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

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."

Grace, Merits, Reprobation, etc., is fully de
cided and cleared: in answer to a Treatise Writ
ten by the Bishop of Londonderry on the same
subject

I

"\ 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



2 FREE WILL

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 the
will 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-



THOMAS HOBBES 3

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



4 FREE WILL

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-



THOMAS HOBBES 5

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.



6 FREE WILL

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



THOMAS HOBBES 7

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."*

II

"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.



8 FREE WILL

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-



THOMAS HOBBES 9

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



io FREE WILL

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.

Ill

"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.



THOMAS HOBBES n

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,



12 FREE WILL

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.



THOMAS HOBBES 13

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



1 4 FREE WILL

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

IV

"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



THOMAS HOBBES 15

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.



1 6 FREE WILL

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.

V

" 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



THOMAS HOBBES 17

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-

2



i 8 FREE WILL

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.



THOMAS HOBBES 19

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.



20 FREE WILL

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.



THOMAS HOBBES 21

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.



22 FREE WILL

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.

VI

" 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-



THOMAS HOBBES 23

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



24 FREE WILL

reproach, as stimulants corrective of his will, but in your
heart you cannot reproach him, for what else could he
have done?

VII

" 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,



THOMAS HOBBES 25

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.



26 FREE WILL

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.



THOMAS HOBBES 27

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



28 FREE WILL

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."

VIII

"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.



THOMAS HOBBES 29

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.



30 FREE WILL

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



THOMAS HOBBES 31

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.

IX

"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.



32 FREE WILL

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



THOMAS HOBBES 33

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.

3



34 FREE WILL

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

X

"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.

XI

"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



THOMAS HOBBES 35

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.



36 FREE WILL

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.

XII

"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.



THOMAS HOBBES 37

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



38 FREE WILL

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



THOMAS HOBBES 39

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




THOMAS HOBBES 41

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.



42 FREE WILL

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.



62 FREE WILL

infinitely multiplied sets of changes simultaneously
going on in worlds too numerous to count, dispersed
through a space that baffles imagination?"* How
indeed, if really I be myself nothing but a flux of states
of consciousness?

But it is not only GOD, His eternity and existence,
that vanish under the analysis of Heraclitus; we and
the objects of our experience equally disappear. We are
always becoming older. But if nothing is permanent in us,
it is not we that become older: the term we is inept. We
do not become anything, and, according to Heraclitus,
we are not anything. There is an end of us; an end also
of what we experience, for nothingness can experience
nothing. So one might improve upon the Heraclitean
formula, and instead of "all things are in a flux " (TTIIVTO.
pi) read "all things have vanished" (irdvTa. E/O/OH), or
with Napoleon flying from Waterloo, Tout est perdu.

Such is the evil end to which a philosophy comes
which has made a bad start. The starting point of philo
sophy, and indeed of thought, is the fact of conscious
ness, I am. Thence our thought flies to beings distinct
from ourselves, and to a being of beings, which is GOD,
Speculative thinkers have dwelt upon the notion of being
to the undue neglect of the I who am. They have
ignored their own personality, and the personality of
their Creator, to glorify an abstraction. Then the ab
straction has been discovered to be an abstraction, and
flung aside accordingly, without concern for its founda-

* Herbert Spencer in Contemporary Review for June, 1 872, p. 151.
A series of states of consciousness could not work the universe; but
such a series is not GOD. See St Thomas, Summa contra Gentiles, i,
ch. liv.



THOMAS HOBBES 63

tion in f;ict. Being has yielded to becoming. But the
forgotten ego cries out against the usurpation both of
beingand becoming. Heracliteans are ever talkingabout
themselves, and thereby giving the lie to their own im
personal teachings. When will these philosophers retrace
their steps and start afresh from the practice of the
Delphic counsel, "Know thyself"? Man s self is a noble
object to study for its own sake; yet not for that sake
would the counsel be worthy to be inscribed on a tem
ple. An inscription fit for a holy place should contain
a revelation of GOD. "Know thyself "contains that reve
lation: it induces knowledge of GOD. Psychology
forms the groundwork of natural theology.

XVII

" Liberty is the absence of all the impediments to
action that are not contained in the nature and intrin-
sical quality of the agent; as, for example, the water is
said to descend freely, or to have liberty to descend by
the channel of the river, because there is no impedi
ment that way, but not across, because the banks are
impediments. And though the water cannot ascend, yet
men never say it wants the liberty to ascend, but the
faculty or power, because the impediment is in the nature
of the water and intrinsical. So also we say, he that is
tied wants the liberty to go, because the impediment
is not in him, but in his bands; whereas we say not so
of him that is sick or lame, because the impediment is
in himself."

Free will goes further than this. "The nature and
intrinsical quality of the agent" determines his spon
taneous attitude to any motive that is applied to him:
it does not determine him to identity himself with that



64 FREE WILL

motive upon advertence, and make it his own by con
sent and acceptance. He so consents, if he does con
sent, that under the same collocation of motives, with
the same character and antecedents, and under the same
spontaneously determined attitude of will, he might still
have held back his consent and not made up his mind
to anything. The alternative for the moment, I observe
once more, is not between consent and positive rejec
tion: that would be "liberty of contrariety," and free
will does not go so far. The alternative is between con
sent and the mere negative attitude of a mind not yet
made up; between volition x and zero of volition: that
is properly called "liberty of contradiction," and in
"liberty of contradiction" human free will essentially
consists. Evidently, this is more than "liberty from
constraint," which is the utmost liberty that Hobbes
and other determinists concede. Some of them are
pleased to call it "self-determination," but their " self-
determination" is not free will. These "self-determi-
nists" are as good determinists, and as true necessa
rians, as Thomas Hobbes himself, only less outspoken.
Metaphorically, we say that the water flows freely in
a river when it appears to flow according to its own
choice, seeking its level as man seeks his good. We
say that an untethered mare is free to run away, be
cause she is left to her own proclivities. In a word, we
call all those things free which are allowed to behave
according to their natures. What then? Does it follow
that a London citizen is not free in any higher sense
than that in which a horse at grass, or the water of the
Thames, is free? Hardly, unless it appear that the water



THOMAS HOBBES 65

and the horse are man s natural equals. But if huma
nity rises superior over bestiality and water-power, it
may be expected that the citizen, following his nature,
shall be free in one way; and Bucephalus and the
Thames, following their respective natures, shall be
free in their own way, but not in his. According to
Hobbes, they are all free in the same way. He sapi-
ently explains how the river is free, and concludes that
man can have no other freedom.

Man s nature is neither purely material, nor purely
animal, nor purely intellectual, but a compound of the
three. A material nature moves whither it is drawn or
thrust without feeling the motion, particle supplanting
particle by mere material laws: an animal nature makes
for pleasurable feelings and avoids painful feelings, real
or imaginary; it is ruled by those feelings as a needle
by a magnet. Various functions of man s organic life
are discharged by animal appliances, when higher direc
tive powers are in abeyance. An intellectual nature
essentially knows itself. It is ruled by perfect good,
according to the highest conception which it has framed
of good. When man reflects what he is about, he occu
pies an intellectual position. Finding himself realising
what is to him a thoroughly adequate and satisfactory
good, he must will that object. But finding a good in
adequate and unsatisfactory, he may hold back his
volition. It is not in any nature to be ruled by what
fails to content it. The swine devours its acorns per
force, for it has no sense of better things, and the acorns
yield perforce to be crunched by the swine, for they
have no sense at all. But man takes his food freely: he

5



66 FREE WILL

has visions of what he prefers to meat and drink. An
anomaly here appears to obtain that, while brute matter
and brute beasts are guided in their behaviour by ade
quate objects, man alone is left to act upon inadequate
grounds. But we must remember that man, too, has
his adequate Object, only out of reach for the present
life.

XVIII

"I conceive that nothing taketh beginning from
itself, but from the action of some other immediate
agent without itself; and that therefore, when first a
man hath an appetite or will to something, to which
immediately before he had no appetite nor will, the
cause of his will is not the will itself, but something
else not in his own disposing."

The meaning here is that all change is produced,
not by the subject of the change, but by some being
external to the subject. The assertion is true, and borne
out by enumeration of instances. Thus an element of
matter is moved, not by any self-moving agency, for
it is inert, but by the agency of another element. And
man s mind, it seems to me, never directly induces
upon itself a modification entirely new. I agree that,
"when first a man hath an appetite or will to some
thing, to which immediately before he had no appetite
nor will, the cause of his will [in that first stage of
volition] is not the will itself, but something else not
in his own disposing." What I have denominated
"spontaneous complacency," results in the mind with
out the person s authorship: it arises either through a
sensation, as when one catches sight of a beautiful ob
ject; or through an association, as when the [pre-



THOMAS HOBBES 67

established connexion of thoughts brings up the idea
of the destruction of an enemy. Such a complacency
in me is not mine: I have neither summoned nor
sanctioned it, although I may be to some extent re
sponsible for its coming, inasmuch as my previous acts,
or my present negligence, may have facilitated its
access to me. I can exercise no act properly my own,
no act, that is to say, of free will, without an antece
dent act which is not properly my own, namely, an
act of spontaneous complacency. For a free volition is
a sustaining of a complacency spontaneously arisen,
after advertence to the insufficiency of the same. And
this distinction, between the spontaneous and the re
flex act of the will, annuls Hobbes s conclusion here
drawn, "that voluntary actions have all of them neces
sary causes"; for spontaneous volitions are traceable
to necessary causes, but reflex volitions ordinarily
are not.

XIX

" I hold that to be a sufficient cause, to which no
thing is wanting that is needful to the producing of
the effect. The same also is a necessary cause. For if
it be possible that a sufficient cause shall not bring
forth the effect, then there wanteth somewhat which
was needful to the producing of it, and so the cause
was not sufficient. . . That ordinary definition of a free
agent, namely, that a free agent is that which, when
all things are present which are needful to produce
the effect, can nevertheless not produce it, implies a
contradiction that is nonsense; being as much as to say
the cause may be sufficient, that is to say necessary,
and yet the effect shall not follow. . . That there is no
such thing as an agent, which when all things requi-



68 FREE WILL

site to action are present, can nevertheless forbear to
produce it; or, which is all one, that there is no such
thing as freedom from necessity, is easily inferred from
that which hath been before alleged. For if it be an
agent, it can work; and if it work, there is nothing
wanting of what is requisite to produce the action,
and consequently the cause of the action is sufficient;
and if sufficient, then also necessary, as hath been
proved before."

Wherever there is a cause sufficient, in the Hob-
besian sense of the term sufficient^ for a necessary effect,
there the cause is necessary and the effect will neces
sarily ensue. All effects of matter acting upon matter
are necessary effects. Wherever then material sub
stances are found in collocation, there is necessarily
wrought a determination towards movement, the effect
of the action of matter on matter. But given a cause
insufficient for a necessary effect, not even Hobbes
would say that that cause was necessary, or that the
effect was necessarily to follow. Now, in the human
mind, a motion of complacency may possibly arise,
which, being adverted to, will be necessarily sustained.
That is the case where the object appears to the sub
ject in the light of a perfect good. There we see a
necessary volition complete. But suppose the object of
the complacency, when examined, appears to be not
without its drawbacks. Such an object is not a sufficient
cause of a necessary volition. Man s will is above be
ing necessitated by what does not satisfy his desire.
Consequently no necessary volition will follow the ap
prehension of that object. If a volition does follow, it
will be not necessitated but free. There is sufficient






THOMAS HOBBES 69

cause for a free volition, but not sufficient cause for a
necessary volition.

At that rate, Hobbes would contend, no volition
could follow at all. I am unable to agree with him there.
The object of man s will is good. Perfect good he must
love; imperfect good he may love. His necessary ad
hesion to the former does not cut him off from freely
adhering to the latter. It is natural for him to love
good in any shape, although not with a necessary love,
except the good which he apprehends to be perfect.
Let us contemplate the case of a mother with her child.
Supremely dear he is to her heart. For his sake she
loves what is connected with him, his playmates, his
playthings, clothes, pictures and familiar haunts, all
that is like him, and all that he is fond of. I have little
doubt that her love for her son is necessitated. She
cannot choose but love him. She cannot possibly will
to do him an injury. But the things which she loves
for his sake she regards with an inferior affection. She
might find it in her heart to burn his likeness, though
she could not allow the sun s rays to beat fierce on
his head. The necessity under which she lies of loving
him leads to a secondary love for what relates to him,
which secondary affection, however, does not possess
the cogency wherewith the primary love is endowed.

We must not forget that a free volition is not an
entirely new move in the mind. Some motion towards
the thing willed there was already, and that of neces
sity: the conscious acceptance and confirmation of that
motion transforms it from necessary to free. Now I
maintain as a notorious fact of consciousness, upon



70 FREE WILL

which no necessarian has ever thrown a doubt, that we
are able advertently to make up our minds to an arrange
ment wherewith we are not altogether pleased. We
subscribe our Le Roi le veut, though intelligence, the
the king within us, conceives, and desire yearns after,
a better measure than that. We then will without a
sufficient cause for a necessary volition. There ^anteth
somewhat which was needful to the production of it. There
fore no necessary volition is produced; but the volition,
which is produced, is free.

XX

"It is necessary that to-morrow it shall rain or
not rain. If therefore it be not necessary it shall rain,
it is necessary it shall not rain, otherwise there is no
necessity that the proposition, it shall rain or not rain,
should be true. I know there be some that say, it may
necessarily be true that one of the two shall come to
pass, but not singly, that it shall rain, or that it shall
not rain, which is as much as to say, one of them is
necessary, yet neither of them is necessary; and there
fore to seem to avoid that absurdity, they make a dis
tinction, that neither of them is true determinate, but
indeterminate; which distinction either signifies no
more but this, one of them is true, but we know not
which, and so the necessity remains, though we know
it not; or if the meaning of the distinction be not that,
it hath no meaning, and they might as well have said,
one of them is true tityrice, but neither of them tupa-
tulice"*

The handling this argument is simply an exercise

in formal logic. If we consider what manner of asser-

*Tityre, tu patuli recubans sub tegmine fagi. 1)irgi/, Eclogue I.



THOMAS HOBBES 71

tion a disjunctive proposition makes, we shall easily
perceive that no proof of necessarianism can be ex
tracted out of the law of excluded middle, that every
thing necessarily either is or is not. Since the operations
of inanimate nature, so far as that nature is concerned,
are acknowledged on all hands to be necessary, I will
alter the example to this: "It is necessary that to
morrow Philip shall sin or not sin." If Hobbes can
show that sin in Philip, supposed to be alive and in
the exercise of his faculties to-morrow, is either a ne
cessity or an impossibility, he has gained the cause.

Logically examined, the disjunctive proposition,
"To-morrow Philip must either sin or not sin," is
tantamount to these two: (i) the assertion of Philip s
sinning to-morrow necessarily involves the denial of
his not sinning; (2) the denial of Philip s not sinning
to-morrow necessarily involves the assertion of his
sinning.

If Hobbes, out of these two propositions, can
gather the conclusion that "if it be not necessary
Philip shall sin, it is necessary he shall not sin," he is
welcome to his victory. But he does not gather that
conclusion out of those two propositions, but out of
the two following, into which he virtually analyses the
disjunctive, "To-morrow, Philip must either sin or
not sin": (i) the assertion of Philip s sinning to-mor
row involves the denial of his not necessarily sinning;
(2) the denial of Philip s sinning to-morrow involves
the assertion of his necessarily not sinning.

No logician can admit that this second pair of
propositions contain formally the same statements as



72 FREE WILL

the first pair. Nor will the adequacy of the first ana
lysis be questioned by any one acquainted with formal
logic. Therefore the second analysis is incorrect, and
the attempt of Hobbes to draw a proof of necessari-
anism out of the formal law of excluded middle is a
pronounced failure.

The two members of a disjunctive proposition are
like two balls flung into the air, with a string connec
ting them. Each ball is fastened, and yet both balls are
loose. Each member of the disjunction is declared ne
cessary, hypothetically upon the denial of the other; yet
neither member is vouched for as being tethered with
an absolute necessity. This must be, if that is not; and
that, if this is not. We do not say: This must be, simply:
nor, That must be, simply. The disjunctive form is no
evidence for or against the absolute necessity of either
member of the disjunction. Hobbes s argument is per
haps confuted more plainly by this similitude of the
two balls tied together, than by the distinction of de
terminate and indeterminate, or even ffynfiand tupatulice.



JOHN LOCKE



JOHN LOCKE

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

I

far as a man has power to think or not to think,
to move or not to move, according to the prefer
ence or direction of his own mind, so far is a man
free."

It is characteristic of Locke as a writer to refuse to
acknowledge difficulties. Where other philosophers
check their pace, and tread warily, and whisper in
one another s ear that they are drawing nigh to a very
grave question, Locke flies forward with a bound, and
overpowers the question, and beats it down low, and
lays the answer open, as he declares, to any ordinary
understanding. This procedure has its advantages.
Difficulties in metaphysics, as in government, in trade
or in travel, are often creatures of the imagination.
The remedy in such cases is to act and cease to ima
gine. Still there are difficulties, real difficulties, on
every line. To ignore them is not to surmount them,
but to bequeath them to posterity. When Locke sought
to silence the strife about the real essences of substan
ces by proclaiming them unknowable, he left it for
Berkeley and Hume in the next generation to ask
whether substance had any real essence at all. So the
award just pronounced by him on the question of free



76 FREE WILL

will is plain and intelligible; but I fear it is also irrele
vant and superficial, and quite fails to touch the point at
issue. The strife between necessarians and libertarians
precisely concerns that preference or direction of his
own mind, which Locke assumes. How does the mind
prefer thinking of a thing to not thinking of it ? How
does the mind direct movement rather than rest ? Does
it prefer or direct in such a way as that it could not
possibly prefer or direct otherwise? This is the ques
tion to which necessarians answer yes, and libertarians
no; and which Locke s definition of freedom touches
not at all.

In proof of the insufficiency of the definition, let me
show that it applies to cases of the most rigid necessity.
A clock is in no sense a free agent. Yet a clock might
be called free when it has power to move or not to
move, according to the preference and direction of its
own workings. It would then be free from all extra
neous, all "anti-horological" interference, such as that
of a child gluing the fingers to the dial or playing with
the weights. Locke, I know, speaks, not of the work
ings of a machine, but of the direction of a man s own
mind; and he refuses, rightly enough, to recognise any
liberty away from mind. But is not this the point in
dispute, whether our minds are wound up like clocks,
to prefer and direct us to certain motions, or whether,
they have a command over themselves, placed in them
selves alone, which machines have not ? If the latter is
the true idea of freedom, Locke s definition fails to
convey it.



JOHN LOCKE 77

II

" Wherever any performance or forbearance are not
equally in a man s power; wherever doing or not doing
will not follow equally upon the preference of his mind
directing it, there he is not free, though perhaps the
action may be voluntary. . . Suppose a man to be car
ried, whilst fast asleep, into a room, where is a person
he longs to see and speak with, and be there locked
fast in, beyond his power to get out; he awakes, and
is glad to find himself in so desirable company, which
he stays willingly in, i.e., prefers his stay to going
away. I ask, is not this stay voluntary? I think nobody
will doubt it; and yet, being locked fast in, tis evident
he is not at liberty not to stay; he has not freedom to
be gone."

Let me too cite an imaginary instance. Suppose a
man s mark to be required to a paper in order to the
perpetration of a fraud, and another seizes his hand, and
by overpowering constraint traces with it the mark re
quired; and the man whose hand is held, though he
cannot help himself, makes the mark with a hearty good
will. I ask, is not the man thus constrained a defrauder?
I do not mean a defrauder before the law, for the law
takes cognisance only of the outward act, which is here
evidently constrained, but a defrauder in conscience and
before heaven? I think nobody will doubt it; and yet,
his hand being held, it is evident that he is not at liberty
not to make the mark, he has not freedom to withhold
it. How then is his action wrong, if he does it not
freely? It is not so much the action as the act that is
wrong. The physical action of marking the paper must
be performed by him whether he will or no, and none



78 FREE WILL

can blame him for that his hand is forced; but the
mental act by which he approves of the marking is an
approval which he might have withheld, which he freely
bestows, and for which GOD holds him culpable. The
man who affixes his mark under such circumstances is
at once a voluntary agent, and a free agent, and a guilty
agent; voluntary, because he wills what he does; free,
because he need not have willed it; and guilty, because
he freely wills to do a fraudulent thing.

Ill

" If this be so, as I imagine it is, I leave it to be con
sidered whether it may not help to put an end to that
long agitated, and, I think, unreasonable because unin
telligible question, viz., whether man s will be free or
no. For if I mistake not, it follows, from what I have
said, that the question itself is altogether improper; and
it is as insignificant to ask whether man s will be free,
as to ask whether his sleep be swift, or his virtue square;
liberty being as little applicable to the will as swiftness
of motion is to sleep, or squareness to virtue. Every one
would laugh at the absurdity of sucha question as either
of these, because it is obvious that the modifications of
motion belong not to sleep, nor the difference of figure
to virtue. And when any one well considers it, I think
he will plainly perceive that liberty, which is but a
power, belongs only to agents and cannot be an attri
bute or modification of the will, which is also but a
power. . . For can it be denied that whatever agent has
a power to think on its own actions, and to prefer their
doing or omission, either to other, has that faculty
called will? Will then is nothing but such a power.
Liberty, on the other hand, is the power a man has to
do or forbear doing any particular action, according as



JOHN LOCKE 79

its doing or forbearance has the actual preference in
the mind, which is the same thing as to say, according
as he himself wills it."

A rambler in a hilly country will come sometimes
upon a sheet of water, sombre, still and solemn, which
partly from its own appearance, and partly from the
ideas of size impressed by the heights around, he will
judge to be very deep. He tries the experiment of going
into it, and finds it a shallow with a bottom of black
mud. And so the reader of Locke s great work, when
he arrives at the striking passage just quoted, a passage
that marks an epoch in the free will controversy, is seized
with awe, and doubts not, as well from the reputation
of the author as from the originality of the statement,
that the reasoning which underlies it must be profound
indeed. But when the first surprise is over, if he coolly
proceeds to reduce the wondrous argumentation into
form, another wonder will start up, how the shallow
sense therein contained can have passed with so many
readers for deep discernment.

Locke s definitions of will and freedom may be given
as follows:

Will is power of thinking on one s own actions, and
preferring their doing to their omission, or their omis
sion to their doing.

Liberty is power of doing or forbearing to do any
action, according as its doing or forbearance has the
actual preference in the mind.

Which definitions amount to these:

Will is power of choosing.

Liberty is power of acting according to choice.



8o FREE WILL

From which definitions it follows that this proposition,

The will has freedom (or)

The will is free,
is equipollent with this:

The power of choosing has the power of acting ac
cording to choice.

But that proposition is absurd, since one power cannot
have another power. Therefore the proposition, "The
will is free," is absurd, unintelligible, meaningless and ir
relevant, or, as Locke says, insignificant and improper.

This is Locke s line of argument, and no one can
deny that the conclusion of it does follow from the
premisses, which are definitions. But as one definition
is wrong and the others defective, the whole argument
must be said decidedly to halt. These are the definitions
that I would substitute for them.

Will is power of consciously rejecting evil and
choosing good.

Freedom is the not being under constraint to reject
any but sheer evil, or choose any but sheer good.

So that the proposition, "The will is free," means:

The power of consciously rejecting evil and choosing
good is not under constraint to reject any but sheer evil,
or to choose any but sheer good.

There is sense, I contend, in this proposition, whether
it be true or not.

