Martineau and Grice: Advice from a Caterpillar

by JLS


Quotes from a 1864 treatise by Hazard which sounds v. interesting in being ethological. Martineau objects to the simplicities of the examples given, e.g. migratory bird, and the caterpillar.

James Martineau
1805-1900

British philosopher, associated with Utilitarianism. A defender of free will. His "Study of religion" (1888) contains a section on

books.google.com/books?id=iPYuAAAAYAAJ...

"Determinism and Free Will."

"Hitherto I have been content, in treating of the grounds whether of Ethics or of Religion, to build upon the assumptions ...

With Martineau, "it is not only Will, but free Will" that counts.

"Necessity is the best school of Free-Will" (Types of Ethical Theory, 1885).

The soul is such that "not all in the soul is necessary, ... but a range is left of Free-will, i.e. of choice".

He refers to Locke's "wavering treatment of the problem of free-will"

Excerpts from his

"Determinism and Free Will" (1888)

at

http://www.archive.org/stream/astudyreligioni02martgoog/astudyreligioni02martgoog_djvu.txt

"The advocates indeed on either side [Libertarians and Necessitarians] arrange
themselves in most unexpected ranks."

"While the austere and lofty Stoic, who makes the highest demands on self-command and self-sacrifice, asserts the reign of universal necessity, the prudential Epicurean insists upon free will,
and makes his very atoms swerve in order to provide it."

"The opinion favoured, be it of Liberty or be it of Necessity, is regarded by its
advocate as the essential premiss, and defended as the
turning-point, of the whole scheme."

"No sooner should we have declared
what we understand by Will, by Cause, by Motive, by
Self, by Choice, by Freedom, by Necessity, than complaint would be made that we had begged the whole
question in each definition."


The question of free will is "whether in the exercise of Will (i.e., cases of choice), the mind is wholly determined by phenomenal antecedents and external conditions ; or, itself also as active subject of these objective experiences, plays the part of determining Cause."

Those who maintain the first branch of this alternative were
called and called themselves ^Necessarians* because, under
the assigned conditions, the sequence of one particular
volition is, in their view, an inevitable event, not less so
than the explosion of gunpowder on the application of a
lighted match, or the fall of a slate blown off into free air
from the roof of a house.

Those, on the other hand, who
maintain the second branch of the alternative were called
and called themselves 'Libertarians' because they deemed
it possible, in spite of the assigned conditions, for the mind
not to will, or to will otherwise.

It is not obliged to deliver
itself over to a bespoken decision.

It is obvious that these
terms are the offspring of the dynamic conception of
causation, in which effect is supposed to be linked with
cause by some constraining objective tie, and not merely
in the subjective certitude of our expectations.

'Necessity*
denoting subjection to power;

Liberty/ immunity from
it, with ability to use one's own.

The words have evidently
come down to us from a date anterior to Hume's essay on
* necessary connection/ or at least to the general acceptance
of its doctrine by the English empirical philosophers.

They
are wholly out of place in a system which discharges all
idea of Force, which abolishes the distinction between
active and passive, and resolves Causality into constancy
of time-relation between successive phenomena.

Where
nothing has power to produce or to control another, and
each change must be content to play the part of sign to
what comes next, there is no room for measurements of
resistance or claims of freedom.

...

I have said that, throughout these processes, the initiative is from within ; but, though this is essential, it is
not enough, to make them voluntary.


STAGE I

Mere spontaneity,
be it ever so 'random,' is also from within.

And so are
routine movements of instinct on its one line.

----

STAGE 2

"And Will does not come into play till the attempt to control the spontaneityy and make it do this and not that, i.e. till there is
some selection and among possible strokes only one is a hit.

Whoever can exclude the wrong and direct himself upon the right exercises voluntary power.

I am the more anxious to emphasize this selective or preferential function of will, because it is partly slurred, partly denied by many modem psychologists, and the
means are thus lost of distinguishing instinct and habit from volition.

