"Free will and four English philosophers": Hobbes, Locke, Mill, and Grice

by JLS
for the GC

Excerpts from J. Rickaby, "Free will and four English philosophers" (London: Burns, 1906).

HOBBES. "Of Liberty": A Treatise wherein all Controversy concerning Freewill."

"\ T 7HEREAS he says thus, If I be free to write
V V this discourse, I have obtained the cause ; I deny
that to be true, for it is enough to his freedom of writing
that he had not written it, unless he would himself.
... It may be his Lordship [the Bishop] thinks it all
one to say, I was free to write it, and, It was not neces
sary I should write it. But I think otherwise. For he
is free to do a thing, that may do it if he have the
will to do it; and may forbear if he have the will to for
bear. And yet if there be a necessity that he shall have
the will to do it, the aclion is necessarily to follow; and
if there be a necessity that he shall have the will to
forbear, the forbearing also will be necessary. The
question therefore is not, whether a man be a free agent,
that is to say, whether he can write or forbear, speak
or be silent, according to his will; but whether the will
to write and the will to forbear come upon him accord
ing to his will or according to anything else in his own
power, I acknowledge this Hberty^ that_I j:jUL_do. if_J..
willi .buL_tQ._say: J_ .can. will" if I wjll I take .to be an
absurd speech."

Hobbes considers human agency to be at once free and necessitated: free, because the action follows thewill of the agent; necessitated, inasmuch as the agent, under the circumstances, could not possibly have willed otherwise than as he did will.

Hobbes takes it to be an absurd speech to say I can will if 1 will. What indeed is the meaning of that phrase in the mouths of such as use it? An outline of
what they mean would run thus: Upon adverting to
a present affection, a like or a dislike which has risen
up within me, I am often competent either to take up
or not to take up that affection: if I do take it up, 1
elicit a volition or full act of my will, which is a free act
inasmuch as I take up, adopt and sanction for my own
an affection which I am competent not to sanction;
while for my sanctioning it no reason can be given be
yond the fact that I, a person, that is an intelligent
nature, exerting my privilege as a person, do choose to
lend myself to the affection which has come over me.

An example. An opportunity offers for striking a lu
crative but unjust bargain. The idea recurs of securing
the gain, and my breast warms with approbetion of that
idea. So far I have been the passive victim of associa
tions and feelings. There has been no personal action
emanating from me. I now advert to my mind s spon-
taneous and unauthorised approval of this idea. If I
continue to approve of it under advertence, spontaneity
passes into freedom, the movement started from with
out has been sustained from within me. I have willed
that which at first I felt. But perhaps I do not decide
quite so readily. I let feelings and the ideas which oc
casion them troop in associated trains across the
stage of my consciousness. I retain none of them. Con
flicting thoughts of gain and of honesty, the joys of a
good bargain, the remorses of a fraud, replace one
another, as past mental experience marshals their array.
Whilst this process lasts, I am said to be thinking the
matter over. At length my mind is made up. The idea
of improving the opportunity or else the idea of letting
the opportunity pass has recurred: it has given me com
placency, as it gave me before, and this time I have
embraced the complacency. Thereby I have done a
voluntary act. I may indeed recall it, but still it is done.
And the act, besides being voluntary, is free, for in it
I have embraced a complacency which I need not have
embraced.

The above is a mere statement of doctrine, not a
proof. But surely it is something to state clearly a doc
trine which adversaries pronounce nonsensical. Non
sense generally will not bear stating. If, then, I have
presented an intelligible, definite theory, there is pre
sumption of its not being nonsense.

Great part of the discredit that attaches to the doc
trine of free will comes from its being supposed to
mean that whatever a man may do from morning to
night he does everything alike freely. Nothing of the
sort. A reflective adult performs perhaps a dozen a<5tions
a day that are altogether free: a child, whether a child
proper or a grown baby, say half a dozen: call another
hundred actions free more or less, and you may de
scribe the rest of the man s daily course as shaped
without advertence and without freedom, except such
part of it as is determined by previous free acts. That
part would be technically termed free in its cause. The
freedom of an agent bears a direct ratio to his actual
knowledge of what he is about: now as mankind know
what they are about, some more, some less, some
scarcely at all, and none always with an actual know
ledge, it cannot be said that all the actions of men are
free, or that all their free actions are equally free.

Much light falls on this matter from the counsels of
Christian ascetics. Let me point in passing to the splen
did psychological education which the Church presses
upon her children, teaching them to lead an interior
life, to examine their consciences, to confess their sins
not of word and deed only, but also sins of thought.
These Christian spiritualists, then, warn us against
doing our actions through routine and custom, telling
us that we shall gain little merit by such mechanical
performances. Why little merit? Because merit attaches
to conscious agents, not to automata; to freedom, not
to machinery. A creature of habit, working blindly in
a secondarily automatic groove, may be a useful ma
chine, but scarcely a virtuous man. At the same time
we learn from the above-cited authorities that a gene
ral pious intention not revoked suffices to impart
merit to a long sequence of work gone through with-
out further advertence. This instruction clears away
a difficulty that is often urged against our freedom.
How, it is asked, can that human aclion be free which
may be unerringly calculated beforehand to be about
to occur? "When a commander orders his soldiers to
wheel, to deploy, to form square, to fire a battery,"*
Mr Samuel Bailey demands, "is he less confident in
the result than he is when he performs some physical
operation, when he draws a sword, pulls a trigger, or
seals a dispatch?" Supposing that he is equally confi
dent of both results, still I say the physical result is
a sheer necessity, while the moral result is due to a
foregone free volition. Those soldiers declare their will
once for all to wheel, deploy, form square, or fire a bat
tery at the word of command. They willed when they
need not have willed to undertake these manoeuvres.
They may be conscripts, but they are not dummies;
they took their allotted service freely. They were not
brought into the ranks like sacks of stones: they came
there, and no one could have foretold for certain that
such and such men individually would consent to
come. But once they have come, their officers calcu
late upon that general intention of obedience of which
the uniform is a pledge. The soldier need not will to
obey for every order he executes: his initial purpose is
enough, if he does not depart from it. But so to de
part would require an express new volition, as obe
dience is in possession. A volition, however, does not
spring up without a motive. If then an officer has no
ground to imagine any motive for mutiny rife amongst
* Letten on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, second scries, p. 166.
his men, he relies upon their previous loyal purpose
working itself out unopposed; and he feels as sure of
their muscles as they of their powder.

It is further to be observed that a perfect apparent
good, or in other words, a good which quite satisfies
him to whom it occurs, does not leave the will the
liberty of refusing. But such a perfect good hardly ever
presents itself to an adult who adverts to what he en
joys. The psalmist sings, "Take delight in the LORD."
Undoubtedly the LORD fills with delight the blessed
souls who "see Him as He is"; but He seldom satis
fies our capacity for delight, who see Him "in a glass,
darkly." Therefore the delight which we consciously
take in the LORD is free, and if free also meritorious.
It is our present sore distress, and at the same time
the condition of our merit and eternal reward, that the
ability to conceive enjoyment in us vastly transcends
our ability to enjoy. Take any enjoyment that you can:
think of it, and your thought has outrun it; you want
more. There are rare moments when some unexpected
blessing received fills our heart brimming over: no
thing seems wanting then to our bliss but continu
ance. But the very names of rapture, transport, ecstasy
applied to such states show that in these states feeling
momentarily precludes reflection. We are not free in
those moments: no mind is free without reflection. But
when "Richard is himself again," when we reflect upon
our state, forthwith we conceive something better and
our liberty of choice returns. By our use of liberty we
make our way to our lasting city. There we shall gaze
face to face on perfect goodness, and yield for eternity
our feeling, our understanding and our will to the
sweet constraints of His love. Till then "content is
not the natural frame of any human mind, but is the
offspring of compromise."*


"All voluntary actions, where the thing that indu-
ceth the will is not fear, are called also spontaneous. . .
But every spontaneous action is not therefore volun
tary, for voluntary presupposes some precedent deli
beration. . . His Lordship is deceived, if he think
any spontaneous action, after once being checked in
it, differs from an action voluntary and elective; for
even the setting of a man s foot in the posture for
walking, and the action of ordinary eating, was once
deliberated of how and when it should be done; and
though afterwards it became easy and habitual so as to
be done without forethought, yet that does not hinder
but that the act is voluntary and proceedeth from
election."

A voluntary action Hobbes defines to be a premed
itated action: a spontaneous action he defings.tn he any
ac{ion t premeditated or unpremeditated, that \% not dic
tated by fear. He continues: Once we have stopped
over a spontaneous action, and thought in the act how
we should do it, every subsequent spontaneous repe
tition, besides being spontaneous, is also a premedi
tated or voluntary action. Whence he concludes against
the Bishop, who had laid it down that spontaneous
actions were necessary, voluntary actions free, that an
action may be spontaneous and voluntary at the same

(* Bain s Emotions and Will, p. 453)
time, in other words, "that necessity and election may
stand together."

I cannot think that Bishop Bramhall, when he called
spontaneous actions necessitated actions, classed as
spontaneous all actions not dictated by fear. That is
Hobbes s account of the word spontaneous. But had it
been the Bishop s, he would never have written against
Hobbes in defence of free will, for, allowing that actions
not dictated by fear were necessitated, he could not
possibly pretend that actions dictated by fear were
free; so that, between actions done for fear and actions
not done for fear, all actions whatsoever would be done
of necessity; that is, the Bishop would have agreed
with Hobbes.

Surely, too, it is a strange argument that habitual
actions are premeditated, because the actions, which
formed the habit, were premeditated. Consider the
habit of dancing. A pupil curveting for the first time
before a dancing-master studies every step. But to
declare in consequence that, when the pupil has become
an expert, every trip of his "light fantastic toe " in the
ballroom is a premeditated action, this surely is either
an abuse of reason or an abuse of language. If Hobbes
means by "premeditated" what ordinary Englishmen
mean, namely, "done with forethought," then his con
clusion does not follow from his premisses; but if he
means "formerly done with forethought," he must
be speaking some other language than English. 1 allow
that the resolution to dance at a ball is a premed
itated voluntary act, but 1 refuse to extend the appel-
lation to each step which the dancer takes. It is upon
such habitual operations* that the issue raised by
Hobbes turns.

