Locke and Grice on freedom

By JLS
for the GC

From Rickaby, "Four English philosophers on Freedom" (1906): Hobbes, Locke, Mill, and Grice.

do but to sin. In that case, either there is no sin, or
JOHN LOCKE

An Essay concerning Human Understanding. Book II, Chap. XXL Of Power

far as a man has power to think or not to think,
to move or not to move, according to the prefer
ence or direction of his own mind, so far is a man
free."
It is characteristic of Locke as a writer to refuse to
acknowledge difficulties. Where other philosophers
check their pace, and tread warily, and whisper in
one another s ear that they are drawing nigh to a very
grave question, Locke flies forward with a bound, and
overpowers the question, and beats it down low, and
lays the answer open, as he declares, to any ordinary
understanding. This procedure has its advantages.
Difficulties in metaphysics, as in government, in trade
or in travel, are often creatures of the imagination.
The remedy in such cases is to act and cease to ima
gine. Still there are difficulties, real difficulties, on
every line. To ignore them is not to surmount them,
but to bequeath them to posterity. When Locke sought
to silence the strife about the real essences of substan
ces by proclaiming them unknowable, he left it for
Berkeley and Hume in the next generation to ask
whether substance had any real essence at all. So the
award just pronounced by him on the question of free
will is plain and intelligible; but I fear it is also irrele
vant and superficial, and quite fails to touch the point at
issue. The strife between necessarians and libertarians
precisely concerns that preference or direction of his
own mind, which Locke assumes. How does the mind
prefer thinking of a thing to not thinking of it ? How
does the mind direct movement rather than rest ? Does
it prefer or direct in such a way as that it could not
possibly prefer or direct otherwise? This is the ques
tion to which necessarians answer yes, and libertarians
no; and which Locke s definition of freedom touches
not at all.
In proof of the insufficiency of the definition, let me
show that it applies to cases of the most rigid necessity.
A clock is in no sense a free agent. Yet a clock might
be called free when it has power to move or not to
move, according to the preference and direction of its
own workings. It would then be free from all extra
neous, all "anti-horological" interference, such as that
of a child gluing the fingers to the dial or playing with
the weights. Locke, I know, speaks, not of the work
ings of a machine, but of the direction of a man s own
mind; and he refuses, rightly enough, to recognise any
liberty away from mind. But is not this the point in
dispute, whether our minds are wound up like clocks,
to prefer and direct us to certain motions, or whether,
they have a command over themselves, placed in them
selves alone, which machines have not ? If the latter is
the true idea of freedom, Locke s definition fails to
convey it.
" Wherever any performance or forbearance are not
equally in a man s power; wherever doing or not doing
will not follow equally upon the preference of his mind
directing it, there he is not free, though perhaps the
action may be voluntary. . . Suppose a man to be car
ried, whilst fast asleep, into a room, where is a person
he longs to see and speak with, and be there locked
fast in, beyond his power to get out; he awakes, and
is glad to find himself in so desirable company, which
he stays willingly in, i.e., prefers his stay to going
away. I ask, is not this stay voluntary? I think nobody
will doubt it; and yet, being locked fast in, tis evident
he is not at liberty not to stay; he has not freedom to
be gone."
Let me too cite an imaginary instance. Suppose a
man s mark to be required to a paper in order to the
perpetration of a fraud, and another seizes his hand, and
by overpowering constraint traces with it the mark re
quired; and the man whose hand is held, though he
cannot help himself, makes the mark with a hearty good
will. I ask, is not the man thus constrained a defrauder?
I do not mean a defrauder before the law, for the law
takes cognisance only of the outward act, which is here
evidently constrained, but a defrauder in conscience and
before heaven? I think nobody will doubt it; and yet,
his hand being held, it is evident that he is not at liberty
not to make the mark, he has not freedom to withhold
it. How then is his action wrong, if he does it not
freely? It is not so much the action as the act that is
wrong. The physical action of marking the paper must
be performed by him whether he will or no, and none
can blame him for that his hand is forced; but the
mental act by which he approves of the marking is an
approval which he might have withheld, which he freely
bestows, and for which GOD holds him culpable. The
man who affixes his mark under such circumstances is
at once a voluntary agent, and a free agent, and a guilty
agent; voluntary, because he wills what he does; free,
because he need not have willed it; and guilty, because
he freely wills to do a fraudulent thing.
" If this be so, as I imagine it is, I leave it to be con
sidered whether it may not help to put an end to that
long agitated, and, I think, unreasonable because unin
telligible question, viz., whether man s will be free or
no. For if I mistake not, it follows, from what I have
said, that the question itself is altogether improper; and
it is as insignificant to ask whether man s will be free,
as to ask whether his sleep be swift, or his virtue square;
liberty being as little applicable to the will as swiftness
of motion is to sleep, or squareness to virtue. Every one
would laugh at the absurdity of sucha question as either
of these, because it is obvious that the modifications of
motion belong not to sleep, nor the difference of figure
to virtue. And when any one well considers it, I think
he will plainly perceive that liberty, which is but a
power, belongs only to agents and cannot be an attri
bute or modification of the will, which is also but a
power. . . For can it be denied that whatever agent has
a power to think on its own actions, and to prefer their
doing or omission, either to other, has that faculty
called will? Will then is nothing but such a power.
Liberty, on the other hand, is the power a man has to
do or forbear doing any particular action, according as
its doing or forbearance has the actual preference in
the mind, which is the same thing as to say, according
as he himself wills it."
A rambler in a hilly country will come sometimes
upon a sheet of water, sombre, still and solemn, which
partly from its own appearance, and partly from the
ideas of size impressed by the heights around, he will
judge to be very deep. He tries the experiment of going
into it, and finds it a shallow with a bottom of black
mud. And so the reader of Locke s great work, when
he arrives at the striking passage just quoted, a passage
that marks an epoch in the free will controversy, is seized
with awe, and doubts not, as well from the reputation
of the author as from the originality of the statement,
that the reasoning which underlies it must be profound
indeed. But when the first surprise is over, if he coolly
proceeds to reduce the wondrous argumentation into
form, another wonder will start up, how the shallow
sense therein contained can have passed with so many
readers for deep discernment.
Locke's definitions of will and freedom may be given
as follows:
Will is power of thinking on one s own actions, and
preferring their doing to their omission, or their omis
sion to their doing.
Liberty is power of doing or forbearing to do any
action, according as its doing or forbearance has the
actual preference in the mind.
Which definitions amount to these:
Will is power of choosing.
Liberty is power of acting according to choice.
From which definitions it follows that this proposition,
The will has freedom (or)
The will is free,
is equipollent with this:
The power of choosing has the power of acting ac
cording to choice.
But that proposition is absurd, since one power cannot
have another power. Therefore the proposition, "The
will is free," is absurd, unintelligible, meaningless and ir
relevant, or, as Locke says, insignificant and improper.
This is Locke s line of argument, and no one can
deny that the conclusion of it does follow from the
premisses, which are definitions. But as one definition
is wrong and the others defective, the whole argument
must be said decidedly to halt. These are the definitions
that I would substitute for them.
Will is power of consciously rejecting evil and
choosing good.
Freedom is the not being under constraint to reject
any but sheer evil, or choose any but sheer good.
So that the proposition, "The will is free," means:
The power of consciously rejecting evil and choosing
good is not under constraint to reject any but sheer evil,
or to choose any but sheer good.
There is sense, I contend, in this proposition, whether
it be true or not.
Therefore I demand that to the proposition, "The
will is free," there be restored that intelligibility, sig
nificance and relevance which Locke has unwarrantably
denied to it.
Free will is a power, the same power as the will, as
St Thomas shows,* but the liberty or freedom of the
will is not a power but an incident of a power: it is
annexed to the condition under which the power of
rejecting evil and choosing good is exercised; which
condition is this, that sheer good must not be rejected,
nor sheer evil chosen. Sheer good to a person is that
which thoroughly meets the requirements of his nature;
and sheer evil that which meets those requirements in
no way whatever. But the objects with which the human
will is ordinarily conversant are neither sheer good nor
sheer evil: they are good and evil mixed: they partly
satisfy us and partly not. In the not being tied fast to
such objects of choice that liberty consists which is
incident to the faculty or power called the human will.
"We may as properly say that tis the singing fa
culty sings, and the dancing faculty dances, as that
the will chooses, or that the understanding conceives.
... I think the question is not proper whether the will
be free, but whether a man be free."
Is not the question, whether a man be free to will ?
Instead of debating that, Locke inquires whether a
man be free to do what he wills. For, he asks, how
can we think any one freer than to have the power to
do what he will ?
Of course it is the man himself that sings with his
singing faculty, dances with his dancing faculty, chooses
with his will, and conceives with his understanding.
Still we rightly say that the will chooses and the un
derstanding conceives, while we do not say that the