In Bain's illustrations of our growth in voluntary power, it is indeed indirectly implied : we learn,
he says, to * single out ' the proper movements, to * determine specific actions,' to bring about a * successful coincidence,' and from among * ideal representations of all pos-
sible movements ' to perform some desired one^. But the significance of this unavoidable language is so far from
fixing his attention, that he totident verbis excludes its
meaning from his definition of voluntary action ; the
specialty of which, he tells us, is * that the antecedent and
the consequent are conscious or mental states (coupled of
course with bodily states).

When a sentient creature is
conscious of a pleasure or pain, real or ideal, and follows
that up with a conscious exercise of its muscles, we have
the fact of volition '.

TWO-STAGE MODEL OF FREE WILL

The two phenomena are successive
in time, t

he feeling first, the movement second.

Not unfrequently two, three, or four feelings occur together, conspiring or conflicting with one another ; and then the
action is not what was wont to follow one feeliftg by itself ^^

According to this account, an animal urged upon action by any single feeling is exercising will, though there be no * singling out,* no comparison, no exclusion, but only a
rush forward upon a straight line : in this limitation of it Bain sees nothing to distinguish the case essentially from
those in which conflict and deliberation may be present

His opinion is sustained by the authority of Mr. Sidgwick,
who thinks that *no clear line can be drawn' between
actions * originated unconsciously,' i. e. from instinctive
impulse, and those which are * conscious and voluntary V


And it is carried to its utmost extent by Mr. Hazard in
his treatise on 'Freedom of Mind in Willing' (1864); which
abolishes all distinction, except in degree, between the
human and the brute faculties, and treats the instinct of
the beaver or the ant as a case of Will realizing a single
end through intelligence knowing a single means, while
our larger wants supply us with a plurality of ends, and
wider intelligence reveals to us a variety of means ^.

In
conformity with this identification of all action with Will
and all skill with intellect, he dispenses with choice as an
element of volition : whether it is present or not depends



^ Mental and Moral Science, book iv. ch. xi. § 2.

^ Methods of Ethics, book i. ch. vi. p. 60, 3rd ed. 1884.

on the accident of there being more ends or means than
one, or only one ; and if it be present, it is a mere intel-
lectual judgment upon compared prior conditions, and
precedes the act of willing, which is confined to the effort
at execution^,

I cannot reconcile myself to a use of language which
identifies phenomena so unlike as the blind instinct of the
caterpillar and the foreseeing and discriminating intellect
of man.

And which separates processes so allied, nay
blended, as the moral choice of the higher principle of
action and the moral effort to give it effect. Though we
cannot plant the line exactly between animal skill and
human intelligence, and can mark the former only by
negative suggestion, it is impossible to doubt that the
exclusions thus made are in the main well founded ; and
that you cannot attribute to the insect, to the salmon, and
to the migratory bird, a knowledge of what they are about,
of the future, even posthumous, offspring they are providing
for, of the distant latitudes they seek, and the relation
between the ends they pursue and the methods adopted
for their attainment This absence of knowledge from
operations which we could perform only by means of it,
needs to be marked by some distinctive term ; and in
calling them instinctive as opposed to voluntary^ we mean
to claim for the latter precisely the elective and foreseeing
element which characterizes self-conscious agency. If a
preconceived end and a selection of means are not neces-
sary to volition, then, within the scope of conscious nature,
there is no such thing as involuntary action ; and, to find
it, we shall have to pass into the mechanism of the material
world. If we assume and take into consideration the
Divine Will, all movement is voluntary. If we omit this
consideration as transcendental, the question arises, how
are the movements taken up which it reh'nquishes ? Is it
by one category, — ike tnechanicaly — covering all that is not
claimed by finite wills? — or by two categories, — the me-
chanicaly for insentient things, and tJu automatic, for simply
sentient ; — leaving the voluntary for t/ie more than sentient,
the self-cofiscious atid reflectively intelligefit ? Surely this
triad is the only natural expression of differences which
insist on taking the lead in our view of the world under
its active and passive aspects. The last head alone gives
us a complete causality, carrying its own directing power.
The first gives us only imparted or transmitted changes
through passive media that only hand them on (as the
first law of motion itself asserts). The second gives us an
intermediate order of facts, viz. the latter half of causal
action without the first, — the conscious execution of an
absent directing iiSea ; the idea being at once undeniable,
and yet not predicable of the creature itself, but left out
in the transcendental sphere, to be claimed by Nature or
by God. This classification, adopted by the common sense
of mankind and incorporated in current language, there
is nothing in our later knowledge to disturb ; and we may
rest content with the definitions of Locke and Edwards,
who both of them regard Choice as the characteristic of
Will.