* Called by physiologists "secondarily automatic movements."
Dr Carpenter says: "There can be no doubt that the nerve-force is
disposed to pass in special tracks; and it seems probable that while
some of these are originally marked out for the automatic move
ments, others [i.e., the nerve-tracks of the secondarily automatic
movements] may be gradually worn in, so to say, by the habitual
adions of the will; and that _when a train of sequential actions pri-

t jquiilj,ijjjeckd by the will has once bcen FeTjnbp^erationrli may"*
contimie~wi^hQut a"ny~TurTfreT mITiTp nrp ^^JmgL-lhjil-iQJJlEga An
Tndwdual who is subject to absence of mind, may fall into a reverie
whilst walking in the streets; his attention may be entirely absorbed
in a train of thought, and he may be utterly unconscious of any
interruption in its continuity; and yet during the whole of that
time his limbs shall have been in motion, carrying him along the
accustomed path. . . It has been maintained by some metaphysi
cians and physiologists, that these secondarily automatic movements
always continue to be voluntary, because their performance is origi
nally due to a succession of volitional acts, and because, in any par
ticular case, it is the will which first excites them, whilst an exertion
ivfll *f ryf^ tp ^ihcck thyn at any time. But this doctrine m-
thr nntinn that thr will ia ift.a.slaie_j3f j^nauIum-Tila: oscjl/
Xjor^bctwecn the train of thought and^ the train of movement;
whereaTriothing TjTnnrq cgrjtajnjto the individual who is the suject

^f both, than that the former may HP as nnintrrriipjed _asjf the bpd^
were perfectly at rest, and his reverie were taking place in the quie-
tude of hit own study. Amj_ait commonly happens that, the direction

.taken is that in whiclTtlie individual is most in the habit of walking.

Jj^ will not unfrcquently occur that if he had previously intended"
tojxirsuc soffiti firhprj-hp fimli himttlf, irhi" hl " - "^ -- : " " ""^
in a locality which may be very remote from that towards which
Kia^walk was originally destined; whicji_would not be the case if
hjJLJJlcni^mcnts had been still under the purposive direction ot tKe
>yj]l v ^mj_al though^ it js^jjejrjeflly: true that these movements can^

^ht^at_jny \\mcL. fcitu cked by an~oHu7t of IIul!Zsgttr} > e]^ rhi? docslibt

realj^_Midicatc__that_the will has been previously engaged in sustain-
ing_Lhem; since, for tKe wTTI to act upon them"at" all, the
Hobbes has used his own terminology, and not his
adversary s. I crave permission to do likewise. By ^spon
taneous acl: of the will, then, I understand the compla
cency which arises from the apprehension of good,
previous to advertence. This spontaneous act is a
necessary act. By a voluntary act I understand the ad
hesion with advertence to a complacency. That act of
complacency, from being spontaneous, becomes volun
tary by being consciously adhered to. If the complacency
does not quite satisfy him who is the subject of it, and
yet he adheres to it, then his voluntary act is free, he
adheres where he need not. But if the complacency
under advertence does quite satisfy him, he cannot but
adhere; his adhesion then is an act at once voluntary
and necessary. Therefore voluntariness and necessity
may stand together, as Hobbes argued they might. But
it does not follow that they commonly do stand toge
ther in this world.

"That which I say necessitateth and determina-
teth every action, is the sum of all things, which being
now existent, conduce and concur to the production of
that action hereafter, whereof if any one thing now were
wanting, the effect could not be produced."

A special interest attaches to this extract: for if we
read phenomena in place of things, and infallibly deter-

_must be recalled to thgm^Qd_llie^ejebjrumaniisl-bj 1 Lberated.iram
itsjDrevious self-occupation." The same authority terms the forma-
tion~bf~a secondarily TuToTTTaTic habitT"" the gradual conversion of
a vbliHoriaHnto an "automatic train of movements7so"tharaTlast this
rain, once started, shall continue to run down~of itselt."
"pks of Human PAyfie/o^y~p^r^2, 610, seventh edition.


minateth for necessitated and determinateth^ those slight
amendments will bring Hobbes exactly to express a
view very generally taken at the present day regarding
causation both physical and mental.

For an instance of physical causation we will con
sider the orbit of the earth. I will enumerate "the sum
of all things which being now existent conduce and con
cur to the production of that action, whereof if any one
thing now were wanting, the effect could not be pro
duced." There are the sun and the remaining planets;
item, the distance of the earth from each of the other
planets and from the sun; item, the tangential velocity
of the earth; item, the respective masses of earth, sun
and planets; item, the absence of further perturbatory
influences, such as would arise from the introduction
of a new member into the solar system. Were any part
of this enumeration left out, and no compensation given,
"the effect could not be produced," i.e., the earth would
not then describe the path which it does describe under
its present data.*

* The absence of influences thit might have been present in a
particular case, but are not, need not be specified in the Hobbesian
view. All history being an unbroken chain of consequent following
antecedent, "necessarily," according to Hobbes, "uniformly," ac
cording to Mill, pure possibility, or "that which might be but
never shall," becomes a name of nothing. "Every act which is pos
sible shall at some time be produced" (Hobbes, First Grounds of
Philosophy, chap. ix). Therefore to talk of what might have been.
how, for instance, an_effcri; whit-h h.i< followed frpmone cause might
liavc followed from another, " I take to be an absurd speech." To
The best ofj

from another ^ans"; but now that it hat fnllnwed from this, WJG
Know thafcould not have followed from aught else. Modern Nomi-
nalists^perceiving that \$ could means did, then could not means did not,

The older philosophers would distinguish among the
enumerated determinants of the orbit aforesaid. The
attracting bodies they would style the "causes," but
the disposition of those bodies in space, along with the
absence of perturbation, they would style the " condi
tions " of the particular effect observable in that orbit.
And they would define cause, "the thing which acts";
and conditions, "the circumstances under which a cause
acts." The modern school, however, of which Hobbes
was a forerunner, applies the name condition to " each
of the things which produce and concur to the produc
tion of that action," and denominates the "sum" of
those things the "cause" of the action or effect pro
duced. "The cause," says Mill,* "is the sum total of
the conditions, positive and negative, taken together."
If one of these conditions were wanting, and were not
otherwise supplied, the effect could not be produced.
Their "sum," in Hobbesian phrase, "necessitated and
determinateth" the effect. Mill, eschewing all men
tion of necessity, would say, "Their sum causes the
effect"; meaning, "they are the set of antecedents,

have struck. OH J af..tllcuiphJlQspp]iicaljocabukr^the superfLuaus,ex-
pressipns, can, ^M^MJj^ti must, power, possiFUtty^necfsiit^ This can
celling of~terms alone differentiates the "uniformist" from the
"necessarian," John Stuart Mill from Thomas Hobbes. Under this
caveat we must read the phrase, "plurality of causes," where it__
j OjxjjjS-Jn-M444-V wri tinge; nofr-that ono-aH the samr f:ftrcLcauld
fojjc)\\^jwjiollj_f rom each of many causes, butjhat like eft ccts^have
followed from many causes ; whence the inadmissibllity oFthe~K 1 -ir&.
arKurncnt From effect to caJHsCj. r~subloin this note because I wish to
"sliovv how little ultimate difference there is between Hobbes and
the modern thinkers with whom I am about to compare him.
* Logic, bk in, chap, v, 3.

positive and negative, upon which the consequent
invariably follows without further condition."

For moral causation let us revert to our example of
a man being tempted to strike a bargain, advantageous
but unjust. Suppose he yields. Let us sift out and dis
tinguish cause and condition in that free act. The_cjiuse
of the volition is the man _himsgjfLHi^U<JJlo.Qtjier _
tljmg besides, causes the volition,full and free. But he
js not .the. cqjise of thg initial complacency, or me ori
ginal mrpulse to do wrong/That complacency resulted^
injiini jiecessarily and inevitably from the news which
heheard^supervening upon his previous habits of mind.
But, upon refle&ioji,.. the objedL^C^his complacency
proves to be not all that he_could jjisljJChfi - m ere_
morallur^ilud.^

T,hjs inadequacy of the obje.ft..tg_Jijs_thmking rnmd
leaves hirn free: he may either _sust_ain_the complacency
into which he finds himself spontaneously thrown,_and
so sustaining it pour himself out and identify himself
with the objec5l,^Lhe_mayJ.e.t_LL42ass. If he so sustains
his spontaneous complacency, he freely wills, and that
under the following conditions, remote and proximate.
The proximate condition is the impulsive complacency
which, like the wash of a steamer, went along with the
idea of the bargain, when that idea, uninvited, entered
his mind. The facts reported to him, and his antece
dent views of a good bargain, were the remote condi
tions giving rise to the complacency.

contentment in the same, in other jgords, the free act
of his TwlII7 : ^s criargeabTe^n himself alone. He caused

jt, he i did Jt^ Jhe [is answerable for it;, -he^and not his
^circumstances.

"The will itself, and each propension of a man du
ring his deliberation, is as much necessitated, and de
pends on a sufficient cause as anything else whatso
ever."

Hobbes, in another work, explains what he means
by a "sufficient," or "entire," cause.

"The aggregate of accidents in the agent or agents,
requisite for the production of the effect, the effect
being produced, is called the efficient cause thereof;
and the aggregate of accidents in the patient, the effect
being produced, is usually called the material cause. . .
But the efficient and material causes are both but par
tial causes, or parts of that cause, which in the next
precedent article I called an entire cause. . . In what
soever instant the cause is entire, in the same instant
the effect is produced. For if it be not produced, some
thing is still wanting which is requisite for the pro
duction of it; and therefore the cause was not entire,
as was supposed. And seeing a necessary cause is de
fined to be that, which being supposed, the effect cannot
but follow, this also may be collected, that whatsoever
effect is produced at any time, the same is produced by
a necessary cause. For whatsoever is produced, inas
much as it is produced, had an entire cause, that is,
had all those things, which being supposed, it cannot
be understood but that the effect follows; that is, it had
a necessary cause. And in the same manner it may be
shown that whatsoever effects are hereafter to be pro
duced shall have a necessary cause; so that all the effects
that have been, or shall be produced, have their neces
sity in things antecedent." 41

Admitting that the aft of will " depends on a suffi
cient cause," I deny that " it is as much necessitated
as anything else whatsoever." I deny that "in whatso
ever instant the cause is entire, in the same instant the
effect is produced"; likewise that "whatsoever effect
is produced at any time, the same is produced by a
necessary cause." In short, I deny that a sufficient (or
entire) cause and a necessary cause are the same. Every
cause is in a certain sense entire; it is entire as a cause.
Such entirety would still appertain to the sun, were
there no planets to suffer the solar attraction. But that
an entire and sufficient cause may work an actual effect,
certain conditions are requisite. Hobbes takes an "en
tire cause" to be an agent surrounded with the condi
tions of action, for instance, a planet having a satellite
within range. I say that the planet is an entire cause
by itself, irrespectively of any satellite. But waiving

* Cf. "The state of the whole universe at any instant we believe
to be the consequence of its state at the previous instant; insomuch
that one who knew all the agents which exist at the present mo
ment, their collocation in space, and all their properties, in other
words, the laws of their agency, could predicl the whole subsequent
history of the universe, at least unless some new volition of a power
capable of controlling the universe should supervene. And if any
particular state of the entire universe could ever recur a second
time, all subsequent states would return too, and history would,
like a circulating decimal of many figures, periodically repeat itself:

Jam rcdit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna. . .
Alter crit turn Tiphys, et altera quae vehit Argo
Deleftos heroas; erunt quoque altera bella,
Atque itcrum ad Trojam magnus mittetur Achilles."

