatively to him.
And this, of course, may be perfectly true; but if true, it is
inconsistent with the attribute of omnipotence. It is conceivable that
there should be no evil in the world; that which is conceivable is
certainly possible; if it were possible for evil to be non-existent, the
maker of the world, who, though foreknowing the existence of evil in
that world, did not prevent it, either did not really desire it should
not exist, or could not prevent its existence. It might be well for
those who inveigh against the logical consequences of necessarianism to
bethink them of the logical consequences of theism; which are not only
the same, when the attribute of Omniscience is ascribed to the Deity,
but which bring out, from the existence of moral evil, a hopeless
conflict between the attributes of Infinite Benevolence and Infinite
Power, which, with no less assurance, are affirmed to appertain to the
Divine Being.
Kant's mode of dealing with the doctrine of necessity is very singular.
That the phenomena of the mind follow fixed relations of cause and
effect is, to him, as unquestionable as it is to Hume. But then there is
the _Ding an sich_, the _Noumenon_, or Kantian equivalent for the
substance of the soul. This, being out of the phenomenal world, is
subject to none of the laws of phenomena, and is consequently as
absolutely free, and as completely powerless, as a mathematical point,
_in vacua_, would be. Hence volition is uncaused, so far as it belongs
to the noumenon; but, necessary, so far as it takes effect in the
phenomenal world.
Since Kant is never weary of telling us that we know nothing whatever,
and can know nothing, about the noumenon, except as the hypothetical
subject of any number of negative predicates; the information that it is
free, in the sense of being out of reach of the law of causation, is
about as valuable as the assertion that it is neither grey, nor blue,
nor square. For practical purposes, it must be admitted that the inward
possession of such a noumenal libertine does not amount to much for
people whose actual existence is made up of nothing but definitely
regulated phenomena. When the good and evil angels fought for the dead
body of Moses, its presence must have been of about the same value to
either of the contending parties, as that of Kant's noumenon, in the
battle of impulses which rages in the breast of man. Metaphysicians, as
a rule, are sadly deficient in the sense of humour; or they would surely
abstain from advancing propositions which, when stripped of the verbiage
in which they are disguised, appear to the profane eye to be bare shams,
naked but not ashamed.