* Sum. Theol. I, q. Ixxxiii, artt. 2 and 4.

singing faculty sings, or that the dancingfaculty dances.
The reason is not far to seek. Will and understanding
are faculties, answering to the Aristotelian SvvapiQ :
they are primitive powers. But dancing and singing
are not * faculties, as Locke is pleased to call them, but
habits, the Aristotelian t &g: they are acquisitions of
skill. Faculty is more intimate to man than habit;
and therefore, putting the part for the whole, we take
that part for the whole which is more representative
of the whole; and speak of the faculty doing what the
man does with the faculty.
" It passes for a good plea, that a man is not free
at all, if he be not as free to will, as he is to act what
he wills. Concerning a man s liberty, there is yet raised
this farther question, whether a man be free to will;
which, I think, is what is meant when it is disputed,
whether the will be free. And as to that, I imagine
that, willing or volition being an action, and freedom
consisting in a power of acting or not acting, a man
in respect of willing or the act of volition, when any
action in his power is once proposed to his thoughts,
as presently to be done, cannot be free. The reason
whereof is very manifest : for, it being unavoidable
that the action depending on his will should exist or
not exist; and its existence or not existence following
perfectly the determination and preference of his will;
he cannot avoid willing the existence or not exis
tence of that action. It is absolutely necessary that he
will the one or the other, i.e., prefer the one to the
other; since one of them must necessarily follow, and
that which does follow follows by the choice and de
termination of his mind, that is, by his willing it: for
if he did not will it, it would not be. So that, in res
pect of the ad of willing, a man in such a case is not
free: liberty consisting in a power to act or not to
ad, which, in regard of volition, a man upon such
a proposal has not. For it is unavoidably necessary
to prefer the doing or forbearance of an action in
a man s power, which is once so proposed to his
thoughts: a man must necessarily will the one or the
other of them, upon which preference or volition, the
action, or its forbearance, certainly follows, and is truly
voluntary; but the act of volition, or preferring one
of the two, being that which he cannot avoid, a man
in respect of that act of willing is under a necessity,
and so cannot be free; unless necessity and freedom
can consist together, and a man can be free and bound
at once. This then is evident, that in all proposals of
present action a man is not at liberty to will or not to
will, because he cannot forbear willing: liberty con
sisting in a power to act or to forbear acting, and in
that only."

At last Locke stands at bay before the real question,
and dispatches it with a reason which he calls l>ery mani
fest^ but which to me appears very obscure, and, on
inspection, very inconclusive. I subjoin an analysis,
which anyone may compare with the text. Three argu
ments are given, or rather, three confused statements
of one argument: that being Locke s custom when he
feels that he has not quite hit the nail on the head, to
hammer all about the spot.

First Argument
i. Every action dependent on a man s will must
either take place or not take place.
2. Every action dependent on a man s will takes
place on condition that he wills it, and does not take
place on condition that he does not will it.
3. Therefore the man must will that the action
should take place, or will that it should not take place.

Second Argument
1. Every action dependent on a man s will takes
place by his willing it: for if he did not will it, it would
not be.
2. But he must will one way or the other.
3. Therefore, one way or the other, he wills of
necessity.

Third Argument
1. He who cannot forbear willing is not at liberty
to will or not to will.
2. Man cannot forbear willing, upon any proposal
of present action.
3. Therefore man is not at liberty to will or not to
will upon any proposal of present action.