--Mill, Logic, bk in, ch. v, 7.


that definition, and allowing* entire and sufficient cause
to mean a cause so conditioned that it may be fol
lowed by its effect without further condition, or that,
which being supposed, the effect can follow ; and fur
thermore accepting Hobbes s definition of necessary
cause as "that, which being supposed, the effect can
not but follow"; still, I must protest against the equi
valence of can follow and cannot but follow ; and, conse
quently, I cannot allow that every sufficient cause in
the Hobbesian sense of that term is at the same time
a necessary cause. Every sufficient mechanical cause is
necessary; but a mental cause may be sufficient and
yet not necessary. How so ? Precisely by this, that
matter is ruled wholly from without, but mind par
tially from within. Matter is carried here and there,
dependent on external causes and their collocation:
whereas the liability of mind to be led captive by a
foreign power stops short at the point where mind
begins to think and to reflect, and thence to choose for
itself.

" He who forces another to do a thing, and then
punishes him for doing of the same, is unjust (accor
ding to the common sense of mankind)."

But GOD forces men to do things, and then punishes
them for doing of the same (according to Thomas
Hobbes).

The odious conclusion that follows from these pre
misses, Hobbes endeavours to shake off by making an
equally odious exception to the major premiss. He
would have the proposition, He who forces another
to do a thing, and then punishes him for doing of the
same, is unjust, not to hold good when GOD is the
subject. Let us hear his own words:

"The power of GOD alone without other helps is
sufficient justification of any action He doth. That
which men make amongst themselves here by parts
and covenants, and call by the name of justice, and ac
cording whereunto men are accounted and termed
rightly just or unjust, is not that by which GOD al
mighty s actions are to be measured or called just, no
more than His counsels are to be measured by human
wisdom. That which He does is made just by His
doing it; just, 1 say, in Him, though not always just
in us. . . Power irresistible justifies all actions, really
and properly, in whomsoever it be found: less power
does not, and because such power is in GOD only, He
must needs be just in all actions. . . GOD cannot sin,
because His doing a thing makes it just, and conse
quently no sin; as also because whatsoever can sin is
subject to another s law, which GOD is not. And there
fore it is blasphemy to say GOD can sin; but to say
that GOD can so order the world, as a sin may be
necessarily caused thereby in a man, I do not see how
it is any dishonour to Him."

These words come well from the author of the
Leviathan. In that work Hobbes maintains that jus
tice does not belong to the nature of man otherwise
than as a fruitless velleity; that in a world of mutual
wrong-doing, where might is right, justice comes into
being only by dint of a convention, which binds men
to live in society, and employs the strength of society
for the curbing of the natural predaceousness of indi-
viduals. But GOD, as He fears none, has no occasion
for any such convention: consequently justice, such as
obtains between man and man, has no analogue in the
Hobbesian Deity, who, superior to all compacts, knows
no justice but power, no right but might.

" It is worthy of remark that the doubt whether
words applied to GOD have their human signification
is only felt when the words relate to His moral attri
butes; it is never heard of in regard to His power. We
are never told that GOD S omnipotence must not be
supposed to mean an infinite degree of the power we
know in man and nature, and that perhaps it does not
mean that He is able to kill us, or consign us to eternal
flames. The divine power is always interpreted in a com
pletely human signification."*

Words applied to GOD have not their mere human
signification, as Mill here supposes, nor have they
a signification quite unconnected with humanity, as
Hobbes thought; but their signification in regard to
GOD is analogous to their signification in regard to men.
Man is a finite model of the infinite GOD: so far as he
exists, he exists after the image of GOD: all his posi
tive qualities reflect the Author of his being. As man
to GOD, so stand man s ways to GOD S ways: they are
not the same in kind, but the same in proportion,
even as the being of the globe and the being of the
globe s roundness are not homogeneous but analogous
being. This view strikes a mean between the Epicurean
high and dry deism, instanced by Hobbes, and the
anthropomorphism into which Mill (loc. /.) appears

* Mill s Examination of Sir W. Hamilton $ Philosophy, chap. vii.

to fall. The issue i s admirably arbitrated by St Thomas
Aquinas. But to understand him, we need to under
stand the terms "univocal," "equivocal" and "analo
gous." Mill shall explain them to us:

"A name is * univocal, or applied univocally, with
respect to all things of which it can be predicated in
the same sense; it is equivocal, or applied equivocally,
as respects those things of which it is predicated in
different senses. . . . An equivocal or ambiguous word
is not one name, but two names, accidentally coinci
ding in sound; . . . one sound, appropriated to form
two different words. An intermediate case is that of a
name used Analogically or metaphorically ; that is, a
name which is predicated of two things, not univocally
or exactly in the same signification, but in significations
somewhat similar, and which being derived one from
the other, one of them may be considered the primary
and the other a secondary signification. As when we
speak of a brilliant light and a brilliant achievement." *

Mill has explained "metaphorical analogy." There
is also " analogy proper," which is the proportion that
obtains between similar things of different grades of
being. The analogy which St Thomas has to speak of
is "analogy proper." f We are now prepared to give
ear to St Thomas.

" Difference in manner of being is a bar to the uni
vocal application of the name Being. Now GOD S
manner of being is different from that of any crea
ture; for GOD is Being in His own right, a prero
gative not attaching to any creature out of GOD.
Hence being is by no means predicable univocally of

* Logic, bk i, chap, ii, 8.

t See Berkeley s {Minute Philosopher, iv, 20, 21.

GOD and the creature; neither is any other predicate
applied univocally to both. But some have said that
there is no predicating anything even analogically of
GOD and the creature; the predication common to the
two is, they say, merely equivocal. That opinion, how
ever, cannot be true; for in the pure equivocal use of
terms a name is given to one thing without reference
to another thing to which it is also given; whereas
whatsoever things are said of GOD and of creatures are
said of GOD with some reference to creatures, or of
creatures with some reference to GOD. Besides, since
all our knowledge of GOD is gathered from creatures,
if there shall be no agreement betwixt the two except
in name, we can know nothing of GOD but empty names
with no realities underlying them. Therefore, we must
say that nothing is predicable univocally of GOD and
of the creature; nor yet are their common predicates
predicated purely equivocally; but they are predicated
analogously with reference of one to the other, as being
is predicated analogously of substance and of quantity."*

Man occupies a certain position relatively to his
Creator, and other positions relatively to his fellow-
men. What his Creator may do to him, that may he
do to his fellows in an analogous case. If no analogous
case can ever occur, then it is in vain our going about
" to vindicate the ways of GOD to man." On that sup
position we cannot even call GOD just, since He is not
just with any proportion to a human standard. Were
an officer to keep a soldier in enforced detention from
parade, and then flog him for being away, the union
of those two acls would argue injustice in the doer of
them. Nor would the injustice be diminished, but rather
* [ De Potentia Dei, q. vii, art. 7.



increased, by the thing being done by the Commander-
in-chief, by the king, nay, by an absolute monarch of
the universe. Analogously, if my almighty Creator " so "
ordered the world as a sin might be necessarily caused
in me, and then punished me for that sin; certainly
such a Creator would forfeit in my regard His title of
just. *

" Power irresistible justifies all aclions, really and pro
perly." As properly might Hobbes have said the same
of immensity or of eternity. The Eternal and Immense
Almighty can do no wrong; but it is not His omni
potence, any more than His eternity or immensity,
that justifies what He does. He is peculiarly One GOD;
and to speak of Him becomingly, we should have a
name to express His perfections all in one. But that
holy and awful name cannot dwell on mortal lips. The
title which He takes in Exodus iii, 13, 14, "lam who

* Hobbes On Liberty and Necessity must have been lying open
before Mill, when he penned this celebrated outburst: "If, instead
of the glad tidings that there exists a being in whom all the ex
cellences which the highest human mind can conceive exist in a
degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled
by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we can
not learn, except that the highest human morality which we arc
capable of conceiving does not sanction them; convince me of
it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I
must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names
which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain
terms that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over
me, there is one thing which he shall not do; he shall not compel me
to worship him. I will call no being good, who is not what I mean
when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a
being can sentence me to hell for not calling him so, to hell I will
go" (Mill s Examination of Sir W. Hamilton i Philosophy, chap. vii).
This vehement language may be pardoned for the badness of the
theology which evoked it.


am," would yield to prayerful study perhaps our ful
lest attainable notion of what GOD is and can. But since
our every conception of GOD is inadequate, we endea
vour by many different conceptions to compensate for
the inadequacy of each. Having realised as best we may
what Supreme Being means, we next regard that Being
as containing the fullness of all the perfections that are
distinguishable in creatures: accordingly we call Him
All-wise, All-good, going through the list of the divine
attributes so far as we have had experience of copies of
them in creation. Each of these attributes intimately
involves the rest. None can be almighty who is not
eternal, immense, and infinitely holy. Still the name
of each attribute stands for that one attribute, not for
the rest. By All-wise we do not mean Eternal: neither
does Almighty mean All-holy. Therefore Hobbes did
wrong to assert that GOD was holy by virtue of His
omnipotence. True, GOD is infinite holiness, and GOD
is infinite power: but we look at GOD in one way when
we call Him holy, and in another way when we call
Him almighty; which two ways being diverse and dis
tinct, it is a falsehood in our mouths and with our con
ceptions to say that GOD is holy because His power
is irresistible. What we mean by power does not con
stitute or involve what we mean by holiness.

" The necessity of an action doth not make the
laws that prohibit it unjust. . . No law can possibly
be unjust, inasmuch as every man maketh, by his con
sent, the law he is bound to keep. . . What necessary
cause soever precede an action, yet if the action be for-
bidden, he that doth it willingly may justly be punished.
For instance, suppose the law on pain of death prohibit
stealing, and that there be a man, who by the strength
of temptation is necessitated to steal, and is thereupon
put to death, does not this punishment deter others
from theft? Is it not a cause that others steal not? Doth
it not frame and make their wills to justice? To make
the law is, therefore, to make a cause of justice, and to
necessitate justice; and, consequently, it is no injustice
to make such a law. The intention of the law is not to
grieve the delinquent for that which is past and not to
be undone, but to make him and others just that else
would not be so, and respecteth not the evil act past,
but the good to come. . . But you will say, how is it
just to kill one man to amend another, if what were
done were necessary? To this I answer, that men are
justly killed, not for that their actions are not necessi
tated, but because they are noxious. . . We destroy,
without being unjust, all that is noxious, both beasts
and men."