Therefore I demand that to the proposition, "The
will is free," there be restored that intelligibility, sig
nificance and relevance which Locke has unwarrantably
denied to it.

Free will is a power, the same power as the will, as



JOHN LOCKE 8 1

St Thomas shows,* but the liberty or freedom of the
will is not a power but an incident of a power: it is
annexed to the condition under which the power of
rejecting evil and choosing good is exercised; which
condition is this, that sheer good must not be rejected,
nor sheer evil chosen. Sheer good to a person is that
which thoroughly meets the requirements of his nature;
and sheer evil that which meets those requirements in
no way whatever. But the objects with which the human
will is ordinarily conversant are neither sheer good nor
sheer evil: they are good and evil mixed: they partly
satisfy us and partly not. In the not being tied fast to
such objects of choice that liberty consists which is
incident to the faculty or power called the human will.

IV

"We may as properly say that tis the singing fa
culty sings, and the dancing faculty dances, as that
the will chooses, or that the understanding conceives.
... I think the question is not proper whether the will
be free, but whether a man be free."

Is not the question, whether a man be free to will ?
Instead of debating that, Locke inquires whether a
man be free to do what he wills. For, he asks, how
can we think any one freer than to have the power to
do what he will ?

Of course it is the man himself that sings with his
singing faculty, dances with his dancing faculty, chooses
with his will, and conceives with his understanding.
Still we rightly say that the will chooses and the un
derstanding conceives, while we do not say that the

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

6



82 FREE WILL

singing faculty sings, or that the dancingfaculty dances.
The reason is not far to seek. Will and understanding
are faculties, answering to the Aristotelian SvvapiQ :
they are primitive powers. But dancing and singing
are not * faculties, as Locke is pleased to call them, but
habits, the Aristotelian t &g: they are acquisitions of
skill. Faculty is more intimate to man than habit;
and therefore, putting the part for the whole, we take
that part for the whole which is more representative
of the whole; and speak of the faculty doing what the
man does with the faculty.

V

" It passes for a good plea, that a man is not free
at all, if he be not as free to will, as he is to act what
he wills. Concerning a man s liberty, there is yet raised
this farther question, whether a man be free to will;
which, I think, is what is meant when it is disputed,
whether the will be free. And as to that, I imagine
that, willing or volition being an action, and freedom
consisting in a power of acting or not acting, a man
in respect of willing or the act of volition, when any
action in his power is once proposed to his thoughts,
as presently to be done, cannot be free. The reason
whereof is very manifest : for, it being unavoidable
that the action depending on his will should exist or
not exist; and its existence or not existence following
perfectly the determination and preference of his will;
he cannot avoid willing the existence or not exis
tence of that action. It is absolutely necessary that he
will the one or the other, i.e., prefer the one to the
other; since one of them must necessarily follow, and
that which does follow follows by the choice and de
termination of his mind, that is, by his willing it: for



JOHN LOCKE 83

if he did not will it, it would not be. So that, in res
pect of the ad of willing, a man in such a case is not
free: liberty consisting in a power to act or not to
ad, which, in regard of volition, a man upon such
a proposal has not. For it is unavoidably necessary
to prefer the doing or forbearance of an action in
a man s power, which is once so proposed to his
thoughts: a man must necessarily will the one or the
other of them, upon which preference or volition, the
action, or its forbearance, certainly follows, and is truly
voluntary; but the act of volition, or preferring one
of the two, being that which he cannot avoid, a man
in respect of that act of willing is under a necessity,
and so cannot be free; unless necessity and freedom
can consist together, and a man can be free and bound
at once. This then is evident, that in all proposals of
present action a man is not at liberty to will or not to
will, because he cannot forbear willing: liberty con
sisting in a power to act or to forbear acting, and in
that only."

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

First Argument

i. Every action dependent on a man s will must
either take place or not take place.



84 FREE WILL

2. Every action dependent on a man s will takes
place on condition that he wills it, and does not take
place on condition that he does not will it.

3. Therefore the man must will that the action
should take place, or will that it should not take place.

Second Argument

1. Every action dependent on a man s will takes
place by his willing it: for if he did not will it, it would
not be.

2. But he must will one way or the other.

3. Therefore, one way or the other, he wills of
necessity.

Third Argument

1. He who cannot forbear willing is not at liberty
to will or not to will.

2. Man cannot forbear willing, upon any proposal
of present action.

3. Therefore man is not at liberty to will or not to
will upon any proposal of present action.

The first remark that I have to make upon these
arguments is that they need lengthening out in order
to reach the heart of the matter of free will. If they
are valid, they prove that, when an action is proposed
to us, we must either positively consent or positively
refuse to do it: we are not free to abstain alike from
consent and refusal. But some, I suppose, contend that
this conclusion still leaves us free; since, though we
must exert an act of the will, it rests with us, they say,
to make that act a consent or a refusal. Though I do
not agree with those thinkers, their position, it seems to



JOHN LOCKE 85

me, has enough show of reason to render Locke s tri
umph incomplete until it is rebutted. But I deny that
conclusion (that we are not free to abstain alike from
consent and refusal), and challenge the arguments
alleged on its behalf.

_ In the first argument the first proposition is true by
virtue of what logicians call the law of excluded middle.
The first half of the second proposition is true by the
wording. The second half of that same proposition is
true as it stands: it is true that the condition for an
action, dependent on a man s will, not to take place, is
that he shall not will it to take place. But it is not
true that the condition for the action not to take place
is that he shall positively will its not taking place. That
is what Locke wishes to be understood in the second
half of this seemingly self-evident second proposition.
And that is the false conclusion which he gathers, with
a therefore prefixed, in the third proposition.

Surely, there is a difference between the negative
state of not willing and the positive act, I will not. There
is a difference between not saying yes and saying no.
There is a difference between not voting for a measure
and voting against it. When an action depends on my
willing it, that is, making up my mind that it shall be
done, my refraining from having any will, or making
up my mind at all upon the matter, is quite enough to
bar the action. I need not say, // shall not be; it will not
be unless I say, It shall. Otherwise there would be no
such thing in the world as irresolution. A man who
did not at once resolve on one course would thereby
have resolved on the other. Yet, who has not been ir-



86 FREE WILL

resolute, undecided, unable to make up his mind, a
prey to hesitation and doubt, in many a critical hour of
his life? It may be replied, however, that this state of
doubt consists, not in a withholding of the will, which
Locke argues to be impossible, but in a quick succes
sion of contradictory volitions. Is irresolution a state
of rest or of oscillation? Oscillation it is called by a
common figure of speech. The figure is so far correct,
inasmuch as a person in doubt inclines now to one
alternative and now to another. But does he will now
the one, now the other? I think he does not will in the
full sense of the term. For what is it fully and properly
to will? I conceive the process to be this. A good is
presented to the mind: a complacency is raised there
by: the person adverts to his complacency, and so ac
quiesces in it. Now, if I am not mistaken, an irreso
lute person does not ordinarily accomplish a series of
these processes in full. The advantages of one alterna
tive strike him with a liking for it, but, as he looks
inward, he does not approve of that liking; then come
the rival advantages, and affect him in the same way,
without his taking to them either. Thus he advances to
the first stage of volition on this side and on that, but
on neither side does he reach the second stage. I am
not denying that he may reach it and then go back;
but I say, so far as I can read my own consciousness
on the matter, and each man has no other conscious
ness to read but his own, that a man, when he hesi
tates, does not usually accomplish in succession a num
ber of complete conflicting volitions ; he does not usually
make up his mind fully for a thing and then fully against



JOHN LOCKE 87

it; but he does what the word hesitate signifies, he sticks
fast halfway in the process of willing; and the thing
which depends on his will is not done, simply because
he never thoroughly wills it. If this be so, the facl is
fatal to Locke s argumentation.

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

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

VI

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

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



88 FREE WILL

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

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

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



JOHN LOCKE 89

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



90 FREE WILL

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

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

VII

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

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



JOHN LOCKE 91

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



92 FREE WILL

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



JOHN LOCKE 93

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

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



94 FREE WILL

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

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

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



JOHN LOCKE 95

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

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

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



96 FREE WILL

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

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

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



JOHN LOCKE 97

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

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

7



98 FREE WILL

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

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

* Aug. in Ps. Ixxxiii.



JOHN LOCKE 99

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



ioo FREE WILL

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

VIII

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

* Aug. in Ps. Ixxxiv.



JOHN LOCKE 101

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

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

The exercise of this suspensory power is called by

Locke forbearance ; and he has already told us that

"mere forbearances require as much the determination

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

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



io2 FREE WILL

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

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



JOHN LOCKE 103

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



io 4 FREE WILL

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

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



JOHN LOCKE 105

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

IX

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

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

* An ape.



io6 FREE WILL

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

X

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

* Romans vi, 16, 18, 20.



JOHN LOCKE 107

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

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



io8 FREE WILL

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

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



JOHN LOCKE 109

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



i io FREE WILL

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

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

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



JOHN LOCKE in

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



DAVID HUME



DAVID HUME

An Inquiry concerning Human Understanding
Section VIII. Of Liberty and Necessity

I

M this circumstance alone that a controversy
has been long kept on foot, and remains still un
decided, we may presume that there is some ambi
guity in the expression, and that the disputants affix
different ideas to the terms employed in the contro
versy. . . This has been the case in the long disputed
question concerning liberty and necessity. . . I hope,
therefore, to make it appear that all men have ever
agreed in the doctrine both of necessity and of liberty,
according to any reasonable sense which can be put
on those terms; and that the whole controversy has
turned hitherto upon words."

We hear in this passage the echo of Locke s vehe
ment denunciation of words ill understood, as the
sources whence most disputes in philosophy spring.
But there is yet another fountain-head, whence con
tention issues in still greater volume. Many differ
ences amongst philosophers are traceable to words ill
understood, but many more to different aims in life
chosen and pursued. For philosophy is not a bare
speculation; it involves practice. From philosophy are
derived the laws of conduct.

The freedom of the will, if free it be, is a pragmatic
consideration for us all. It is a summons to responsi-



n6 FREE WILL

bility, to merit or demerit, to exertion, to fighting, to
victory or defeat. It means that we are not embarked
as otiose passengers, but we must work our passage
through life, and we shall drift to shipwreck if we will
not work. Though the LORD is our light and our sal
vation, we need to follow the light in order to attain
salvation. When we have wilfully loved darkness and
gone astray, the hope of reaching our destined end dies
down in our breasts; we become uneasy and repine at
our misconduct, which is exactly the frame of mind
wherein a man would gladly hear that there is no
free will, and consequently no ground for remorse, no
sin. Let the advocates of necessarianism consider what
a source of prejudice is here arrayed on their side. Then
they will be less hasty in giving judgement that con
sciousness does not witness to freedom, and that, apart
from misunderstandings of language, all mankind are
necessarians. Qui bono fait? Whose interest is it to
figure as one necessitated in all his actions ?

To form a rough guess whether a contradiction be
tween two philosophers is real or verbal, it is well
to look whether the two men agree in their practice.
If they do, there is reason to hope that their specula
tions are not really at variance, and that they might be
brought to manifest harmony by mutual explanation
and definition of terms. But where one disputant takes
one line of action, and his opponent acts just the re
verse way, there is indication of a conflict of thought,
which may be aggravated rather than appeased by a
removal of ambiguity of expression.



DAVID HUME 117

II

"It seems evident that if all the scenes of nature
were continually shifted in such a manner that no two
events bore any resemblance to each other, but every
object was entirely new, without any similitude to what
ever had been seen before, we should never in that case
have attained the least idea of necessity, or of a con
nexion among these objects. We might say, upon such
a supposition, that one object or event has followed
another; not that one was produced by another. The
relation of cause and effect must be utterly unknown
to mankind. Inference and reasoning concerning the
operations of nature would from that moment be at
an end; and the memory and senses remain the only
channels by which the knowledge of any real existence
could possibly have access to the mind. Our idea there
fore of necessity and causation arises entirely from the
uniformity observable in the operations of nature, where
similar objects are constantly conjoined together, and
the mind is determined by custom to infer the one
from the appearance of the other. These two circum
stances form the whole of that necessity which we ascribe
to matter. Beyond the constant conjunction of similar
objects, and the consequent inference from one to the
other, we have no notion of any necessity or connexion.
If it appear, therefore, that all mankind have ever al
lowed, without any doubt or hesitation, that these two
circumstances take place in the voluntary actions of
men and in the operations of mind, it must follow
that all mankind have ever agreed in the doctrine of
necessity, and that they have hitherto disputed merely
for not understanding each other."

However irregularly the scenes nf nature were shit-



n8 FREE WILL

ted, still I think we should not fail to attain some idea
of Jiecjsssitvj nay, I am not sure that the idea would
not be imprinted upon us even more vividly than it
is now. Suppose that, when a man rose in the morn
ing, the floor of his bedroom at first felt like thistles
and cut his feet: the moment after it was like smooth
glass: then it became a bog, and then a snowfield: sup
pose that the water with which he tried to wash turned
to ink, and then to treacle, and then to oil of vitriol;
that the soap burnt his skin and then gilt it; that his
stature grew and shrank through all sizes between
three feet and thirty; that he took by turns the shape
of every animal in the Zoological Gardens; and that
changes like these befell him all the days of his life
without any regularity of recurrence; still, I am apt
to reckon, if he preserved his personal identity, and
remained conscious to himself of an enduring self or
ego, he might attain an idea of necessity, clear and
distinct to a degree. For he would live under per
petual constraint. Nature is a stubborn thing for any
of us to deal with. Yet we know something of her ways
and observances, and can arrange our plans according
to them. The man I am supposing would desire and
contrive as we do, but, with the protean instruments
supplied to his hands, he would be for ever failing of
his purpose. Then he would understand what " I can
not " meant. And what else is it to say, " I cannot," but
to say, "Necessity is upon me"? "1 cannot speak,"
that is, "I am under a necessity of silence"; "I can
not help it," that is, " I needs must suffer it." We feel
the pressure of necessity when we realise the limita-



DAVID HUME 119

tion of our being and ability. Now what would a man
find himself able to do in a universe where law reigned
not ? When he hit upon an action that suited his pur
pose, he would try it again, but the same means might
not serve him another time. Then he would desire,
and desire in vain : so necessity would make herself
felt upon him. Who so necessitous as the impotent ?

The state of chaotic irregularity, which we imagined
for example s sake, was taken by Plato and his followers
to have been the actual state of the universe of matter,
before the supreme mind subjected it to law and uni
formity. "In those days," says Plato, "nothing had
any order except by accident, nor did anything at all
deserve to bear any of the names that now are used,
such zsfire, water, and the names of the other elements.
All this chaos the Artificer first sorted out and made
into a cosmos, and then out of it He constituted the
present universe."* And again: "God, finding the
whole visible universe not at rest, but moving in an
unharmonious and disorderly manner, reduced it from
disorder to order." f Now the name which the Plato-
nists gave to the primitive principle of capriciousness,
irregularity, inconstancy, and variation in nature, was
this very name of ava-y/o/, or necessity. Once more the
great founder of the school: "The universe is a com
pound, the result of a union of necessity and mind. . .
We must distinguish two sorts of causes, the one
necessary and the other divine."J It is usual to iden
tify freedom with caprice, and necessity with uni
formity. But a little consideration will show the reason
* Plato, Timaui, 69. t Id. ib. 30. \ Id. ib. 48, 68.



120 FREE WILL

that there was on Plato s side. It is essential to free will
that two men in the same situation should not inevi
tably make the same choice. Yet if both are equally
wise, and both choose for the best, they will in point
of fad often choose the same; for frequently there is
one best course evident to intelligence. Plato supposed
that nature was uniform, in so far as it was swayed by
the divine Mind for the best. On the other hand,
where there is no mind and no appreciation of good
ness, things will fall out blindly, capriciously, irregu
larly, or, as the Platonist said, by force of necessity,
by brute force, the vis consili expcrs of Horace. The
Greeks called that "necessity" against which human
contrivance was powerless. Now if nature were not
anywhere uniform, human contrivance would be
powerless everywhere.

We might then have an idea of necessity, even
though nature were not uniform. But nature is uni
form. Is then Hume right in saying that "our idea of
necessity and causation arises entirely from the uni
formity observable in the operations of nature"?
What is our idea of necessity, according to Sume?
He assigns two notes to that idea, "the constant con
junction of similar objects and the consequent infe
rence from one to the other." Uniform conjunction
prompting inference makes necessity, says Hume.
Happily for mankind, Hume is wrong. Happily for
mankind, I say: for were this analysis correct, it would
be a bar to all progress in the arts of life, and to all
amelioration of man s life on earth consequent upon
such progress. Let us consider for example the pro-



DAVID HUME 121

gress of surgery. Fifty years ago certain injuries were
uniformly conjoined with death, and death might be
inferred from the receiving of such injuries. If sur
geons had been guided by Hume, they would have
acquiesced in the necessity of death in such cases; they
would have avowed the impossibility of cure, and, says
Aristotle, "When the impossible is come upon, men
desist."* But enterprising and inventive men took
another course. "True," they said, "in the past people
always have died of these injuries, but that is no reason
why they always should die: what always has been,
need not be: past uniformity does not make necessity."
They tried new conditions, novel treatment, extra
precautions, and patients recovered. The necessary
then is not what always has been, but what in the na
ture of things must be:



Necessity is not constant conjunction, but implication.
"For a l On|UflftiOfi flm,flways is, belongs to the

actual order of fact; but a conjunction that must be,
appertains to the ideal order of possibility.^ and B
may ever coexist, as rue earth ana moon coexist, and
yet the idea of one does not include the idea of the
other: they may be separated in thought, though in
fact they will not be separated: their separation is an
intelligible hypothesis. On the other hand, were A and
B necessarily connected, the having them apart would
be a contradiction in terms: A without B would not
be A, and B without A would not be B, the one
supposing the other. No conceivable arrangement then
could separate the two.

* Etb. Nic. i.



122 FREE WILL

Such is the necessary connexion between a natural
effect and the causes that lead to it. When any material
agent acts, the action absolutely must be as it is. Not
only does the moon always draw after it the tidal wave,
it cannot do otherwise than draw it. For the moon and
the earth to be as they are without interference, and
yet for there to be no tide, is an hypothesis that can
not be expressed without simultaneous assertion and
denial of the nature of the two bodies. As the hypo
thesis is self-contradictory, so is the thing absolutely
impossible. Of course an arrangementmight be devised
to prevent the tides, but that would not be the present
arrangement. GOD Himself, if He wished the tide not
to rise, would not leave things exactly as they are,
without altering or adding to the forces now in opera
tion. As things stand, supposing no change in their
position, and no new force, natural or preternatural,
brought to bear, the tide must rise, it cannot but rise,
it rises not only invariably and uniformly, but of a
necessity.

By { necessary therefore I understand that which can
not but be. I proceed to examine whence this notion is
derived. It is not gathered from the study of external
nature alone, for, as Hume strongly urges, the utmost
which that study directly and by itself teaches is that
which always is. If all our knowledge was got by look
ing outside of ourselves, I doubt whether we should
have any idea of necessity, or of active causation, or
even of being. Hume in this argumentation tacitly
assumes that our knowledge is entirely procured by
looking outwards. On the unsound support of that



DAVID HUME 123

assumption the whole weight of his reasoning rests.
Let me repeat his words. He says that if nature were
not uniform, "inference and reasoning concerning the
operations of nature would from that moment be at
an end, and the memory and senses remain the only
channels by which the knowledge of any real exis
tence could possibly have access to the mind." Whence
I gather that under present conditions, where nature is
uniform, the only channels by which the knowledge of
any real existence can possibly have access to the
mind are the senses, the memory, and inferences and
reasoning concerning the operations of nature. The
senses, I presume, convey to us impressions of
what is outside of us, the memory reinstates those
impressions, and the reason sorts and arranges them,
like with like. Meanwhile, what is become of ourselves ?
Have we no knowledge of ourselves? or is self-con
sciousness a sensation, of what sense? Do we see or
hear or taste or smell self, or feel self with the sensory
papill<e of our fingers, or is the ego an organic sensa
tion like a stomach-ache, or a feeling of expanded
muscular energy such as a mower feels in cutting a
swathe? Or perhaps we remember ourselves. But how
can we remember that which we have not first appre
hended? And if self is not any operation of nature, and
our reasoning is only about operations of nature, I
am at a loss to conceive how we can attain to a
reasoned knowledge of self. And yet somehow we do
know self. We could not make / the subject of so
many certain asseverations, if / were an unknown
quantity or a meaningless name. But how the mean-



i2 4 FREE WILL

ing is discovered in Hume s detail of the mental

powers does not appear.

Therefore, besides memory and the senses and
reasoning about nature, we must mention self-con
sciousness as another "canal" by which "the know
ledge of real existence" has "access to the mind." It
is along this canal, if I mistake not, that the idea of
necessity travels most of its way. The following are
utterances of consciousness: / am, I do, I can, I can
not, I cannot but. In all these instances we have self
speaking to self on the present state of self. It is not
maintained that these truths of consciousness are re
cognised antecedently to all experience. However it
may be with pure spirits, in man certainly the ego is
not adverted to as a being and a power till after many
a feeling has entered in at the gates of the senses. Nor
are we aware of what we can do and what we cannot
before we have tried. But when we try and the effort
is in vain, in that position we are conscious of inability,
and we know that there are changes which we cannot
bring about. When we cannot bring about a change,
we are fain to let things remain as they are. Thus we
are conscious oil cannot but, that is, I must, lam under
a necessity. From / must the transition is easy to you
must, he must, it must. Here is the idea of necessity
arrived at by means of consciousness of self, working
concomitantly with experience of nature; in other
words, by the measurement of self against nature.
The uniformity of nature is irrelevant to this process.
Were nature a disorderly flux of changes, supposing
self to be constant, we should still battle against the



DAVID HUME 125

external chaos, and still appreciate I cannot and / must.
Of course, if self were fluxional likewise, we should
not gather the idea of necessity. But neither should
we gather any other idea, for there would be an end
of us.

We learn to pronounce brute nature necessitated
by marking it off from and contrasting it with our
own intelligent and free selves.

Ill

" It is universally acknowledged that there is a great
uniformity among the actions of men in all nations
and ages, and that human nature remains the same in
its principles and operations. . . Nor are the earth,
water, and other elements examined by Aristotle and
Hippocrates, more like to those which at present lie
under our observation, than the men, described by
Polybius and Tacitus, are to those who now govern
the world. . . We must not, however, expect that this
uniformity of human actions should be carried to such
a length, as that all men in the same circumstances
will always act precisely in the same manner, without
making any allowance for the diversity of characters,
prejudices and opinions. Such a uniformity in every
particular is found in no part of nature. Thus, for in
stance, in the human body, when the usual symptoms
of health or sickness disappoint our expectations; when
medicines operate not with their wonted power; when
irregular events follow from any particular cause; the
philosopher and physician are not surprised at the mat
ter, nor are ever tempted to deny in general the neces
sity and uniformity of those principles by which the
animal economy is conducted. They know that a human
body is a mighty complicated machine, that many secret



126 FREE WILL

powers lurk in it which are altogether beyond our
comprehension, that to us it must often appear very
uncertain in its operations, and that, therefore, the
irregular events which outwardly discover themselves
can be no proof that the laws of nature are not ob
served with the greatest regularity in its internal
operations and government. The philosopher, if he be
consistent, must apply the same reasoning to the
actions and volitions of intelligent agents."