The first remark that I have to make upon these
arguments is that they need lengthening out in order
to reach the heart of the matter of free will. If they
are valid, they prove that, when an action is proposed
to us, we must either positively consent or positively
refuse to do it: we are not free to abstain alike from
consent and refusal. But some, I suppose, contend that
this conclusion still leaves us free; since, though we
must exert an act of the will, it rests with us, they say,
to make that act a consent or a refusal. Though I do
not agree with those thinkers, their position, it seems to
me, has enough show of reason to render Locke s tri
umph incomplete until it is rebutted. But I deny that
conclusion (that we are not free to abstain alike from
consent and refusal), and challenge the arguments
alleged on its behalf.
_ In the first argument the first proposition is true by
virtue of what logicians call the law of excluded middle.
The first half of the second proposition is true by the
wording. The second half of that same proposition is
true as it stands: it is true that the condition for an
action, dependent on a man s will, not to take place, is
that he shall not will it to take place. But it is not
true that the condition for the action not to take place
is that he shall positively will its not taking place. That
is what Locke wishes to be understood in the second
half of this seemingly self-evident second proposition.
And that is the false conclusion which he gathers, with
a therefore prefixed, in the third proposition.

Surely, there is a difference between the negative
state of not willing and the positive act, I will not. There
is a difference between not saying yes and saying no.
There is a difference between not voting for a measure
and voting against it. When an action depends on my
willing it, that is, making up my mind that it shall be
done, my refraining from having any will, or making
up my mind at all upon the matter, is quite enough to
bar the action. I need not say, // shall not be; it will not
be unless I say, It shall. Otherwise there would be no
such thing in the world as irresolution. A man who
did not at once resolve on one course would thereby
have resolved on the other. Yet, who has not been ir-
resolute, undecided, unable to make up his mind, a
prey to hesitation and doubt, in many a critical hour of
his life? It may be replied, however, that this state of
doubt consists, not in a withholding of the will, which
Locke argues to be impossible, but in a quick succes
sion of contradictory volitions. Is irresolution a state
of rest or of oscillation? Oscillation it is called by a
common figure of speech. The figure is so far correct,
inasmuch as a person in doubt inclines now to one
alternative and now to another. But does he will now
the one, now the other? I think he does not will in the
full sense of the term. For what is it fully and properly
to will? I conceive the process to be this. A good is
presented to the mind: a complacency is raised there
by: the person adverts to his complacency, and so ac
quiesces in it. Now, if I am not mistaken, an irreso
lute person does not ordinarily accomplish a series of
these processes in full. The advantages of one alterna
tive strike him with a liking for it, but, as he looks
inward, he does not approve of that liking; then come
the rival advantages, and affect him in the same way,
without his taking to them either. Thus he advances to
the first stage of volition on this side and on that, but
on neither side does he reach the second stage. I am
not denying that he may reach it and then go back;
but I say, so far as I can read my own consciousness
on the matter, and each man has no other conscious
ness to read but his own, that a man, when he hesi
tates, does not usually accomplish in succession a num
ber of complete conflicting volitions ; he does not usually
make up his mind fully for a thing and then fully against
it; but he does what the word hesitate signifies, he sticks
fast halfway in the process of willing; and the thing
which depends on his will is not done, simply because
he never thoroughly wills it. If this be so, the facl is
fatal to Locke s argumentation.

The second argument is a restatement of the first.
The first prosposition in it is true; the second is false,
and the conclusion does not follow.

In the third argument, again, the first proposition
is true, and the second false, and so the conclusion
fails.

VI

"To ask whether a man be at liberty to will motion
or rest, speaking or silence, which he pleases, is to
ask whether a man can will what he wills or be
pleased with what he is pleased with, a question which
I think needs no answer; and they who can make a
question out of it must suppose one will to determine
the acls of another, and another to determine that, and
so on in infinitum"

To suppose a man already to will or to be pleased
with a thing, and then ask whether he can will it or
be pleased with it, is of course absurd; but to say that
no reason can be assigned for a man s freely willing a
thing beyond his freely willing it, is, I believe, to speak
the truth. Locke thinks that it involves an infinite series
of wills. A man wills because he wills to will, and he
wills to will because he wills to will to will, and so
forth; but this is absurd; therefore, a man has no self-
determination. In like manner it might be argued that
we have no self-knowledge; because, if we had, we

should say, we know that we know, to infinity. Car
dinal Newman remarks on this point:

"Of course these reflex acts may be repeated in a
series. As I pronounce that Great Britain is an island,
and then pronounce That "Great Britain is an island"
has a claim on my assent, or is to be assented to, or
to be accepted as true, or to be believed, or simply
is true (these predicates being equivalent), so I may
proceed, The proposition "that Great Britain is an
island is to be believed," is to be believed, etc., etc.,
and so on to infinitum. But this would be trifling. The
mind is like a double mirror, in which reflections of
self within self multiply themselves till they are un-
distinguishable, and the first reflection contains all the
rest."*

When an offer is made to an antiquarian of a trip
to Constantinople, and he is delighted with the idea,
that delight does not originate there and then with
him. It is the result of the words addressed to him
working upon his previous dispositions. The only way
in which he personally has promoted the delight
which he feels is by those his previous acts which
have disposed him that way. But during that first
instant of surprise and pleasure he is quite passive.
And yet the volition to visit the city of Constan-
tine is already drawn up, like a document awaiting
his signature; or to use a more appropriate compari
son, it lives already within him, and expects his recog
nition and acknowledgement of it for his own. Sup
pose that when he looks into himself he approves of
* Grammar of Assent, p. 1 88.



JOHN LOCKE 89

the complacency which he finds there, and fully and
freely wills to undertake the journey, I ask what
moves him to that free volition? And the answer is
twofold, partly regarding the volition and partly the
freedom of it. The volition, by which I mean here
the original complacency taken in the idea of actually
going to Constantinople, is, as I have said, the result
of an impression from without encountering certain
previous habits of mind in him who receives it. Thus
far the motion comes from without, and not from the
person s own self. But the freedom of the volition,
that is, the fact of the complacency being persevered
in after advertence, when it might have been rejected,
that perseverance is of the proper motion of the per
son and proceeds from him, and from none other
besides him. If you raise the question why he perse
veres, you are liable to the demand, why should he
not? The complacency has possession of his mind, and
we know whence it came. To acquiesce in it and con
sciously to sustain and intensify it, now that it is pre
sent, is not to turn the act in a new direction, but to
stamp it with a new character, and, as it were, to set
the seal of the ego upon it. Clearly, therefore, the
person can acquiesce in that complacency. It is no less
clear that he need not acquiesce therein. For no na
ture need acquiesce in what does not fully satisfy its
needs. But the needs of man s nature rise as high
as does his conception of good; and he conceives
good far higher than going to Constantinople. That
good, therefore, does not necessitate him to acquiesce
in the cmoplaccncy which it excites within him. If he



90 FREE WILL

withholds acquiescence, the complacency, being ad
verted to without being approved, withers away.