This passage is marked by a lucidity and vigour
truly admirable. It is a splendidly bold and a scienti
fically accurate presentment of the philosophy of de-
terminist punishment. My objections to that philoso
phy I have set forth in Political and {Moral Essay s y in
the essay on Morality without Free Will^ particularly
pp. 253-259. My objections come to this, that while
there is abundant ground on utilitarian principles for
visiting with pain the offender who has unfortunately
been determined to the injury of society, for the pain
will readjust his determination, there is nevertheless
no ground for visiting him with any moral disappro
bation: you may call him names, significant of moral
reproach, as stimulants corrective of his will, but in your
heart you cannot reproach him, for what else could he
have done?

" If there be a necessity that an action shall be done,
or that any effect shall be brought to pass, it does not
therefore follow that there is nothing necessarily requi
site as a means to bring it to pass; and therefore, when
it is determined that one thing shall be chosen before
another, it is determined also for what cause it shall so
be chosen, which cause, for the most part, is delibera
tion or consultation, and therefore consultation is not
in vain."

Hobbes signifies that the necessity of an action is a
conditional necessity, dependent upon a certain state of
mind going before. Hence he notes the unreasonable
ness of withdrawing the condition and still looking for
the action as a thing that must ensue. But the condi
tion itself, he says, is supplied of necessity, following
upon other antecedent conditions likewise necessary,
and so up to some primitive collocation of circum
stances, the parent egg, whence the phases of the uni
verse, from yesterday to to-day, for ever, are perpe
tually proceeding according to a law of mathematical
rigour. With this vast concatenation of conditional ne
cessities the acts of our will interlink. The conditions
which inexorably determine those acts pre-existed cycles
untold before our birth. The primitive nebula bore
within its bosom the seeds which were, of sure neces
sity, to develop into the doings of every agent that
should populate the solar system, the shooting of me
teors, the revolutions of planets, the spots on the sun,
and the feelings, thoughts and volitions of men. Any
bystander with an eye to see, and an intellect to com
prehend, might have perused the universal history of
the system, printed entire in that early primer. The
thread of our lives was hackled and twisted ere our
mothers conceived us. We rise too late in the parlia
ment of the world to move any amendment. Our puny
individualities may not stand between cause and effect.
We are children, creatures of the arrangements that
were before us: we are their slaves. Our function is to
do their bidding and die. We exist in fulfilment of a
destiny, whereof we hold in our hands neither the begin
ning, middle, nor end. Each man s lot in life is designed
and constructed for him; none is his own architect in
that matter: though the expiring eloquence of the Ro
man Chatham did protest to the contrary: Faber quisque
mortalium fortune su<. Fortune to us is, not as the web
to the spider, spun out of ourselves, but rather as the
web to the fly, catching us in its meshes. Only, with less
initiative than the fly, we do not wing our own flight
into the entanglement; we are born there. Fortune s web
is very old, hanging from the pillars of creation and co
eval with them. Fortune s web is very broad:

A covering net, that nor sinner nor saint
Can scape from the circle of slavish constraint
And captive woe complete.*

Yes, and of captive joy, too; the house of feasting with
the house of mourning is alike a house of bondage.

On such a system it is idle for any man to question
with his own soul what he means to do. What he must

yEschylus, dgamemnon, 346.

do is written even to the last detail. We need not use
our own judgements: there is no seat for us at the
council board where the march of our lives is planned.
Circumstances may be relied upon to galvanise us, when
the hour for action arrives. We shall be equal to the
occasion, so far forth as the occasion shall raise us to
its level. For if, as Hobbes confesses, the consultation,
the necessary prelude to the action, is secured and can
not fail, secured by a chain of antecedents reaching
back to before the birth of the consultor, that person
infallibly will find himself consulting and acting, if
necessity will have him so; even as some day he will
find himself dying, without any labour of his, thanks
to the sure, steady thud of necessity battering cease
lessly at the portal of animal life. Consultation, in this
view, is not in vain; neither is digestion; but, to use a
colloquial phrase, "it comes natural" to one to deli
berate as to digest.

Denial of the freedom of the will does not involve
a renunciation of that freedom in practice. A man can
not divest himself of a property so connatural. If GOD
creates, we must be, and be of the specific nature that
GOD specifies. The very neglect of freedom is an exer
cise of liberty in us: it is the part of a free man playing
the slave. Fatalism abounds in the East.* Philosophers
further westward have taught necessarian doctrines,
rigid as ever Sultan acquiesced in. But their specula
tive fetters, a looser fit than the Grand Turk s, can be
slipped off upon occasion, to permit of a scamper with
free limbs after the butterflies of temporal profit. We
* Cf. Palgrave s Arabia, vol. i, pp. 365-368.


never witness the part of a necessarian played on Change,
nor in the Houses of Parliament, nor in Westminster
Hall. In the disabusing air of civil emulation our
countrymen understand that success depends on the
fight which men make to gain it; that fighting any fight,
good or bad, comes, not of motives simply, but ulti
mately and mainly of a man s own will and deliberate
espousal of motives.

Because in the affairs of this world necessarians ex
hibit as much self-determination as their opponents, the
denial of free will passes for an error, if it be an error,
of pure theory, void of evil consequences to pure
morals. Unfortunately, morality follows from theory,
and varies with theory, far more closely than business
does. The ends of business stare us in the face, money
and manufactures, things of gross and palpable advan
tage. But the ends of morality glimmer in the distance
like stars calm and cold and high overhead. If we are
Christian just men, we live by faith, which is the evi
dence of things unseen. If, again, our justice be the
justice of a heathen naturalism, still its mainsprings are
abstract contemplations of the intellect, such as honour
or the happiness of society, not objects of sense. The
ends of business are attractive enough of themselves
to rouse an Englishman to work with a will, necessa
rian though he be. Not so the ends of morality in the
case of the multitude of mankind, once they get to be
lieve that they cannot help doing whatever they do. It
is somewhat of a risk to guarantee any mortal s re
maining a moral man far into the future; but a peculiar
instability vexes his moral position, who writes himself
down a log brandished in necessity s arms. The suspi
cion that one is being tempted above one s strength
must furnish a frightful lever to temptation. It is not
a suspicion that a wise father would wish to awaken in
his child. Yet, if the will is not free, the suspicion is
too well-founded, all sins in that case being examples
of men tempted above their strength.

Hobbes so trembled in prospect of the pernicious
construction to which his opinion was liable, that he
wrote: " It is true that ill use might be made of it, and
therefore your Lordship [the Marquis of Newcastle]
and my Lord Bishop [Bramhall of Londonderry] ought,
at my request, to keep private what I say here of it.
And in conclusion I beseech your Lordship to commu
nicate it only to my Lord Bishop."

"For praise and dispraise they depend not at all on
the necessity of the action praised or dispraised. For
what is it else to praise, but to say a thing is good?
Good, I say, for me, or for some one else, or for the State
and commonwealth. And what is it to say an action is
good, but to say it is as I wish? or as another would
have it, or according to the will of the State? that is to
say, according to the law. Does my Lord think that
no action can please me or him or the commonwealth
that should proceed from necessity? Things may there
fore be necessary and yet praiseworthy, as also necessary
and yet dispraised, and neither of them both in vain,
because praise and dispraise and likewise reward and
punishment do by example make and conform the will
to good and evil."

To praise a thing is to pronounce it good in its kind.

A thing is praised for having the excellence proper to
its nature. Praise implies approval. The statement there
fore is not a correct one, that to praise is to affirm a
thing to be as I would wish. I may wish a being for
private ends of my own to have not the excellence that
it ought to have. The burglar wishes the lock of the
safe to be ill-made; he wishes the servant of the house
to be unfaithful. If lock and servant do yield to his tam
pering, he is pleased, but finds it not in his heart to
praise them. He despises them both, the one for a
good-for-nothing manufacture, the other for a good-
for-nothing man.

Inanimate things are praised for their beauty or use
fulness. Products of art are praised inasmuch as they
answer the end for which man made them. Plants and
brute beasts are praised for their full and perfect growth
or promise of growth, according to their species. And
for what is man praised? Man is praised for exhibiting
in himself what belongs to the perfection of human
nature. He is praised for stature, strength and beauty,
for quickness of understanding, for talent to command.
He is praised to a large extent for what nature in a
particular case and circumstances have made him. But
the praise of man stops not there. When it has been
said of an individual that he is tall and handsome and
intelligent, what is most to his praise or dispraise re
mains still to be told. There is the question of conduct:
whether he lives up to his nature as man behaving rea
sonably or whether he is the slave of passion, the sport
of the solicitation of the hour. On his conduct it depends
whether or no we shall call him a praiseworthy man.

A thing may be necessary and still praised. But the
term praiseworthy is reserved for those actions alone
which are commonly taken to be not necessary, the
actions of the human will in the sphere of merit or duty.
Praise is an approval that may be bestowed on any
being or agency; but praiseworthiness is a title to what
is called moral approbation. Praiseworthiness comes of
acting up to the dictates of reason, to the counsels of
generosity, to the requirements and capabilities of a
moral nature. A moral nature has power within certain
limits to make or mar itself. A brute nature is made
or marred simply in accordance with primitive endow
ment and supervening circumstances. In other words
a moral nature is free. It does not grow by a physical
and necessary course towards the perfection that be
comes it. It tends thither by self-determined acts in
keeping with a law of command, not of inevitable effect.
A morally good being, then, is to a certain extent the
cause and author of his own goodness; not so the
nature, however admirable for beauty or fertile of pro
fit, that simply is what it is, and does what it does, be
cause it is made so to be and so to act.

Hobbes insists on ignoring that special quality of
praise which is bestowed on free agents, and is expres
sive of the sentiment of moral approbation. According
to him we praise a hero and a hurricane just alike, when
bothhavedone the like workof discomfiting an enemy s
Armada, except that we applaud the hero with a pru
dential regard to the future, hoping to move him or
others to repeat the performance when the emergency
shall recur. But does not this intention to stimulate by
praising come as an afterthought? Is not the first burst
an outpouring of pure admiration and commendation,
without respect to any recurring need. Is praise to be
included under the sarcastic definition of gratitude,
"a lively sense of future favours"? So it appears on
Hobbes s showing. But Hobbes s philosophy is one
continuous piece of sarcasm on humanity.

"Piety consisteth only in two things: one, that we
honour GOD in our hearts, which is that we think as
highly of His power as we can . . . the other is that
we signify that honour and esteem by our words and
actions. . . He therefore that thinketh that all things
proceed from GOD S eternal will, and consequently are
necessary, does he not think GOD omnipotent? . . .
Again, he that thinketh so, is he not more apt by ex
ternal acts and words to acknowledge it?"