Hume s argument forms a syllogism to this effect:
Necessity is the constant conjunction of similar objects,
and the consequent possibility of inference from one
to the other: but such a conjunction and potential
inference obtains in human volition: necessity, there
fore, obtains in human volition. The major premiss
of this syllogism I have combated in the previous
section. I have now to consider the minor, in proof
whereof Hume alleges this fact, that human, nature is
the same in all ages, a fact not wholly unquestioned
by the modern anthropologist. "Ambition, avarice,
self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit,
these passions," says our author, "mixed in various
degrees and distributed through society, have been,
from the beginning of the world, and still are, the
sources of all the actions and enterprises which have
ever been observed among mankind." Suppose that
this enumeration of human motives is complete, it
follows that men have the same sort of inducements
to action now as they had three thousand years ago:
it does not follow that the same inducement uniformly
begets the same action. Plato tells of an Athenian



DAVID HUME 127

citizen, who taking a walk along the wall that joined
Athens with the Piraeus, came to the place where the
bodies of criminals were exposed to public view after
death. Curiosity impelled him to go and have a look;
and, on the other hand, respect for self and for huma
nity, that peculiar feeling which the Greeks call ai&oc,
prompted him to avert his gaze and pass by. At last
he stretched his eyes wide open with his hands, and
rushed to see the sight, saying to his eyes: "There
now, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair spectacle."
An Englishman, placed to-day in the like circum
stances, would likewise be attracted by curiosity and
repelled by aiSwc : his character in all essential points
might resemble that Athenian s. But that he would
act in the same way, and that every one else, similarly
circumstanced and disposed, would do the like, is an
assumption that requires proof, other proof than the
mere showing that they would all have the same in
ducements for action.

An inducement is a motive upon which a person
may act. If the motive is strong, he probably will act
upon it. If it is overpowering, he must act upon it.
We observe motives of various degrees of strength
influencing men. We can estimate, more or less accu
rately, the power of a certain motive in a certain mind;
and often we can decrease or diminish it to serve our
purpose. Thus far the actions of our fellow-men are
submitted to our calculation and control. Society could
not go on otherwise. But that this calculation is always
certain, and this control in every respect entire, is a
position that no necessarian has dared to maintain.



i 2 8 FREE WILL

Necessarians undertake to show why volitions arc not
as amenable to our calculation as eclipses, and on the
supposition that volitions are in themselves as calcu
lable as eclipses, their explanation is excellent. But since
the absolute calculability of volitions is just the point in
dispute, their argument falls under that frequently
employed form called petitio principn, in which the
defects of the premisses are made good by begging what
should have been proved. From the fact that men are
influenced by motives, it follows that human actions
can be calculated to a certain extent; and so experience
shows that they can. From the libertarian doctrine that
men are not necessitated by motives, it follows that
human actions cannot be calculated with universal
certainty: neither is there any experience of any such
certain and universal calculation. It appears that ex
perience so far squares well with libertarian conclu
sions. No evidence for necessarianism can be got from
theorising upon facts which are just as well explained
on the hypothesis of free will.

But I am told that the success hitherto attained in
calculating human action forms only a fragment of the
proof of necessarianism, and cannot fairly be criticised
apart from the main argument. That argument runs
as follows: Where we have been able to get data and
to handle them, our calculations have never failed: we
have had experience of this in a sufficient number of
instances to warrant an induction, to the effect that
all results are calculable, given the data and the calcu
lating power: we find the volitions of men calculable
to some extent, which is so far in our favour, and on



DAVID HUME 129

the strength of the above-mentioned induction we
declare that the exceeding multitude and variety of
the antecedents to volition alone prevents us from
determining accurately in all cases the result which
uniformly and necessarily follows. This argument is
confirmed by the example of the weather. In the pre
sent state of knowledge, the weather is in some ways
less predictable than the actions of men: so that when
a man is unusually wayWard and unreliable we call
him a weathercock. A whimsical observer might thence
take occasion to assert free wind and free sunshine:
and he might show that his theory suited meteoro
logical facts quite as well as did the supposition of an
undiscovered uniformity.* Yet even the defenders of
free will avow that the assertion of free weather is
utterly demolished by the force of the induction already
stated. Is not this confession a virtual surrender of
the libertarian position ? Or take the instance which
Hume cites, of a disease which baffles the calculations
of the physicians. They do not jump to the conclusion
that the patient is afflicted by a free agency. A medical
man has had sufficient experience of nature to put
faith in the uniformity of her operations, even when
it is not apparent to his eyes. Outward irregularity is
to him no argument of the absence of inward law, for
he knows that "a human body is a mighty complicated
machine." Should not the psychologist reason as the
physician? Is not the human mind also "a mighty
complicated machine" ? Why should volition be frcc_

* Room is left for the theory that the weather is subject to occa
sional angelic interference.

9



1 30 FREE WILL

any more than the plague of Athens or the earthquake
of Lisbon ?

In brief, I rejoin that volition is free because it is
the act of a mind, and a mind is not a machine. Let
us take the induction that is alleged against free will,
and try it by the canons of sound inductive proof laid
down by Mill. The argument before us is one of the
sort which Bacon and Mill call "induction by simple
enumeration," where a law is proved by mere accu
mulation of instances. In that case, it is important that
the generalisation should not be extended to regions
where the circumstances are unlike those in the midst
of which the uniformity has been observed to obtain.
Thus from the fact that Roman Catholicism has at no
date hitherto been the only religion professed by men,
it would be rash to pronounce without further study
that Roman Catholicism will not be the only religion
on earth ten thousand years hence. We cannot fore
tell with anything like precision that a child, when he
is grown up, will be as we have known him in child
hood. The success of a form of government in Eng
land is not a sufficient guarantee of its succeeding in
Italy. The constitution under which we live and pro
sper, as our fathers before us, may not suit the temper
of our grandchildren. When a certain fact has been
noticed over and over again attending another fact,
the appearance of one becomes a sign of the other.
But if a third fact, momentous and novel, appears
upon the scene, the sign may be at fault, and it would
be imprudent to rely upon it, till fresh experience has
been procured of the altered state of things, or a bring-



DAVID HUME 131

ing to bear of previous knowledge has shown that the
new circumstance has not affected the character of the
sign. To apply this maxim to the case in question.
Wherever we have been able to get data, say the neces
sarians, or uniformists, if they prefer that name,
wherever we have been able to get data, which have
not baffled us by their detail, we have calculated the
resultant action unerringly: therefore all actions might
be surely deduced from their antecedent causes, sup
posing a completeness of data and a competent calcu
lating power: therefore, as the movements of a system
of weights and pulleys, so might the volitions of man
be rigidly calculated from their causes, which are the
motives and previous dispositions of the person. But,
I rejoin, there is one condition of deep significance
attaching to the operations of intelligent mind, and not
to the operations of matter. This condition, in the
libertarian view, renders the action of intelligence a
phenomenon sui generis, specifically distinct from the
phenomena of mechanics, chemistry, biology, and even
of mere sensation and animal impulse. This condition
is the foundation of free will. In virtue of the pre
sence of this condition it is maintained that the num
ber of instances which would suffice for an induction
in the grosser region of matter is not sufficient in the
finer domain of intelligence. The condition in ques
tion is reflex consciousness, or the power of adverting
to one s own mental states and recognising one s own
actions as one s own.

If anyone is still disposed to carry on the induc
tion from matter to mind, let him hear the eloquent



132 FREE WILL

language of Ferrier, speaking of "the great and ano
malous fad of human consciousness," an anomaly
sufficient to dissipate all surprise at what Bain is
pleased to call the " enormous theoretical difficulty,"
the "metaphysical deadlock," the "puzzle and para
dox of the first degree," the " inextricable knot " of
freewill.* I must premise that by " consciousness "
Ferrier means not direct but reflex consciousness, or
self-consciousness, or what I have termed " adver
tence."

"And truly this fact is well worthy of our regard,
and one which will worthily reward our pains. It is a
fact of most surpassing wonder; a fact prolific in sub
lime results. Standing aloof as much as possible from
our acquired and inveterate habits of thought; divest
ing ourselves as much as possible of our natural pre
possessions, and of that familiarity which has blunted
the edge of astonishment, let us consider what we
know to be the fact, namely, that existence, combined
with intelligence [?] and passion in many instances,
but unaccompanied by any other fact, is the general
rule of creation. Knowing this, would it not be but an
easy step for us to conclude that it is also the universal
rule of creation ? and would not such a conclusion be
a step naturally taken ? Finding this, and nothing
more than this, to be the great fact * in heaven and
on earth, and in the waters under the earth, would
it not be rational to conclude that it admitted of no
exception ? Such, certainly, would be the natural infer
ence, and in it there would be nothing at all surprising.
But suppose that when it was on the point of being
drawn, there suddenly, and for the first time, started
*The Emotions and the Will, p. 493.



DAVID HUME 133

up in a single Being a fact at variance with this whole
analogy of creation, and contradicting this otherwise
universal rule; we ask. Would not this be a fact attrac
tive and wonderful indeed ? Would not every attempt
to bring this Being under the great general law of the
universe be at once, and most properly, abandoned ?
Would not this new fact be held exclusively worthy
of scientific consideration, as the feature which dis
tinguished its possessor with the utmost clearness from
all other creatures, and as that which would be sure
to lead the observer to a knowledge of the true and
essential character of the being manifesting it ? Would
not, in fine, a world entirely new be here opened up
to research ? And now, if we would really behold such
a fact, we have but to turn to ourselves and ponder
over the fact of consciousness; for consciousness is
precisely that marvellous, that unexampled fact which
we have been here supposing and shadowing forth. "*

IV

"And indeed, when we consider how aptly natural
and moral evidence link together and form only one
chain of argument, we shall make no scruple to
allow that they are of the same nature and derived
from the same principles. A prisoner, who has neither
money nor interest, discovers the impossibility of his
escape, as well when he considers the obstinacy of the
gaoler, as the walls and bars with which he is sur
rounded; and, in all attempts for his freedom, chooses
rather to work upon the stone and iron of the one
than upon the inflexible nature of the other. The same
prisoner, when conducted to the scaffold, foresees his
death as certainly from the constancy and fidelity of
his guards, as from the operation of the axe or wheel.
Ferrier s Remains, vol. n, pp. 87, 88.



134 FREE WILL

His mind runs along a certain train of ideas: the refu
sal of the soldiers to consent to his escape; the action
of the executioner; the separation of the head and body;
bleeding, convulsive motions and death. Here is a con
nected chain of natural causes and voluntary actions;
but the mind feels no difference between them in pas-
ing from one link to another, nor is less certain of the
future event than if it were connected with the objects
present to the memory or senses by a train of causes
cemented together by what we are pleased to call a
physical necessity. ... A man who at noon leaves his
purse full of gold on the pavement at Charing Cross,
may as well expect that it will fly away like a feather,
as that he will find it untouched an hour after. About
one half of human reasonings contain inferences of a
similar nature."

Here is further proof of the minor premiss of the
syllogism which was put forward in the previous sec
tion. I admit, of course, that human behaviour is fre
quently matter of inference. The admission in noway
militates against free will, as may appear by the enun
ciation of two simple principles, which I call the
principle of habitual volition and the principle of
averages. A word upon each.

The principle of habitual volition may be stated
thus: a person who has his mind already made up to
do a thing, need not make it up afresh when the mo
ment for action comes. It is enough that he clings to
his habitual purpose; to which, if it is firm, and espe
cially if it has been frequently carried out in deed, he
will cling, unless some novel and extraordinary mo
tive arise to deter him. If, therefore, we know that a



DAVID HUME 135

person has made up his mind, and has no special mo
tive for unmaking it, we may reckon, with more or
less probability according to the circumstances of the
case, that he will acl: up to his resolve. This may be
most confidently anticipated, when a number of men
are publicly pledged to a common course of external
behaviour: for there the force of example operates to
prevent individual defection.

Thus the gaoler, that Hume speaks of, has deter-
termined not to let his prisoners escape. He did that
when he first entered into office, and long practice has
confirmed him in his determination. It is now a mat
ter of course with him to keep men in prison. He
never thinks of doing otherwise, except in extraordi
nary circumstances. As the prisoner in this case " has
neither money nor interest," his circumstances are not
extraordinary. The gaoler in guarding him does not
form a new acl: of will: his will is fixed already, and
takes effecl: accordingly, there being nothing to unfix it.
When in the beginning he undertook the charge of
prisoners, he did specially will to keep them, and that
volition was free. His detention of this prisoner, the
three-hundredth perhaps that he has lodged, is a
sequel to that volition, and may be reckoned surely to
follow from such an antecedent in the absence of un
common motives. The case is the same with the sol
diers on guard at the execution. They, too, are acting
out a previous resolution, which they have no temp-
tion to break. Military discipline largely consists in
an acquired readiness to acl automatically. But though
their performance of military duty in ordinary cases



136 FREE WILL

may be presumed from the fact of their being in the
army, disciplined to obey, and moving as one man
under the binding spell of sympathy and example, yet
their being in that state is the result of ads of indivi
dual volunteering and free choice, which could not be
calculated.

I pass to the enunciation of the second principle,
the principle of averages.

When from a knowledge of motives we can form
a probable anticipation of the behaviour of every in
dividual out of a large body, we possess a practically
certain foreknowledge of the behaviour of the genera
lity, which certitude becomes more indefectible as the
body is more numerous.

This is the foundation principle of the sciences of
human action. The statesman and the public econo
mist are not concerned to decide what this or that
particular man will do; their concern lies with the be-
haviour of the masses. Of them they can be sure: of
the individual they cannot, and care not to be. I bring
an example, which I single out because it has been
urged as irreconcilable with any theory of free will.*
Suppose the building trade becomes more lucrative
than the rest, at once it draws capital from the other
trades, until the equilibrium of profits is restored. This
occurrence may be looked for as confidently as the
motion of water to its level, though the latter is a phy
sical and the former a moral phenomenon. Still no just
suspicion is cast on the free will of the capitalist, who

* By Bain, Smotions and Will, p. 495, quoting from Samue
Bailey.



DAVID HUME 137

rushes into bricks and mortar. The determination to
turn builder is not absolutely calculable in the case
of an individual speculator. But it is calculable for the
generality, on the principle of averages, without pre
judice to the freedom of the individual.

When this formidable instance has been met, the
purse at Charing Cross presents little difficulty. I should
be loth to leave any purse of mine in so exposed a
situation, except on the motive which Diogenes had
in throwing his money into the sea, to get rid of it.
The speedy removal of such a purse is certain. The
police have their instructions in such cases; and need,
greed, or curiosity might necessitate some wills. But
the removal might be accounted for without allowing
that any will was necessitated thereto. The first passer
by, that was not a philosopher, would feel a violent
inclination to take the purse, and probably would take
it. Probability always conquers in the long run; and
here, with the probability so high, there would be no
long run.

V

" It would seem indeed that men begin at the wrong
end of this question concerning liberty and necessity,
when they enter upon it by examining the faculties of
the soul, the influence of the understanding, and the
operations of the will. Let them first discuss a more
simple question, namely, the operations of body and of
brute unintelligent matter."

If man were not a person, he would not be free. Bv^

u person 1 mean a being who realises in consciousness
that which is expressed in language by the first per-



138 FREE WILL

sonal pronoun, the English I. That act of conscious
ness is the fountain-head of liberty. It is wanting in
brute animals, and freedom is not in them. It might
have been also wanting in the paragon of animals.
Without self-consciousness man might not indeed have
formed general concepts, or spoken rational language;
but he could have constructed steam-engines, and laid
down railways, and reared palaces for hotels, and
piloted floating cities through the ocean. He might have
done these things as the bee builds her honeycomb and
the beaver his dam without knowing on what principle
they were done, or reflecting on himself as the doer of
them. Let only instinct of the same kind that guides
the beaver and the bee be given in fuller measure to
man, and the material triumphs of which this age is so
proud might all be achieved, without intelligence or
language, without self-consciousness or free will, by
beings in an everlasting state of infancy, not knowing
the difference between good and evil, between their
right hand and their left. Moreover, a utilitarian kind
of morality might be established among such subli
mated beavers. When Beaverman A, prompted by glut
tony, in the course of the uniform sequence of action
upon motive, partook of more meat and drink than
was consistent with the good of united Beaverdom,
the rest of the beaver brotherhood, alike obedient to
their motives, might muzzle their greedy kinsman for
a while, or draw one of his teeth, or otherwise pain him,
so that the recollection of what he had suffered should
counterpoise his appetite in the next temptation. It is
true that actual mankind do the like of this, when



DAVID HUME 139

they lock up a drunkard or whip a garrotter. It is true
that the bees on Hymettus built in some respects as
well as the men on the Acropolis. It is true, but it is
not the whole truth. The vice of the phenomenal, uni-
formist,or positive philosophy lies not so much in what
it affirms as in what it denies or overlooks. Thus it lays
stress on points of agreement between man and brute,
and slurs over what is much more important and valu
able, the points of contrast. Abstraction, language, self-
consciousness, these facts have slight justice done them
by positivist observers. One might think that the
school was so named because they posit the facts that
suit them, and suppress whatever their philosophy is
incompetent to explain. Else they might have con
sidered that, when man is punished, not only is physi
cal pain inflicted, as in the beating of a horse, but also
a moral reproach is cast, a stigma and brand of guilt.
Also, in comparing the doings of brute animals with the
doings of men, they might have contrived to escape a
little while from the cloud of anecdote, and examine in
the serenity of their own hearts how men act with
consciousness of themselves as authors of their action;
thence they might have gone back to inquire of the
brutes whether they too possessed self-consciousness,
and whether there was any grunt of a pig, or bark of
a dog, or neigh of a horse, or other cry of any brute
animal whatsoever, that could be taken to mean I know
what I am doing.

The dependence of free will on personality has been
often declared. A number of my companions go to a
place: I feel ashamed to be left behind: so I am dis-



HO FREE WILL

posed to go too. So far my state of mind involves no
personal or free aft. If the willing process in me were
completed there, as it is completed in other gregarious
animals, I could not help going, I must needsgo : liberty
to do otherwise would be out of the question. But I
advert to my disposition, and in that advertence of self
to self, in that conscious personal ad, my liberty begins.
In the light of this explanation let us view the sug
gestion of Hume, that men begin at the wrong end of
the question of liberty when they enter upon it by an
examination of the soul, the understandingand the will,
without a previous study of body and brute matter.
I remark that, though Hume speaks of beginning with
matter, his reasoning not only begins with matter but
ends there. He asserts certain fads and lays down cer
tain laws about the operations of brute agents, and thence
proceeds to extend those laws to intelligent agents, as
though there were no new fads in the case. Is intelli
gence a fad so attenuated and insignificant that no proof
even of its insignificance is required? Ama valde intel-
lettum, is St Augustine s advice: the sceptic Hume will
not throw on intelligence even a passing glance, and
that where the inquiry lies concerning the mode of
adion of an intelligent being. First appearances con
demn such inattention to fad: the subsequent disco
very that the fad so negleded is the cardinal point of
the case, excludes the argument from further hearing.
The operations of body and of brute unintelligent
matter may be the right end to begin at in this ques
tion of liberty and necessity, but assuredly it is the
wrong end to stop at.



DAVID HUME 141

In a good course of education the science of matter
is taught before the science of mind. Youths should
learn something of geometry, mechanics, astronomy,
chemistry and physiology, before advancing to psy
chology and metaphysics. The very derivation of the
name "metaphysics," ;ra TO ^wruca, points to this
procedure. The rule is to proceed from the more
simple to the more complex. In this order, geometry
superadds extension to the number that was treated of
in arithmetic: mechanics superadd force upon exten
sion: astronomy contemplates a particular disposition
of forces: chemistry superadds upon force that which
is known as chemical combination; and physiology
upon chemical combination superadds life. And be
yond physiology ranks psychology, the object-matter
of which is not simply a living organism but a con
scious mind. This being the order of precedence in
time amongst the sciences, a student would defeat the
end for which that orderis framed, if his mind refused to
take on new facts in his progress from science to science.
Suppose in mechanics he would attend to nothing but
extension, without regard to force, which of the phe
nomena of motion could he investigate to any pur
pose ? Could he, on grounds on pure geometry, arbi
trate the difference between Newton and Descartes as
to the motor power in the heavens ? Could he discuss
spontaneous generation on mechanical principles ? Me
chanical, or even chemical, biology is looked upon un
favourably by good judges of science. What, therefore,
should be thought of a mechanical, unconscious, imper
sonal psychology, and physical renderings of moral



1 42 FREE WILL

action ? Such explanations are at best incomplete; and
when they profess completeness, they become positively
erroneous.

VI

"The necessity of any action, whether of matter or
of mind, is not, properly speaking, a quality in the
agent, but in any thinking or intelligent being who may
consider the action; and it consists chiefly in the de
termination of his thoughts to infer the existence ot
that action from some preceding objects; as liberty,
when opposed to necessity, is nothing but the want of
that determination, and a certain looseness or indiffe
rence which we feel in passing or not passing from the
idea of one object to that of any succeeding one. Now
we may observe that, though, in reflecting on human
actions, we seldom feel such a looseness or indifference,
but are commonly able to infer them with considerable
certainty from their motives, and from the dispositions
of the agent; yet it frequently happens that, in per
forming the actions themselves, we are sensible of
something like it: and as all resembling objects are
readily taken for each other, this has been employed
as a demonstrative and even intuitive proof of human
liberty."

With the exception of some volitions of men and
angels, all things that happen in nature, all bodily and
mental actions of creatures, are necessary actions, ac
tions that cannot but follow upon their antecedents,
that is to say, upon the sum of relevant conditions,
positive and negative, going before. This attribute of
the actions, that they cannot but ensue under the cir
cumstances, is their necessity. Surely it is an attribute
of the actions themselves, wholly independent of any



DAVID HUME 143

human inference. Whether men infer it or not, the
action ensues and cannot but ensue. The sequence and
its inevitability together make an objective fad. The
necessity, Hume says, is "a quality in any intelligent
being who may consider the action: it consists chiefly
in the determination of his thoughts to infer, etc." No,
it is that which determines his thought to infer, and
that is no quality in him, but in the object which he
is studying. For however much he may determine his
thought to infer the sequence of the action, the action
will not ensue unless there be that in the object which
is of itself adequate to determine a well-informed mind
to infer the sequence. According to Hume, necessity
is confidence in inferring, and liberty is hesitation in
inferring. Then the necessity of the orbit of the moon
lies ("chiefly" at least, for Hume has the caution of
his race) in the confidence with which astronomers
calculate the moon s path in the heavens. Then, if
there were no calculating astronomers, where would
the moon be ? To ask such a simple question nowa
days is to incur the imputation of "dualism," and to
be taunted with one s ignorance of the great philoso-
pherforwhom Hume prepared theway,Kant. To Kant,
of course, necessity is a "form" of the mind. But I
leave Kant alone, and Hume so far as he is Kantian,
as he appears to be in this passage. I may as well avow
that I am a dualist, and hold by "things in themselves."*
There is, however, one case in which the liberty or

* For Necessity as a form of the mind, compare the remarks on
Contingency in my Of God and His Creatures, pp. 49, 50, 63, 244,
259. For Potentiality as involving "things in themselves," see ib.
pp. 17, 38, 39.



i 4 4 FREE WILL

necessity of an action belongs to the thinking or in
telligent being who considers it: I mean when the
action is that being s own. Hume in faltering accents
admits that, though we infer other people s conduct
from their antecedent motives and dispositions, we
are frequently at a loss to infer from those data what
step we ourselves are just about to take. And yet
there, where we are best informed, is just the case
where our prediction should be most confident and
unfaltering. Are we not acquainted with our disposi
tions by an experience commensurate with our ratio
nal lives ? How comes it then that we are so much at
fault in the prediction of our own immediately future
behaviour? From this perplexity English philosophers
may extricate themselves by a study of the English
language. Good grammar and sound psychology con
cur in proclaiming that it is not my business to calcu
late what I shall do, but to decide what I will do.
The distinction between shall and will is overlooked
by Hume, and by necessarians and uniformists gene
rally. No man in adjusting his W// reasons out his shall:
resolution and speculation are two acts incompatible
in the same instant.