Once more I have explained what I believe to be
the process of free volition. The account is open to
criticism, as all accounts of delicate workings are.
But I do not see how the reproach of postulating an
infinite series of wills can be fastened upon it by a
candid reader.

VII

*"Good and evil, present and absent, tis true, work
upon the mind; but that which immediately deter
mines the will from time to time to every voluntary
action is the uneasiness of desire fixed on some absent
good, either negative, as indolency to one in pain; or
positive, as enjoyment of pleasure. That it is this un
easiness that determines the will to the successive
voluntary actions whereof the greatest part of our lives
is made up, and by which we are conducted through
different courses to different ends, I shall endeavour
to show both from experience and the reason of the
the thing. When a man is perfectly content with the
state he is in, which is when he is perfectly without any
uneasiness, what industry, what action, what will is
there left but to continue in it? Of this every man s
observation will satisfy him. . . Convince a man never
so much that plenty has its advantages over poverty,
make him see and own that the handsome conveni
ences of life are better than nasty penury, yet as long
as he is content with the latter and finds no uneasiness
in it, he moves not; his will never is determined to
any action that shall bring him out of it. Let a man
be ever so well persuaded of the advantages of vir-

* In this quotation the several passages stand not exadlly in the
same order in which Locke presents them.



JOHN LOCKE 91

tue, that it is as necessary to a man who has any great
aims in this world, or hopes in the next, as food to
life; yet till he hungers and thirsts after righteousness,
till he feels an uneasiness in the want of it, his will
will not be determined to any aclion in pursuit of
this confessed greater good; but any other uneasiness
he feels in himself shall take place and carry his will to
other adions. . . If we inquire into the reason of what
experience makes so evident in fact, and examine why
tis uneasiness alone operates on the will and deter
mines it in its choice, we shall find that, we being
capable but of one determination of the will to one
action at once, the present uneasiness that we are
under does naturally determine the will, in order to
that happiness which we all aim at in all our actions;
forasmuch as whilst we are under any uneasiness we
cannot apprehend ourselves happy or in the way to
it; pain and uneasiness being by every one concluded
and felt to be inconsistent with happiness, spoiling the
relish even of those good things which we have, a
little pain serving to mar all the pleasure we rejoiced
in. And therefore that which of course determines the
choice of our wills to the next action will always be
the removing of pain, as long as we have any left, as
the first and necessary step towards happiness. Another
reason why tis uneasiness alone determines the will
may be this: because that alone is present, and tis
against the nature of things that what is absent should
operate where it is not. It may be said that absent
good may by contemplation be brought home to the
mind and made present. The idea of it, indeed, may
be in the mind, and viewed as present there; but
nothing will be in the mind as a present good able to
counterbalance the removal of any uneasiness which
we are under till it raises our desire, and the uneasi-



92 FREE WILL

ness of that has the prevalency in determining the
will. Till then, the idea in the mind of whatever good
is only there like other ideas, the object of bare, in-
aclive speculation, but operates not on the will, nor
sets us on work. . . For the removal of the pains we
feel and are at present pressed with being the getting
out of misery, and consequently the first thing to be
done in order to happiness; absent good, though
thought on, confessed and appearing to be good, not
making any part of this unhappiness in its absence, is
jostled out to make way for the removal of those
uneasinesses we feel, till due and repeated contempla
tion has brought it nearer to our mind, given some
relish of it, and raised in us some desire, which then
beginning to make a part of our present uneasiness
stands upon fair terms with the rest to be satisfied, and
so according to its greatness and pressure comes in its
turn to determine the will. . . Were the will determined
by the views of good, as it appears in contemplation
greater or less to the understanding, which is the state
of all absent good, and that which in the received opi
nion the will is supposed to move to and to be moved
by, I do not see how it could ever get loose from the
infinite eternal joys of heaven, once proposed and con
sidered as possible. . . This I think anyone may ob
serve in himself and others, that the greater visible
good does not always raise men s desires in proportion
to the greatness it appears and is acknowledged to have,
though every little trouble moves us, and sets us at
work to get rid of it.. The reason whereof is evident
from the nature of our happiness and misery itself.
All present pain, whatever it be, makes a part of our
present misery; but all absent good does not at any
time make a part of our present happiness, nor the
absence of it make a part of our misery. If it did, we



JOHN LOCKE 93

should be constantly and infinitely miserable, there
being infinite degrees of happiness which are not in
our possession. All uneasiness, therefore, being re
moved, a moderate portion of goo 1 serves at present
to content men, and some few degrees of pleasure in
a succession of ordinary enjoyments make up a hap
piness wherein they can be satisfied. . . But we being
in this world beset with sundry uneasinesses, dis
tracted with different desires, the next inquiry natu
rally will be, which of them has the precedency in de
termining the will to the next action. And to that the
answer is, that ordinarily which is the most pressing
of those that are judged capable of being then removed.
For the will, being the power of directing our opera
tive faculties to some action for some end, cannot at
any time be moved towards what is judged at that time
unattainable. That would be to suppose an intelligent
being designedly to act for an end only to lose its la
bour; for so it is to act for what is judged not attain
able, and therefore very great uneasinesses move not
the will when they are j udged not capable of a cure : they
in that case put us not upon endeavours. But these set
apart, the most important and urgent uneasiness we
at that time feel is that which ordinarily determines
the will successively in that train of voluntary actions
which make up our lives. The greatest present un
easiness is the spur to action that is constantly felt and
for the most part determines the will in its choice of
the next action."

Locke says that the will is determined ordinarily
and for the most part by the greatest present uneasi
ness: he does not say always. Indeed in the next
section he sets a limitation to the axiom. With that
limitation I shall have to deal. My argument here is



94 FREE WILL

not directed against the position upon which Locke
ultimately retires, but against the bare, unqualified
statement that the will is ever and always determined
by the greatest present uneasiness.

And first let us take the word determined literally,
in the full Hobbesian sense of necessitated. Man would
be a pitiful creature if he were thus the puppet of his
discomforts, the sport of the first uneasiness that be
fell him. From the cradle to the grave he would grovel
in unredeemed bondage to his bodily wants. The cra
vings of appetite are our earliest promptings to action;
and throughout life they touch us closest, and affect
us most urgently in the way of present uneasiness.
What room does such a doctrine leave for any forma
tion of habits of temperance and self-control?