By thus limiting the range of Will to the function of
determining an alternative^ we dispense with those earlier
stages of the Hartleyan psychology in which single lines
of associated feelings, ideas, and movements are formed
by closing up their links ; and we take up the problem
at the point where first two co-present tendencies conflict.
There it is that the hinge of our whole question is found.

Prior to this, we may allow the law of association its claim
to connect sensation, conception, and movement, and to
make action dependent on suggested ideas : we are per-
fectly familiar with this process in the training of skill and
the formation of habit; — a process exactly the same as
that of learning by heart, and exemplified also in the
breaking-in of an animal. Here, in this passage from the
'automatic' to the 'secondarily automatic* or habitual,
there is one definitely given path to be traced and
smoothed, and no alternative presents itself except in the
form, at once universal and negative, of the aU else that
is to be excluded ; so that the only entrance which Will
can make is in the shape of aitention, warding off the
intrusion of lateral disturbance, and securing for each step
the determination of the next In this function, the Will
only stands sentinel at the outposts to let the files be
rightly formed within, and does not mix with them and
direct them, so as to render them properly voluntary.
And when once the connections have been strongly riveted,
we regard an habitual action as no less involuntary than
one that is instinctive ; and though, in both cases, we may
hold the agent responsible for it, it is because, while not
issued by his will, it was preventible by it. If it conflicts
with some higher principle of action which ought to have
been present, the cohesive force of habit will not excuse
it ; choice holding a perpetual veto against mechanism.