VII

"Let any one define a cause, without compre
hending, as a part of the definition, a necessary con
nexion with its effect, and let him show, distinctly, the
origin of the idea, expressed by the definition; and I
shall readily give up the whole controversy. . . Had
not objects a regular conjunction with each other, we
should never have entertained any notion of cause
and effect, and this regular conjunction produces that



DAVID HUME 145

inference of the understanding, which is the only con
nexion that we can have any comprehension of. Who
ever attempts a definition of cause, exclusive of these
circumstances, will be obliged either to employ unin
telligible terms or such as are synonymous to the term
which he endeavours to define. Thus, if a cause be
defined, that which produces anything, it is easy to
observe that producing is synonymous to causing.
In like manner, if a cause be defined that by which
anything exists, this is liable to the same objection.
Had it been said that a cause is that after which any
thing exists, we should have understood the terms.
For this is, indeed, all that we know of the matter.
And this constancy forms the essence of necessity, nor
have we any other idea of it."

Another quotation, this time from Plato:

"And don t tell me, he said, that justice is duty,
or advantage, or profit, or gain, or interest, for that
sort of watery stuff won t do for me; I must, and will,
have a precise answer. . . You are a philosopher,
Thrasymachus, I replied, and well know that if you
ask what numbers make up twelve, taking care to pro
hibit the person whom you ask from answering twice
six, or three times four, or six times two, or four
times three, for this sort of nonsense won t do for me;
then, obviously, if that is your way of putting the
question to him, neither he nor anyone can answer.
And suppose he were to say, "Thrasymachus, what do
you mean? And if the true answer to the question is
one of these numbers which you interdict, am I to say
some other number, which is not the right one, is
that your meaning?" how would you answer him?
Yes, said he, but how remarkably parallel the two
cases are! Very likely they are, I replied; but even

10



146 FREE WILL

if they are not, and only appear to be parallel to the
person who is asked, can he to whom the question is
put avoid saying what he thinks, even though you and
I join in forbidding him? Well, then, I suppose you
are going to make one of the interdicted answers? I
dare say that I may, notwithstanding the danger, if,
upon reflection, I approve any of them. "*

I fear I am making one of the answers which Hume
interdicts when I define a cause as "that by which
aught is made or done." He will observe that "mak
ing" or "doing" is the same as "causing." I admit it:
it is on that very point that I lay stress. Elementary
notions, like "cause," "being," "right," cannot be
defined without a certain tautology. But it is better to
be tautological than falsely philosophical. Better is a
familiar definition than one which surprises and de
ludes. "That after which anything constantly exists"
is certainly no synonym of "cause." It means a great
deal less than cause, and applies to a great many things
that are not causes: it cannot stand as a definition. It
leaves out that notion of "making," or "doing," or
"producing," which, on Hume s own avowal, is one
with the notion of causing. And it takes in what no
reasonable man would venture to call a cause. There
is a rainbow at two o clock, and at six o clock there is
an accident to an excursion train. Did the rainbow
cause the accident? No, I say, for it did not make or
produce it. "No," Hume cries, "for an accident does
not always follow after a rainbow." His definition ex
cludes that case. But it does not exclude the case ot

* Plato, Republic, Book i, Jowett s Translation.



DAVID HUME 147

night following day, nor of the ebb of the tide follow
ing the flow, nor of weakness following strength. Yet
how insufficient an explanation it would be to say that
the sun set because it rose; that the tide went out be
cause it came in, or that a man was weak in old age
because in youth he was strong!

I would draw a distin&ion between a "cause" and
and an "explanation." By "cause" I understand, as I
have already defined, "that by which aught is made
or done." By "explanation" I understand "that after
which an event always follows and always would follow
under any conceivable hypothesis." I call "explana
tion "what John Stuart Mill, in his Logic, calls "cause,"
and defines to be "that after which a phenomenon
follows invariably and unconditionally," in which de
finition the adverb invariably signifies that the pheno
menon always follows ; and, unconditionally , that it
always would follow. Unconditionally is well rendered
by the French quand meme. This is an explanation in
the sense in which a grammatical construction is said
to be "explained" by quoting a rule of grammar. It
is an alleging of the indefectible law of which the case
in point forms an instance. Thus the phenomenon of
sunset is explicable by a recitation of the fa<5ts of the
existence, opaqueness and rotation of the earth, and
of the existence and luminous nature of the sun.
These positive conditions, along with the negative
condition of the absence of arrangements to the con
trary, such as would be a provision for reflecting the
sun s rays round the earth, are the explanation of
sunset. Suppose all this, and you may suppose what



148 FREE WILL

else you like: the sun surely will set. The negative
condition bargains, amongst other things, for the
absence of miraculous interposition. If GOD, at
the prayer of another Joshua, willed the sun not to
set as it usually does, He would make some unusual
arrangement against its setting. His would be no
barren velleity, leaving the antecedents just as they
were, without addition. That would be to will and will
not, which is not the way of a wise being. For we must
remember that the uniformity of nature, whereby cer
tain consequents are annexed to certain antecedents
is GOD S express will and ordinance. "He hath sta-
blished it for ever, for ever and aye; he hath given
command, and it shall not pass away."

No explanation in the technical sense just defined
can be given of the volitions of free agents as such.
Of a free act you cannot predicate that it always fol
lows and always would follow any given previous state
of things; you cannot particularise the antecedent or
set of antecedents upon which such an act ensues in
variably and unconditionally. The reason of this ano
maly is manifest: it is the addition of personality, of
self-consciousness. Here there are not simply fads
following fads: there is, to boot, an ego reviewing the
sequence.

But though, strictly speaking, no * explanation is
assignable for a free volition, yet every volition has a
cause; for every volition is an act, and every act has
its doer. The doer of an act of will is the person will
ing. He it is by whom the act is done; he then is the
cause of the volition. The definition of cause here



DAVID HUME 149

involved does not comprehend any necessary con
nexion with the effect. Though it appear a paradox, it
is the truth in regard to volition, that the effect is ne
cessarily connected with the cause, but not the cause
with the effect. If the volition has taken place, the
agent must have willed it; but the agent may be in the
conjuncture proper for willing, and yet no volition
ensue.*

The origin of the idea expressed by the definition,
* A cause is that by which aught is made or done, is
not far to seek; we find it in our consciousness of our
selves. We recognise ourselves as the principle of our
acts, the source from whence they proceed. We learn
to say, * I made so and so, * I did so and so, { Such
and such a work is mine. But we cannot say this of
everything. We are surrounded with what we have not
made, we are the victims of much that we have not
done. Thereby we are taught to detach the idea ot
( maker or * doer from the idea of self, and form the
general concept of l cause.

To cause is to act, to work, to energise: it is not
simply to go before, as one phenomenon before an
other. If nothing is real but phenomena, then to be
sure causation does dwindle down to mere sequence
without action. But how absurd the concept of pure
unsubstantial phenomena, manifestations which reveal
no enduring thing to any abiding person, manifesta
tions of nothing to nobody! How shall we account for

* Compare the teaching of the old theologians that the world is
really related to GOD, but GOD is not really related to the world;
which means that the world implies GOD, but GOD does not imply
the world. See Of CjW and His reaturei, pp. 82, 83.



1 5 o FREE WILL

that self of ours, which remembers the past, is con
scious of the present, and argues the future, being at
once historian, witness and prophet? Sure I am that 1
am no vanishing phenomenon, no fluxional state of
consciousness, but a person who leads a continuous
life, identically the same person from age to age. And
from my own permanence I argue permanence around
me, both of persons and things. I am the subject of
changes, which modify but do not subvert my being.
When I observe changes of which I am not the sub
ject, I find a subject for them in some permanent being
outside myself. I cannot believe that the whole of
nature, beyond the bounds of myself, consists of pure
changes, floating loose and unattached to any lasting
underlying things. But if there exist things that last,
or noumena,then appearances that pass, or phenomena,
are the actions of those lasting things; in other words,
noumenal things are the causes of phenomenal changes.

VIII

" Liberty, when opposed to necessity, not to con
straint, is the same thing with chance; which is uni
versally allowed to have no existence."

Chance may be defined an unforeseen coincidence
in some sphere of human enterprise. We do not call
the arrangement of the heavens a chance: that is be
cause we find the host of heaven drawn out antece
dently to any undertaking of ours. We call no arrange
ment a chance arrangement, which we recognise as the
usual thing in nature, or see to have been designed by
man. But when, looking tor one thing, we find another,



DAVID HUME 151

we call that a chance. Many discoveries in science ami
art have been made by chance. Excavating for drain
age purposes, we * chance upon some prehistoric re
mains. But coming upon a mound which we seledlas
likely to contain such remains, we do not call it chance,
if excavation proves our conjecture to have been correct.
To the omniscient Mind there is no chance. Chance
is a relative term. Absolutely, or objectively, chance has
no existence.

An acl: of free will may be considered, antecedently
to its performance, in the reckoning of some interested
looker-on. Either that looker-on has endeavoured to
influence the choice of the agent, or he has not. Either
again he is acquainted with the agent s character and
motives, or he is unacquainted with them. If the ob
server is quite a stranger to the agent and to the cir
cumstances of his action, what the agent will do is to
him mere chance. If he knows the man and his mo
tives, he predicts his adlion with high probability, sub
ject however, in some cases, to an element of chance,
which is traceable partly to the observer s ignorance,
but partly also to the agent s free will. If the observer
has endeavoured to influence the choice, and the agent
chooses accordingly, the exerciser of such influence will
not ascribe the aclion to chance, for this reason that
he himself has intended it and laboured to bring it
about. If, on the other hand, the agent resists the soli
citation, the person so thwarted puts the refusal down
to obstinacy or cussedness, terms which point to free
will: he never ascribes it to chance.

But an adl of free will may be otherwise considered,



152 FREE WILL

not in the reckoning of a bystander, but in the mind
and will of the agent himself. So considered the act is
as far removed from chance as the poles of the heavens
stand asunder. The act is "adverted to," it is "meant,"
it is "known," "willed," "chosen"; all which expres
sions denote the very reverse of "fortuitous." Not by
chance was it that "the well-beloved Brutus stabbed."

Altogether this attempt to tie up free will with
chance, and merge them both in non-existence, appears
singularly infelicitous. From one point of view chance
is not non-existent, while from another point of view
free will is not chance.

IX

"There is no method of reasoning more common,
and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical
disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothe
sis by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to
religion and morality. When any opinion leads to
absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain
that an opinion is false because it is of dangerous con
sequence. Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be
forborne, as serving nothing to the discovery of truth,
but only to make the person of an antagonist odious."

This passage has gathered interest during the cen
tury and more which has elapsed since it was written.
The first issue which it raises is this: how far have we
certainty of faith and religion? If there are certainties
of faith and religion, any hypothesis in plain diametri
cal contradiction with such certainties must, on Hume s
own confession, be an opinion that "leads to absur
dities" and is "certainly false." That there are certain
ties in faith and religion is the first and prime point



DAVID HUME 153

of Catholic belief. But how many people who have not
the blessing of Catholic faith hold now to such certain
ties? I am far from replying, None: I do not know how
many, but the number of such persons is rapidly dimi
nishing in intellectual circles.

But an opinion may be not contradictory of faith
and religion, but merely "dangerous," as threatening
contradiction to come. What such an opinion contra
dicts is not the religious truth itself, exactly as that
stands in its certainty, but some sort of explanation
which theologians have given of such truth, some
shape into which their private hands have moulded
it, some protecting envelope in which they have en-
sheathed it. Here Hume s saying is true: "It is not
certain that an opinion is false because it is of danger
ous consequence." One is reminded of the notices to
cyclists that now diversify our country roads: Danger^
ride cautiously. The rider is not bidden to stop and go
no further, but to go slow, as it were feeling his way.
If he persists in riding at a breakneck pace, he may
merit the attention of the police. And a Catholic philo
sopher or theologian, who pushes " dangerous" opinions
recklessly, may be censured by some Roman Congre
gation, not as a heretic, not necessarily as a teacher of
false doctrine, but as a "temerarious" person.

A central certain truth of faith and religion is the
doctrine of Providence, that GOD has care of the world.
In the Middle Ages this came to be curiously bound
up with Ptolemaic astronomy. The heavenly spheres,
it was supposed, presided, although not absolutely,
over terrestrial events; the primum mobile conducted



154 FREE WILL

the motions of the heavenly spheres; and an angel by
divine command guided and impelled the primum mo
bile* When Copernicanism came to be advocated, and
the primum mobile denied, the new theory seemed
"dangerous" to the doctrine of Providence. There was
need to proceed with some caution. The divine govern
ment of the world had to be otherwise explained. The
readjustment was made, the danger disappeared, the
heliocentric astronomy was admitted, and certainty of
divine faith in Providence still remained. Not every
new opinion that has seemed "dangerous" to faith,
has turned out so safe and true as Copernicanism.

But necessarianism, or "determinism" as it is now
called, is not merely "dangerous": it is in diametric
contradiction with the certainties of Catholic faith, at
least when it goes the length of affirming that free will
is not merely "highly mysterious," "inexplicable,"
"hitherto unexplained," but that nothing that can be
truly called freewill has anyplace in any spiritual nature
whatsoever. The ruin of Catholic devotion is the ruin
of Catholic faith. But a thing fundamental in Catholic
devotion is sorrow and contrition for sin. "Contri
tion" is "heart-bruising." It is the heart of a penitent
broken with sorrow and self-reproach before a GOD
whom too late it has come to know, too late it has
come to love; too late as regards the commission of
sin, although not too late for forgiveness. Its cry is
mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Determinism would
change all that. Instead of "my fault," all that it

* St Thomas, Contra Gentiles, m,chapp. 77-87: Of God and His
Creatures, -pp. 201, 249.



DAVID HUME 155

owns to is "my very great misfortune." "My con
duct," it says, "has been bad, harmful, disorderly,
vicious, ugly and shameful: but with my inherited
proclivities, with my environment, my bodily consti
tution, my temptations, it was the only conduct of
which I was capable: anyone else in my exact position
would have done just the same: unhappy man that
I am, but who can blame me? My conduct indeed has
been condemnable, but who can condemn w^"? Thus
self-reproach is exchanged for self-commiseration. The
evil-doer is ashamed of his evil doing, but only as a
poor man may be ashamed of wearing poor clothes
where he has no others to put on. I need not say that
such lamentation over self is not contrition. I need not
say that such predetermined swerving from the path
of righteousness is not sin.*

The denial of free will has merited the explicit con
demnation of the Catholic Church, e.g., in the Council
of Trent, sess. 6, can. 5. The denial may proceed on
theological grounds, as though the fall of Adam had
deprived man of free choice in all alternatives of right
and wrong, and made sin a necessity to him; or as
though the victorious grace of CHRIST, in some few
favoured persons, overbore free will, and necessarily
produced works meritorioos of heaven. Or the denial
may proceed on grounds of mere philosophy, as in
Hobbes s and Hume s case, which seems to have been
the case also of sundry medieval doctors, notably \Vy-
clif. Wyclif was expressly censured in the Council of
Constance for declaring omnia de necessitate e- oeniunt.
* Sec my Political and Moral Eisays, pp. 259, 260.



156 FREE WILL

The theological denial of free will makes an essential
part of the often condemned heresies of Calvinist and
Jansenist. I have no intention of discussing the mind
of St Augustine. The mind of that profound thinker,
and in controversy somewhat impetuous disputant, is
a vast region to explore. I content myself with the
remark that no necessarian could have shed the tears
of contrition which bedew the pages of St Augus
tine s Confessions.

X

" The only proper object of hatred or vengeance
is a person, or creature endowed with thought and
consciousness; and when any criminal or injurious
actions excite that passion, it is only by their relation
to the person or connexion with him. Actions are, by
their very nature, temporary and perishing; and where
they proceed not from some cause in the character or
disposition of the person who performed them, they
can neither redound to his honour if good, nor infamy
if evil. The actions themselves may be blameable; they
may be contrary to all the rules of morality and reli
gion ; but the person is not answerable for them ;
and as they proceeded from nothing in him that is
durable and constant, and leave nothing of that nature
behind them, it is impossible he can upon their account
become the objecl: of punishment or vengeance. Ac
cording to the principle, therefore, which denies neces
sity, and consequently causes, a man is as pure and
untainted after having committed the most horrid
crime, as at the first moment of his birth, nor is his
character anywise concerned in his actions, since they
are not derived from it, and the wickedness of the
one can never be used as a proof of the depravity of
the other."



DAVID HUME 157

To begin with an argumentum ad hominem. Hume
here repudiates that philosophy which reduces "being,"
oixriii, to "becoming," ycwm?; that philosophy which
owns no other reality than states of mind, or " actions
temporary and perishing"; that philosophy which dis
covers in man "nothing that is durable and constant,"
nothing, therefore, that can be called "the person." But
such is the very phenomenalist, or positivist, philo
sophy, which Hume s sceptical attacks on cognition
went so tar to introduce. Hume professes a horror of
" the principle which denies necessity, and conse
quently causes," the very things which he himself
denies, bringing down necessity to fact, and causes to
invariable antecedents. And if upon definite antece
dents one definite human act invariably (and therefore,
in Hume s explanation, necessarily) follows, the facts
of character being reckoned among the antecedents,
many of us will not hesitate to declare that "a man is
as pure and untainted after having committed the most
horrid crime as at the first moment of his birth," at
least he is no more guilty than the wolf which worries
a six-months-old child: what else could the creature
rationally be expected to do? In this incautious wri
ting Hume seems to have exposed the flank of his
whole philosophy. The present argument, however,
deserves treatment on its own merits. The argument
is still current: I have myself heard it on the lips of
an eminent lecturer in the University of Oxford.
Where it is contended that murder, for instance, is a
free act, Hume takes that assertion to imply that there
was nothing in the character or disposition of the



158 FREE WILL

agent inclining him to shed blood, and that, when the
deed is done, there ensues in him no inclination to do
the like again, but the act stands isolated and all alone,
after the manner of the moment out of time, TO t <-tyi>jr,
which Plato supposes to be the instant of transition
from rest to motion, or from motion to rest.* Hume
may open all his batteries upon this position without
touching one single defender of free will. We all allow
that character has a vast influence on conduct: we only
deny that it has an absolutely determining influence
upon every single point of premeditated action. Like
wise we allow that acts form habits; and character is a
sum total of acquired habits and congenital proclivities.
Character is more or less permanent; but there is
something still more permanent than character: that
is the " person, or creature endowed with thought and
consciousness," a definition which I thankfully take
from Hume. Free will in act is eminently a personal
act: it is the rational creature s outpouring of its own
vitality; and where the act is evil and vitality is poured
out with will and deliberation upon an undue object,
the person thereby becomes a more or less wicked
person, and so remains until the act is revoked.

A wicked character is a mark of wicked deeds: it is
produced by them and reproduces them in turn. The
deeds by which such a character is produced are freely
done. The deeds which it produces are free less and
less as they are multiplied, and as the evil character of
the doer is more and more confirmed. A wicked cha
racter then is a sure mark of wicked deeds having
* Plato, Tarmenictts, i 5 6d.



DAVID HUME 159

gone before, and a probable mark of more to follow.
Wicked deeds are a sure mark of a wicked character
bcinij .it le;ist in course of formation, but not neces
sarily already formed, a fact which founds the Aristo
telian distinction between UK par fa and afcoXoaroc.*
Volition, like muscular and nervous energy, with
which in man it is essentially connected, tends to run
in grooves according as it is exercised. There is no
thing incompatible with free will there. Free will is
limited, like everything else in man.

XI

" If voluntary actions be subjected to the same laws
of necessity with the operations of matter, there is a
continued chain of necessary causes preordained and
predetermined, reaching from the original cause of all
to every single volition of every human creature; no
contingency any where in the universe; no indifference,
no liberty. While we act, we are at the same time acted
upon. The ultimate Author of all our volitions is the
Creator of the world, who first bestowed motion on
this immense machine and placed all beings in that
particular position whence every subsequent event by
an inevitable necessity must result. Human actions,
therefore, either can have no moral turpitude at all,
as proceeding from so good a cause; or if they have
any turpitude, they must involve our Creator in the
same guilt, while He is acknowledged to be their ulti
mate cause and author. For as a man who fired a mine
is answerable for all the consequences whether the
train he employed be long or short, so wherever a con
tinued chain of necessary causes is fixed, that Being,

* See Nicomackean Ethics, vii, 9, or Aquinas Etkum, vol. i>
pp. 170, 171.



i6o FREE WILL

either finite or infinite, who produces the first is like
wise the author of all the rest, and must both bear the
blame and acquire the praise which belongs to them.
Our clear and unalterable ideas of morality establish
this rule upon unquestionable reasons when we exa
mine the consequences of any human action, and these
reasons must still have greater force when applied to
the volitions and intentions of a Being infinitely wise
and powerful. Ignorance or impotence may be pleaded
for so limited a creature as man; but those imperfec
tions have no place in our Creator. He foresaw, He
ordained, He intended all those actions of men which
we so rashly pronounce criminal. And we must there
fore conclude either that they are not criminal or that
the Deity, not man, is accountable for them. But as
either of these positions is absurd and impious, it
follows that the doctrine from which they are deduced
cannot possibly be true."

This is an objection which Hume urges against
himself with a vivacity and force that deserve the best
thanks of his opponents. In answer he avows that the
difficulty is not to be got over by accepting the first
alternative, the position that no human actions are
criminal. He finds it as impossible to deny wickedness
as to deny pain and ugliness in this world of woe. He
says: "Why should not the acknowledgement of a real
distinction between vice and virtue be reconcilable to
all speculative systems of philosophy as well as that of
a real distinction between personal beauty and de
formity? Both these distinctions are founded in the
natural sentiments of the human mind, and these
sentiments are not to be controlled or altered by any
philosophical theory or speculation whatsoever."



DAVID HUME 161

As Hume does not deny the criminality of certain
human actions while he affirms the necessity of them,
one is curious to see by what shift he escapes the
second horn of his own dilemma. How ever does he
avoid the "absurd and impious position," for so he
calls it, of charging the Judge of all the earth with all
the wrong done there ? He makes his escape in the fol
lowing characteristic manner:

"The second objection admits not of so easy and
satisfactory an answer; nor is it possible to explain dis
tinctly how the Deity can be the mediate cause of all
the actions of men, without being the author of sin
and moral turpitude. These are mysteries, which mere
natural and unassisted reason is very unfit to handle;
and whatever system she embraces, she must find her
self involved in inexplicable difficulties, and even con
tradictions, at every step which she takes with regard
to such subjects. To reconcile the indifference and con
tingency of human actions with prescience; or to de
fend absolute decrees, and yet free the Deity from
being the author of sin, has been found hitherto to
exceed all the power of philosophy. Happy, if she be
thence sensible of her temerity, when she pries into
these sublime mysteries; and leaving a scene so full
of obscurities and perplexities, return with suitable
modesty to her true and proper province, the exami
nation of common life; where she will find difficulties
enow to employ her inquiries, without launching into
so boundless an ocean of doubt, uncertainty and
contradiction ! "

There is a certain vulpine humility in all this. But
it had been more honest either to admit the objection



1 62 FREE WILL

as valid and unanswerable,an admission tantamount to
a denial of GOD, for a bad god is no god at all ; or
else to repudiate that Humian doctrine from which
the whole objection proceeds, that "voluntary actions
be subjected to the same laws of necessity with the
operations of matter."