I wonder what was the greatest present uneasiness
of the martyr St Lawrence on his gridiron. His libe
ration rested with himself: it was to be bought with
a word. There was the pain of future remorse in the
scale against that word of apostasy: there was the pain
of actual burning fire making for it. Which was the
greater pain? Some may argue from the martyr s
choice, that he found the remorse more painful. But
it is not a question of the agony of remorse against the
agony of burning, but of a prospect of the former
agony against an actual endurance of the latter. It is
hard to believe that the shadow of threatened re
morse distressed the young deacon more than did the
reality of present fire. It is a revolting philosophy which
pictures a witness of CHRIST unto torments and death,
as merely doing after all the pleasantest thing that he



JOHN LOCKE 95

could do under the circumstances, seeking his greater
ease and comfort in the jaws of the flames, and only
not denying his LORD because on the whole it was less
painful to confess Him. It is not creditable to natu
ral manliness, let alone to supernatural sanctity, to be
driven by the prickings of uneasiness, as it were at the
bayonet s point, to deeds of heroism and high renown.
Or, taking the word determined in a looser sense,
shall we say that the greatest present uneasiness is ever
for the time being the strongest determinant, or mo
tive, to the will, whether the will consent to it or not?
That would be to ignore the well-established Aristo
telian distinction between pleasures that presuppose
a previous uneasiness, now being allayed, and plea
sures that are attractive of themselves, no uneasiness
being presupposed. These are Aristotle s words:

They say that pain is a falling below the natural level, and
pleasure a filling up to the natural level. But these are bodily
incidents. If pleasure is a filling up to the natural level, the
subject of pleasure will be that subject in which the filling
up takes place, namely, the body. But that conclusion is not
acceptable. Pleasure then is not a filling up, but the man feels
pleasure when the filling up takes place. This belief seems to
have arisen from the consideration of the pleasures and pains
connected with nutrition; seeing that when men are in want
of food, and have experienced the previousannoyance of hunger
and thirst, then they feel pleasure in the making up of the
deficiency. But this is not the case in all pleasures. The plea
sures of mathematical discovery involve no such previous pain;
nor the pleasures of the senses of smell, hearing and sight;
nor the pleasures of memory and hope.

It is not to allay any personal discomfort, or mental
uneasiness, that the astronomer sweeps the heavens



96 FREE WILL

with his spectroscope and speculates on the composi
tion of the stars. Or does the poet sing to allay the
turmoil ofa frenzied mind ? Keble, I know, maintains the
affirmative in his once-celebrated Pr<?lectiones Academic*.
But there is a poetic and artistic pleasure of a softer
and a gentler sort which comes of an activity congenial
in itself, and attractive to the will for its own sake,
apart from any uneasiness which it may allay.

I further observe that the axiom in debate fails to
allow for force of character, apt to withstand immedi
ate solicitation, and for that habit of endurance of
uneasiness which Aristotle calls KapTtpia. For this,
however, Locke himself does make due allowance, as
will appear in the next section.

Happiness on earth is rather prospective than present :
it lies in hope and exertion, not in fruition and repose.
To a huntsman in an eager chase, the very toil of
riding is pleasure. The stoppage of his horse would vex
him more than the escape of the fox. All happy men
on earth are huntsmen after something. This continued
chase supposes a spur of uneasiness, unfelt in the heat
of pursuit, but goading the flank of the eager soul the
moment the pursuit is stopped. We may be at our ease,
after a fashion, so long as we are diligent; but like the
swimmer in troubled waters, we are not, cannot in this
world, be at rest. If then we take " uneasiness " to
include not bodily discomfort only, but the uneasiness
of curiosity, of ambition, of zeal, we must allow that
uneasiness sets an edge on all human motive, though
it would not be true to say that all human motive is
made up of uneasiness. The philosophy of uneasiness



JOHN LOCKE 97

is eloquently set forth by St Augustine, in the two
following passages, which seem in place here.

Need is the mother of all human actions. Brethren, I have
just told you the truth in brief. Run through in mind any
action you like: see if aught engenders them but need. Con
sider even those pre-eminent arts which are rated high, the
pleadings of oratory and the aids of medicine, for such are
the professions which excel in this world, what of them?
Take away lawsuits, whom does the advocate assist? Take
away diseases and wounds, what does the physician heal?
Again, all those actions of ours that are required and per
formed for our daily sustenance spring out of need. Ploughing,
sowing, planting, navigation, what begets all such works but
need and want? Take away hunger, thirst and nakedness,
and what use are they all? The same even with the works
of mercy that are enjoined in the Christian law. For the
works which I have hitherto mentioned are morally good in
deed, but belong to all men, I leave out of count the worst
sort of works, those detestable works, crimes and enormities,
murders, mutilations and adulteries: them I do not reckon
amongst human works, but these lawful works I spenk of
are born of no other parent than need, the need incident to our
fleshly frailty. The like holds true of those works also which I
have said are enjoined upon Christians. Break thy bread to the
needy. To whom breakest thou, where no one hungers?
Gather the needy and hnrbourless into thy house. What stranger
dost thou entertain, where all dwell in their own country?
What litigants dost thou reconcile, where there is everlasting
peace? What dead dost thou bury, where there is life eternal?
Thou art not there likely to do any of those lawful works
that belong to all men. Thou art not likely to do any of the
works of mercy: for those young of the turtle (Ps. Ixxxiii, 3)
will then be flown from the nest. To thee I turn, O Prophet.
Thou hast already told us what we shall have: Blessed are
they who d^ucll in thy house. Tell us now what the blessed
shall do, for I see not any needs in that state to impel me to
action. Lo, my present speech and discourse is the fruit of need.