Leaving these cases of transition from automatism to
habit, let us fix our attention on the point where the line
of usual association bifurcates into alternative possibilities.
Suppose that you suffer under some calumny, admitting
disproof ; your natural course would be, to give the excul-
pating statement But if in doing so you must cast a
shadow on some fair name, or embitter some precious
friendship, your impulse will be arrested by a resistance
equally natural. Consider what takes place in deciding
this conflict ; for a true analysis of the process gives the
solution of our problem. The elements which are present
are (i) two incompatible springs of action, the desire to
save your own credit, and the desire to save that of others ;
and (2) what I will cdWyour awn Pasty i.e. a certain formed
system of habits and dispositions brought from your pre-
vious use of life. The former head comprises the tnotives
that are offered ; the latter, the character that has come to
be. Do these settle the matter between them? Is the
character the arena on which the play, or rather the war, of
the motives fights itself out, and is the volition the flash of
the stronger sword ? Or, inverting the parts of active and
passive, shall we say that the past character, instead of
lying still and being influenced by the triumphant motive,
comes in as umpire between them, giving the ascendency to
that which is the more consonant with itself? Or, is our
account of what is there still incomplete ; and must we
admit that, besides the motives felt, and besides our formed
habits or past self, there is also a present se/f tha.t has a part
to perform in reference to both? Is there not a Causal
self, over and above the catised self, or rather the caused
state and conteftts of the self left as a deposit from previous
behaviour ? Is there not a judging self, that knows and
weighs the competing motives, over and above the agitated
self that feels them} The impulses are but phenomena ol
your experience ; the formed liabits are but a condition and
attitude of your consciousness, in virtue of which you feel
this more and that less : both are predicates of yourself as
subject, but are not yourself, and cannot be identified with
your personal agency. On the contrary, they are objects
of your contemplation ; they lie before you to be known,
compared, estimated ; they are your data ; and you have
not to let them alone to work together as they may, but to
deal with them, as arbiter among their tendencies. In all
cases of self-consciousness and self-action there is neces-
sarily this duplication of the Ego into the objective^ that con-
tains the felt and predicated phenomena at which we look or
may look, and the subjective, that apprehends and uses them.
It is with the latter that the preferential power and personal
causality reside ; it is this that we mean when we say that
* it rests with us to decide/ that * our impulses are not to be
our masters/ that ' guilty habit cannot be pleaded in excuse
for guilty act* If this distinction be lost sight of, and the
word Self be used exclusively of the objective and pheno-
menal, the essence of the personality is erased, and nothing
remains, in the absence of any cause which can settle an
alternative, but to deny the alternative, contrive that one of
its terms shall slink away, and leave the field to a linear
series of jointed phenomena. No one denies that, with
alterations in their data, i.e. in the intensity of our impulses
and in the acquired cast of our habit and temper, the pro-
blems of right action become more or less difficult and
weighted by temptation ; and, in formerly treating of the
principles of Ethics, I have endeavoured to reduce these
variations to definite rules. But, short of mania, they do
not go so far as to usurp the whole causality for the mere
conditions ; and the deciding Ego of a rational self-con-
sciousness will never allow that it is obliged to joUow the
importunities of its feeling ; will insist, on the contrary,
that it can command them. If my past alone predetermines
my future, having settled both the motives that shall be
suggested and the reception which I shall give to them, I
in the present have no part or lot in the matter, except to
play the stepping-stone of transition from the one to the
other ; and the doctrine which involves such an utter
collapse of the sense of personality appears to me self-
condemned. Here it is that we touch the hinge of the
whole question : whether we are, or whether we have and
partly produce, the phenomena of our own life. If we are
nothing but the growing sum-total of them thus far, then
the next term in the series is given by the preceding. But
if, instead of our equivalents, they are only our predicates,
they express, without exhausting, an essence and power
behind them, which may betake itself to other modes of
manifestation. I submit that the consciousness of self, as
an identical personality, is the consciousness of such power ;
and that no one can sincerely deem himself incapable by
nature of controlling his impulses and modifying his
acquired character. That he is able to make them the
objects of examination, comparison, and estimate, places
him in a judicial and authoritative attitude towards them,
and would have no meaning if he were not to decide what
influence they should have. The casting vote and verdict
upon the offered motives is with him, and not with them-
selves ; he is * free ' to say ' Yes ' or * No ' to any of their
suggestions : they are the conditions of the act ; he is its
Agent. In the typical case of inward conflict which I have
supposed, between your sensitiveness to unjust reproach
and your tenderness for others' reputation, you do not let
yourself sway to and fro with the varying fling of the
motives upon your character, like a floating log on an
advancing and retreating wave ; but address yourself to an
active handling of their pretensions ; and deciding that the
care for repute, however vehement, is lower than the sym-
pathy, however calm, you force yourself to obey the better
claim. You yourself, as a personal centre of intelligence
and causality, are at the head of the transaction, and deter-
mine how it shall go ; though doubtless what you have been
about in the past, and what you feel in the present, enter
subordinately into the problem as its avowed data or its
tacit aspects.

To the force of this inward assurance Professor Sidgwick,
though almost borne down by the arguments on the other
side, has put on record the following emphatic testimony : —

'This almost overwhelming cumulative proof seems,
however, more than balanced by a single argument on the
other side ; the immediate affirmation of consciousness in
the moment of deliberate volition.

It is impossible for me
to think, at each moment, that my volition is completely
determined by my formed character and motives acting
upon it. The opposite conviction is so strong as to be
absolutely unshaken by the evidence brought against it.
I cannot believe it to be illusory. So far it is unlike the
erroneous intuitions which occur in the exercise of the
senses ; as, for instance, the mis-perceptions of sight or
hearing. For experience soon teaches me to regard these
as appearances whose suggestions are misleading ; but no
amount of experience of the sway of motives even tends to
make me distrust my intuitive consciousness that in resolv-
ing after deliberation I exercise free choice as to which of
the motives acting upon me shall prevail. Nothing short
of absolute proof that this consciousness is erroneous could
overcome the force with which it announces itself as certain^*.