Piety, called in Greek iV/3ar<, "due reverence,"
in Latin, pietas, "filial duty," was defined by the Pla-
tonists "justice towards the gods"; by the Stoics, "the
science of serving the gods."* The notion of piety ac
cording to these definitions depends upon the notion
of GOD. GOD is to be reverenced as His dignity merits:
He must have that duty paid Him which His pater
nity demands: He must have that justice done Him
to which His authority has a right: He must receive
service in that quality and in that degree in which He
is master. To people who know little about GOD, His
power is His most striking attribute; even as, placed
at a distance from a noble edifice, the chief feature we

* Trench s Nf:v Testament Synonyms, xlviii.

appreciate about it is size. After the power of GOD,
His justice becomes known; and so, after the appre
ciation of size, there follows, on a nearer view, the
appreciation of proportion. Not till we stand on the
threshold of the building, does our eye kindle to the
sight of its delicate carving and variegated splendours;
even so GOD must draw us very near to Himself ere
we can enter into and reciprocate His tenderness and
love. The tyro in piety is slavishly afraid of GOD: the
proficient in piety tempers this slavish fear with hope:
the expert in piety fears GOD with a filial fear, he hopes
in GOD, he does more, he loves Him. The timid tyro
hardly looks upon GOD as a person: the sentiment of
fear is fully entertainable of things. The trustful pro
ficient awaits the sentence to be passed upon him by
the person of his "just Judge." But to the loving ex
pert GOD is a father; and the father is the first of per
sons in his child s eyes. There is no thorough piety
towards a GOD of mere power, nor even towards a
GOD of mere justice; the adequate object of piety is
a GOD of justice and power blended into love. But
Hobbes s Deity is not good: He is nothing more than
omnipotent. Else why should piety consist in this, that
we think as highly of His power as we can, to the ex
clusion of His goodness ?

Opening the eleventh chapter of Isaias, which an
nounces the coming of a GOD far other than him
whom necessarians imagine, we read: "And the spirit
of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom
and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude,
the spirit of knowledge and piety; and there shall fill
him the spirit of the fear of the LORD." From this pas
sage the Church has drawn her enumeration of the
seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. St Thomas Aquinas
defines the phrase "gift of the Holy Ghost," and
shows in what sense piety falls under the definition.
"The gifts of the Holy Ghost," he says, "are certain
habitual dispositions of the soul, whereby it is readily
susceptible of the impulses of the Holy Spirit. Among
other things, the Holy Spirit moves us to this, to che
rish a filial affection towards GOD, according to the
text (Rom. viii, 15), Ye have received the adoption
of sons, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. And since to
piety it properly belongs to pay duty and reverence
to a father, it follows that the piety whereby we pay
duty and reverence to GOD is a gift of the Holy
Ghost."* This piety of filial affection is the kind in
culcated by St Peter: "Provide, in the exercise of your
faith, virtue ; and in your virtue, knowledge ; and in your
knowledge, self-restraint; and in your self-restraint, pa
tient endurance; and in your patient endurance, piety;
and in your piety, brotherly love; and in your brotherly
love, charity." f On the clause, "in your patient endu
rance, piety," Dean Alford has the paraphrase: "Let it
not be mere brute stoical endurance, but united with
Goo-fearing and GoD-trusting." J He quotes another
commentator s remark, that, in this company of virtues,
we see "faith leading the band, love closing it." But
brute stoical endurance, little better than that of the
devils, who "believe and tremble," is all the piety,

* 23. 2x, q. cxxi. t 2 Pet. i, 5, 6, 7.
i A t ti? Testament for English Reader i. James ii, 19.

all the "justice towards God" rendered by Thomas
Hobbes, all the "science of serving God" that a neces
sarian knows.

"For repentance, which is nothing else but a glad
returning into the right way, after the grief of being
out of the way; though the cause that made him go
astray were necessary, yet there is no reason why he
should not grieve; and again, though the cause why
he returned into the way were necessary, there re
mained still the causes of joy. So that the necessity of
the actions taketh away neither of those parts of re
pentance, grief for the error and joy for returning."

By a rule of logic, a definition should not be latius
definite^ wider than and including more things than
the thing defined. Hobbes s definition of repentance
as "a glad returning into the right way after the grief
of being out of the way" sins against this rule. It
would apply to the case of a traveller lost on a moor,
and afterwards finding the track again, a glad recovery
which none but Thomas Hobbes would exalt into re
pentance. Surely the tears of Mary Magdalen flowed
from some other source.

There is nothing moral in Hobbes s philosophy.

"Though prayer be none of the causes that move
GOD S will, His will being unchangeable, yet since we
find in GOD S word, He will not give His blessings
but to those that ask, the motive of prayer is the same.
Prayer is the gift of GOD no less than the blessing, and
the prayer is decreed together in the same decree where
in the blessing is decreed. . . Prayer . . . though it
precede the particular thing we ask, yet is not a cause
or means of it, but a signification that we expect no
thing but from GOD. . . The end of prayer, as of thanks
giving, is not to move but to honour GOD Almighty,
in acknowledging that what we ask can be effected by
Him only."

Rather, the prayer is foreseen in the decree wherein
the blessing is decreed. Thus GOD, foreseeing from
eternity that certain creatures will pray for fine weather
on a certain day, has passed His eternal fiat that that
day shall be fine. The prayer is indeed the gift of GOD
no less than the blessing. " Every good gift and every
perfect gift is from above."* Prayer being a better and
more perfect gift than sunshine, it would be absurd to
pretend that we owed sunshine to GOD and not prayer.
But our free will co-operates with the grace of prayer
which GOD gives us; while the sun shines upon us willy
nilly. Prayer is the better gift, precisely because, invi
ting our co-operation, it becomes more our own.

I may inquire why GOD will not give His blessings
but to those that ask. I gather from Hobbes that it is
because the Almighty wishes to receive from us the
honour of an acknowledgement that the beneficial re
sult which we desire can be effected by Him only. He
wishes us to confess our thorough dependence on Him.
That, I think, is truly the reason of the institution of
prayer. But it supposes the confession on our part to
be free. It is no honour to a lord to seize his vassal s
hand and trace therewith, by stronger contraction ot
muscle, a signature to a declaration of allegiance. It
* James i, 17.

may be honourable to have persons under one in a state
of constrained subjection; but there can be no access
of honour from compelling them, without possibility
of denial, to declare that they are in constraint. GOD
has creatures who serve Him perforce, the whole of
irrational nature. But He does not expect confession
from them. It is true that the Psalmist has, " Confess
to the LORD, ye heavens "; * and, " The heavens are
telling the glory of GoD."f These sayings mean that
the heavens tell the glory of GOD to man, and incite
him to confess to the LORD. Man is the high priest of
the universe, gathering up the unconscious worship of
the rest of creation to present it consciously to the Crea
tor. Another verse is, " Let all thy works confess to
thee, O LoRD."J If all, then also Thy reprobate works,
the devils and spirits of the damned. These confess of
necessity and against their will. But there is reason for
constraint in their case. GOD is wringing from them
perforce that homage which they refused Him while
they were free. He has bound them physically, for that
they broke through moral bonds. They would not
serve, and He has made them slave. Hobbes insists
that the tribute exacted from hell is the type and model
of whatsoever honour ascends to GOD from any of His
creatures. I cannot but think such a doctrine an ex
ceeding insult to the Most High.

"The nature of sin consisteth in this, that the
action done proceed from our will and be against the
law. . . Now when I say that the action was necessary,

* Ps. cxxxv, 26. t Ps. xviii, i. I Ps. cxliv, 10.

I do not say that it was done against the will of the
doer, but with his will, and necessarily."

The nature of sin consisteth in this, that the action
done proceed from our will with advertence, and be
against the known law. An action done from impulse,
a hasty blow struck in passion, has an excuse from sin.
So far as it was sinful, the agent knew what he was
doing. Perhaps a series of sinful yieldings to impulse
had formed in him a habit of yielding. That habit it
was, of his own formation, which communicated to the
passionate impulse the force which he did not with
stand. He was to blame for the strength of an evil ten
dency which had been strengthened by himself. Impul
sive action is less pardonable in an adult than in a child,
who has not lived long enough to form habits whether
of licence or self-restraint. Again, to be sinful, an action
must be against a known law. Against a law unknown,
which there was no ground to surmise and no obliga
tion to ascertain, there can lie no sin. In cases where
the law is imperfectly known, breach of law is excused
to the extent of the transgressor s invincible ignorance.
Hence a higher intelligence sins more guiltily than a
lower one. The higher intelligence is both better con
scious of its own act, and better appreciative of the
sacred character of the obligation which it violates.

Hobbes speaks of action done with the will of the
doer and necessarily. I am far from replying that this
phrase involves a contradiction. An action may well be
voluntary and necessary at the same time. Such may
be some of our actions in this life, in early years espe
cially. The act of loving GOD, in the saints who see
Him face to face, is voluntary and necessary. When
ever an object under advertence perfectly satisfies our
longing, we will that object and we cannot but will it.
If our understanding is mean, mean are our longings,
and our will is necessitated to acquiesce in mean things.
Exalt the understanding, and you amplify the desires
and elevate the will to greater liberty. But no will is
free in reference to all possible objects. There must be
some point of satiety to the mind s cravings: free will
reigns up to that point, and no further. To an infant
a toy marks the point of satiety; to a seraph, GOD. The
infant fain must love the toy; the seraph fain must love
GOD. Adult man on earth occupies an intermediate
position. The toy satisfies him not thoroughly, nor does
any worldly thing afford him thorough satisfaction.
Even GOD is at present an inadequate object to his
desire, owing to his imperfect realisation of the good
ness of GOD. Therefore man remains free to choose
between good and evil of the moral order. In that
crisis, what GOD expects of him is that he shall fix his
thought and his affection on the excellence of the divine
law, which reason indicates, and turn away his mind
from the sensible advantages of breaking that law, and
will not to taste those sweets. Thus is man on trial in
this world.

But it would be no fair trial, if, when a man knew
an action to be against the divine will, still do it he
must, with full consent and without ability to refuse;
if, in other words, a sinful pleasure, adverted to as sin
ful, gave complete and unmixed satisfaction to human
nature, and left man nothing to desire, nothing else to
do but to sin. In that case, either there is no sin, or
the author of the sin is the author of the necessity by
which it is committed.

Hobbes rejects the Apocrypha: I bring therefore
the son of Sirach, not as an authority to condemn, but
as a sage to warn him:

Say not, It is owing to the LORD I fell away: for what
he hateth, thou shalt not do.

Say not, he led me astray: for he hath no use for a sinful
man.

The LORD hateth all abomination, and it is not lovely to
them that fear him.