JOHN STUART
MILL



JOHN STUART MILL

Logic, Boo{ VI, Chap. II. Of Liberty and Necessity.
Examination of Sir William Hamilton s Philo
sophy, Chap. XXVI. On the Freedom of the
Will

I

"CORRECTLY conceived, the doctrine called
\^4 Philosophical Necessity is simply this: that,
given the motives which are present to an individual s
mind, and given, likewise, the character and disposi
tion of the individual, the manner in which he will
act may be unerringly inferred; that if we knew the
person thoroughly, and knew all the inducements
which are acting upon him, we could foretell his con
duct with as much certainty as we can predict any
physical event. This proposition 1 take to be a mere
interpretation of universal experience, a statement in
words of what every one is internally convinced of. No
one who believed that he knew thoroughly the cir
cumstances of any case, and the characters of the dif
ferent persons concerned, would hesitate to foretell
how all of them would act. Whatever degree of doubt
he may in fact feel arises from the uncertainty whether
he really knows the circumstances, or the character of
some one or other of the persons, with the degree of
accuracy required; but by no means from thinking
that if he did know these things, there could be any
uncertainty what the conduct will be."



1 66 FREE WILL

Mill strives to rest his doctrine, which is one with
that of Hume, upon experience. But I observe that
the experience which he invokes is not any know
ledge of fact, but a belief about an unobserved con
tingency: it is not an experience of what is, but an
expectation of what would be in a certain issue which
never occurs. No one ever does know any person
thoroughly, nor the relative values of all the motives
affecting any person s conduct out upon a new field
of choice where he has never been tried before, where
he cannot proceed by force of habit, where he will
have to make up his mind afresh, the very situation
in which, if anywhere, free will must come into play.
Even a successful prediction in such a case would
prove nothing. The success might be due, three-
quarters to shrewdness and the remaining quarter to
luck, as when one has backed the winner of the Derby.
"Three-quarters to shrewdness," I say, for I admit
that a free volition may be predicted with probability.
1 deny only that it can be predicted with certainty even
under the fullest knowledge of antecedent conditions
of choice. Not with certainty, because the volition is
not essentially contained in those conditions. Against
this position Mill alleges "a mere interpretation of
universal experience," his interpretation, to wit, but
certainly not his experience. As I have shown against
Hume, the libertarian interpretation, properly guarded
and explained, suits all experienced facts of predic
tion as well as "the doctrine called Philosophical
Necessity." Nothing, then, is thereby proved on
cither side.



JOHN STUART MILL 167

II

"The religious metaphysicians who have asserted
Lhc freedom of the will have always maintained it to
be consistent with divine foreknowledge of our actions;
and if with divine, then with any other foreknowledge."

As religious metaphysicians we speak of" the GOD of
the Theist and of the Christian ; a GOD who is numeri
cally One, who is Personal; the Author, Sustainer and
Finisher of all things, the Life of Law and Order, the
Moral Governor; One who is Supreme and Sole; like
Himself, unlike all things besides Himself, which are
but His creatures; distinct from, independent of them
all; One who is self-existing, absolutely infinite, who
has ever been and ever will be, to whom nothing is
past or future; who is all perfection, and the fullness and
archetype of every possible excellence, the Truth Itself,
Wisdom, Love, Justice, Holiness; One who is All-
powerful, All-knowing, Omnipresent, Incomprehen
sible."* I am not concerned with the correctness of
this representation: my sole purpose is to show that
they who believe it to be correct are not committed to
the inference that if the freedom of the will is con
sistent with the divine foreknowledge of our actions,
it must be consistent likewise with any other fore
knowledge. The foreknowledge ascribed to "the GOD
of the Theist and of the Christian" not standing on
a level with any other foreknowledge, Mill s argu
ment a part becomes inadmissible.

God is"One,who is self-existing, absolutely infinite,
who has ever been and ever will be, to whom nothing is
* Grammar of\fssfftf, p. 98.



1 68 FREE WILL

past or future." He is the perfed realisation of all that
can be, filling all bounds of being, filling all space and
time, yesterday and to-day and for ever the same,
stationary in the plentitude of being. Like His being,
His knowledge is measured by eternity; it all exists
together, it embraces all time. Whatever things come
to be in time, are to God eternally present. His vision
ranges from eternity over all things as they are under
His unvarying all-pervading gaze.

To us the past and the future, when we know them,
are present in their images or in their signs.* But to
God they are present in themselves, for they are in
Him as in their first principle. We are placed at the

* " If the future and the past are, I would know where they are.
And if I cannot yet compass that, still I know that, wherever they
are, they are not there future or past but present. For if there also
they are future, they are not yet there; if there they are past, they
are no longer there. Wherever, therefore, they are, and whatever they
are, they are not save in the present. When the past is related truly,
it is not the past things themselves that are produced from memory,
but words formed from the images of them, like footprints which
in passing by they have impressed on the mind through the senses.
My boyhood for instance, which is no more, is in the time past,
which is no more; but when I con over and tell my impression of
it, I am looking at an objecl in the present time, because the im
pression is still in my memory. . . When the future is said to be
seen, it is not the things themselves which as yet are not, or which
are future, it is their causes or signs perchance, that are seen, which
signs already are. . . It is now plain and clear that neither the future
nor the past is. Nor is it properly said, There are three tenses, the
present, the past, and the future; but perhaps it might properly be
said: There are three tenses, the present of things past, the present
of things present, and the present of things future. For these are
three certain realities in the mind, and elsewhere I sec them not;
the present of things past, which is memory; the present of things
present, which is intuition; and the present of things future, which
is expectation." St Augustine s Confessions, xi, 18, 20.



JOHN STUART MILL 169

circumference of the circle of which He is the centre.
The instant in which we are is one now out of many:
from the divine now all nows radiate, and it is equiva
lent to them all. Thus to God there is no foreknow
ledge or afterknowledge, but simply knowledge of the
present. This knowledge, as applied to adual creation,
receives in theology the name of the " science of vision."
By it God sees, He sees in the a6l itself, He does not
calculate from antecedents, all that He Himself is
freely about to do, or rather is doing, in the way of
creating, working miracles and the like, as also all the
effects that will proceed from natural causes, whether
from the necessary determination of their natures, or
through the use made of them by free agents. God,
looking at a creature, sees its history all at once before
Him, albeit that, to the creature, the facls are evolved
successively. The generation that shall be alive thirty-
five years hence will behold what the ruler of France
at that time does.* They will not calculate his actions
from the motives, they will watch them being done.
Thirty-five years hence is present in the now of God.
He is a spectator of what is to go on then.

This is marvellous doctrine. If it were not marvel
lous, it would hardly be likely to be true of Him whose
name is called Wonderful. But it is not on the mar-
vellousness, nor even on the truth of the doclrine that
I here wish to insist, but on the bare facl that this
is the doctrine of those "religious metaphysicians"
who assert the freedom of the will and maintain it to
be consistent with the divine foreknowledgeofourcon-
* Written about the year 1872.



i?o FREE WILL

duct. Such eternal foreknowledge is a thing without
parallel in the human mind. It gives, therefore, no
ground for the inference set up by Mill.

Ill

" It is not the doctrine that our volitions and actions
are invariable consequents of our antecedent states of
mind, that is either contradicted by our consciousness
or felt to be degrading. But the doctrine of causation,
when considered as obtaining between our volitions
and their antecedents, is almost universally conceived
as involving more than this. Many do not believe, and
very few practically feel, that there is nothing in causa
tion but in variable, certain and unconditional sequence.
There are few to whom mere constancy of succession
appears a sufficiently stringent bond of union for so
peculiar relation as that of cause and effect. Even if the
reason repudiates, the imagination retains the feeling
of some more intimate connexion, of some peculiar tie
or mysterious constraint exercised by the antecedent
over the consequent. Now this it is which, considered
as applying to the human will, conflicts with our con
sciousness and revolts our feelings. We are certain that,
in the case of our volitions, there is not this myster ious
constraint. We know that we are not compelled, as by a
magical spell, to obey any particular motive. W r e feel
that if we wish to prove that we have the power of
resisting the motive, we could do so (that wish being,
it needs scarcely be observed, a new antecedent); and
it would be humiliating to our pride and paralysing
to our desire of excellence if we thought otherwise. But
neither is any such mysterious compulsion now sup
posed, by the best philosophical authorities, to be exer
cised by any cause over its effect. Those who think
that causes draw their effects after them by a mystical



JOHN STUART MILL 171

tie, are right in believing that the relation between
volitions and their antecedents is of another nature.
But they should go further and admit that this is also
true of all other effects and of their antecedents. If
such a tie is considered to be involved in the word
necessity, the doctrine is not true of human actions;
but neither is it then true of inanimate objects. It
would be more correct to say that matter is not bound
by necessity than that mind is so."

This language is, of course, no more than an echo
of Hume (nn. 6, 7). But because it is striking and
clear, and is caught up with approval by men of our
time, and even by boys, it had better be listened to
attentively and judged for what it is worth. Mill
teaches that volition does not differ from mechanical
action, so far as the invariable and unconditional se
quence of consequents upon antecedents is concerned.
Let the simultaneous facts, A, B, C, D, and others,
be followed by the fact Z. Then, says Mill, whatever
be the character of the facts, whether mental or phy
sical, it is certain that wherever A, B, C and the rest
go before, without addition or diminution, there Z
will come after. Experience may show that Z occurs
whether A precedes or not. Therefore A may be left
out of the account, as likewise may other antecedents,
as B, C, D, for the same reason. But it will be found
that some antecedents, such as F and G, cannot be
omitted without the result Z failing to appear. These
antecedents must be retained. Again, the insertion of
some new antecedents, as P, Q, R, may be found to
prevent the appearance of Z, even though F and G,



172 FREE WILL

and all others whose presence is indispensable, are
duly there. The omission of these obstructive ante
cedents must be bargained for. Let the indispensable
antecedents, F, G, etc., be summed under the general
expression E, and the impeding antecedents, P, Q, R,
etc., under the general expression E. Then the expres
sion E - E will stand for what Mill calls the cause of Z,
Z being any fact either of mind or of matter.

Let us take an illustration from each department.
And first of matter. A smith takes a piece of iron,
heats it red-hot in the forge, and beats it flat on the
anvil. The iron becoming flat is a fact or phenomenon
of matter. The antecedents to it are the smith s hav
ing got up that morning, having had his breakfast,
having work to do, having put the iron in the fire,
having hammered it, there are these and other ante
cedents too numerous to mention. The result is that
the iron gets flattened out. Any similar iron would
get flattened out in similar circumstances. Even a varia
tion of circumstances, up to a certain point, is compa
tible with the attainment of the result. That smith,
we will suppose, said his morning prayers. But iron
will yield to beating, whether the hands that strike it
have been previously clasped in prayer or not. GOD
rains upon the just and the unjust. On the other hand,
if the smith is stricken blind, his blow is likely to
fail, and the metal will go unflattened. Thus some
conditions are requisite to the effect, and some are
superfluous. Further, there are conditions of which
the absence is positively required. The hot bar must
not be cooled in water, else the beating will make no



JOHN STUART MILL 173

impression. When all the indispensable conditions are
there, and the preventive conditions are all absent, the
result, the flattening of the iron, will be brought to pass,
infallibly^ M ill would say : I should add, and necessarily.
Let us pass to a phenomenon of will. A man has
gained an importantsuccess,somethingthat he imagines
will fix his name in history: he has vindicated his
country s honour in the field, or amended her consti
tution at home, or he has come forward in the ranks
of her poets, her artists or her men of science: and
as he thinks of his achievement, his heart is lifted up
within him, as was the heart of Lucifer of old, taking
the glory to himself away from GOD. If the person
deliberately consents to this movement of vainglory,
he commits a sin: so all moralists who recognise the
rights of the Creator agree in teaching. If we are to
believe Mill, the guilty consent there follows upon
the temptation with a sequence as indefectible as the
flattening of a hot iron consequent upon percussion.
When a smith hammers a bar that has been properly
heated, and when there is no interference, natural or
supernatural, with the operation, it is incredible to
Mill, as it is to every reasonable man, that the shape
of the bar should remain unchanged. Suppose now
two persons are placed together in the situation of
trial which I have described. Their antecedent dis
positions, their present motives, arising as well from
nature as from grace, are essentially alike in number
and in kind. In that case it is simply incredible to
Mill that one man should sin and the other remain
innocent. Crimes, he thinks, are ruled by the same



i 7 4 FREE WILL

laws as landslips. One cliff will not stand in the exacl:
situation in which a similar cliff has fallen: neither
will Abel ever do right, if placed, with Cain s charac
ter, in an occasion similar to that in which Cain has
done wrong.

Our author indeed says: "We know that we are
not compelled, as by a magical spell, to obey any par
ticular motive. We feel that if we wished to prove
that we have the power of resisting the motive we
could do so." That wish, he adds with emphasis, would
be "a new antecedent." Just as well may it be said
that a cliff is not compelled, by any magical spell or
natural necessity, to give way under any particular
mining operation. If, as you cut away the rock, you
judiciously replace it with iron pillars, they will bear
up the superincumbent mass as it stood before. Those
pillars are new antecedents. Without them, or some
support like them, the rock, being undermined, surely
will fall. With them, if they are sufficient, it as surely
will stand. So, on Mill s showing, a man in tempta
tion surely will sin, unless it occurs to him that it
would be a fine thing to show his power of resistance.
Without that, or some deterring thought of that sort,
his offence is calculable, with mathematical precision,
from the occasion given him. But supply him with
motive sufficient, or if you like to speak theologically,
with grace sufficient, to keep him out of sin, and
there is no more danger of his yielding to temptation
than there is of his sinking through a stone pavement.

We have here a system of necessarianism, rigid as that
of any Calvinist divine. The recognition of anything



JOHN STUART MILL 175

that possibly might be other than what actually is cannot
stand with the doctrine of philosophical necessity, taught
nowadays by "the best philosophical authorities," as
Mill complacently styles himself and friends. The se
quence of antecedent and consequent in this system
is so close, so invariable, so uniform, as to leave no
room anywhere for edging in a might be, A bridge
has given way with a train upon it. It might not be
that the train should not fall into the river. It might
not be that the bridge, constructed as it was, should
not give way under that pressure. It might not be that
the railway officials, with their individual characters and
incentives to action, should have had the forethought
and energy to prevent the train from going upon the
bridge. It might not be that the engineer of the bridge
should have constructed it in any other way. It might
not be that anything which has happened should have
happened otherwise. Everywhere, event follows event
with rigid calculable precision, till we come to the pri
meval arrangement, the original collocation of mate
rials in the universe. That, one is tempted to say,
might have been arranged quite differently. But here
those self-styled "best philosophical authorities" de
clare human knowledge to stop short. Nothing, they
tell us, can be known as to how the first position of
things came about. Then it cannot be known that
things might have been arranged in the beginning in
any other fashion than as they actually were arranged.
Consequently, so far as we know, all that happens is
inevitable; what happens not, is impossible; andnothing
might have been, or might be, except what has been,



1 76 FREE WILL

is, or shall be. This is what the doctrine of philosophi
cal necessity comes to, Hobbism, pure and simple.

A "mystical tie," indeed, would that relation be, of
which there were no terms! The doctrine that "there
is nothing in causation but invariable, certain and un
conditional sequence," abolishes the terms of the re
lation of cause and effect, and cuts the relation afloat
to go by itself; this event before, and that event after,
no permanent being anywhere. If there is nothing of
permanent being in ourselves, and nothing permanent
in nature, on what ground do we assert the perma
nence of any law of nature? Why must the future re
semble the past, if nothing of the past stands over into
the future? No wonder if "many men do not believe,
and very few practically feel," that there is nothing
in the universe but a ghostly procession of phantoms
going before and phantoms coming behind. No wonder
if many men persist in looking for substantial realities,
and for ties, "mystical" or otherwise, so long as
they are real, that is to say, "real relations" between
cause and effect. We divide these substantial realities
into persons and things, persons habitually conscious of
self, things totally unconscious: dumb animals, who need
not here be considered, come in between. A thing es
sentially acts upon whatever comes within the range
of its action, as the earth on the moon, the sun on the
planets, every particle of matter upon every other par
ticle to which its power extends. The effect of such
action is some determination to motion. This action
of things is called transient, because the term of action
lies without the agent. Therefore are things called



JOHN STUART MILL 177

inert ^ because they do not aft within or upon them
selves, as it were setting themselves in motion. A
pefsotijOn the other hand, the only person I here speak
of is thinking man, as such, is impressed and acted
upon by objects without entering into his ken, and to
this impression there is a responsive action from
within. This action is immanent, for it remains within
the agent. This is the act of perceiving and liking, or
disliking, and in its first stage this action is necessary,
being determined, as determinists truly say, by envi
ronment and character. It is only in a further stage,
when the ego consciously awakes to judge of this spon
taneous and necessary like or dislike, that the exercise
of free will begins.

Libertarians have this abiding dissatisfaction with
Hume and Mill and the modern determinist school,
that, as men blinded by physics to everything above
the physical and material order, they ignore a vital
difference between beings conscious of the ego and beings
totally unconscious^ between persons in fact and things.
Still, dissatisfied as we are, we are not surprised: we
remember that we are dealing with men who have shut
out from their philosophical purview all such con
cepts as that of substantial, permanent Being and Per
sonality (oufft o, u7ro<TTo<rit;), yea even of Body and Soul,
and exercise their speculation solely upon transient

States of consciousness (ytrtaiQ, a taOijaii;, iravra pit).

Such exclusiveness leaves no place for free will, nor for
much else that is valuable in human nature: nay,
c nature itself loses all persistency and is carried away
in the stream of the definitely and determinately <be-

12



1 78 FREE WILL

coming. On all which dissolving views see Plato,
The<etetus i 796-1 Sjb.

IV

" I am inclined to think that . . . error . . . would
be prevented by forbearing to employ, for the expres
sion of the simple fact of causation, so extremely in
appropriate a term as necessity. That word, in its other
acceptations, involves much more than mere unifor
mity of sequence; it implies irresistibleness. Applied
to the will, it only means that the given cause will be
followed by the effect, subject to all possibilities of
counteraction by other causes; but in common use it
stands for the operation of those causes exclusively,
which are supposed too powerful to be counteracted
at all. When we say that all human actions take place
of necessity, we only mean that they will certainly
happen if nothing prevents: when we say that dying
of want, to those who cannot get food, is a necessity,
we mean that it will certainly happen whatever may
be done to prevent it. The application of the same
term to the agencies on which human actions depend,
as is used to express those agencies of nature which
are really uncontrollable, cannot fail, when habitual, to
create a feeling of uncontrollableness in the former
also. This, however, is a mere illusion. There are
physical sequences which we call necessary, as death
for want of food or air; there are others which are not
said to be necessary, as death from poison, which an
antidote, or the use of the stomach-pump, will some
times avert. It is apt to be forgotten by people s feel
ings, even if remembered by their understandings,
that human actions are in this last predicament; they
are never (except in some cases of mania) ruled by any
one motive with such absolute sway that there is no
room for the influence of any other. The causes,



JOHN STUART MILL 179

therefore, on which action depends are never uncon
trollable; and any given effect is only necessary, pro
vided that the causes tending to produce it are not
controlled. That whatever happens, could not have
happened otherwise unless something had taken place
which was capable of preventing it, no one surely
needs hesitate to admit."

This is a distinct advance upon Hume, who thought
(n. 7) that necessity added nothing to mere uniformity
of sequence. Mill recognises that it adds an element
of what we may call uncounteraftableness. No doubt Mdl
is right. Only Mill s position is none the better for this
correction of his predecessor; for in Mill s philosophy,
as in Hume s, whatever is actually uncounterafled\s prac
tically and in the concrete uncounteraftable; and there
fore to happen and to happen of necessity are one.

At Minster Lovel on the Windrush, some fifteen
miles west of Oxford, may be seen what remains ot
the house of Sir William Lovel, the trusted minister
of Richard III. In the next reign Sir William took part
in a rising against Henry VII, was defeated near Stoke,
and never heard of again. Some said that he was
drowned in the Trent, but others that he found his
way back to his Oxfordshire home, and ensconced him
self in one of those hiding-places which in those tumul
tuous days were an indispensable adjunct to every great
mansion. One old housekeeper knew his secret, and
she suddenly died. A skeleton, supposed to be Sir
William s, was found in the hiding-hole in 1708. We
may imagine the unhappy plight of the refugee lord
and master of that house. He hears the village clock



i8o FREE WILL

striking his usual dinner-hour: it does not call him to
eat. Twenty-four hours pass away to the solitary
prisoner, and forty-eight, and how many more? Men
keep aloof from him, and he cannot go to them: nor
do the angels come and minister to him. Nothing is
left for the man in that situation but death: inevitably,
irresistibly, necessarily, he must die. He may weep or
sing, sit or stand or lie down, but he must die. The
sun may shine or the rain fall, there may be feasting
or mourning in the house, his acquaintance may love
him or love him not: happen what will, if he remain
in that situation, he must die. And so he did die, and
there was no help for him.

Sir William died necessarily, as the case stood. We
can readily conceive how it might have stood other
wise, how he might have been discovered in time and
had food brought him by some faithful domestic. Let
us pass to a case of volition, and clothe the volition in
those circumstances which best make for freedom, if
volition ever is free. I speak of what I know and where
I have experience, in contradiction to blind prejudice
and lack of experience, when I say that the most per
fectly free volition possible is the choice of a state of
life, made according to St Ignatius s "method of elec
tion" in the Spiritual Exercises. But the particular in
stance chosen matters not. If any one will not take
mine, let him pick another for himself, let us say
Wellington s resolution to give battle to Marmont at
Salamanca. I follow up the instance which I have taken.
It is all-important that the "exercitant s" election be
his own. The director of the exercises is warned on



JOHN STUART MILL 181

no account to express a preference: nay, so far as may
be, he is not to feel a preference of one state over an
other for the exercitant s choice; he is not to advise
this choice or that, much less to dictate. He is to allow
the Creator to work alone upon the soul that He has
created. Days of careful thought are bestowed on the
choice. Mere emotion is discounted; prayerful reason
ing must decide. The decision is made, and in this case
we will suppose it to be, not to become a priest or
religious, but to go into the army. Wrong or right, it
is a thoroughly free election, the exercitant s own
choice. Now I say, considered in the concrete and
under the circumstances in which it is actually made,
that choice is every whit as uncounteractable, in Mill s
philosophy, and quite as necessary, as the refugee s
death in his hiding-hole. Only by violating your hypo
thesis, and bringing in discovery where discovery was
none, can you save Sir William s life. Only by altering
the exercitant s character, making him antecedently
more of a churchman by disposition than he actually
was, or by striking him with an alarm that in fact he
felt not, or kindling in him an enthusiasm that in his
breast did not burn, could you, on Mill s showing,
bring that exercitant to choose to be a priest. As
things stood, Mill would say, any choice of the
priesthood in him was quite out of the question and
impossible. Nay, taking a wider view of both positions,
we must avow that it was not in the nature of things,
as they lay from the beginning, for Sir William to be
discovered and saved; nor was it part of the existent
order of nature (and there can be only one order of



182 FREE WILL

nature) for that exercitant to have approached his elec
tion in other dispositions or under any other play of
motive. Mill would have allowed, I think, the neces
sity of Sir William s death. Most men would allow it, I
should allow it myself. No one who holds by Mill can
draw any distinction subtle and potent enough to dis
allow the similar necessity of that exercitant s choice.