It is right to add that subsequent reflection seems to
have reduced this firm and sharp-cut judgment to a
more yielding condition ; on its re-appearance in more
recent editions of the Methods of Ethics, it shows evident
symptoms of incipient melting away. But still, in the
third edition, it makes again a modest assertion of its
rights : * Certainly, in the case of actions in which I have
distinct consciousness of choosing between alternatives of
conduct, one of which I conceive as right or reasonable, I
find it impossible not to think that I can now choose to do
what I so conceive, however strong may be my inclination
to act unreasonably, and however uniformly I may have
yielded to such inclinations in the past ^ *.

It is not, however, to be supposed that the empirical
psychologists have not an account to give of this con-
sciousness of elective power : and their exposition must
be compared with the foregoing. They all agree in dis-
pensing with any contribution to the result from the present
selfy over and above what is furnished by the two other
factors ; and undertake to account for each volition from
the play of the motives upon the habits and dispositions
formed in the past. Of these conjoint conditions, either
may be announced as determining the volition : Mr. Shad-
worth Hodgson prefers to treat it as consequent upon the
character^ \ Bain, more in conformity with usage, regards
it as the resultant of the combinations of tnfitives. Neither
has the least intention to ignore the unnamed condition ;
and the different language merely indicates the element
ascendent, and tacitly endowed with activity, in the mind
of each.

In bringing the case of Choice under the rule
that the strongest motive always prevails.

Bain represents
the so-called chooser as passively at the mercy of the
objects that offer themselves ; each has a certain attraction ;
and that which has the greatest carries the day and gives
him his volition. When this happens at once^ it shows that
there is no approach to equality in the strength of the
attractions, but that one has a decisive preponderance.
When, on the other hand, there is an interval of suspense,
it is because the motives are nearly balanced and are
trying their strength till the weaker are driven from the
field ; or else that, in view of the evils of precipitate action,
a * deliberative

veto

[cfr. LIBET]

is in exercise,* till the opposing solici-
tations have been sufficiently compared ; when this arrest
is withdrawn, the volition rides in on the back of the
victorious motive.

You may call this Self-determination^
if you mean by ' Self* only * what is resolvable into motive,'
and consent to define it as the * sum of the feelings ' that
'impel the conduct, together with the various activities
impelled ' ; for thus you do but vary the phraseology, still
claiming the causality for the motives, though referring to
the particular motives of the present case only under cover
of the sum-total of motives called * Self.' But if, under
this word, you think of any entity that meddles with the
phenomena, or turns them into anything more than ante-
cedents and sequents of the regfular sort, and mingles with
them that 'mystical' fiction named 'Power,' you confuse
the phenomenon of volition by thrusting into it an illusory
element^ In this exposition, let us consider (i) the funda-
mental maxim that, among conflicting motives (defined as
* pleasures and pains in prospect '), the strongest must
prevail. If this proposition is to have any meaning, and
be susceptible of verification, there must be some common
measure of motives, enabling us to set them on a graduated
scale of strength, and say * this is weaker than that, and
here is the weakest of all' Yet it is confessed that we
have no such measure ; Bain himself saying that * the only
test of strength of motive* is that the volition follows. That
it is so, you may readily convince yourself by trying to
arrange the motives which you have rejected in the order of
their relative strength ; you will find it utterly impossible
to do so. Even kindred inducements that may come into
rivalry, a visit to a picture-gallery, and a skating-excursion,
and a ride on the downs, may prove incommensurable ;
and when the range takes in quite dissimilar ends, ad-
dressing themselves to different parts of our nature, some
prudential, some sympathetic, some moral, the common
application to them of terms of quantity becomes simply
ridiculous. How am I to balance the * attractions ' of a
festive evening among friends in health against those of
the same hours given to a friend in dejection and sorrow ?
or of attendance upon him in infectious fever against those
of security to my own life ? or of a new carpet against
those of helping a church or an hospital into existence ? I
might as well compare my sensibilities in eating a lobster-
salad and in reading an epic poem. The Will has to live
and move among objects which, in their pleasurable or
painful aspects, are perfectly heterogeneous, and no more
measure themselves by one common standard than light,
weight, and electricity by the thermometer. If it is said
that all these, in spite of their differences, have in this
respect the same feature, that they are susceptible of more
or less intefisity ; and that, through whatever channel they
may enter our consciousness, they will report themselves
there with corresponding degrees of excitement \ it may
still be doubted whether we can tell, in the case of
different senses and affections, all susceptible of degrees
of stimulation, what excitements are equivalent or to what
extent they miss equivalence. But, waiving this doubt,
we may surely affirm that, in our inward conflicts, it is by
no means the motive most intensely felt and most exciting,
that wins our volition. Often a vehement passion may be
controlled by the mere tranquil memory of a resolve quite
distasteful to us at the moment. What else indeed do we
mean when we speak of the frequent opposition of in-
clination and duty? If therefore by 'strength of motive'
be meant its felt intensity, (and, if it denotes a quality at
all, this is the only possible sense), the proposition that the
volition follows the strongest motive is false. If, as Bain
admits, the only test of greatest strength is in the victory,
we are simply landed on the tautology, that the prevailing
motive prevails.

