Religion, the common-sense of humanity, the science of law, and history itself understand this relation between necessity and free will.
All cases, without exception, in which our conception of free will and necessity varies depend on three considerations:
1. The relation of the man committing the act to the external world.
2. His relation to time.
3. His relation to the causes leading to the act.
In the first case the variation depends on the degree to which we see the man’s relation to the external world, on the more or less clear idea we form of the definite position occupied by the man in relation to everything co-existing with him. It is this class of considerations that makes it obvious to us that the drowning man is less free and more subject to necessity than a man standing on dry ground; and that makes the actions of a man living in close connection with other people in a thickly populated district, bound by ties of family, official duties, or business undertaking, seem undoubtedly less free than those of a man living in solitude and seclusion.
If we examine a man alone, apart from his relations to everything around him, every action of his seems free to us. But if we see any relation of his to anything surrounding, if we perceive any connection between him and anything else, a man speaking to him, a book read by him, the work he is employed in, even the air he breathes, or the light that falls on the objects around him, we perceive that every one of those circumstances has its influence on him, and controls at least one side of his activity. And the more we perceive of those influences, the smaller the idea we form of his freedom, and the greater our conception of the necessity to which he is subject.
2. The second cause of variation is due to the degree of distinctness with which the man’s position in time is perceived, the clearness of the notion formed by us of the place the man’s action fills in time. It is owing to this class of considerations that the fall of the first man, leading to the origin of the human race, seems to us obviously less free than the marriage of any one of our contemporaries. It is owing to this class of considerations that the life and acts of men who lived years ago cannot seem to me as free as the life of my contemporaries, the consequences of whose acts are still unknown to me.
The variation in our conception of free will in this connection depends on the interval of time that has elapsed between the action and our criticism of it.
If I examine an act I have committed a moment ago in approximately the same circumstances as I am placed in now, my act appears to me indubitably free. But if I examine an act I have committed a month ago, then being placed in other circumstances, I cannot help recognising that had not that act been committed, much that is good and agreeable, and even inevitable, resulting from that act, could not have taken place. If I reflect on a still more remote action, performed ten years or more ago, the consequences of my act are even plainer to me, and it will be difficult for me to conceive what would have happened if that action had not taken place. The further back I go in my reminiscences, or what is the same thing, the further forward in my criticism of them, the more doubtful becomes my view of the freedom of my action.
We find precisely the same ratio of variation in our views of the element of free will in the general affairs of men in history. A contemporary event we conceive of as undoubtedly the doing of all the men we know of concerned in it. But with a more remote event, we see its inevitable consequences, which prevent our conceiving of anything else as possible. And the further back we go in the examination of events, the less arbitrary they seem to us.
The Austro-Prussian war appears to us to be undoubtedly the result of the crafty acts of Bismarck and so on.
The Napoleonic wars, though more doubtful, appear to us the effect of the free will of the leading heroes of those wars. But in the Crusades we see an event, filling its definite place in history, without which the modern history of Europe is inconceivable, although to the chroniclers of the Crusades, those events appeared simply due to the will of a few persons. In the migrations of peoples it never occurs to any one now that the renewal of the European world depended on a caprice of Attila’s. The more remote in history the subject of our observations, the more doubtful we feel of the free will of the persons concerned in the event, and the more obvious is the law of necessity in it.
3. The third element influencing our judgment is the degree to which we can apprehend that endless chain of causation demanded by the reason, in which every phenomenon comprehended, and so every act of man, must have its definite place, as a result of past and a cause of future acts.
This is the element that causes our acts and those of others to appear to us on one side more free the less we know of the physiological, psychological, and historical laws deduced from observation, and the less thoroughly the physiological, psychological, or historical cause of the act has been investigated by us, and on the other hand the less simple the act observed and the less complex the character and mind of the man whose action we are examining.
When we have absolutely no understanding of the causes of an action—whether vicious or virtuous or simply non-moral—we ascribe a greater element of free will to it. In the case of a crime, we are more urgent in demanding punishment for the act; in the case of a virtuous act, we are warmer in our appreciation of its merits. In cases of no moral bearing, we recognise more individuality, originality, and independence in it. But if only one of the innumerable causes of the act is known to us, we recognise a certain element of necessity, and are less ready to exact punishment for the crime, to acknowledge merit in the virtuous act, or freedom in the apparent originality. The fact that the criminal was reared in vicious surroundings softens his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father, of a mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of reward is more comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and so is regarded by us as less deserving of sympathy and less the work of free will. The founder of a sect, of a party, or the inventor impresses us less when we understand how and by what the way was paved for his activity. If we have a large range of experiments, if our observation is continually directed to seeking correlations in men’s actions between causes and effects, their actions will seem to us more necessary and less free, the more accurately we connect causes and effects. If the actions investigated are simple, and we have had a vast number of such actions under observation, our conception of their inevitability will be even more complete. The dishonest conduct of the son of a dishonest father, the misbehaviour of women, who have been led into certain surroundings, the relapse of the reformed drunkard into drunkenness, and so on, are instances of conduct which seem to us to be less free the better we understand their cause. If the man himself whose conduct we are examining is on the lowest stage of mental development, like a child, a mad-man, or a simpleton, then when we know the causes of the act and the simplicity of the character and intelligence, we see so great an element of necessity, and so little free will, that we can foretell the act that will follow, as soon as we know the cause bound to bring it forth.
