The Freedom of the Will

Article 3. The Freedom of the Will

a) The Meaning of Freedom

Taken in widest meaning, freedom or liberty is a kind of undeterminedness, an immunity from necessitation or obligation. Obligation is that which determines a thing, requires it to be as it is and not otherwise. A thing so obligated or necessitated depends upon the obligating force. Hence the further a thing is removed from such dependency, the greater its degree of freedom. Therefore, the infinite God, who has no dependency on anything else whatever, has absolute and perfect freedom. Creatures, however, are dependent upon the causes which produce and conserve them and make and keep them what they are essentially; they depend also, in some sense, upon the forces which affect them accidentally and determine their accidental character at any given moment. Hence creatures, from highest to lowest, are excluded from absolute and perfect and universal freedom. Some measure of freedom they may possess,—and do possess if they are sentient creatures or rational creatures,—but their finiteness is a determination and a mark of dependency which precludes the possibility of boundless and perfect freedom,

Human freedom is the liberty of the human will. It is freedom of choice. In many things, man is not free. He is not free to disregard the law of gravitation; he is not free to see with his ears and hear with his eyes; he is not free to change the process of natural bodily or mental activity; he is not free to be everywhere at once. Nor is he free from moral obligations. But, as we shall see, he is free to act or refrain from acting; he is free to choose this and reject that object. And this is the freedom we mean when we speak of the freedom of the will.

b) Kinds of Freedom

I. Freedom of independence. This is immunity from the obligation of law which exacts obedience of subjects. Only God enjoys such liberty, for only God is subject to no regulation or law. Man is not, and cannot be, independent of law, even though he is physically free to violate it. Man’s obligation arising from law (divine, natural, human) is a moral obligation. Man is not morally independent.

2, Freedom from force (or freedom from coaction) is immunity from unwelcome bodily compulsion. A person in normal circumstances enjoys this freedom. A person who is pushed forward in a crowd, although he wishes to stand still or go the other way, suffers coaction, and has not, at the moment, freedom from force. So with the prisoner dragged protestingly to jail; so with the youthful culprit held captive while he is being caned. A bird in a cage or a prisoner in a cell has a limited freedom from force, for each can move about freely but within a very restricted space. A man in a straitjacket has no such freedom at all.

3, Freedom of choice is immunity from any interior natural compulsion to act in this way or that. It is the freedom of a faculty or acting-power which has the control of its acts. Of course, the faculty will be so constituted by nature that it must exercise its normal function when it operates, and in this it is not free; but it has freedom of choice when it is free to act or not to act in a given situation, and is free to fix upon this object or that when it does act. The freedom of choice is well described by its very name, for it is the freedom of a choosing-faculty; it is a power to take a course of action or refuse to take it; to take this course or that. This is the type of freedom or liberty which we ascribe to the human will. Sometimes it is called freedom from necessitation in acting.—Freedom of choice is manifested in three ways and psychologists have devised a special name for each mode of its exercise. Thus we have: (a) Freedom of contradiction, which is the power to choose between contradictories. Now, contradictories are two judgments, statements, or courses of action which perfectly exclude each other and exhaust the possibilities. Between contradictories there is no middle ground; they are always two in number, as is manifest from their definition, and, in the sphere in which they exist, one of them is necessarily verified, the other necessarily impossible. Thus “white” and “not-white” are contradictories. In the sphere of color, there is no conceivable thing which is neither the one nor the other. A thing cannot be both, but it must be one of them. Thus we rightly say that contradictories are exactly opposed and so exclude each other (both cannot be verified simultaneously), and they exhaust the possibilities (one or other must be verified; there is no conceivable alternative in the sphere in which they belong). Now, freedom of contradiction (a special variety or special manifestation of freedom of choice) is the power to choose between contradictories. Examples: to act or not to act; to love or not to love; to speak or not to speak, (b) Freedom of contrariety is the power to choose between contraries. Contraries are two judgments, statements, or courses of action that are opposite and so exclude each other, but do not exhaust the possibilities. Between contraries there is a middle ground. Thus “white” and “black” are contraries; they cannot be simultaneously verified,—a thing cannot be at once wholly white and wholy black,—but the whole range of colors lies between them; many things may have color and be neither white nor black. Freedom of contrariety is, we repeat, the power to choose between contraries. Examples: to love or hate; to do good or do evil, (c) Freedom of specification is the power to choose between merely different courses of action. It is the power to specify, to indicate exactly, what is to be done. Examples: to read or to walk; to visit friends or to play golf. Of course, one specifies when one chooses between contradictories or between contraries; one “picks out” what precisely is to be done. But the freedom of specification (which thus overlaps the other varieties of freedom of choice) is technically limited to those choices which do not fall under the classification of contradictories or contraries.—The essence of freedom of choice lies in the freedom of contradiction and that of specification. Freedom of contrariety, does not belong to this essence for the ability to choose between good and evil (in the moral sense) is an imperfection of liberty, involving as it does the possibility of ultimate defeat in the quest for which the will was made. A further note: Freedom of choice is the power to choose means to an end, and if an all-perfect end be achieved, so that no rational desire can longer exist,—since all desire is perfectly satisfied in the end achieved,—then freedom of choice necessarily ceases to have a meaning. The will has, in such a perfect object, found fulfillment. It is now in possession of a crowned and perfect freedom; it is not enslaved by good, but filled up and perfected by what it was made for, and further choice became an absurdity.