The account given of delayed choice I find unintelligible
on Bain's theory.


The suspense, he tells us, is evidence
that the opposite motives are nearly balanced ; and time is
occupied in trying their manage this experiment?

What is going on during this pause ?

He does not reveal the secret.

It is a battle in the dark ; or behind the scenes, as in the classic drama, that
lets no horrors come upon the stage : all we know is that,
at last, the door is opened, and

STAGE II

the volition, stepping into
the daylight, reports which is the victor and which is the
slain.

I have often been conscious of incompatible motives,
but never of their behaving themselves in this way, and
presuming to settle their quarrels on my field and without
my intervention, and even to make me the prize for whose
captivity they fought. If there be several of them, have
they to try it all round, in a succession of single combats,
till the last survivor can go off with me unmolested ? That
the period of suspense should work itself out in this way
without betraying the transaction is inconceivable. But
Bain offers us an alternative explanation : it may be that
the time is spent in using judgment, instead of experi-
menting on strength: the * deliberative veto' may be
applied to stay decision, until the several motives have
been surveyed, compared, and estimated at their value;
and then withdrawn, to let the winner have its way.

But
Who exercises and withdraws this veto?

Who compares
and appraises the clamorous impulses ? As there is no
^Self^ irresolvable into motive^ there is nothing but the
motives themselves to do the * deliberation,' the * veto,' the
* comparison,' and then put an end to it all. If it be said
that the *Self' which deliberates is indeed a sum-total of
feelings, impulses, and acts, but those of the whole previous
life, and not the mere group of the immediate crisis, so that
it is the * formed character ' up to date which examines and
appreciates the solicitations of the moment ; I reply with
two remarks : (a) A sum-total of feelings, impulses, &c.
cannot deliberate, any more than each feeling and impulse
separately, but only a Mind that has them : nor is that
mind superseded by any particular condition or * formed
character ' to which it may have been brought, so as to sur-
render to it the work of comparison and estimation. The
habits contracted in the past may improve or deteriorate
the mind's capacity for right judgment, but cannot take its
place. (^) Deliberation as to an impending act assumes
that no one of the motives on the field is predeter-
mined victor in virtue of its superior * strength * : for, if it
were so, the suspense on which we are insisting would
be illusory : in the state of character as defined by the past,
and the relative force of the motive, the conditions of the
volition are already complete. The very fact therefore that
we pause and compare implies that consciousness repudiates
the determinist assumption, and recognises a tribunal with
jurisdiction over the pleas of motive and habit, and em-
powered to open new lines, and set new precedents, of
Right