He made man from the beginning, and turned him loose
in the power of his own deliberation.

If thou choosest, thou wilt keep the commandments, and
give proof of thy resolution.

He has set before thee fire and water: to whichever thou
choosest thou wilt stretch forth thine hand.

Before men is life and death, and whichsoever one resolves
upon shall be given to him.

For great is the wisdom of the LORD, strong in principality,
and seeing all things.

And his eyes are upon them that fear him, and lie shall
take cognisance of every work of man.

And he did not command anyone to be impious, and gave
not permission to anyone to sin.*

XIII

"A man is then only said to be compelled, when
fear makes him willing ... as when a man willingly
throws his goods into the sea to save himself. . . Thus
all men that do Anything for love, or revenge, or lust,
are free from compulsion, and yet their actions may be
as necessary as those that are done by compulsion; for
sometimes other passions work as forcibly as fear."
*Ecclus xv, 1 1-20, from the Greek.



40 FREE WILL

Aristotle* examines the question whether a man
who willingly throws his goods into the sea to save
himself can be said to do so under compulsion. And
he concludes that, denning a compulsory act to be
one "the origination of which is from without, the
party compelled contributing nothing," such an act
of jettison cannot be pronounced compulsory. What
is compulsory is the owner s distress between two
alternatives, the abandonment of his goods on the one
side, and the likelihood of perishing with them on the
other. There he stands, as we say, " between the devil
and the deep sea." His liberty is circumscribed be
tween two terms, neither of which he likes. Yet is he
free to attach himself to either term, to choose either
the certainty of a loss of fortune or the imminent risk
of a loss of life. Loss or risk, one or other he must
choose, but he will choose either of them freely. The
jettison would be then compulsory, if the captain were
to lock the merchant up in the cabin while his wares
went by the board without his concurrence.

The Christians, whom the pagans threatened with
death if they refused incense to Jove, furnish another
case in point. They could not help having to choose
between death and apostasy, but they could help on
which side their choice lay. For that reason we honour
the martyrs, while CHRIST has judged the guilt of them
that denied Him. It would be improper to call their
denial compulsory.

At the same time, acts of that kind, to which men
consent rather than- brave a threat, frequently go by
the name of compulsory in common parlance. We say
that a traveller was compelled to fee the brigand who
clapped a pistol to his ear. I admit that there is this
usage of speech. Neither do I deny that sometimes
other passions work as forcibly as fear. I conceive a
father, whose child has been murdered, being at least
as strongly prompted to pursue the murderer for re
venge as to fly from him for fear. Yet if he fled, he
would be spoken of as having been compelled to retire;
whereas there would be no mention of compulsion if
he went in pursuit. That is true. Hobbes thence infers
that a deed of vengeance is as much necessitated as a
deed done by compulsion of fear. I may let pass the
inference, for I deny that a deed done by compulsion
of fear is necessitated. If my opponent, taking a loose
phrase for a strict one, retorts that compulsion im
plies necessity, I straiten his lines and bring him back
to the strictness of the Aristotelian definition: "An
act is compulsory, the origination of which is from
without, the party compelled contributing nothing."
An act done from fear is not compulsory in that sense:
for the frightened party contributes his own volition
to remove himself from what he fears.

Yet there is ever some truth at the bottom of popu
lar sayings about matters of morality. Not moral phi
losophers alone are moralists: all men are so. No trust
worthy professor of moral philosophy will brand popular
phrases on that subject as the mere expression of popu
lar errors. Why then do the people in spite of Aristotle
persist in calling those volitions compulsory which are
elicited under intimidation ? I hope I can show why.

In the first place I remark that a person, acting under
the spell of any passion whatsoever, is by no means
the free and authentic agent that he is when his act is
passionless. The more impassioned, the less free, at
the moment. For the freedom of the will is derived
through the intellect; it is the truth that makes us
free: but passion dazes the intellect and paints the
truth in false colours. The passion that infringes a
man s freedom may be the foster-child of his own
folly: then his past conduct is to blame for the strength
of temptation at the present hour. It is no excuse for
a guilty amour that the offender was over head and
ears in love: he plunged himself into the quagmire.
Forbidden love tempted, and he accepted by repeated
acts, till he converted a passing excitement into a chron
ic disorder. There are some words of Aristotle that
go near to describing this case: "The sick man can
not with a wish be well again; yet ... he is voluntarily
ill, because he has produced his sickness by living in-
temperately and disregarding his physicians. There
was a time then when he might have helped being ill;
but, now he has let himself go, he cannot any longer
recover himself; just as he who has let a stone out of
his hand cannot recall it, and yet it rested with him to
aim and throw it, because the origination was in his
power."*

But the passion of fear is unlike other passions.

Love, ambition, sloth are home-products ; but fear

has rather the character of an importation. What a man

shall love rests pretty much with himself: what he shall

* Nic. Eth. in, vii, 14.



THOMAS HOBBES 43

fear, not so much. Tearfulness is that key of our nature
on which our neighbour s ringers find it easiest to play
without our leave. I may make gifts to a man, and he
will not love me; do him wrong, and he will not hate
me; but let me threaten his life, and it will be very
hard if he does not fear me. Fear-prompted actions
then are less liable than the rest of impassioned actions
to be involved in the guilt of prior free acts that fos
tered the growth of the passion: for fear depends less
upon the free acts of the subject than do the other
passions. Free will has ordinarily more to say to anger
and love than to fear. This, I conceive, is the reason
why actions done under intimidation are popularly
palliated under the name of compulsory. But they are
not wholly excused by the people; nor are they proved
absolute necessities.

XIV

"One heat may be more intensive than another,
but not one liberty than another: he that can do what
he will hath all liberty possible, and he that cannot
hath none at all."

In a noun that is made to signify the mere attain
ing or falling short of a certain measure, there is no
room for less and more. In an entrance examination
for a school, college or profession, some candidates
pass and some fail. All who pass gain entrance equally;
all who fail are equally excluded. We say, "more nearly
equal," or "more hopelessly lost"; but not "more
equal, ""more dead," "more lost." Participles properly
so-called admit no comparative: nor do nouns substan
tive that denote a species. Julius Caesar was not more a



44 FREE WILL

man than the meanest of the mean crew who murdered
him; though he was more of a man perhaps than all
of them together, and had stuff in him to furnish forth
a dozen Brutuses.

Freedom, in Hobbes s definition, is ability to do as
one likes. A fair specimen of this sort of freedom is
found in that institution which Hobbes delighted to
extol, the absolute monarch. One or other of three
things: either the monarch alone of all the inhabitants
of the realm is in any sense free; or the monarch is
more free than his subjects; or monarch and subjects
are equally free. The last proposition means that, under
a despotic government, every man does as he likes.
Probably that is what Hobbes would have said. He
would have proceeded to explain, as in many of his
writings,* how the will of the subject coincides with
the will of the monarch by virtue of the compact where
by the people have made over their rights to one per
petual depositary. There is no use arguing the point.
If anyone is pleased to say that a Russian goes to Si
beria because he likes to go wherever the Tsar may
send him, we can afford to let that whimsical thinker
enjoy his own humour without contradiction. Nor need
we stay to contend with any maintainer of the position
that freedom of any kind, and consequently free will,
is the exclusive prerogative of absolute monarchs,
though that paradox might not unreasonably be built
upon the Hobbesian saying that he who cannot do what
he will hath no liberty at all. The remaining alternative
is to allow that the will of an absolute monarch is more
*e.g., De Ch itate, cap. xxi, DC Libertate Civium,



THOMAS HOBBES 45

free, by Hobbes s definition of freedom, than the wills
of his subjects, more free, because more powerful.

Nevertheless, free will is not to be confounded with
the power to carry one s will into deed. A beggar s will
may be as free as a king s. It may be more so. An act
of the will is free, when the agent might have abstained
from eliciting it, the circumstances relevant to the act
remaining the same. A free act is not unconditioned,
but it does not follow from the conditions as a matter
of course. Now, if no more be here meant by freedom
than the bare absence of necessity, and the mere fact
that the agent could absolutely have done otherwise, it
is clear that free will admits of no degrees, as neither does
life: an animal must be either alive or dead. But there
are degrees of fullness and intensity of life, and similarly
of freedom. We do not say that he who can break prison
by a great effort is as much at liberty as the man who
can walk out by an open door. We commonly call that
freedom greater which is more readily available and can
be exercised more easily. At that rate, there are degrees
in free will. An act is more free, then, in proportion as
the agent could have done otherwise with greater faci
lity. An act is more free the less it is conditioned. No
free act, however, is wholly independent of conditions.
So, to take an example, in the case of a strong propen
sity to drink, whether hereditary or self-acquired, if
the propensity stops short of mania, the victim of it is
not so entirely victim as wholly to cease to be a free
agent, and yet, in common parlance, he is much less
free than the well-bred and hitherto virtuous lady who
is taking the first steps on the way of sipping.



46 FREE WILL

Agents free and necessitated may be classified as fol
lows in point of freedom and the reverse:

1. GOD.

2. Rational creatures, in final blessedness, having the
sight of GOD.*

3. Rational creatures, still in the way of trial.

4. Irrational feeling creatures.

5. Insensible creatures.

Numbers 4 and 5 are necessitated in all their opera
tions; number 3, in their chiefest operations, are free;
numbers i and 2, in their chiefest operations, are ne
cessitated. This may be briefly explained. An insensible
thing, having no consciousness whatever, has no light
to guide it to a choice; and, where there is no light,
there is no liberty. A thing of this sort is not wholly
passive, else it would be void of existence, but the ac
tive powers which it has are blind, and are led to their
end by an external Being, the intelligent Creator of the
insensible thing. A creature with senses, but without
intellect and reason, has no reflex consciousness, no
faculty of advertence to its own being and condition
as such. Therefore, it acts always either on native im
pulse or by virtue of a training received from without.
An agent like this is moved by springs of feeling, more
or less complicated, which are not at its own command:
it is not free. Rational creatures, on their trial in this
world, have an intellect that informs them of unlimi
ted good; they have a rational appetite that craves

* It is neither essential to my purpose, nor pleasantly accessory to
it, to discuss the state of the will of" rational creatures in statu termini,
having no vision of GOD.



THOMAS HOBBES 47

for unlimited satisfaction; they have a power of adver
tence to the spontaneous affection of their will, embra
cing a satisfaction not unlimited and consequently not
adequate to their desire; they have then the liberty
either of continuing in the embrace of that satisfaction
or of desisting from it. Rational creatures, in final
blessedness, are endowed with the same boundless de
sire and the same advertence, but they have reached
their destination in the apprehension of a good, the re
cognised satisfaction of their immense desire: they are
not free to fall away from that Good, which is GOD
seen. Lastly, GOD Himself eternally beholds Himself,
eternally delights in Himself, eternally looks with com
placence inward upon Himself as the worthy object of
His own satisfaction: GOD is not free not to love Him
self.