4. Freedom is further divided into a number of varieties which indicate the power to exercise rights in various departments of life and human action. Thus we have civil liberty, religious liberty, personal liberty, domestic liberty, industrial liberty, and so on.

c) Human Freedom

By human freedom we mean the freedom of the human will. And we assert that the human will is free, by freedom of choice, to elect the means which carry it on to the achievement of good. The good we speak of is good in general, or universal good. Every creature, and specifically every appetite, tends to the attainment of good, and in this general tendency there can be no question of choice. Man is not free to choose to seek evil instead of good (we use the terms good and evil still in their universal meaning), for, as we have already seen, evil is not, and cannot, be chosen for its own sake, but only under the aspect of good. But in the objects,—that is, particular objects, individual objects,—in which a man seeks good (and which are therefore appetized as means to that general good towards which his nature inevitably bends him) there is room for election or choice. And therefore human freedom consists in this: a man is free, by the will’s freedom of choice, to choose, in individual instances, to act or not to act, to act thus or otherwise. Man has, in every act (thought, word, deed) that he deliberately exercises, the power of self-control, the power of self-determination, the power which makes him the true author of his acts,—which are therefore imputed to him, and for which he is therefore responsible. And this is what we mean by human freedom or freedom of the will.

The will is a tendency, an appetite, a striving towards an end, a goal,—-towards good. The will is free in any individual situation to choose this or that object as good, whether, in fact, the good be real or only apparent. The character of an object as good is manifested to the will by the intellect; and the will has control of the intellect inasmuch as it can allow the intellect to focus upon an object, or can remove its attention to something else. Now, the intellect is a limited faculty; in the present life it is also hampered by its extrinsic dependence upon the senses; and its clear view and ready judgment is more or less effectively balked by impulses and precipitateness and acquired habits. For this reason the intellect may present what is good under an aspect which makes it undesirable, and in so far evil; and, on the other hand, the intellect may present what is really undesirable under desirable aspects, and thus judge as good what is actually evil. Consider the man who sins by intemperance. He knows by sad experience that if he indulges his taste for liquor, he will go too far; and he knows that the consequences will be most unpleasant: he will suffer physical distress, perhaps for days, and he will make himself the object of anger and contempt; his conscience will afflict him with the knowledge that he has lowered himself below the status of a man and has given bad example. Despite all this, he chooses to drink liquor. Now, the free-will of a confirmed toper is not a ready will; as we have said; habit and bodily appetites influence the judgment which precedes the act of will. But so long as he is sane, the man has control of his acts; he can will and will effectively even if not easily; he remains master of his conduct, and is responsible for his deliberate acts. The point, however, that here immediately concerns us is indicated by a question: how can the man choose what is so manifestly a source of unpleasantness and distress as good? For this reason: the intellect can focus upon the desirable features of the object (i. e., the suggested activity or piece of conduct), leaving the undesirable features out of consideration. In another place in this Chapter, we compared the intellect to a spot-light and the will to the hand that guides it and controls the direction of its beams. In the example of the intemperate man, the intellect is allowed by the guiding will to focus its light upon the immediate pleasure to be had in drinking; the consequences and ugly circumstances of the act are allowed to remain in darkness. Thus we see that the object, despite all evil that comes of it, is seen under the aspect of the desirable, the satisfying, the appetizable. In a word, the object is chosen as good.