In order to avoid recognising this personal causality,
Bain supplies yet another meaning of the word *Self,'
besides that of the collection of * motives,* and that of the
hitherto formed character. It sometimes is used to mark
my ^ permanent interests' as distinguished from ^'temporary
solicitations * : and * self-determination ' means no more than
that my idea of the former moves me more than my feeling
of the latter : but this in no wise disturbs the law of the
strongest or the necessary sequence of volition on motive,
by introducing any agency beyond these phenomena: it
simply classifies my motives^ using the word *Self* as a
name for the * ideal ' ones. He adds that * to neutralize, by
internal resources, the fleeting actualities of pleasure and
pain, is a great display of moral power.* Two brief com-
ments comprise what I have to say on this phase of the
doctrine, {a) That *Self' means something 'permanent'
as opposed to what is transient, there can be no doubt ; and
therefore self-determination is certainly the ascendency of
the permanent. But permanent what? Is it merely the
more durable, that is, frequently recurrent, among the
phenoffiena, as contrasted with the fleeting and occasional ?
Am I myself in my digestion, and not in my toothache ?
By no means : the * Self is not some of our phenomena^ but
tJie Subject of them all: and it is the continuity and
identity of this subject that make * permanence ' predicable
of it, and not predicable of anything that happens in it : a
self constitutes a permanent : but a permanent order
repeated does not constitute a self. Self-determination
therefore is not determination of some phenomena by
others, but of phenomena by a subject, (b) So irresistibly
do we feci this that Bain himself cannot state his case
without confessing it While reducing the whole inward
life, voluntary no less than involuntary, to a mere time-
order of sequence, and denouncing the words * Will ' and
'Power* as mischievous 'expletives,' serving as nests of
dynamic illusion, and fostering the idea of some * mystical
or fictitious agency/ other than the occurrence of the
antecedent phenomenon, he yet tells us that * to neutralize,
by internal resources, the fleeting actualities of pleasure and
pain, is a great display of moral power* What is * moral
power,* if there be no such thing as power at all and the
word is a misleading * pleonasm'? Who displays it? is
it the sequences ? Who neutralizes the fleeting solicitations,
by command of * internal resources ' ? Is it the ideas of
something less fleeting? or are these just the * internal
resources ' by means of which the thing is done ? Who
then uses these means, finding thetn among his 'internal
resources ' ? The author has evidently slipped into
phraseology more sensible than his doctrine, and having
no intelligible meaning except on the assumption of that
* mystical agency ' which he denies. And so does he again
when he says * The collective " I " or self can be nothing
different from the feelings, actions, intelligence, of the
individual,* If I am only a collection^ I am a divided
aggregate : if I am an * individual! I am a unit not divisible ;
and the collection of feelings, &c. is not myself, but belongs
to myself, the many in the one.

One more attempt to take its meaning out of the
phrase ' self-determination * is made by Bain.

Bain tells us
that * Spontaneity * is synonymous with it : that is, in com-
parison with action propelled or induced from without, any
that springs up of itself from within may be regarded as
* self-determined,* that is, functional to the nature of the
being and provided for out of its resources. When restricted
to the voluntary acts of human beings, the word would
denote the absence from them of any external pressure or
prompting by others : as when a person unsuspected comes
forward and confesses a past crime. Undoubtedly, both
words, * spontaneity * and * self-determination,' denote action
from within : but there is a difference between them which
Bain overlooks : spontaneity denotes action from within in
the absence of any counter forces or irrespective of them : self-
determination, in their known presence and in spite of them.
The latter word is never used except to claim for the Ego a
jurisdiction over the solicitations to action whencesoever
presented ; and we do not employ it to mark merely that
the agent has no accomplices in his inducements. In no
way can this term be appropriated by the Necessarian : it
expresses precisely the relation between the motives and the
personality which he desires to disprove.