There is a children s story of a certain Dutch ship,
which encountered a great storm at sea, whereupon the
sailors chose one of their number to tie all the rest
fast to the mast and spars. And so that one did. Then
he fastened himself up, in such a way that, when the
storm was over, he might loose first himself and then
his comrades. But the ship happening to give a great
lurch, he was turned head over heels, and hung un
able to release himself. Thus the whole crew were put
to drift at the mercy of the weather. Mill depidls man
kind in the plight of these unfortunate Dutchmen.
Any man might act otherwise than he does, if he could
get fresh motives, which would be forthcoming if any
one else could give them; but every man is tied up in
invariable and unconditional sequences like his fellow-
man: thus the world drifts underthe breath of necessity.

This sad consequence results from a too unqualified
admission of the principle that "whatever happens,
could not have happened otherwise unless something
had taken place which was capable of preventing it."
Man, in certain cases, could have elicited the mere
inward, deliberate acl: of his will otherwise than as he
actually has elicited it, and that apart from anything
else taking place, other than what has actually taken



JOHN STUART MILL 183

place, antecedently to his willing. Man is the one un
bound sailor in the ship of the physical universe.

V

"Though the doctrine of necessity, as stated by
most who hold it, is very remote from fatalism, it is
probable that most necessarians are fatalists, more or
less, in their feelings. A fatalist believes, or half be
lieves, for nobody is a consistent fatalist, not only
that whatever is about to happen will be the infallible
result of the causes which produce it, which is the
true necessarian doctrine, but, moreover, that there is
no use in struggling against it; that it will happen how
ever we may strive to prevent it. Now, a necessarian,
believing that our actions follow from our characters,
and that our characters follow from our organization,
our education and our circumstances, is apt to be, with
more or less of consciousness on his part, a fatalist as
to his own actions, and to believe that his nature is
such, or that his education and circumstances have so
moulded his character, that nothing can now prevent
him from feeling and acting in a particular way, or at
least that no effort of his own can hinder it. In the
words of the sect which in our own day has most per-
severingly inculcated and most perversely misunder
stood this great doctrine, his character is formed for
him, and not by him; therefore his wishing that it had
been formed differently is of no use; he has no power
to alter it. But this is a grand error. He has, to a cer
tain extent, a power to alter his own character. Its being,
in the ultimate resort, formed for him, is not incon
sistent with its being in part formed by him as one of
the intermediate agents. . . We are exactly as capable of
making our own character, if we will, as others are
of making it for us. Yes, answers the Owenite, but



i8 4 FREE WILL

these words, "if we will," surrender the whole point,
since the will to alter own character is given us, not
by any efforts of ours, but by circumstances which we
cannot help; it comes to us either from external causes,
or not at all. Most true: if the Owenite stops here, he
is in a position from which nothing can expel him.
Our character is formed by us as well as for us;
but the wish which induces us to attempt to form it
is formed for us, and how? Not, in general, by our
organization, nor wholly by our education, but by our
experience; experience of the painful consequences of
the character we previously had, or by some strong feel
ing of admiration or aspiration, accidentally aroused."

The Owenite whom Mill combats is his own veri
table shadow; or Mill is the shadow of the Owenite.
The attitudes of the two precisely correspond. The
Owenite alleges that man s character is formed for
him and not by him. Mill answers that we are capable
of making our own characters, if we will. The Owen
ite contends that this "if we will" surrenders the
whole point, and Mill ingenuously replies, "Most
true." The Owenite lays it down that man has no
power to alter his character by his wishing. Mill
thinks that he has, to some extent. The Owenite points
out that the will to alter our character is given us, not
by any efforts of ours, but by circumstances which we
cannot help; and Mill hastens to assure him that so
long as he stops there he is in a position from which
nothing can expel him. Is there any difference be
tween the disputants? Whatever there is comes only
to this, that the one would have our characters to be
formed for us and not by us; the other both for us



JOHN STUART MILL 185

and by us. But this difference disappears upon the
explanation which Mill affords, that our characters are
formed for us "in the ultimate resort," but by us "as
intermediate agents." Bearing in mind what Mill adds,
that this intermediate agency of ours is determined
by "external causes," this explanation is everything
that the Owenite could desire. Man starts with an
organisation which is none of his contriving: he re
ceives an education, that is, a supply of motives from
without, tending to direct him in a certain way: he
gets experience of painful consequences which he did
not mean to encounter: he also has strong feelings,
accidentally aroused. These and the like adventitious
determinants are the making of the man s character.
Character determined from without, and motive com
ing in from without, rule the man s every choice jointly.
It must be so in the absence of free will.

VI

"To think that we have no power of altering our
character, and to think that we shall not use our
power unless we desire to use it, are very different
things and have a very different effect on the mind.
A person who does not wish to alter his character can
not be the person who is supposed to feel discouraged
or paralysed by thinking himself unable to do it. The
depressing effect of the fatalist doctrine can only be
felt where there is a wish to do what that doctrine re
presents as impossible. It is of no consequence what
we think forms our character, when we have no desire
of our own to form it; but it is of great consequence
that we should not be prevented from forming such
a desire by thinking the attainment impracticable, and



1 86 FREE WILL

that if we have the desire, we should know that the
work is not so irrevocably done as to be incapable of
being altered."

To think that we shall not use our power to alter
our character unless we desire it, and further that we
shall not desire it except in accordance with some in
variable sequence analogous to the sequence of a feel
ing of heat from hot weather, seems to be the very
same thing and to have the very same effect upon the
mind as thinking that we have no power of altering
our character. We shall alter it, perhaps, when the de
sire of amendment supervenes: well, we wdl await the
desire, and when it comes, float out upon it to repen
tance and amendment.

It is of consequence what we think forms our cha
racter, even when we have no present desire of a re
formation. For it is important, as Mill well says, "that
we should not be prevented from forming such a de
sire." But we should be prevented, if we thought that
the desire, when it came, would take hold of our minds,
as the tide of a log lying upon the beach, without our
seconding it, and without our being on the alert to
transmute by our conscious sanction the spontaneous
craving, the velleity for better things, into a solid and
effective purpose of amendment.

VII

"And indeed, if we examine closely, we shall find
that this feeling of our being able to modify our own
character if we wish, is itself the feeling of moral free
dom which we are conscious of. A person feels morally
free who feels that his habits or his temptations are not



JOHN STUART MILL 187

his masters, but he theirs: who even in yielding to
them knows that he could resist; that were he desirous
of altogether throwing them off, there would not be
required for the purpose a stronger desire than he knows
himself to be capable of feeling. . . The free will doc
trine, by keeping in view precisely that portion of the
truth which the word Necessity puts out of sight,
namely, the power of the mind to co-operate in the
formation of its own character, has given to its adherents
a practical feeling much nearer to the truth than has
generally, I believe, existed in the minds of necessarians.
The latter may have had a stronger sense of the impor
tance of what human beings can do to shape the cha
racters of one another; but the free will doctrine has,
I believe, fostered in its supporters a much stronger
spirit of self-culture."

Here Mill has imitated the tactics of his admired
master, Locke. I have remarked how Locke (11.9) shifts
his ground, and without express adherence to free will
nearly becomes a libertarian. And it has been observed
of Mill, by one of the ablest of his opponents,* that he
answers objections by yielding to them, and yet will
not resign the pretensions of his school. The present
passage, if it means anything, means a withdrawal of
the application of the doctrine of invariable and uncon
ditional sequence to the operations of the will. But
Mill has not written a book of Retractations.

Let us " examine closely," as he suggests, and ac
cording to his description, " the feeling of moral free
dom which we are conscious of." When we feel morally

* John Grotc, in his Examination of the Utilitarian Ththsophy. It is
an Oxford saying: "The best things in Mill are his admissions."



1 88 FREE WILL

free, we are conscious, according to Mill, of three facts:
(i) that we are able to modify our own character, if we
wish: (2) that we are masters of our habits and temp
tations, not they of us: (3) that we could resist habit
or temptation even when we yield to it. The first of
these facts has already been discussed. The wishing, on
which our ability to shape our character is conditioned,
must rest consciously with us: else how can we be con
scious of possessing that ability? As for the second fact,
our conscious mastery over our habits and temptations,
the said " habits " and " temptations " are the same as
the "dispositions" and "motives" respectively, which
Mill formerly declared to be the causes whence our
actions flow in uniform sequence. But if the sequence
is uniform, we are not masters of our actions, and there
fore not of our habits and temptations: they rule us,
not we them. Indeed this we is a new term, not intro
duced before. Before there were antecedent circum
stances followed by consequent acts; now there comes
on the scene a person, a conscious agent, who claims
the acts for his own and disputes the mastery of them
with the circumstances. A transition appears to have
been made from physics to psychology. The third fact
which Mill learns from consciousness is that we can resist
temptation even when we yield to it. The very thing
that libertarians say, and the one thing that they care
to keep to! The great champion of the uniformity of
nature acknowledges free will, he avows that he is con
scious of it. Let all that is here written against him be
cast into the fire, and let his literary executors cancel
his chapter on Liberty and Necessity, all except the



JOHN STUART MILL 189

present passage; and the little world that reads our
books will be delighted with the unusual spectacle of
a philosopher come to terms with his adversary. For
if in yielding to a temptation we know that we can
resist, we know that our yielding is not a sure con
sequence of the circumstances of trial in which we
stand. Therefore the chain of uniformity does not bind
volition. Catching at a quibble to hold him from being
drawn into this concession, Mill might insist that his
word is could) not can resist; and he might explain
himself to mean that we could resist, if circumstances
were different, but cannot as they are. But is conscious
ness of what we might help in another case, but can
not help in the present, a consciousness of not being
here and now overpowered? If this is freedom, no man
ever was a slave, for never was man placed in circum
stances in which he could not have broken his bonds had
not the said bonds been there and then too strong for
him. In Mill s work On Liberty there is a chapter "Of
Individuality as one of the conditions of well-being."
In that enthusiastic and paradoxical vindication of indi
viduality, one may mark the loathing with which the
author turned from rigid necessarianism, a loathing
which has got the better of his respecT: for consistency,
and wrung from him a confession of free will in the
midst of a treatise that argues universal uniformity.

VIII

"What experience makes known is the facl: of an
invariable sequence between every event and some
special combination of antecedent conditions, in such
sort that wherever and whenever that union of ante-



1 90 FREE WILT.

cedents exists, the event does not fail to occur. Any
must in the case, any necessity, other than the uncon
ditional universality of the fact, we know nothing of.
. . . The so-called Necessitarians . . . affirm, as a truth
of experience, that volitions do, in point of fact, follow
determinate moral antecedents with the same unifor
mity, and, when we have sufficient knowledge of the
circumstances, with the same certainty as physical
effects follow their physical causes. . . . This is what
Necessitarians affirm, and they court every possible
mode in which its truth can be verified. They test it
by each person s observation of his own volitions. They
test it by each person s observation of the voluntary
actions of those with whom he comes into contact, and
by the power which every one has of foreseeing actions
with a degree of exactness proportioned to his previous
experience and knowledge of the agents, and with a
certainty often quite equal to that with which we pre
dict the commonest physical events. They test it fur
ther by the statistical results of the observation of
human beings acting in numbers sufficient to elimi
nate the influences which operate only on a few, and
which on a large scale neutralise one another, leaving
the total result about the same as if the volitions of the
whole mass had been affected by such only of the deter
mining causes as were common to them all. In cases
of this description the results are as uniform, and may
be as accurately foretold, as in any physical enquiries
in which the effect depends upon a multiplicity of
causes. The cases in which volitions seem too uncer
tain to be confidently predicted are those in which our
knowledge of the influences antecedently in operation
is so incomplete, that with equally imperfect data there
would be the same uncertainty in the predictions of the
astronomer and chemist. On these grounds it is con-



JOHN STUART MILL 191

tc rule*.! that our choice between the conflicting incon-
ceivables should be the same in the case of volitions
as of all other phenomena; we must reject equally in
both cases the hypothesis of spontaneousness, and con
sider them all as caused. A volition is a moral effect,
which follows the corresponding moral causes as cer
tainly and invariably as physical effects follow their
physical causes. Whether it must be so, I acknowledge
myself to be entirely ignorant, be the phenomenon
moral or physical; and I condemn, accordingly, the
word Necessity as applied to either case. All I know is
that it always does"

This, and the following extracts, are from Mill s
Examination oj Sir William Hamilton s Philosophy. Mill
here repeats what he has written in his Logic, that is
to say, he repeats Locke and Hume. I am, therefore,
compelled to repeat myself. I count it no disadvantage,
on a difficult topic, to be led into some repetition.

We have experience of necessity, and of what Mill
terms the "a priori must," quite as much as of inva
riable sequence and the " a posteriori does." Experience
is either immediate or mediate: it takes the form either
of intuition or inference. W T e cannot be always, nor
go everywhere; we cannot, therefore, gain immediate
experience of the working of a law in all times and
places. Creatures of a day, we cannot crowd an inva
riable sequence into our field of view. If we know any
such sequence, we know it only by inference, by as
suming that an observed uniformity obtains beyond
the sphere of observation. But how justify this infer
ence, how warrant the passage from "It does so far as
I have seen" to "It always does"? The a posteriori



192 FREE WILL

"does" does very well; but the a posteriori "will do,"
I fear, will not do.

The a priori "must" comes to the rescue. If we
know what must be, we have ground to predial what
will be. How, then, do we know what must be? And,
first, how do we conceive it? By considering our in
tuitions of what is. Surely we do right to examine
ideas which we have already got. We do no violence
to experience by counting the treasure which experi
ence has bestowed on us. Intuition of self reveals "I
am," "I do," and thence "I can." The reverse of that
is "I cannot"; whence, by reduplication of the nega
tive, "I cannot not," which is "I must." Transferring
the idea from self to not-self, we conceive "thou
must," "it must." But when do we know that a thing
must be ? So far as we are concerned, that must be
which we find ourselves unable to prevent. To pre
vent a thing by our personal exertions we require to
know of it: ignorance in us means incapacity of inter
ference. Given, therefore, an agent without under
standing, we know that it cannot help whatever it does
or suffers; that it must do all that it can do, and suffer
all it can suffer under the circumstances in which it is
placed; that it is, in fad, a necessary agent. Whatever
it can do it does, and must do, if there be a term to
work upon within its sphere of action. What a brute
agent once does, it must ever do, ilne sail pas faire au-
trement. This necessity cleaves to the substantial abi
ding nature of a brute agent. To know that nature,
then, in the present, contains a knowledge of its aclion
in the future. A phenomenon of matter will be, because



JOHN STUART MILL 193

it must be. That positis ponemlis it must be we see in
the cognition of the noumenon, the material substance
which is at once the necessary agent, efficient cause of
formerly observed phenomena, and the guarantee of
like effects to follow under like conditions to come.

Rational natures often act unconsciously: they wake
up to consciousness of mental states not of their own
choosing. But then they can refrain from enhancing
such a state within themselves: at the same time they
can enhance it. The fuller their reflection, the greater
their liberty in this particular. Looking into them
selves, they become masters of their affections. Thus
they are free to will or, as the Elizabethan writers said,
to afeff, or not to will and affect the objects that occur.
But for this freedom, the verb can in our mouths
would be foolish. "I can go to bed" means, in the first
place, "I can make up my mind to do so." If my re
solve were determined for me by the accidents of my
position, it would be as idle for me, sitting in my chair,
to say, "I can go to bed," as for the stones of West
minster Abbey, could they find a voice, to cry to the
Dean and Chapter assembled below, "We can fall and
crush you." Allow the possible as distinct from the
actual, and one must allow the impossible, and thence
the necessary and the contingent. To deny necessity
is to deny possibility and impossibility. But it is as
egregious wilfulness in a psychologist to set aside any
element of human consciousness as for a chemist to
expel from his laboratory chlorine and its compounds,
forsooth because he has a theory with which those
bodies do not square. As such a theory of chemistry

13



194 FREE WILL

would be "done all on one side," so, too, is the phi
losophy one-sided that ignores necessity. And Mill
does ignore necessity: he will not hear of it in physi
cal science: he banishes it from the science of mind.
Still the phrase, "It must be," has a meaning: every
man understands it: a philosopher should take account
of it.

Mill alleges three proofs, not of the necessary, but
of the invariable sequence of volitions from certain
antecedents. He appeals, first, to self-consciousness.
Here is room not so much for controversy as for re
flection. Reflection upon self is indispensable to the
psychologist. It is, nevertheless, a somewhat untrust
worthy source of knowledge. Entering into ourselves,
we see what we go to see, and few of us go to see
ourselves as we are. However, there is one reason for
thinking that the insincerity in this question rests not
with those psychologists who affirm the consciousness
of free will. For what does that imply? "My will is
free," in the mouth of a man on earth, implies, among
other things, this: "I am capable of sinning." That,
again, if we consider who the speaker is, further im
plies, to a greater or less extent, "I have sinned." Be
lievers in free will believe in sin. One section, also, of
disbelievers in free will have professed to believe in
sin: I mean the Old Calvinists. The greater number,
however, of disbelievers in free will, including all who
deny the doctrine on other than theological grounds,
have no belief in sin. They believe in noxious actions,
restrainable by motives, but not in sinful actions.
"Thou art the man" is not their word to the evil-



JOHN STUART MILL 195

doer. They would shield him with Adam s excuses,
his wife, the serpent, his temper and his circumstances.
They put crime in the same rank with disease: they
would have a criminal operated on for his cure; not
punished for his guilt. "Sweet shall be thy rest," says
the author of the Imitation of Christ, "sweet shall be thy
rest, if thy heart do not rebuke thee." The rest which
phenomenalists enjoy ought to be delicious indeed:
their heart cannot rebuke them, if they are, as they
represent themselves, unconscious as babes of the very
possibility of sinning. There is but one way heartily
to enjoy this world; that is, to put sin out of the list
of possibilities to be thought of. This comfortable way
phenomenalists have found. But the author quoted
above, speaking of ungodly men, who say they are at
peace, gives this warning, "Believe them not, for the
wrath of GOD shall rise of a sudden, and their deeds
shall be brought to nothing, and their speculations
shall perish." To deny sin is hardly the way to escape
the wrath to come, if it be to come. And men know
it is to come, and they know why, because in spite of
themselves they know that they have sinned. The
sense of sinfulness is written too deep in man s heart,
it has operated too widely amongst mankind, to be a
misconception, a psychological solecism. But it is no
more unless the will be free. Sin impossible? Would
it were so! But I fear that, were it not possible, men
could never have imagined such a horror. I conclude
that, of the philosophers who find free will in their
consciousness and sin upon their conscience, and of
those others who declare that they are unconscious



196 FREE WILL

alike of being free and of having sinned, the latter are
the more likely to be deceiving themselves, and to
have not the truth in them.

Mill s second proof is borrowed from the fact that
men can foretell each other s behaviour better or
worse as they know more or less about one another.
This fact proves nothing for him, if it stands as well
with liberty as with uniformity in volition. And so it
does. Free will is not indifference to motives: it is ab
sence of any absolute constraint from the particular
motive that is uppermost in the mind at any given
moment. But there may be more or less an approach
to constraint. A person is left more free under some
motives than under others. A knowledge of his mo
tives is a probable clue to his action. Still more is the
probability of the estimate increased, if, along with
motives, we know also his character, which we may
know by knowing how he has behaved on similar
occasions before. Every time a man does a thing, he
diminishes his liberty of not doing it next time;
he makes the act in some degree natural to him, and
necessary in so far as it is natural. A habit is not
broken without a special motive. The better a man s
habits and motives are known, the more calculable his
action becomes, calculable, I mean, with an ever in
creasing probability. Nor do I care to deny that some
of man s actions may be calculated with absolute
certainty. Such actions, if such there be, are neces
sary; but frequently they are what is called "free in
their cause," being acts proceeding from a habit which
was engendered originally of free acts. While Mill



JOHN STUART MILL 197

holds that all acts are absolutely calculable in them
selves, and are relatively incalculable to us because of
our ignorance of their antecedents, libertarians will
have it that some acts are absolutely beyond calcula
tion, as not following rigidly from antecedents. Neither
view is inconsistent with the facts of our experience.
Necessarianism is not provable a posteriori.

Mill s third proof from "statistical results" shows
no more than this, that many men are sure to do what
all are inclined to do. Probability for each is certainty
for some, out of a large number, but not for any defi
nite individuals. Free will, however, is an attribute of
men taken individually, not collectively. And antece
dent probability of action is compatible with a degree
of freedom.

I reject, equally with Mill, "the hypothesis of spon-
taneousness" about volitions, and "I consider them
all as caused." That is to say, I do not believe an act
of the will to come out of nothing, a causeless pheno
menon. I hold that the person who wills causes his
own volition, under certain motives as conditions. To
Mill the person is nobody; that is why he would call
a free act "spontaneous," meaning that it has no cause.
I do not, however, agree that volitions are "caused"
in Mill s sense of the term, or that an "explanation"
can be found for them, as for physical events.

"A volition," says Mill, "is a moral effect, which
follows the corresponding moral causes as certainly and
invariably as physical effects follow their causes." The
absurdity of this proposition is manifest, when we con
vert it into the following equivalent form: "A volition



198 FREE WILL

is a conscious act, which is done by a conscious agent
or person, as necessarily as an unconscious act is done
by an unconscious agent or thing."

IX

"To be conscious of free will must mean, to be
conscious before I have decided that I am able to de
cide either way. Exception may be taken in limine to
the use of the word consciousness in such an applica
tion. Consciousness tells me what I do or feel. But
what I am able to do is not a subject of consciousness.
Consciousness is not prophetic; we are conscious of
what is, not of what will or can be. We never know
that we are able to do a thing, except from having done
it, or something equal and similar to it. We should
not know that we were capable of action at all, if we
had never acted. Having acted, we know, as far as that
experience reaches, how we are able to act; and this
knowledge, when it has become familiar, is often con
founded with and called by the name of consciousness."

/ do, I can, and I am, are three facets of the same
truth, all three known together in present conscious
ness. / do implies / can. I do and / can imply / am,
for there is no activity nor power in non-existence.
Again, / am signifies / can and also / do; there is no
substantial being without power, and there is no
power where there is no act, though outward action is
not coextensive with power. / do in the present, / can
in the present, and / am in the present. Mill acknow
ledges the present truth of / do and / am, but not of
/ can. He thinks that when I declare / can, I announce
some future fact; but "consciousness," he says, "is
not prophetic." Conscious I am of being, Mill allows,



JOHN STUART MILL 199

and conscious of doing, but not conscious of power.
My belief in any power of my own he holds to be an
inference from what I have done to what I shall do
again in like circumstances. But surely, "I can do a
thing" does not mean "I shall do it." When I act, I
am conscious alike of action and of power, both in
the present. The action passes, but the consciousness
of power remains. There is nothing "prophetic" about
it. It is true that we learn our powers by exercising
them. And we learn that we have a free will by exer
cising it. It is a consciousness that comes of experi
ence. There is no innate idea of free will. The will
is not free in childhood. To say that a child has come
to the use of reason means that his will is now be
ginning to assume command of his conduct. We learn
to will as we learn to lift. There are weights that we
cannot so much as stir. And about many circumstances
and conditions of life our will is utterly powerless. We
learn to know hard necessity, things that we cannot
help, in contrast with what we can help. Necessity
strikes us most when it is about feelings of our own,
of a pleasurable or painful kind. Many such feelings,
e.g., those of temperature in our own bodies, are partly
under our control and partly beyond our control.
Such experience especially helps on the cognition of
free will. But free will comes out most of all in the
matter of impulses. Moral education begins in the
checking of impulses, notably those passionate out
bursts of crying characteristic of infantsgenerally. Aided
by much persuasive impulse from without, the child
comes to cry a little less. There is nothing of free will



200



FREE WILL



here, because there is not as yet any reflex conscious
ness, nothing more than that formative process which
we observe in the higher animals under the training
of man. The assertion of self against impulse is very
gradual. When that assertion takes definite shape, free
will has begun. One day an impulse is curbed in this
way; another day it is allowed free scope. But in
giving it scope, the young agent remembers, " I helped
crying, or getting angry, or frightened, yesterday."
The inference thence is not beyond the range of a
child of six or seven, " I might have helped getting
angry to-day." There we have an initial consciousness
of free will. There is nothing mysterious in the pro
cess, nothing inconsistent with the nature of a con
scious a<5t. It is a reading of one s own present state
in the light of a remembered similar past. There is
no reference at all to the future; nothing of the ele
ment that Mill calls "prophetic."