The agents in class number 3, however, may some
times be necessitated, while numbers I and 2 are upon
many points free. We often will without reflection: we
may occasionally encounter a satisfaction which fully,
or almost fully, meets our desire for the moment: our
volitions, thereupon, are not free or are hardly free.
Again GOD, and the blessed spirits who see His face,
find some good in created objects. The world is "very
good"; but, since GOD discerns in Himself an infinity
of better goodness, He was not necessitated to create
this world. The saints and angels have their favourites
on earth; yet, as none of us is good enough to enrap
ture a seraph, we may be sure that, when the angels
love us, as Spenser says they do,* they love us freely.
* Faerie Queene, book 11, canto viii.



48 FREE WILL

Of freedom there is but one species, intelligent free
dom: but we may distinguish intelligent necessity
and brute necessity. A person lies under an intelligent
necessity when, adverting to a complacency that fully
satisfies his intellectual nature, he perseveres in that act
of complacency. He cannot do otherwise than perse
vere: he knows better than to do otherwise than per
severe. An agent that is fain to act without advertence
lies under a brute necessity. This agent does things
because it knows no better. An agent intelligently free,
upon adverting to a complacency that does not fully
satisfy his intellectual nature, may or may not perse
vere in the act of complacency. He knows of better
things, but he may acquiesce to do that which now
suggests itself as good.*

Numbers 4 and 5 (irrational creatures generally) lie
wholly under the dominion of brute necessity, the
avay/ci) of the Greek philosopher. Numbers i and 2
(Goo and the spirits which see His face) exemplify in
the main an intelligent necessity of divine love, but
they have also their freedom. Number 3 (rational crea
tures in the way of trial) rise in their best moments to
the exercise of an intelligent freedom, whereby they
merit reward or punishment. They walk in the border
country between intelligent necessity and brute neces
sity. One or other of those realms shall be their home
for eternity, according as they accomplish well or ill
their transient course on earth.

It might, therefore, be expected, and experience

* It may be urged, But he does not know of better things to do
under the circumstances. This difficulty will be faced in dealing
with Locke.



THOMAS HOBBES 49

proves the fact, that good men, yet in their flesh, ap
proach to the state of angels, and bad men to the state
of devils. I mean that the good, having GOD ever be
fore their eyes, although in a glass, darkly, discern
Him clearer and clearer by degrees, and proportion
ally diminish the possibility of their sinning; while the
bad, who live away from GOD, grow more and more
incapable of virtue. Thus good and bad alike abridge
their freedom. True; but how do they abridge it? By
exercising it.

This is how St Bernard speaks of the confirmed and
hardened sinner: "That the soul, which could fall of
itself, is unable further to rise of itself, proceeds from
the will, which, enfeebled and prostrated by a spoilt and
spoiling love of the corruptible body, is unequal to the
undertaking of the love of justice. Thus, by a prodigy
of strange perversity, the will, changed for the worse
by sin, makes unto itself a necessity, in such a way
that neither the necessity, being voluntary, can excuse
the will, nor the will, being allured, can exclude the
necessity. For this necessity is in a manner voluntary.
It is a kind of courteous violence, overwhelmingly
soothing and soothingly overwhelming; of which the
guilty will, having once consented to sin, can neither
shake itself free by its own sole effort, nor anywise ex
cuse itself by reason."* This is a very sad necessity,
as sad as the contrary necessity is happy. Between the

* In Cantica, sermo Ixxxi. Cf. St Thomas, Contra Gentiles, b. in,
ch. clxi. The necessity here described is not physical, but moral:
it implies, not utter impossibility, but enormous difficulty, which
may, however, be surmounted by the grace of GOD. This is what the
Saint means by saying that the fallen soul cannot rise of itself.

4



50 FREE WILL

two we are striking out our course, away from this,
towards that. The strokes that advance us are our own
free acts. However, strike and act as we may, we are
not to reckon on reaching any sure establishment in
well-doing short of the grave. Nor, unless we choose
to be very wicked, shall we achieve anything at all like
confirmation in sin. The sea of freedom flows wide
between these two opposite coasts. But the bottom
shelves towards one and the other. The righteous in
this world are drawing near to tread the firm earth of
paradise, the land of immutable intelligent good; and
the unrighteous are drifting on to the shore of that
land of darkness and misery, where no order, but
brute necessity of evil reigns.

XV

" The will follows the last opinion or judgement
immediately preceding the action, concerning whether
it be good to do it not. . . In that sense, the last dic
tate of the understanding does necessitate the action,
though not as the whole cause, yet as the last cause, as
the last feather necessitates the breaking of a horse s
back."

The last opinion or judgement immediately prece
ding the action, concerning whether it be good to do it
or not, is technically termed, "the last practical judge
ment." It is an old dispute in the schools, whether or
no volition be determined by the last practical judge
ment; concerning which controversy three positions
may be taken, none of them satisfactory:

i. Either the last practical judgement, which is sup
posed to determine the volition, is itself determined by



THOMAS HOBBES 51

something else going before, so that we get an unbroken
chain of necessary sequences, and this is Hobbes s
view here expressed; or the practical judgement, which
determines the subsequent volition, is itself a free act;
thus the will is free, not immediately in itself, but
mediately, through the judgement on which it is neces
sarily conditioned; so that, instead of "free will," it
would be more appropriate to speak of "free judge
ment," freedom being the immediate attribute, not of
the will, but of the understanding.

2. Every judgement, in other than self-evident mat
ter, involves a volition : you must " make up your mind "
to judge, which means that your will must bring your
understanding to act. Such a judgement, in scholastic
phrase, is elicited by intellect, but commanded by will.
Then, if every volition is determined by the last practical
judgement, we have a regressus in infinitum^ that same
practical judgement being (usually) itself ruled by a vo
lition. I say usually : where it is not so, the judgement
is necessitated by the irrefragable evidence of the matter.

3. If, to escape these difficulties, you identify the
last practical judgement with the volition to do the
thing under deliberation, then the practical judgement
determines itself; and the judgement being an act of
intellect, the volition wherewith it is identified is an
act of intellect also: where then remains the difference
between intellect and will?

These three positions, with the perplexities which
they involve, are all abolished by a distinction between
a spontaneous practical judgement, which is the form
which every practical judgement assumes to begin with,



52 FREE WILL

and a practical judgement ratified and accepted by the
will) that is, a voluntary practical judgement, to which
form not all practical judgements arrive. Upon this
distinction I reply, in Thomist style, ad i m , ad 2 m ,
ad 3 ".

Ad \ m . The practical judgement in its spontaneous
stage does not determine the ensuing volition, except
in a qualified sense presently to be explained. The
voluntary practical judgement assumes its voluntary
character consequently upon a volition,which, therefore,
it does not determine. As an intellectual activity, the
voluntary practical judgement is the matter of a free
act, a thing freely commanded.

Adi m . Not every judgement is determined by a
volition. As the argument allows, judgement in self-
evident matter is not so determined. Self-evident means
evident upon full inspection. But other matters, which are
not evident when fully inspected, still present a prima
facie appearance, sufficient to determine a spontaneous
judgement, or what we call "an impression at first blush
of the thing." This spontaneous judgement is not com
manded by will, nor does it necessitate any subsequent
volition, but it is matter for volition to go upon. The
regressus could be urged against him only who was
foolish enough to say that every volition is determined
by a previous voluntary practical judgement.

Ad^ m . The spontaneous practical judgement clearly
is not the volition to act accordingly, as such judge
ment is antecedent to all volition. When the resolve
to act is taken, that spontaneous judgement is raised to
the rank of a voluntary judgement. As it is in the in-



THOMAS HOBBES 53

tellect, however, it remains the matter of a volition;
it is not the volition itself.

My own view is as follows. Every practical judge
ment begins in a form in which it is spontaneous and
necessary. This spontaneous form is "valid," as canon
ists would say, i.e., it is a real judgement, but it is not
"firm," i.e., it is liable to fail in securing approval
from the will upon advertence, and so to pass away
unauthorised and ineffectual. Yet if the will approve
any practical judgement, it can for the nonce approve
none other than the spontaneous judgement that is in
possession, though it need not approve that: this
measure of determinism is to be admitted. The last
spontaneous practical judgement thus determines the
will in this sense, that the will for the time being can
not go counter to that judgement in whatever it sanc
tions, as the traveller for the time being cannot take
any train but that which is at the platform. And as the
traveller always travels by the last train that draws up
at the platform, by getting in and moving off and so
seeing no more trains arrive; so the assent of the will,
converting the spontaneous into the voluntary practical
judgement, is always in accordance with the last prac
tical judgement: for the adoption of one definite course
of conduct leaves no room for approval of any other
course.

XVI

" As soon as I can conceive eternity to be an indi
visible point, or anything but an everlasting succes
sion, I will renounce all that I have written on this
subject [i.e., about the best way to reconcile contin-
gence and liberty with the prescience and the decrees



54 FREE WILL

of God]. I know St Thomas Aquinas calls eternity,
nunc stans, an ever-abiding now; which is easy enough
to say, but though I fain would, yet I could never con
ceive it; they that can are more happy than I."

Any who share Hobbes s difficulty in conceiving the
nunc stans may be referred to the eleventh book of St
Augustine s Confessions, I here advance two proposi
tions, countenanced by the Saint. First, that eternity
is not an everlasting succession; and, secondly, that
the very fact of succession evidences an everlasting now.

A succession is a series of changes. GOD does not
change. Yet He is eternal. GOD S eternity therefore is
not an everlasting succession.