In all legislative codes the exoneration of crime or admission of mitigating circumstances rests only on those three classes of consideration. The guilt is conceived as greater or less according to the greater or lesser knowledge of the conditions in which the man judged is placed, the greater or less interval of time between the perpetration of the crime and the judgment of it, and the greater or less comprehension of the causes that led to the act.
Chapter 10
AND THUS our conception of free will and necessity is gradually diminished or increased according to the degree of connection with the external world, the degree of remoteness in time, and the degree of dependence on causes which we see in the phenomenon of man’s life that we examine. So that if we examine the case of a man in which the connection with the external world is better known, the interval of time between the examination and the act greater, and the causes of the action easier to comprehend, we form a conception of a greater element of necessity and less free will. If we examine a man in a less close dependence on external conditions, if his action is committed at a moment nearer the present, and the causes leading him to it are beyond our ken, we form a conception of a less element of necessity and a greater element of free will in his action.
But in neither case, however we shift our point of view, however clear we make to ourselves the connection in which the man is placed with the external world, or however fully comprehensible it may appear to us, however long or short a period of time we select, however explicable or unfathomable the causes of the act may be to us, we can never conceive of complete free will, nor of complete necessity in any action.
1. However carefully we imagine a man excluded from the influence of the external world, we can never form a conception of freedom in space. Every act of man’s is inevitably limited by what surrounds him and by his own body. I raise my arm and let it fall. My action seems to me free; but asking myself could I raise my arm in any direction, I see that I moved it in the direction in which there was least hindrance to the action arising from bodies around me or from the construction of my own body. I chose one out of all the possible directions, because in that direction I met with least hindrance. For my action to be entirely free, it would have to meet with no hindrance in any direction. To conceive a man quite free, we have to conceive him outside of space, which is obviously impossible.
2. However near we bring the time of criticism to the time of action, we can never form a conception of freedom in time. For if I examine an act committed a second ago, I must still recognise that it is not free, since the act is irrevocably linked to the moment at which it was committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it; but I ask myself: Could I not have lifted my arm in that moment of time that has just passed? To convince myself of that, I do not lift my arm the next moment. But I am not abstaining from lifting it that first moment of which I asked myself the question. The time has gone by and to detain it was not in my power, and the hand which I then raised and the air in which I raised it are not the same as the hand I do not raise now or the air in which I do not now raise it. The moment in which the first movement took place is irrevocable, and in that moment I could only perform one action, and whatever movement I had made, that movement could have been the only one. The fact that the following moment I abstained from lifting my arm did not prove that I could have abstained from lifting it. And since my movement could only be one in one moment of time, it could have been no other. To conceive it to oneself as free, one must conceive it in the present on the boundary between the past and the future, that is, outside time, which is impossible.
3. However we increase the degree of difficulty of comprehending the causes of the act, we never reach a conception of complete free will, that is, absolute absence of cause. Though the cause of the expression of will in any act of our own or another’s may be beyond our ken, it is the first impulse of the intellect to presuppose and seek a cause, without which no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm in order to perform an act independent of any cause, but the fact that I want to perform an act independent of any cause is the cause of my action.
But even if by conceiving a man entirely excluded from external influence, and exercising only a momentary act in the present, not called forth by any cause, we were to reduce the element of necessity to an infinitesimal minimum equivalent to nil, we should even then not have reached a conception of complete free will in a man; for a creature, uninfluenced by the external world, outside of time, and independent of cause, is no longer a man.
In the same way we can never conceive a human action subject only to necessity without any element of free will.
1. However we increase our knowledge of the conditions of space in which a man is placed, that knowledge can never be complete since the number of these conditions is infinitely great, seeing that space is in finite. And so long as not all the conditions that may influence a man are defined, the circle of necessity is not complete, and there is still a loophole for free will.
2. Though we may make the period of time intervening between an act and our criticism of it as long as we choose, that period will be finite, and time is infinite, and so in this respect too the circle of necessity is not complete.
3. However easy the chain of causation of any act may be to grasp, we shall never know the whole chain, since it is endless, and so again we cannot attain absolute necessity.
But apart from that, even if, reducing the minimum of free will till it is equivalent to nil, we were to admit in some case—as, for instance, that of a dying man, an unborn babe, an idiot—a complete absence of free will, we should in so doing have destroyed the very conception of man, in the case we are examining; since as soon as there is no free will, there is no man. And therefore the conception of the action of a man subject only to the law of necessity, without the smallest element of free will, is as impossible as the conception of a completely free human action.
Thus to conceive a human action subject only to the law of necessity without free will, we must assume a knowledge of an infinite number of conditions in space, an infinitely long period of time, and an infinite chain of causation.
To conceive a man perfectly free, not subject to the law of necessity, we must conceive a man outside of space, outside of time, and free from all dependence on cause.
In the first case, if necessity were possible without free will, we should be brought to a definition of the laws of necessity in the terms of the same necessity, that is, to mere form without content.
In the second case, if free will were possible without necessity, we should come to unconditioned free will outside of space, and time and cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and unlimited would be nothing else than content without form.
We should be brought in fact to these two fundamental elements, of which man’s whole cosmic conception is made up—the incomprehensible essence of life and the laws that give form to that essence.
Reason says: 1. space with all the forms given it by its visibility—matter—is infinite, and is not thinkable otherwise.