I have mentioned that, while Bain rests the determinist
case on the necessary connection between motive and
volition, Mr. Shadworth Hodgson prefers to emphasize the
necessary connection between the formed character and the
volition : and I must not neglect the argfument of so acute
a metaphysician. He presents it as a comment on the
following words of a Libertarian writer : * I feel, when I
have done wrong, that I have done something / could have
avoided, — the accusation of conscience directed against that
which I mean when I speak of myself/ * Admirably stated/
says Mr. Hodgson, * first expressing our sense of freedom in
choosing, and then giving the interpretation of that sense,
viz. (in the case of wrong-doing), the moral reproach against
the Self as agent. Now I say that all the Determinist
theory is therein contained. The reproach is ultimately
against the agent [he means, as distingfuished from the act].
The agent gives rise to the act of choice, not the act to the
agent ; the act flows from, presupposes, and is evidence of,
the character of the agent We reproach ourselves for
being such agents as to choose the good so feebly, or the
bad so readily. We accept the responsibility of what we
are^ as evidenced by what we choose : and in this our moral
responsibility consists.* He then proceeds to argfue that if
you make the responsibility depend on a supposed power,
irrespective of character, to choose differently, you dissolve
the connection between act and character, and practically
treat the agent as characterless at the moment of action :
and then his choice expresses nothing, and is destitute of
moral quality. *The whole validity,' he concludes, *of
moral responsibility depends on the necessary connection
between the character of the agent and the character of his
act 1 '.

I understand this to mean that if the act were free and
wrongy the reproach would be directed against it: but,
since it is the necessary result of the agents character, the
reproach is directed against himself It would draw
reproach, if free : it escapes it, through being necessary.
Reproach therefore goes only with freedom ; and could
not be transferred to the self but in the consciousness that
the self was free. How could we * reproach ourselves for
being such agents,' how * accept the responsibility of what
we arel if our * being such,* were not our own doing, but
were, like the immediate act, the inevitable fruit of the
retreating antecedents back to our nativity? Granting
that from the character as it is nothing but this act could
come, still, in upbraiding that character, I certainly exempt
it from a like necessity, and assume that I could have
determined it into a better form : else, I should as soon
feel compunction for a hump-back or a squint The
Determinist, if he cares for it, may have the act : for,
so much the more, in order to interpret the self-reproach,
must he leave free the character. It is the abuse of
a prior liberty that has brought us under the present
necessity.

And here it is well to observe the ambigfuity that lurks
in the word * character.' In order to work the determinist
theory, that is, to refer the volition wholly to its antecedent
phenomenal conditions, it ought to mean my collection of
inward and outward habits gathered in the past : these it is
which are affirmed to be, under the offered motives, the
necessary determinants of my act. But these are not all
that we usually intend to cover by the word * Self I or the
word ^ character^ when employed as its equivalent: we
think, not merely of a manufactured Ego, the resultant of
its own experiences and therefore changing through their
course, but of a permanent self-identical Ego living through
all, responsible now for what it is because responsible all
through for what it does. And when we say that an act
gives evidence of the character, we mean, not that it is
retrospective and reveals the past and established habits,
but that it shows us the kind of use which the living Ego
makes of its freedom. If the act were perfectly fresh,
unencumbered by any antecedent acquired tendencies, it
would express one of the mind's preferences, and so far
tell us what it is and what it is not. The * character * thus
reported to us includes the Will ; and so, while determining
the act, leaves room for self-determiftatioft.

On the whole then, I submit, the empirical psychology
does not dispose of our consciousness of personal causation,
or succeed in reducing us to a theatre of felt antecedents
and sequents. There remains the indelible conviction that
we are not bound hand and foot by either our present
incentives or our own past : but that, drag as they may,
a power remains with us to make a new beginning along
another path than theirs. It is matter only that moves
out of the past : all mind acts for the future : and though
that future operates through the preconception of it which
is earlier than the act, and so might seem to conform to
the material order, yet, where two or more rival precon-
ceptions enter the field together, they cannot compare
themselves mter se : they need and meet a superior : it
rests with the mind itself to decide. The decision will not
be unmotivedy for it will have its reasons. It will not be
unconformable to the characteristics of the mind, for it
will express its preferences. But none the less is it issued
by a free Cause that elects among the conditions, and is
not elected by them. For what can be more absurd than
to say, because an intelligent and moral agent is careful to
bring his actions into correspondence with the conditions
available for bettering the future, that they and not he must
be credited with the causation? If the conditions were
different, the decision would no longer be the same, pre-
cisely because the mind is free to appreciate its problem
and conform to its terms, by making the best of the possi-
bilities it supplies.