Mill s mistake, common to him with Locke, is that
of confusing the will to act in a certain way with the
power of executing such volition. Nothing certainly
is more frequent than for people to fancy themselves
conscious of abilities, which further experience proves
that they do not possess. Conscious of his swimming
powers, so he thinks, the unfortunate youth jumps
into the quarry pond and is drowned. We have
in such cases to distinguish between man and his cir
cumstances. Man is conscious of what depends on
himself; he is not conscious of what depends on cir
cumstances. He makes an effort and hopes it will suc
ceed. The effort is perhaps the main element of success,



JOHN STUART MILL 201

but it is not success. To be conscious of ability is to
be conscious of that which in us lies, not of what lies
without us. Therefore, * I am conscious I can swim,
is a twofold judgement of consciousness and of infer
ence. It comes to this: I am conscious I can try, and
I argue from past experience that my attempt will be
successful. The consciousness here is infallible, but
further experience in unwonted circumstances may
overthrow the inference. Hence we may learn to dis
tinguish what truth there is in Mill s saying, that the
assertion / can is " prophetic." So far as it means, * I
can use my endeavours, the assertion / can is a fact
of present consciousness: so far as it means, those
endeavours will be adequate to the occasion, it is an
inference from the past to the future.

X

"But this conviction, whether termed conscious
ness or only belief, that our will is free what is it ?
Of what are we convinced ? I am told that whether I
decide to do or to abstain, I feel that I could have
decided the other way. I ask my consciousness what I
do feel, and I find, indeed, that I feel (or am con
vinced) that I could have chosen the other course if
1 had preferred it; but not that I could have chosen
one course while I preferred another. When I say pre
ferred, I, of course, include with the thing itself, all
that accompanies it. . . Take any alternative: say to
murder or not to murder. I am told that if I elect to
murder, I am conscious that I could have elected to
abstain: but am I conscious that I could have abstained
if my aversion to the crime, and my dread of its con
sequences, had been weaker than the temptation? If



202 FREE WILL

I elect to abstain, in what sense am I conscious that
I could have elected to commit the crime ? Only if I
had desired to commit it with a desire stronger than
my horror of murder; not with one less strong. When
we think of ourselves hypothetically as having acted
otherwise than we did, we always suppose a difference
in the antecedents : we picture ourselves as having
known something that we did not know, or not known
somethingthatwedidknow; which isa differencein the
external motives; or as having desired something or dis
liked something more or less than we did; which is a
difference in the internal motives. I, therefore, dispute
altogether that we are conscious of being able to act in
opposition to the strongest present desire or aversion."

Let us for a moment suppose that the doctrine,
here laid down by Mill, is true. Let us take his exam
ple of a man who has before him an alternative to mur
der or not to murder. Then, if that man s aversion to
the crime and his dread of its consequences are wea
ker than the temptation, he cannot abstain from the
murder: he needs must commit it in that case. If, on
the other hand, his desire to commit the crime is wea
ker than his horror of it, he cannot commit the mur
der, but must needs abstain from it. Whence I argue
thus. Either the temptation is stronger than the hor
ror of the crime, or the horror of the crime is stronger
than the temptation, the case of the two being equal
is a blank. Which ever way it is, the man s election is
necessitated; and as of this, so of every other election
that a man may be called upon to make, all are neces
sitated; therefore, the true theory of volition, as Mill
expounds it, is absolute necessarianism.



JOHN STUART MILL 203

Having followed Mill to a goal which he himself
somewhat deprecates, let us retrace our steps to the
point where we differ from him. It is a slight point, so
slight that he has overlooked its being a possible occa
sion of difference. He " disputes altogether that we are
conscious of being able to act in opposition to the
strongest present desire or aversion." I dispute it also;
indeed, in strict parlance, though, of course, not in the
popular sense, I deny it. We cannot act in opposition
to the strongest present desire, while that desire is at
the present strongest. But frequently we are able to
refrain from acting in accordance with the strongest
present desire (or aversion). Suppose I have a desire
to pull a house down because it is inconvenient, and
also a desire to leave it standing because it is endeared
to me by old associations. I cannot feel two such in
compatible desires both at exactly the same instant, but
I feel now one and now the other. Each in turn is the
stronger at the instant at which I feel it, though one
may be stronger than the other on the whole, as com
ing oftener and being more intense when it does come.
If the proposition, which Mill and I alike dispute,
simply means that I can finally act against the desire
which on the whole is stronger, I cannot stand with
Mill, for the proposition in that sense is true. But if
the meaning is that I can do the very reverse of what
at the moment of my action I supremely long to do,
I protest with Mill against the proposition. To me, as
to Mill, it appears incredible that a man should choose
one course, and at the same time prefer, altogether
prefer, the reverse. Such a choice would turn the laws



204 FREE WILL

of volition topsy-turvy. Let us go back to the example
of the house. At this instant, we will say, the desire
of pulling down the building is uppermost in my soul.
By the very fact that I have that desire now, I do not
desire at the same moment to let the building stand.
I have a spontaneous complacency in the idea of de
struction; and that, while it lasts, prevents me from
being complacent in the idea of conservation.* If I
consummate any volition now by a reflex approval of
a spontaneous complacency, the approval must fall on
the complacency which I have now. I cannot at pre
sent make up my mind to keep the house standing: for
the one "bill," so to speak, at present awaiting my
royal assent is a bill to pull it down. A man cannot
will in opposition to, I do not say his animal or physi
cal, but his psychical and volitional impulse while that
impulse actually reigns; nor being spontaneously com
placent in one purpose can he become then and there
reflexly complacent in another. Thus far I go along
with Mill. He proceeds tacitly to assume that a man
must positively acl and reflexly will in accordance with
his strongest present desire, and there I fall off" from
him. I say the man can wait. Once more to the house.
Desiring to pull the old place down I cannot resolve
to keep it standing, but I can stay and view my desire.
And while I view it, the desire fades away, and I re
main thinking, but not willing, what I shall do with
the old place. The desire to keep it now rises and be
comes predominant. I cannot will to pull the building

*The coiner s press must stamp just that bit of metal which at
that moment lies under it, if at that moment it stamp? anything at all.



JOHN STUART MILL 205

down while I feel an actual desire to keep it; but at the
same time I need not will to keep it. So I go on till at
last I will in accordance with some present desire.

When the volition is completed, I look back upon
my ad. I say it was freely done, by which I mean,
not that I could at the instant have acted otherwise,
but that I could at the instant have refrained from
acting in the way I did. In the moment when the act
of my will was done, though I could not have acted
otherwise, I need not have acted at all. I might have
been quiescent: I might simply not have approved
the complacency at that time being. Without any dif
ference in the antecedents, without any learning of
anything that I did not know, or becoming ignorant of
aught that I did know, or desiring or disliking more
or less than I spontaneously did desire or dislike, I
might have held aloof from that complacency which
I sanctioned and made into a full volition. But for me
then to have embraced a different complacency, and to
have performed a different act of the will, does sup
pose a difference in the antecedents, just such a dif
ference as Mill says "we always suppose when we think
of ourselves hypothetically as having acted otherwise
than we did." Mill s dictum is right, formally for the
psychological instant of decision, but not for the whole
of the deliberative process which is popularly called
the "action."*

See Locke, n. 9.



206 FREE WILL

XI

"It is not the belief that we shall be made account
able, which can be deemed to require or presuppose the
free-will hypothesis; it is the belief that we ought so to
be; that we are justly accountable; that guilt deserves
punishment. It is here that the main issue is joined
between the two opinions. In discussing it, there is no
need to postulate any theory respecting the nature or
criterion of moral distinctions. It matters not for this
purpose whether the right and wrong of actions de
pends on the consequences they tend to produce or
on an inherent quality of the actions themselves. It
is indifferent whether we are utilitarians or anti-
utilitarians; whether our ethics rest on intuition or
on experience. It is sufficient if we believe that there
is a difference between right and wrong, and a natural
reason for preferring the former. . . The real question
is one of justice the legitimacy of retribution or
punishment. On the theory of necessity, we are told,
man cannot help acting as he does, and it cannot be
just that he should be punished for what he cannot
help. Not if the expectation of punishment enables
him to help it, and is the only means by which he can
be enabled to help it? ... There are two ends which
on the necessitarian theory are sufficient to justify
punishment: the benefit of the offender himself and
the protection of others. The first justifies it, because
to benefit a person cannot be to do him an injury. To
punish him for his own good, provided the inflictor has
any proper title to constitute himself ajudge, is no more
unjust than to administer medicine. . . In its other
aspect punishment is a precaution taken by society in
self-defence. . . If it is possible to have just rights, it
cannot be unjust to defend them. Free will or no free
will, it is just to punish so far as is necessary for this



JOHN STUART MILL 207

purpose, exactly as it is just to put a wild beast to
death, without unnecessary suffering, for the same ob
ject. Now, the primitive consciousness we are said to
have, that we are accountable for our actions, and that,
if we violate the rule of right, we shall deserve punish
ment, I contend is nothing else than our knowledge
that punishment will be just; that by such conduct we
shall place ourselves in the position in which our
fellow-creatures, or the Deity, or both, will naturally
and may justly inflict punishment upon us. By using
the viordjust/y I am not assuming in the explanation
the thing I profess to explain. As before observed,
I am entitled to postulate the reality and the know
ledge and feeling of moral distinctions."

Mill is righting against an objection which may be
put into syllogism thus.

We cannot know that we ought to be punished for
our misdeeds, without knowing also that our wills
are free.

But we do know that we ought to be punished for
our misdeeds.

Therefore we know also that our wills are free.

Mill denies the major of this syllogism, and under
takes to prove the contradictory, that we can know that
we ought to be punished for our misdeeds, without
knowing also that our wills are free; in other words,
that the notion of just punishment does not involve
the notion of free will. The way to prove this thesis
would be to explain the meaning of the phrase, "we
ought to be punished," and to show, if possible, that the
phrase does not contain any reference to free will. But
Mill starts with the surprising announcement that the
reason of the right and wrong of actions, which explains



2o8 FREE WILL

why we ought to be punished when we do wrong,
matters not for the purpose of his proof. Surely, it is
on that very reason that the proof depends. How can
anyone discuss why punishment is just, without his
argument involving some view as to the essential
nature of justice? But that again involves some theory
of morals. Indeed, one of the greatest treatises on the
theory of morals ever written, the Republic of Plato,
starts from this very inquiry, What is justice? Mill s
antagonists here contend that the denial of free will
puts quite a new face on justice and just punishment;
and that the ordinary notion of justice and just punish
ment is founded on the assumption of free will; that
consequently, to ordinary minds, to punish a man for
a deed which there and then he could not help is
unjust. Mill s reply, fair enough in its way, is that the
ordinary notion of justice is altogether a mistake. He
proceeds to inculcate instead his own notion of justice
and just punishment, which is the blankest utilitari
anism. Mill s compeer, Bain, correctly writes: "Assu
ming that the imposition of punishment is the distinc
tive property of acts held to be morally wrong, we are
next to inquire on what grounds such acts are forbidden
and hindered by all the force that society or individuals
possess. What are the reasons or considerations re
quiring each one to abstain from the performance of
certain actions, and to concur in a common prohibition
of them, enforced by stringent penalties? The answer
to this is the theory of morals."* This is saying, and it
is well said, that some theory of morals is implied in the
belief that certain actions ought to be punished. How

* Emotions and H lll, second edition, p. 254.



JOHN STUART MILL 209

then can Mill pretend that "it is indifferent whether
we are utilitarians or anti-utilitarians?" His whole
argument is constructed on a basis of utilitarianism.
When a philosopher writes, " There is no need to
postulate," let the reader beware, and till he sees it
to be otherwise, let him expect that his author is going
to take for granted the point which he says there is no
need to postulate. It is not dishonesty on the philoso
pher s part that prompts him to this stretch of the
" privy paw." The stealth is ascribable to a mixture of
zeal and mistrust. Observing some pet doctrine in
want of a particular support, and doubting of our
ability to secure it in face of the opposition of our
adversary, we yield to the nervous eagerness of desire
which makes men say the reverse of what they should
say, and we bid the other party distinctly to take notice
how we scorn that support on which all the while our
doctrine rests. Thus Mill needs the utilitarian morality
to bear out his assertion, that crime ought to be pun
ished, free will or no free will. But his opponents are not
utilitarians, and to convert them is not worth his while
to try. Therefore he denies his need, at the same time
taking what he needs for granted. He lays down utili
tarian definitions concerning crime and punishment
and justice. He lays beside them the necessarian prin
ciple, that a man cannot help the crime that he com
mits. He applies the said definitions to the said prin
ciple, and the result appears accordingly, that it is just
to punish a man for the crime that he cannot help. In
other words, it is expedient for the greatest happiness
of the greatest number, that a man who has been com-



210 FREE WILL

pelled to mar that happiness for want of a motive to
maintain it, should suffer such an amount of pain as
shall furnish a motive to compel him on the next temp
tation to respect the common interests of humanity.
A just procedure, on condition that crime be made
out an accident, punishment a surgical operation,
justice expediency, and man a motive-worked automa
ton. At that rate I readily understand how, " free will
or no free will, it is just to punish so far as is neces
sary for this purpose, exactly as it is just to put a wild
beast to death."

Utilitarianism is a ruthlessly logical system, but it
is not a system of morals. Elsewhere I have styled it
" an abyss of chaos and confusion," in which " moral
philosophy finds her grave."* Abiding by that verdict,
I say that to punish a man for what he cannot help is
an insult to the dignity and a violation of the rights of
man. To punish is not simply to pain: it is to pain and
to blame together. Though it be sometimes just, for
a man s own benefit and for the protection of others,
to make him suffer pain for what he cannot help, it can
never be just to blame him for what he cannot help. The
castigations which we inflict on children and brute
animals are only styled punishments in an improper
sense of the term, inasmuch as they are not accom
panied with moral reproach. It is from an exclusive
study of this improper sense that utilitarians have
evolved their theory of punishment, a theory which
supposes that a wicked man, a " naughty boy," and a

* Ethics and Natural Law, Stonyhurst Series, pp. 177-189.



JOHN STUART MILL 211

restive horse, are all on a level as objects of punishment.
A moment s consideration destroys this supposition.
Man, boy, and horse receive stripes alike; but the man
is blamed severely, the boy perhaps slightly, the horse
not at all. The blame is an essential portion of the man s
punishment; it is that which gives it the sting. The
animosity shown against men of blood, marking them
off from mere beasts of prey, Mill would set down to
the desire to see an example made of noxious men, lest
they should breed imitators. That is indeed a reason why
the murderer should suffer. But it is not a reason for
holding him in abomination. Abomination is not pro
spective, precautionary, prudential, as Mill would
have the entire treatment of wrong-doers to be. To
punish is not to dispense suffering as a chemist dispen
ses drugs: punishment is sufferingattended with blame.
Blame supposes that the delinquent could and ought
to have done otherwise.

As there seems to be something incompatible with
utilitarian ideas in the reprobation heaped on crime
by the common people, it will be desirable in the day
when criminals shall be confined among the beasts, for
some disciple of Mill to stand beside the cages to
rectify the vulgar errors of the visitors. The tenor of
his lecture might be as follows:

" That bear there you observe, ladies and gentle
men, yesterday morning hugged his keeper: the man
was carried out dead from that fatal embrace. The
animal in the next compartment is a man, who has
murdered his wife. As the other bears are not likely



212 FREE WILL

to be influenced by that one bear s example, it has not
been thought necessary to punish him: but the new
keeper has received instructions not to take liberties
with his charge. The man, however, is to be made a
warning to his fellows. It were in evil precedent for
our species if a husband could kill his wife with im
punity. Therefore is he deprived of his liberty, and
any afternoon at one o clock you may see him publicly
flogged. Not that his guilt is greater than the bear s:
but prudence requires that he should undergo a more
exemplary punishment. Be pleased, therefore, not to
censure, blame, loathe or abominate the man any more
than you loathe the brute. You call the murderer a
brute, and it is well you should: only remember that
nature made him what he is, no less inevitably than
she made the bear. The keeper s death took place in
accordance with an invariable law. Had he indeed not
enraged the animal, the law would not have come into
operation. But he did enrage the animal, and the animal
killed him necessarily. You do not blame Bruin for
that. The man is as blameless as the bear. He had
from nature, to start with, a certain organisation and
certain susceptibilities of character. He grew up in
the midst of circumstances, which followed other cir
cumstances in unvarying sequence, like the heat and
cold, and sun and rain, under which a water-lily springs
on the bosom of a lonely lake. A plant s growth is
determined by two fadors, germinal capacity and en
vironment: so is a man s character made for him by
nature and by circumstances. This poor fellow could
not help killing his wife. There are motives which



JOHN STUART MILL 213

would have saved him from the crime, but they were
out of his reach. He had them not, and could not get
them. If his wife had been wearing an iron helmet,
the blow would not have proved fatal. But she had
no helmet to wear, and so was fain to die, as her hus
band was fain to kill. One is no more to be blamed
than the other for what neither could help. It was the
uniformity of nature, the same which tempers the
heat of the sun and measures the orbit of the moon,
that brought the husband to strike with the cleaver
and the wife to die of the wound. Let us hope, ladies
and gentlemen, that nature is not steadily preparing,
in the order of her sure sequences, a similar fate for
you and me."

This, it will be said, is turning philosophy into buf
foonery. It may be buffoonery, but, to the writer at
least, it is not mirth. It saddens my heart to read
utterances like the following: "You discern nothing
while your eye is fixed on Archelaus himself. . . But
when you turn to the persons whom he has killed,
banished, or ruined . . . there is no lack of argument
to justify that sentiment which prompts a reflecting
spectator to brand him as a disgraceful man. . . It will
indeed be at once seen that the taint or distemper with
which Archelaus is supposed to inoculate himself when
he commits signal crime ... is a pure fancy or poetical
metaphor on the side of Plato himself."* To say that
sin is no stain is to say that it is not sin. A criminal

*Grote s Plato, n, 109, ill. There is nothing "disgraceful" in
being a usurper and a tyrant, if one cannot help it. Men should not
be reproached for their natural defects nor for the circumstances of
their education.



2i 4 FREE WILL

in this view is toned down to a hurtful agent: "a
Borgia and a Catiline" appear no worse than " storms
and earthquakes." Wicked men certainly are influenced
by motives, hurricanes are not. The inference which
I should draw, as an utilitarian, measuring moral evil
by material damages, is that hurricanes are more wicked
than men, as being more incorrigibly noxious. A deed
of ours which we cannot help may hurt our fellow-
men, but we are quite aware that that is no sin. We
should not resent being put to inconvenience to pre
vent the recurrence of the mishap, being shut up by
ourselves, for instance, when we have unwittingly com
municated an infection. But we should resent being
punished for it, that is, being reproached as well as
inconvenienced. It is the earliest excuse of a child,
I could not help it. The stupid, rude answer, But I ll
make you help it, has a ring of tyranny and injustice
in the ear of a little one.

One last word on the theory of punishment. The
theory, as we have seen, needs to be modified to fit in
with the hypothesis of determinism. But, I observe,
not only does the theory, as a theme of academic
discussion, need modification: an important change
must likewise be made in our criminal jurisprudence,
and in the practice of our courts of justice, those
arbiters of life and death. I refer to the case of the
criminal lunatic, afflidled with homicidal mania. Like
other madmen, these unhappy persons are by no means
inaccessible to motives, especially of the more violent
sort. It is quite possible to inspire them with fear and
so deter them from offending; and this possibility is



JOHN STUART MILL 215

greater, and the deterrent more effectual, ere they have
yet shed blood. These early stages of the malady should
be contemplated by the preventive eye of the judge.
If a new legal maxim were introduced, and enforced
by example before the eyes of all men, that insanity
shall no longer enter into the verdict, and that crimi
nal lunatics henceforth shall be hung for homicide as
inexorably as other murderers are hung, then persons
of unsettled reason, and others whose criminal habits
are gradually unsettling their reason, would have a
strong motive provided them to keep them from
shedding blood, and this provision would be a notable
addition to the safety of the community. Why should
not the law provide this additional security ? If any
criminal at all should be hung for murder on deter-
minist principles, we should hang the criminal lunatic
for murder. Of all dangerous persons he is the most
dangerous: his type is the most clearly marked: his
character is the most set, and his execution would be
the most exemplary.

The sole reason for sparing the life of this dangerous
person is drawn from the ancient belief of that Chris
tianity in which European States were conceived and
nurtured, the belief that, not being a free agent, the
lunatic is not responsible for his deed; that with his
character and under his circumstances he could not
help it; that, therefore, he has not sinned before GOD,
and, consequently, should not be visited with extreme
punishment by man.* Civilly noxious, and, therefore,

* " Never by human judgement ought a man to be punished with
the pain of the lash (pana flagelli), so as to be put to death, or



216 FREE WILL

to be kept in confinement, he is still morally inno
cent, and retains the right of a man to live, a right
which no man forfeits except voluntarily and freely,
by choosing to behave like a wild beast.* This poor
lunatic still claims the benefit of the medieval axiom:
"The life of the just makes for the preservation and
promotion of the good of the community; and, there
fore, it is nowise lawful to slay the innocent. "f

But all these considerations of the old libertarianism
are swept away by modern determinism, as ruthlessly
as they were abolished by Hobbes. To any determinist,
or necessarian, a punishable murderer is not one who,
being what he was by nature and character, and tempted
as he found himself, could possibly have acted other
wise than as he did act to the slaying of his fellow-
man: he is simply a highly noxious element of society,
whose extirpation will be a good riddance, and will act
as a motive to deter similar characters from imitating
his conduct. If the determinist judge will hang any
man, let him hang this criminal lunatic.

XII

"If any one thinks that there is justice in the
infliction of purposeless suffering, that there is a natu
ral affinity between the two ideas of guilt and punish-

maimed, or beaten with [grievous] stripes, without his own fault.
But with the pain of loss (paena damn ?) one is punished even in
human judgement without fault, but not without cause." Aqui
nas, Sum. Theol. 23 zae, q. cviii, art. 4 ad 2.

* I beseech the reader to whom these ideas are strange to study
them in St Thomas, Sum. Theol. 2a zx, q. Ixiv, articles I, 2, 3, 6;
they may be read in English in dquinas Sthicus, n, pp. 39-42, 46;
cf. Ethics and Batumi Law, pp. 203, 349, 350.

t St Thomas, I.e.