7



98 FREE WILL

Shall there be in heaven the like discoursing, to teach the
ignorant, forsooth, and to remind the forgetful? Or shall the
Gospel be read there in our own country, where the Word
of GOD shall be gazed upon in person? Therefore since the
Psalmist, desiring and sighing in our name, has told us what
we are to have in the country for which he sighs: Blessed,
he says, are they who dwell in thy house, let him tell us what
we are to do. They shall praise thee for ever and ever. This
will be our whole unceasing occupation, alleluia. Let it not
seem to you, brethren, that there will be weariness there,
because here you cannot endure to be repeating GOD S praises
for long; it is need that diverts you from that joy. And con
sidering that a thing is so much the less pleasing for being
unseen, if, under the pressure and frailty of our flesh, we
praise with such alacrity what we believe, how shall we praise
what we shall see! When death shall be swallowed up in
victory; when this mortal body shall have put on immor
tality, and this corruptible body shall have put on incorrup-
tion, no one will say, I have been a long time standing; no
one will say, I have been a long time fasting, I have been a
long time without sleep. For there shall be great stability
there; and the very immortality of our body shall then be rapt
in the contemplation of GOD. And if now this word which
we dispense to you keeps the frailty of our flesh standing so
long, what will that joy do for us? How will it change us?
For we shall be like Him, since we shall see Him as He is.
Being come to be like Him, when shall we fail? where shall
we falter? Let us then rest assured, brethren; naught but the
praise of GOD and the love of GOD will satisfy us. If you
cease from love, you will cease from praise. But if your love
shall be unceasing, inasmuch as that beauty without cloy shall be
unceasing, have no fear of not being always able to praise Him
whom you will always be able to love. Therefore blessed
are they who dwell in Thy house; they shall praise Thee for
ever and ever.*

So in another place the holy Doctor treats of our
present labour and future rest:

* Aug. in Ps. Ixxxiii.



JOHN LOCKE 99

Hunger and thirst fight daily: the weariness of the flesh
fights against us: the delight of sleep fights: so too does the
oppression of it. We wish to watch, and we fall asleep: we
wish to fast, and we hunger and thirst: we wish to stand, and
we get tired: we try sitting down, and if we sit long, we are at
a !os^ whut to do with ourselves. Whatever we provide for our
rch xhment, there we find a new want. Are you hungry?
some one says to you. You answer, Yes, I am. He sets food
before you. He sets it there to refresh you: go on with what
is set before you. I know you wished to take refreshment: make
that your lasting occupation ; by doing so, you will find weariness
in that which you had provided to refresh you. You are tired
with long sitting: you get up and refresh yourself by a walk. Go
on with that recreation: you are wearied with long walking and
seek again to sit. Find me any way of refreshing yourself that
will not exhaust you anew, if you continue in it. What peace,
therefore, is that which men have here in face of so many dis
tresses, cravings, wants and wearinesses? That is no true, no
perfect peace. What will be perfeft peace? This corruptible body
must put on incorruption, and this mortal body put on immor
tality: then the saying shall be fulfilled which is written: Death
is swallowed up in victory. Where is, O death, thy viclory?
Where is, O death, thy struggle? How should there be entire
peace where there is still mortality? For of death comes that
weariness which we find in all our refreshments. Of death, I
say, because we bear a body doomed to die; a body which the
Apostle calls dead, even before the separation of the soul: the
body indeed, he says, is dead through sin. Go on with much
eating: the very at will kill you. Go on with much fasting,
and you will die of it. Sit always, refusing to rise, and you
will die of that. Walk always, refusing to sit down, you will
die of that. Watch always, refusing to sleep, you will die of
that. Sleep always, refusing to awake, you will die of that.
When, therefore, death shall be swallowed up in victory, these
things shall not be, and there shall be peace, entire and ever
lasting. We shall be in a certain city, brethren. When I speak
of it, I am unwilling to end, especially as scandals thicken. Who
would not desire that peace whence no friend shall be absent,



ioo FREE WILL

whither no enemy intrudes, where there is no tempter, no
mutineer, no divider of the people of GOD, no harasser of the
Church in the service of the Evil One; when the archrebel
himself shall be cast into everlasting fire, and with him, who
soever sympathises with him, and will not abandon his cause ?
There will then, I say, be peace, peace refined and purified,
among the sons of GOD, all loving one another and seeing
themselves full of GOD, when GOD shall be all in all. We shall
have GOD for our common spectacle: we shall have GOD for
our common possession: we shall have God for our common
peace. Whatever it is that He gives us at present, He will be
to us in place of all that He gives: He will be our entire and
perfect peace. This peace He speaks to His people; this peace
the Psalmist wished to hear when he said: / will bear what
the Lord speaketb in me, for he will speak peace to bis people and
upon his saints.*

VIII

"There being in us a great many uneasinesses
always soliciting and ready to determine the will, it is
natural, as I have said, that the greatest and most pres
sing should determine the will to the next action, and
so it does for the most part, but not always. For the
mind having in most cases, as is evident from experi
ence, a power to suspend the execution and satisfac
tion of any of its desires, and so all, one after another,
is at liberty to consider the objects of them, examine
them on all sides, and weigh them with others. In this
lies the liberty man has ; and from the not using it right,
comes all that variety of mistakes, errors and faults which
we run into in the conduct of our lives and our endea
vours after happiness, whilst we precipitate the deter
mination of our wills, and engage too soon before due
examination. To prevent this, we have a power to sus
pend the prosecution of this or that desire, as every
one daily may experiment in himself. This seems to me

* Aug. in Ps. Ixxxiv.



JOHN LOCKE 101

the source of all liberty; in this seems to consist that
which is (as I think, improperly) called free will."

The Bodleian Library possesses a copy of Locke s
Essay concerning Humane Understanding, bearing the
date 1690. In the "Epistle to the Reader" the author
informs us how he has made various additions to the
work as originally published, notably on Book II,
chap, xxi, concerning Liberty and the Will. He goes
on ingenuously to say: "These are advantages of this
edition, which the bookseller hopes will make it sell. . .
He [bookseller] has promised to print them by them
selves, so that the former edition may not be wholly
lost to those who have it, but by the insertion in their
proper places of the passages that will be reprinted
alone, to that purpose, the former book may be made
as little defective as possible." In the Bodleian copy
accordingly these additions figure as insertions between
the pages. Opposite p. 124 the reader will find the very
extract above quoted: it is numbered " 47." It is then
an afterthought; and, curiously enough, in this after
thought Locke approximates closely to the theory of
free will put forward in the present work. Formerly
he held that liberty was the power of thinking or not
thinking, doing or forbearing, as we wished; now he
makes it to be "a power to suspend the prosecution*
of this or that desire."