There is an inverse relation between concentration
of mind and sense of succession. The more the atten
tion is fixed, the less advertence is given to the lapse
of time, and vice versa. There is a well-known legend
of a monk who chancing in the forest to light upon a
bird, the song of which marvellously won his ear,
stopped out all day, as he imagined, listening to the
angelic songster, for such it was, and in the evening,
returning to his monastery, found himself the lone
remainder of a bygone generation, other men having
reckoned a century what he counted one day. This,
perhaps, is rather a tale of what would be than of
what was. But, legend apart, who has not proved the
unnoticed flight of hours over an interesting occupa
tion? The mathematician, the poet, the saint lose all
count of time; he in his calculation, he in his reverie,
he in his prayer. But for the keen demands of appetite
we might get becalmed for years, thinking of a favour-



THOMAS HOBBES 55

ite hobby, and awake, like Rip Van Winkle, from
his protracted sleep, wondering how old we were. On
the other hand, that day seems very long into which
a variety of incidents has been crowded. Schoolboys
sometimes remark what a length to look back upon
their holidays appear, and that when they have enjoyed
them keenly. The reason is, that holidays are a series of
alternations of circumstances in striking contrast with
the monotony of school-life. Each day of the vacation
paints itself on new canvas: at school to-day does but
deepen the picture of yesterday. The story of holidays
is written out fair from leaf to leaf in an album. The
story ot school-days descends to memory on a palimp
sest. When we say that a sailor has seen more life than
a recluse of the same age, we mean that the sailor has
felt more changes. In pain the tread of time is exceed
ing slow. This at first sight appears at variance with
my theory. The sufferer apparently is confined to one
thought, his pain. But I reply that the one thought of
a creature in pain is pregnant with many thoughts.
He seeks relief this way and that, and has no rest in
his search. New trial and new failure, the one inces
santly giving place to the other, make up the wrig
gling thing, the worm that never dies while the pain
endures.* In pleasure also hours may seem long, but
only in pleasure of the exciting kind, which makes the
heart flutter and the thoughts fly wild. That is the
pleasure of astonishment and expectation, rather than
of fruition and content. There is a deeper and calmer

* The Greek word for anxiety, ;up<>va, was derived by the old
etymologists from /uept w, I divide, because, as Terence says, curce
dfaersum trahunt.



56 FREE WILL

happiness where the heart is at rest. Of that type will
be the eternal bliss of the saints. Face to face with the
Object of their beatitude, and absorbed in the contem
plation of the same, they will take even less note of
time than the hermit in the legend: the everlasting
years will roll on, measured by the motion of matter;
but the thought, life and existence of the elect will
remain a point, a nunc stans^ an ever-abiding now, in
the vision of GOD.*

To the same purpose St Augustine writes: "It has
seemed to me that time is nothing but a lengthening
out of what I know not; but I should be surprised if

*The relativity of time to the thinking mind is brought out in
the following extract from Newman s Dream ofGerontius. The soul
just departed wonders at not being immediately confronted with
its Judge. The Guardian Angel accounts for the delay:

For spirits and men by different standards mete

The less and greater in the flow of time.

By sun and moon, primeval ordinances,

By stars which rise and set harmoniously,

By the recurring seasons and the swing,

This way and that, of the suspended rod,

Precise and punctual, men divide their hours,

Equal, continuous, for their common use.

Not so with us in th immaterial world;

But intervals in their succession

Are measured by the living thought alone,

And grow or wane with its intensity.

And time is not a common property;

But what is long is short, and swift is slow,

And near is distant, as received and grasped

By this mind and by that; and every one

Is standard of his own chronology;

And memory lacks its natural resting points

Of years and centuries and periods.

It is thy very energy of thought

Which keeps thcc from thy GOD.



THOMAS HOBBES 57

it were not a lengthening out of the mind itself."*
"In thee, my mind, I measure periods of time. . .
In thee, 1 say, the impression which passing things
make upon thee endures even after they are past. What
I measure is that present impression, not the things
which have passed to cause it. That is what I measure
when I measure periods of time. Therefore the periods
of time are either that or nothing."f The holy doctor
remarks that the mind fixed on GOD is "not distended
but intent. " The mind in that case is not in time, if
time is "a distension of the mind."

If the spirits who contemplate GOD are unmindful
of succession, because they experience no change, much
more will GOD Himself be changeless and without suc
cession in His knowledge. Immutability enters into the
essential concept of Deity. GOD is a self-existent Being.
The selfr-existent cannot be material: matter without
mind to support it is, in these days, a demonstrated
absurdity. The Deity, therefore, is intelligent. And if
intelligent, He knows Himself. Likewise He is the
fountain of all possible existence. For possible exis
tences are possible contingences, and the contingent
must originate from the necessary, that is, from the
self-existent, which is GOD alone. Were there two self-
existents, there would be two orders of possibility, two
regions of intellect, two truths. Since GOD is the intel
ligent origin of whatever can exist, He knows Himself
and all things adlual and possible in Himself. His
knowledge, being thus infinite, must be unchanging: a
change would be the introduction of a limit. GOD S

* Con/, xi, c. xxvi. f Ibid. c. xxvii. I c. xxix.



58 FREE WILL

mind, therefore, never changes. But, as we saw before,
to a mind without change there is no time. Therefore
there is no time to GOD. Yet GOD is eternal, as Hobbes
confesses. Therefore the eternity of GOD is not an ever
lasting succession.*

Nay, succession would be impossible without some
being that was not successive. Let us consider a human
being running his course year by year. He is alwaysgrow-
ing older : he is always the same person : nay, he could not

* " // alone in correct parlance belongs to the eternal Essence :
was and shall be are expressions proper for creation that passes in
time: for past and future are two states of transition, while that
which is ever unswervingly the selfsame is like to become neither
older nor younger by time, nor ever to have been created, nor to
be now a creature, nor destined to be hereafter; and in a word it
stoops not to undergo any of the alterations which creation has
attached to the things that fleet before sense." Plato, Tim<rus
3 8a.

"In the beginning, O LORD, thou hast laid the foundations
of the earth, and the works of thine hands are the heavens: they
shall perish, but thou remainest, and they all shall grow old like a
garment: and as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be
changed; but thou, O LORD, art the selfsame, and thy years shall
not fail." Ps. ci, 25-27.

" Brethren, do not our years daily fail, and stand not still at all ?
For past years are not now, and future years are not yet. Now the
former have failed, and the latter, that are coming, are coming to
fail. In this one day then, brethren, lo, our present speech is in an
instant. The hours gone by are past, the hours to come are not yet
come; and when they are come, they too will pass and fail. What
are the years that do not fail, but those that stand still ? If, then,
there the years stand still, the said years that stand still are one
year, and the said one year that stands still is one day: which said
one day has neither sunrise nor sunset, nor begins from yesterday,
nor is cut off from to-morrow, but it stands always still, that one
day. And you call that day what you will. If you will, it is years :
if you will, it is a day. Whatever you think it, all the same, it
stands still." St Augustine on Ps. cxxi.



THOMAS HOBBES 59

grow older if he did not remain the same person.* And
he could not remain the same person, were there not
a GOD, ever in every respect maintaining him in his
personal identity. Succession implies permanence, vari
ables imply a constant. Laying our hands on a friend s
shoulder we say, < This is he. But this is he only for
this instant : it is an inadequate view of him : in his full
amplitude he is a being of many past instants linked on
to endless futurities. The man is the subject of all his
biography. Such is the meaning of personal identity.
Though the man changes, it is always he who changes:
the entire sum of changes are the changes of one per
son. There is an unchangeable element in man, by vir
tue of which he continues the same man. I am not
arguing with the atheist: I suppose the reason of man s
existence from moment to moment to be because GOD
causes and wills that existence continually. Now a con
stant effect, and man in his person and spiritual sub-
sistency is a constant effect, can be ascribed only to a
cause that does not change. Changeable causes by their
continuedactionproducechangeableeffects.If GOD were
changeable, there would be nothing unchangeable in
man, or anywhere in nature. Man would be a different
person day by day: or rather there would be no per
sonality in man at all, nor any substantial being in crea
tion. As in man there is permanence under succession,
so in GOD there is permanence without succession.
The Oriental emblem of eternity was a serpent with

* The impossibility of saying that anything changes if absolutely
everything is always changing, in other words, the impossibility
of any Becoming (ytVeo-tc;) if there be no Being (ovaia) anywhere,
is well argued by Plato, 77r<*-/V//, 1810183!?.



60 FREE WILL

its tail in its mouth, forming a circle. Instead of a circle
for the emblem I would propose a sphere, of radius
infinite. At the centre of the sphere is GOD, seeing in
Himself with one look the whole compass of possible
creations, represented by great circles traceable on the
sphere. A few great circles, aclually traced there by His
hand, represent actual creatures. GOD sees the whole
circle round at once, not however as a point, but as
a circle. And this illustration meets an objection, which
has been put as follows: "A man has not the qualities
which he had some years ago, but other qualities ; he
had not then the qualities he has now. If any one sees
all these qualities existing together, which are not toge
ther, he does not see them more correclly, but less
correctly."* GOD does not see qualities existing toge
ther which are not together, but He sees together the
entire succession of qualities coming one after another.
I refer the writer to his own remark, a few pages later:
"Nothing is completely itself now, nor in a limited time:
it needs everlasting time for that; for every monad is
a focus of infinity."! The "now" he speaks of is the
how of the creature, and in that sense the remark is
just: but in the standing "now" of the Creator, in
GOD S eternal vision, everything completely is. GOD
does not progress with the world s progress, He is ever
beforehand with it. The vicissitudes of the creature cast
no shadow on Him who is the pure light of perfecl
Knowledge burning from the fullness of Being.
There are philosophers who deny all permanent exis-

*The Hon. Roden Noel in Contemporary R^viev for June, 1872,
p. 94. t Ibid. p. 99.



THOMAS HOBBES 61

tence, inclusive of that which I call personal identity.
They agree with Heraclitus that the universe is mere
yti ffftc, or becoming, without any subtratum of oiVi a,
or being.* They say that I am conscious of mind in
myself as a series of my own states of consciousness;
that I think of other minds only in terms derived from
my own; that mind, therefore, means to me a series of
conscious states. This argues the impossibility of my
conceiving any originating mind as first cause of the
universe. "How is it possible for me to conceive an
originating mind which I must represent to myself as
a single series of states of consciousness, working the

* " The principal feature in the conception of being is rest, fixed
ness. Now the opposite of this is the principal feature in the con
ception of becoming. It is unrest, unfixedness. A thing never rests at
all in any of the changing states into which it is thrown. It is in the
state and out of it in a shorter time than any calculus can measure. In
faft the universe and all that it contains are undergoing a continuous
change in which there is no pause; and therefore since pause or rest
is necessary to the conception of being, the universe cannot be said
to be in a state of being or fixedness, but in a continually fluxional
condition, to be a process, a becoming, that is, something always
changing, and no one of its changes enduring or stopping during any
appreciable interval of time. If the change could be arrested for a
single instant, that would yield a moment of what might properly
be called being; but inasmuch as no change can be so arrested, the
universe is a continual creation, a continually varying process, a
becoming" Ferricr s Lcftures on Greek Philosophy, Heraclitus, 10.
Thus, as the professor goes on to exemplify, the velocity of a falling
body is "always becoming," for it is "always changing." It has no
" certain constant velocity for the smallest conceivable time." In the
"roseate hues" of a "gorgeous sunset," "before any one colour
has had time to be that colour, it has melted into another colour";
and " you never, even for the shortest time that can be named or
conceived, see any abiding colour, any colour which really i>."
According to Heraclitus there is no more permanence about sub
stances and persons than about the rate of a falling stone or the
tints of a sunset; all things are in a flux and nothing endures.