JOHN STUART MILL 217

merit, which makes it intrinsically fitting that wherever
there has been guilt, pain should be inflicted by
way of retribution, I acknowledge that I can find no
argument to justify punishment inflicted on this prin
ciple. As a legitimate satisfaction to feelings of indig
nation and resentment which are on the whole salutary
and worthy of cultivation, I can in certain cases admit
it; but here it is still a means to an end. The merely
retributive view of punishment derives no justification
from the doctrine I support. But it derives quite as
little from the free-will doctrine. Suppose it true that
the will of a malefactor, when he committed an offence,
was free, or, in other words, that he acted badly, not
because he was of a bad disposition, but for no reason
in particular, it is not easy to deduce from this the con
clusion that it is just to punish him. That his acts were
beyond the command of motives might be a good
reason for keeping out of his way, or placing him
under bodily restraint; but no reason for inflicting pain
upon him, when that pain, by supposition, could not
operate as a deterring motive. While the doctrine I
advocate does not support the idea that punishment in
mere retaliation is justifiable, it at the same time fully
accounts for the general and natural sentiment of its
being so. From our earliest childhood the ideas of
doing wrong and of punishment are presented to our
mind together, and the intense character of the im
pressions causes the association between them to attain
the highest degree of closeness and intimacy. Is it
strange, or unlike the usual processes of the human
mind, that in these circumstances we should retain the
feeling, and forget the reason on which it is grounded?
But why do I speak of forgetting? In most cases the
reason has never in our early education been presented
to the mind. The only ideas presented have been those



2i8 FREE WILL

of wrong and punishment, and an inseparable associa
tion has been created between these directly, without
the help of any intervening idea. This is quite enough
to make the spontaneous feelings of mankind regard
punishment and a wrong-doer as naturally fitted to
each other as a conjunction appropriate in itself, in
dependently of any consequences."

There is no strategic advantage in marching in force
upon a position entirely removed from the seat of war.
" He acted badly for no reason in particular " is such
an irrelevant position in the present controversy: no
necessarian need attack what no libertarian holds. Of
course the malefactor acts for some reason and some
motive: of course certain reasons and motives appeal
strongly to his peculiar disposition. But every true
human act, though necessarily done on some motive,
is not done according to one motive rather than
according to another except under the conscious
superintendence and final arbitrement of the presiding
Ego. Whichever way the arbitrement goes, it goes
upon "some reason in particular": the crux of the
question is, Why upon this reason rather than upon
that? Libertarians assert that no "why" of physical
determination, like the " whys " of physical science,
is assignable; and that, therefore, "moral" science is
not, what necessarians make it, a "physical" science.
For my own part I should keep out of the way of a
man to whom it was the same thing to have a motive,
supervening upon a particular disposition, and to act
accordingly. Such is the behaviour of somnambulists, of
patients in delirium and of lunatics generally, but not



JOHN STUART MILL 219

of men in their right senses. A man in his right senses,
that is to say, a free agent, is one whose ads are not
beyond the command of motives, nor yet wholly
within the command of motives. Give a person a mo
tive, and you incline him to act; you do not compel
him. Motives, therefore, are useful means to employ,
though they do not quite act like weights in a scale.
It is advisable to lead your horse to the water, even
though you cannot make him drink. He certainly will
not drink unless he comes to water. And thus much
of deterrent punishment on the theory of free will.

Now for free will and retributive punishment. An
evil deed freely done calls for retribution. Not only
should repetition be guarded against in the future,
but the past wrong should be revenged. There should
be " sorrow dogging sin." This is the keynote of tra
gedy, to which the human heart has responded sym
pathetically in all ages.

kpaaavra Tra&tv,
rpiytpwv /tuOoc TriSe fytovti.

What is it that a man does when he commits a crime ?
He does damage, and he does wrong: his act is evil
physically and morally. The damage is to be repaired
and hindered from recurring, like any other damage.
If it is a wound inflicted, we send the patient to the
hospital, and lay restraints upon the hasty temper and
violent hand of the striker. Thus the physical evil is
corrected. But the offending person has not only done
damage, a stone may do that: he has, moreover, willed

* ^Eschylus, Qkofphori, 314.



220 FREE WILL

to do damage, freely and wantonly. He himself per
sonally was the main author of the mischief, not his
motives. Without motives he could not have done
evil: but the motives that he had were void of effect
without his sanction. Not only, therefore, shall we la
bour to readjust his motives; we shall also blame him
for having yielded to his motives as they stood, and
blaming him we shall avenge the majesty of the moral
law upon him, making him suffer for the wrong that
he has freely done.

Man starts life with much good about him, the gift
of nature and of GOD. He has as a duty of serving the
Giver by keeping the law of nature; and that law he
will discern in various measures according to circum
stances of age, place and race. He can and he ought
to help himself by the aid of his liberty to keep the
law, as he understands it, and as the observance of it
lies within his power. If he wilfully breaks the law,
not as it binds me, and as it would be atrocious fcr
me to break it, but as it binds him, and with a dis
obedience atrocious even in him, then he has entered
upon a quarrel with his Maker, in which he, the man,
is the aggressor. God essentially loves Himself and
hates whatever is opposed to Him. He cannot be op
posed but by a free agent. Ill will alone can set up
against the Almighty; and an ill will is the single ob
ject of His hate. GOD, we are told, is love. The earth and
the fullness thereof is the monument which GOD S love
has built. But if His love is so efficacious, His hatred
is not feeble. St Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises, in the
first Exercise on sin, puts before us the case of a man,



JOHN STUART MILL 221

no matter who, "who for one mortal sin has gone to
hell ": he bids us ponder " how in sinning and acting
against Infinite Goodness such a one has been justly
damned forever." Eternal punishment is the consum
mation of retributive justice, a consummation to over
awe, but not to astonish us. We are not to be sur
prised at wilful, flagrant opposition to the Supreme
Goodness having its issue in endless evil. Holiness
and happiness are in GOD. It is not unnatural that
he who cuts himself off from holiness, should be cut
off f-om happiness ; and that impiety, if not accom
panied with misery, should at any rate end in misery.
Whoever renounces the law cannot expect to retain
the joy of the LORD. Whoever will not share GOD S
holiness, shall not share His happiness. We say com
monly that man sins and GOD punishes. We might put
it otherwise that man, so far as in him lies, casts off
GOD, and then finds himself forlorn. Punishment is
not so much the remedy as the result of sin. When
GOD leaves things to take their course, the sinner is
chastised: mercy is more of a divine interference than
justice. When the angels sinned, we are told, " their
place was no more found in heaven." * Heaven had
become for them a foreign country, a climate in which
they could not thrive, and they fell down as dead
leaves drop from the trees in autumn.

The separation of the wicked from GOD, and their
consequent destruction, are thus pictured by Plato:

GOD, as the old tradition declares, holding in His hand
the beginning, middle and end of all that is, moves according
* Apocalypse xii, 8.



222 FREE WILL

to His nature in a straight line towards the accomplishment
of His end. Justice always follows Him, and is the punisher
of those who fall short of the divine law. To that law he
who would be happy holds fast and follows it in all humi
lity and order ; but he who is lifted up with pride, or
money, or honour, or beauty, who has a soul hot with
folly and youth and insolence, and thinks that he has no
need of a guide or ruler, but is able himself to be the guide
of others, he, I say, is left deserted of GOD, KaraAfnrrrcu tpripof
Oeov ; and being thus deserted he takes to him therso who
are like himself, and dances about in wild confusion, and many
think that he is a great man, but in a short time he pays a
penalty which justice cannot but approve, and is utterly de
stroyed.*

Mill and his school enter vigorous protests against
any introduction of theology into philosophy. But
natural theology is a part of philosophy, the end and
crown of the science. To treat of crime and of pun
ishment, without reference to the Supreme Ruler and
Judge of all the earth, is impossible to a serious
theist.

Having spoken of chastisements immediately divine,
I pass to those inflicted by civil society. Is it right for
civil society to punish one of its members merely with
a view to satisfaction for a past offence, without hope
either of the reformation of the culprit or the protec
tion of society? It is not right, as I will show with all
possible brevity. To punish, one must have authority
over the delinquent. Against an equal there exists the
right of self-defence but not of punishment. The
awarding of punishments is a function of distributive
ustice, the actual exercise of which justice belongs to

* Lotus, 716, Jowett s translation.



JOHN STUART MILL 223

rulers, not to subjects.* The civil ruler must not
punish beyond the measure of his authority. That
measure is determined by the end of civil govern
ment, which end is the temporal happiness of the civil
community, that the citizens may live together in peace
and justice, with a sufficiency of wordly goods, and
with so much of moral probity as is requisite for the
outward good order and happiness of the State. f The
civil magistrate cannot punish, motu proprio, except
for this end. To the extent to which this end may
reasonably be expected to be furthered, to that extent,
and not beyond, may pains and penalties be imposed
by the civil power.

But, though the State should not punish any man
further than there is a prospect of good to mankind,
yet the punishment inflicted under this limitation is
retributive as well as corrective. A murderer should
not be hung, except where the hanging is likely to
hinder bloodshed; but when he his hung in that likeli
hood, men may well rejoice that he has got his deserts.
We may rejoice to see sin expiated by suffering,
though we should not inflict suffering on another
person without his consent, solely for the expiation of
his sins. We blame sin wherever we discover it. But,
in order to award pain as well as blame, that is, to
award punishment to a sinner, the civil magistrate
should have some prospect of amending the offender
or protecting society against him and his example. A
wicked man deserves punishment, but his fellow-men

* St Thomas Aquinas, Summa, 2a, 2X, q. Ixi, art. I ad 3.
t Suarez, De Lcgibus, \. m, c. I i, n. 7.



224 FREE WILL

are not always the persons to punish him. Where they
have the right to inflict punishment for their own
purposes, they become, at the same time, the ministers
of the vengeance of the LORD, and should consider
themselves as such.

Mill draws an argument from "the punishment of
crimes committed in obedience to a perverted con
science." He alludes by name to Ravaillac and Bal-
thasar Gerard. Men like these, he thinks, are justly
immolated to political expediency, without any regard
to the "state of mind of the offender, further than
as this may affect the efficacy of punishment as a means
to its end." I observe that laws are made to deal with
fads as they ordinarily occur. If a criminal s conscience
has been perverted, it is commonly his own fault. The
law, therefore, will not admit the plea of perversion
of conscience. It supposes guilt in the man who, being
of sound mind, does a criminal aft.

These, then, are the positions which I advance
against Mill, (i) It is unjust to punish a man, blame
and distress him, for a deed which he could not help.
(2) Even for deeds that he could help, the civil power
should never punish a man further than the good of
society requires; but within that limit he should be
punished as well as in retribution for the past as in
precaution against the future. (3) GOD does justly
punish in certain cases by way of mere retaliation for
the wrong done to His Divine Majesty.

One word in conclusion on the educational bearing
of this discussion, as our pedagogists now insist on
psychology for teachers. Let free will be an article of



JOHN STUART MILL 225

the teacher s psychological creed, if not on the higher
ground of truth, then on the lower ground of utili
tarian and pragmatic expediency. Where free will is
denied, punish as we may, the training of the young
in virtue will prove no easy task. When a child is
punished, unless he confess at heart that he deserves
it for his own waywardness and wilfulness, the pun
ishment will not appear to him in any moral light
but as a mere odious infliction. If there is no self-
reproach, no iteration of the rod will ever lead a delin
quent to think that wrong-doing is wrong and ought
to be punished. His thought will be that, unfortu
nately, it is hard to do forbidden things and escape
scot-free, a widely different conclusion. But self-
reproach brings in the consciousness of free will: we
do not reproach ourselves for what we think we could
not help. Evil, inevitable under the circumstances, is
a matter of pure compassion.

XIII

" Suppose that there were two peculiar breeds of
human beings, one of them so constituted from
the beginning that, however educated or treated, no
thing could prevent them from always feeling and
acting so as to be a blessing to all whom they ap
proached; another, of such original perversity of na
ture that neither education nor punishment could
inspire them with a feeling of duty, or prevent them
from being active in evil-doing. Neither of these races
of human beings would have free will; yet the former
would be honoured as demigods, while the latter would
be regarded and treated as noxious beasts: not punished

15



226 FREE WILL

perhaps, since punishment would have no effect upon
them, and it might be thought wrong to indulge the
mere instinct of vengeance: but kept carefully at a
distance, and killed like other dangerous creatures
when there was no other convenient way of being
rid of them. We thus see that even under the utmost
possible exaggeration of the doctrine of necessity the
distinction between moral good and evil in conduct
would not only subsist, but would stand out in a more
marked manner than now, when the good and the
wicked, however unlike, are still regarded as of one
common nature."

If we consider a man s act apart from the manner
in which it is elicited, in other words, if we abstract
from free will and determinism, neither affirming nor
denying either, no doubt a distinction between good
and evil actions might still be kept up. Nay, even under
the denial of free will, the action which we now know
as good remains good, and the action which we know
as evil remains evil. But under such denial we should
regard the doers of such actions in quite a different light
from that in which we view good men and bad men
now. On this point I have written elsewhere:

And first of what remains of our present moral system,
when it comes to be worked on determinist principles. The
Ten Commandments remain unchanged. The list of vices and
virtues remains unchanged. The ethical motives for virtue and
against vice remain unchanged. The State continues to frame
laws, commanding and forbidding the same things as before.
The same conduct is praised and rewarded, or blamed and
punished, as before, albeit not quite with the same intention.
The portraits of the good man and of the bad man respectively
have lost none of their external lineaments. The one is still



JOHN STUART MILL 227

self-controlled and self-denying, brave, loving, magnanimous
and just. The other remains a sensualist, cruel and cowardly,
frivolous, idle, heartless and untrustworthy. Nero is still bad,
and Paul good. The exigencies of human nature and of hu
man society have not lost their value. The good and happi
ness of the individual, and the prosperity of the society to
which he belongs, require of him the same conduct as before.
Goodness has not become less profitable, nor wickedness less
detrimental and deplorable, now that both are recognised
necessities. Wickedness is what it was in every respect save
one; and the same deeds are wicked that were wicked. Good
ness has lost only one of its attributes. Formerly the good man
did what it befitted a man to do, having at the same time in
the very act and circumstances of his well-doing the power to
swerve from goodness: still he does the same things, but fur
ther it is to be noted that, with his charadler and circumstances,
he cannot help doing them. And conversely of the wicked man,
who is rightly enough pronounced by the determinist a dan
gerous, disgusting and offensive animal. Ugly conduct fits in
with the determinist hypothesis as well as ugly architecture.
We praise a flower, or a gun, or the "points" of a horse.
There would be no difficulty in praising in that way a man
in whose conduit we recognised no free will. Still he might
be to us a grand fellow, a very useful creature. We might
further encourage him with prospective praise, as an induce
ment to serve us still better, much in the same way that a
driver pats his horse and utters kind cries to it on a hard
road. Such praise, however, and the corresponding blame,
cannot be called moral approbation and reprobation.*

There are two cases conceivable in which no edu
cation nor treatment could prevent a human being
from going about doing good in this world. The
first would be the case of a being too unsusceptible of
education, too stupidly insensible of the treatment he
received, to be diverted from gratifying a blind incli-
* Political and Moral Essays, pp. 253-255.



228 FREE WILL

nation that he had to make himself agreeable and pro
fitable to others, a being that would exercise among
men a genial and healthy influence, as a tench is said
to do amongst fishes, without understanding. Such a
being, though useful, would not be morally good, nor
would his utility be of the highest order; indeed he
would be scarcely human. Secondly, we may conceive
a man, possessed of such a lively and ever actual in
sight into the paramount excellence of doing good,
that he would no more think of failing to do good in
seasonable circumstances, notwithstanding any per
verse training or harsh treatment that he might have
undergone, than we should think of cutting off our
heads to appease our hunger. This man s will would
not be free to turn away from doing good. At the
same time he would be a moral agent, as distinguished
from a physical one, for he would act with an appre
ciation of what he did. His would be a case of an in
tellectual necessity, similar to the necessity under
which GOD and the angels and saints are of being holy,
from seeing the clear vision of the beauty of holiness.
Brute necessity, on the other hand, is the state of an
agent that must act, without knowing what it does.
Brute necessity is incompatible with either moral ex
cellence or turpitude: intellectual necessity is incom
patible with moral evil, but quite compatible with
moral good.

A human being, lying under a brute necessity of
evil doing, may be discussed in three shapes. In the
first place, he may do evil from stupidity, not mean
ing what he does: but then it is no moral evil. Mill



JOHN STUART MILL 229

seems to have wished to exclude this case by his phrase
"adive in evil-doing." Secondly, we may speak of
"an original perversity of nature," that intends known
evil with a resistless necessity from the first. Such a
being would not be of sound mind: would be what is
called a " criminal lunatic " ; and his aclions, horrible ot
themselves, would not be morally evil in him. Lastly,
we may conceive human beings with their wills set in
wickedness, whence no motive can convert them, not,
however, created in this state, but having come to it
by their own abuse of their free will. Such men would
be in the state and condition of devils. Of the devils
St Thomas writes, "The evil angels sin mortally in all
things whatsoever they do of their own will,"* and
he assigns as a reason this property of angelic nature,
that when once an angel takes a decisive resolution,
his will becomes eternally fixed in the same: "The
free will of man is flexible one way and another both
before and after election; whereas the free will of an
angel is flexible before election, but not after."f Such
a life, however, we may venture to think, is not studded
and diversified with a multitude of distinct sins, but
is one long sin, the beginning of which was a free acl,
albeit the continuance is a necessity. We see some
approximation to this state in a confirmed habit of vice
even in a man on earth.

* Sumrtta, la zx, q. Ixxxix, art. 4. t la, q. Ixiv, art. 2.



230 FREE WILL

XIV

" Real fatalism is of two kinds. Pure, or Asiatic
fatalism, the fatalism of the QEdipus, holds that our
actions do not depend upon our desires. Whatever our
wishes may be, a superior power, or an abstract destiny,
will overrule them, and compel us to ad, not as we de
sire, but in the manner predestined. Our love of good
and hatredof evil are of no efficacy, and thoughinthem-
selves they may be virtuous, as far as conduct is con
cerned, it is unavailing to cultivate them. The other
kind, modified fatalism I will call it, holds that our
actions are determined by our will, and our will by our
desires, and our desires by the joint influence of the
motives presented to us and of our individual cha
racter; but that, our character having been made for
us and not by us, we are not responsible for it, nor for
the actions it leads to, and should in vain attempt to
alter them. The true doctrine of the Causation of hu
man actions maintains, in opposition to both, that not
only our conduct, but our character, is in part amen
able to our will; that we can, by employing the proper
means, improve our character, and that if our character
is such that while it remains what it is, it necessitates
us to do wrong, it will be just to apply motives which
will necessitate us to strive for its improvement, and
so emancipate ourselves from the other necessity: in
other words, we are under a moral obligation to seek
the improvement of our moral character. . . When we
voluntarily exert ourselves, as it is our duty to do, for
the improvement of our character, or when we act in
a manner which, either consciously on our part or
unconsciously, deteriorates it, these, like all other
voluntary acts, presuppose that there was already
something in our character, or in that combined with



JOHN STUART MILL 231

our circumstances, which led us to do so, and accounts
for our doing so."

The interest of this interesting passage, with which
the previous passage, n. 5, the reply to the Owenite,
should be compared, lies in the affirmation that "not
only our conduct, but our character, is in part ame
nable to our will." How so? That is the question the
answer to which should light up Mill s whole position,
and reveal the gulf, if any gulf there be, between him
and that " Modified Fatalism " which he reprobates.
This then is his reply or replies:

R. i. " We can, by employing the proper means,
improve our character."

The reply merits all praise from the libertarian
point of view. It is quite true. But how is it consis
tent with " the true doctrine of the Causation of hu
man actions," as laid down by Mill? To get that doubt
solved, we are obliged to ask for an explanation of the
terms of the reply received. What are the " proper
means" by employing which we can improve our
character? Mill replies as follows:

R. 2. "The proper means for improving our cha
racter are our own voluntary exertions."

This reply is gathered from the last sentence in the
extract quoted: "When we voluntarily exert our
selves, as it is our duty to do, for the improvement of
our character," etc. Again, an excellent reply, and, as
it stands, conceived quite in a libertarian spirit. But
this libertarian spirit Mill hastens to exorcise and cast
out. For the sentence goes on: " These [voluntary ex
ertions], like all other voluntary acts, presuppose that



232 FREE WILL

there was already something in our character, or in that
combined with our circumstances, which led us to do
so, and accounts for our doing so." Alas, alas, here we
are back in the squirrel s cage, the vicious circle, from
which Mill seems impotent to escape. By a singular
method, which we may call Roundabout Fatalism, he
derives our volitions from our character and circum
stances, our character from our volitions and circum
stances (one most important circumstance being no
doubt that of heredity), and those volitions again from
our character and circumstances. Then, except our
character and circumstances cause and determine us so
to do, we shall make no voluntary efforts for the im
provement of our character. In what does this account
differ from the "Modified Fatalism" which represents
" our character having been made for us and not
by us"?

The only way to strike a difference, and it is a direct
and very true way, is by saying that although character
and circumstances must concur to induce us to make
voluntary exertions to improve our character, for we
can do nothing without motives, and motives suffer a
sort of refraction in the character upon which they im
pinge; nevertheless, it rests with us finally, having the
motive for voluntary exertion, to ad upon it or to let
it drop void and ineffectual, and this is an alternative
ultimately ruled, not by motive and character, but by
our own personal self. But this a statement of free will;
the direct contrary of that doctrine of the "causation
of human actions," i.e., their physical determination,
which Mill maintains.



JOHN STUART MILL 233

"We are under a moral obligation," writes Mill,
"to seek the improvement of our moral character."
This may be accomplished by "voluntary exertions";
but, as we have seen, those voluntary exertions are
determined by that very character which needs them
for its improvement. Should the character not be re
sponsive to the need, Mill provides another remedy.
"If our character is such that while it remains what
it is, it necessitates us to do wrong, it will be just to
apply motives which will necessitate us to strive for
its improvement"; which means that we may be justly
punished to set us on the way of reform. Here is a
duty which we cannot do until we are punished for
not doing it; a moral obligation, the fulfilment of which
rests with the strong arm of the law that grips us.
Awaiting that, we lie like over-turned motor cars,
helpless for all good on the wayside of life. It is diffi
cult to see any moral obligation in such a position of
necessity.

Disagreeing with Mill in many things, I have never
ceased to cherish for him a certain admiration. Since
I first opened his pages, nearly forty years ago, I have
everadmired his clear, incisive thought, his logical acu
men, and his candour, shining out, as it often does, at the
expense of his consistency. He is too ingenuous, too
adverse to fatalism, too great a lover of individualism
and liberty, to be a thorough determinist. In all this
he forms a strong contrast to Hobbes, who drives his
necessarianism, as he drives every other point of his
grim philosophy, steadily and remorselessly to the
final conclusion.



234 FREE WILL

The difference between determinism and fatalism is
not so much in theory as in practice. The fatalist acts
upon his theory, and either sits idle in the absence of
strong emotion, or surrenders himself to the impulse
in which he recognises his destiny. The determinist,
in England at least, shuts his determinism up with his
books; and, in active life, uses his free will vigorously.
Whatever academicians may say, an illogical escape into
the realms of truth is preferable to detention in the
logical bonds of error once entered upon. Thus esca
ping, on the whole we prosper in England, notwith
standing much bad philosophy.



Rickaby, J.J. B

Free will and four 1133

English philosophers. .F7R5





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