The exercise of this suspensory power is called by

Locke forbearance ; and he has already told us that

"mere forbearances require as much the determination

of the will as the contrary actions." To this statement 1

* For "prosecution" I should say "ratification."



io2 FREE WILL

do not agree altogether. I accept it only with a distinc
tion. Some forbearances require the determination of the
will, others do not. Positive forbearance is a resolu
tion not to do a thing here and now: that resolution is a
determination of the will, in fad, a volition. But there
are negative forbearances also. A negative for
bearance is the very reverse of resolution: it is a state
of irresolution, indecision, hesitation ; there is no deter
mination of the will there. Now if Locke would only
recognise these negative forbearances, and admit
that the aptitude of such forbearance is the root of all
human liberty, my contention with him would cease.

I account this passage of Locke highly valuable and
noteworthy. It contains the answer to the inquiry so
often set on foot, whether the will can follow the weaker
motive. It must be remarked that the strength of a
motive is measured in our regard by the direct atten
tion which we pay to it. When one advantage is care
fully contemplated, and a greater advantage carelessly
glanced at, that will be in the mind the greater advan
tage, which is objectively the less. The good that is
considered at any given instant, furnishes the domi
nant motive for that instant. If any volition be accom
plished just then, it cannot but be a volition to follow
that motive and accept that good. But the person may
for the nonce abstain from all volition, unless the good
before him be a perfect good, filling to the brim his
conscious capacity of enjoyment. If the proposed good
comes short of that measure, he may withhold his ap
proval from the complacency which it has caused in
him: he may check his volition midway, simply by not



JOHN LOCKE 103

going on with it. " In "this," as Locke appositely ob
serves, "lies the liberty man has; in this seems to
consist that which is, as I think," with all deference
to so grave an authority, properly "called free will."
When a boat is left high and dry on the beach, if
she floats away with any tide, it must be with the tide
that is in at the time of her floating. She cannot float
away on Monday morning with the tide that went out
on Sunday afternoon. It depends on her owners, pro
vided they secure her properly, whether she shall float
away with any tide, and if with any, with what tide.
Tides are conceivable, which would sweep away any
boat left within their reach; but they are of excep
tional occurrence. When the tide is in, and the owners
do not wish the boat to go out with it, all that they do
is not to unmoor her, that is, they do nothing to her.
Their liberty as regards the floating of that boat con
sists in this, that theirs is the decision whether the
boat shall or shall not float away with any ordinary tide :
if she does float away, they could have hindered her;
if she does not, they could have made her. They sus
pend the floating till whatsoever tide they think good.
This is the picture of the case of a person willing. If
he exercises any complete volition, in other words, if
he consciously approves any complacency, he must
approve the particular complacency that is on him at
the moment, and not any absent complacency. It rests
with him to approve any or none, with advertence;
to will, that is, or to abstain from willing. There are
good things great enough to fill with rapturous compla
cency his whole nature, and necessitate hisconscious ac-



io 4 FREE WILL

ceptance of them; but such a good thing is rara avis in
terris. When a person has a complacency, which does
not turn it into a full act of the will, all he need do is
not to approve of it: he simply lets it go. He may
suspend his volition through complacency after com
placency, as many as he is not pleased to sanction.

To interfere with this suspension of volition is to
interfere with the agent s freedom. When an enthu
siast wishes us to say yes or no upon the spot to a
proposal of some interest, we are wont to damp his
ardour by telling him that we will see. That expres
sion signifies that we will please ourselves, and follow
our own determination, more than he is willing to
allow us. A thing said or done on the spur of the
moment, before we have had time to think, is rather
an appendage and sequel to previous volitions than a
fresh volition by itself. It is true that indecision can
not last for ever, and when we have hesitated long, the
very length of our hesitation precipitates our choice,
which is frequently made in a hurry at the end of a
tedious weighing of motives. But account must be
taken then, not so much of the actual choice, as of the
way by which it has been reached, through a continued
exercise of liberty. Perhaps King Edward VI con
sented to Joan Bocher s death in a fit of don t-care
weariness of Cranmer s importunity; but how often
had the idea of definitively refusing his consent passed
before his mind and not been acted upon, or had been
acted upon and the act been recalled! His will, though
becoming less free as delay became more and more
impossible, was free for every instant that his wavering



JOHN LOCKE 105

lasted: the collected freedom of all those instants to
gether gathers round the volition which sent Joan to
the stake.

IX

"Would anyone be a changeling,* because he is
less determined by wise considerations than a wise
man ? Is it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty
to play the fool, and draw shame and misery upon a
man s self? If to break loose from the conduct of rea
son, and to want that restraint of examination and
judgement which keeps us from choosing or doing
the worst, be liberty, true liberty, madmen and fools
are the only freemen: but yet I think nobody would
choose to be mad for the sake of such liberty but he
that is mad already."

It is impossible for man to be so free as not to be
moved by any motives. For man is not complete in
himself; his nature requires things outside of him;
consequently external objects attract his nature and stir
his craving and influence his conduct. The only ques
tion is, what motives shall effectually move him. That
depends on himself. He determines which way he
shall go, and he gathers momentum by going, so that
it is not so easy for him to stop when once he is
started. Thus he becomes as we say addicted^ that is,
bound 0>T, to virtue or to vice, as St Paul tells the
Romans, "Know ye not that to whomsoever ye yield
yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are whom
ye obey; whether it be of sin unto death, or ot obe
dience unto righteousness? . . . Being made free from
sin, ye were made servants to righteousness. . . When

* An ape.



io6 FREE WILL

ye were servants of sin, ye were free in regard to
righteousness."* Free will is not given to us to romp
and play the fool with, but to choose good, and there
by contract that habit of choosing good which is called
virtue. A person who should strive to observe neu
trality between virtue and vice, and seek of set pur
pose to escape entanglement with either in order to
preserve his freedom intact, would speedily become
the bondslave of vice. For performances always fall
short of the ideal standard of good contemplated by
the agent. If then the ideal in view be not too much of
goodness^ the result actually achieved is likely to turn
out a deal too much of villainy. Plato compared the ser
vant of righteousness, the servant of unrighteousness,
and the trimmer between the two, to the city of good
government, the city of bad government, and the city
of no government, respectively. He shows how rapidly
the third state passes into the second, from no govern
ment to bad government, from anarchy to tyranny.
The man of no habits and no character degenerates
into a man of bad character and vicious habits. I have
no quarrel with Locke here.

X

"Liberty, tis plain, consists in a power to do or
not to do, to do or forbear doing, as we will. This
cannot be denied. But this seeming to comprehend only
the actions of a man consecutive to volition, it is further
inquired whether hebe at liberty towillor no. Andto this
it has been answered that in most cases a man is not at
liberty to forbear the act of volition; he must exert an

* Romans vi, 16, 18, 20.



JOHN LOCKE 107

act of his will, whereby the action proposed is made to
exist or not to exist. But yet there is a case wherein a man
is at liberty in respect of willing, and that is the choosing
of a remote good as an end to be pursued. Here a man
may suspend the act of his choice from being deter
mined for or against the thing proposed, till he has
examined whether it be really of a nature in itself and
consequences to make him happy or no. . . That
which in the train of our voluntary actions determines
the will to any change of operation, is some present
uneasiness, which is, or at least is always acccompanied
with, that of desire. Desire is always moved by evil,
to fly it; because a total freedom from pain always makes
a necessary part of our happiness. But every good, nay,
every greater good, does not constantly move desire,
because it may not make, or may not be taken to
make, any necessary part of our happiness. For all that
we desire is only to be happy. But though this general
desire of happiness operates constantly and invariably,
yet the satisfaction of any particular desire can be su-
pended from determining the will to any subservient
action till we have maturely examined whether the parti
cular apparent good, which we then desire, makes a part
of our real happiness, or be consistent or inconsistent
with it. The result of our judgement upon that examina
tion is what ultimately determines the man, who could
not be free, if his will were determined by anything
but his own desire, guided by his own judgement."

These two extracts together form a sort of map of
the ground over which Locke has gone and I after
him. Let us recapitulate results. Locke s first position
was that "he is free who can do what he wills to do."
Liberty, taken this way, is one with power. That man
is the most free who is the strongest, the ablest, the



io8 FREE WILL

best supplied with means for effecting his purpose,
whatever it be. An absolute sovereign, then, a Sesostris
or a Bajazet, would show forth in his person the per
fect type of a free man. The plenitude of liberty is the
plenitude of arbitrary power; and Hobbes was right
in his sarcastic observation, that when men cry for
liberty, they want power. I am surprised at a patriarch
of English Liberalism lending any countenance to this
view. What fault had Locke to find with Charles II
and James II, if those aspirants to autocracy were
merely coveting for themselves that which is the birth
right of every Englishman? Why did Locke place the
German Ocean between him and two such liberty-
loving English monarchs? Was it because they loved
power too well? But if power is freedom, what Liberal
can love it too well? I will desist, however, from this
argumentum ad hominem. I need do no more than re
mark that power may well be physical freedom, but it
is not that mental and moral autonomy which a psycho
logist, to say nothing of a statesman, is bound to
study.

Locke s second position was that " the will is de
termined by the greatest present uneasiness." If that
were true without qualification, there would be no
room for the moral autonomy of free will. Uneasiness
comes upon us from without. It is not ourselves, but
our surroundings, including the accidents of our body
independent of our will, that make us uneasy. Virtue,
or the steady doing of what is right, could never be
secured by these fortuitous promptings of uneasiness.
Happily, most men are virtuous to a greater or less



JOHN LOCKE 109

degree. They could not live within the pale of a civi
lised community otherwise. Locke recognises this
truth; and thereupon endows us with a power to
" suspend the satisfaction of any particular desire till
we have further considered whether the particular
apparent good, which we then desire, makes a part of
our real happiness." This third position is a near
approximation to what I consider to be the true theory
of free will. The one thing that I dislike about it is
that Locke takes this suspension to be always itself an
act of volition. Were it so, it would be necessary for
the philosopher to inquire into the motive of that act
of suspension, or the present * uneasiness that deter
mined such act. It would look very much like a reso
lution taken, a volition achieved, against the greatest
present uneasiness. This troublesome inquiry is ren
dered unnecessary, if we allow that the suspension or
adjournment of action need not come of a positive
volition to adjourn, but merely out of a negation, the
absence of a full self-determination to act. The present
* uneasiness, as Locke calls it, determines the sponta
neous complacency; but that motus primo primus^ as
divines call it, is not an achieved volition; it must be
adverted to, and under advertence its drawbacks must
appear. Then, without further act, the adverting mind
may hesitate to endorse and approve the complacency,
and the complacency never becomes a volition till it
is approved. To hurry the agent on so fast as to leave
no time for advertence or consideration at all, would
be to exclude free choice by the exclusion of all choice
and full volition. Under the above explanation I



i io FREE WILL

agree with Locke that " the man could not be free,
if his will were determined by anything else than his
own desire, guided by his own judgement."

In conclusion, I observe that it is one thing for an
action to be our own by being freely done by us, and
another thing for it to be our own by being an action
becoming for us to do. An action becoming us may even
be somewhat of a necessity on our part. I allude not to the
outward constraint of any secular arm, but to the inner
efficacy of a virtuous custom. A man who has long
studied good and done good, sees evil so clearly to be
evil that the horror of evil is the strongest repulsion
of his nature. It is not too much to say that he cannot
abruptly throw himself into the lap of wickedness. But
this inability is not a privation of freedom in any sense
in which freedom is valuable. Freedom is naught, ex
cept it be riddance of something bad. To be rid of an
indifferent thing is no gain: to be rid of a good thing
is a loss. Deliver us from evil is the prayer which we
are taught to offer for freedom.

The evil that haunts the region of the intellect is
ignorance, uncertainty and error. A free mind, then,
is a mind endowed with a sure knowledge of truth.
In one way such a mind is not free: it is restrained
from doubt and delusion: it has surrendered to evi
dence, and evidence holds it captive. In the region of
the will dwells the evil of folly. From that the wise
man is delivered in so far as he has compassed wisdom.
The wiser he grows, the more nearly impossible it be
comes for him to do a foolish thing. The one right
course to take in every perplexity shines luminously



JOHN LOCKE in

before him. So schooled are his eyes to discern the
beauty of that light that he will not, and scarcely can,
diverge into the fenny quagmires where the ignis fa-
tuus gleams. Is not that a happy impotence, snatching
his soul from death and his feet from stumbling?
I Yeedman now of truth and goodness, finds he aught to
envy in the licentious rovings of the runaway slave?
It is well, in conclusion, to remark that the blissful
dependence of a believer upon truth, and of a just
man upon righteousness, is not entered upon without
free ads of the will. He alone holds any high practi
cal truth securely who has grasped it resolutely. He
alone has any sort of gulf fixed in this world between
his will and sin, who in many a circumstance of temp
tation has had the power to transgress, and has not
transgressed, and the power to do evil and has not
done it.