—We may profitably consider a further example. Consider the man who declares that he would like to lead a virtuous life, yet continues to lead a bad life. How is this possible? Not only is virtue good in itself, but the man knows it and declares that he wishes to possess it. The problem is not difficult of solution. The judgments of the intellect are of two kinds: speculative and practical. A speculative judgment pronounces on the truth or falsity of a fact or situation; it recognizes a state of affairs. A practical judgment is one that enunciates something to be done or avoided. Now, the will follows the practical judgment of the intellect, for the will is a _doing-_power, a _choosing-_power. The mere recognition of virtue as good and desirable is not yet a practical judgment; it is speculative; it is the pronouncement of intellect upon the status of a thing; it is the recognition of a state of affairs. Only when the intellect presents virtue as not only good and desirable in a detached way, but as good and desirable here and now to go after and acquire, only then is the judgment a practical one that can win the assent of the will, causing it to elicit the activity of intention. But even the practical judgment is not necessarily operative in leading the will to action; only when this judgment is the final judgment, the last word about what is right now to be done, does the will necessarily follow. Nor does the will cede its freedom by reason of this necessity; remember, it is the will which allows the intellect to fix finally on the thing to be done. The ultimate practical judgment of intellect must be followed by will-action; but the will exercises the decision which makes the judgment ultimate. Recall our analogy of spot-light and guiding hand. The object upon which the spot-light is permitted to rest must be shown in its clear light, but the hand exercises the power which permits the light to come to rest or moves it on. Now, in the case of the man who says he wishes to be virtuous but remains vicious, we have speculative judgments of intellect which recognize virtue as fine and noble, but not the practical judgments which lead to virtuous conduct. The speculative judgment, “This is something that I should do” is not transformed into the practical judgment, “This is what I’m going to do.” But, you may say, the problem remains. If the intellect actually presents virtue as desirable, it presents it as good,—at least speculatively,—and how can the will go counter to even such a judgment in its actual choice. Because the intellect of the man in question presents virtue, in a practical judgment, as undesirable, in spite of what the speculative judgment reveals. In a word, the practical judgment of the man of bad habit shows virtue to be difficult of achievement, accompanied by sacrifices that discommode, not immediately attainable by simple effort, rewarded ultimately by a far-off heaven. On the other hand, the pleasures that contravene virtue are ready to hand, exact no effort, meet the tendency of acquired habits, give satisfaction,—however fleeting,—here and now and not hereafter. Focussing upon the present, on that which is immediately attainable as an agreeable experience, on that which meets the inordinate tendencies which have long been allowed to have their way, on that which lies in the spot-light as desirable (however many opposite features and appeals may be in the ring of darkness outside that small focus), the intellect actually judges (by ultimate practical judgment) that the present sinful pleasure is good and its opposite virtue is evil.

The intellect is said to be capable of objectively indifferent judgments. In other words, the intellect may fix upon an object, however good, and find it evil; it may fix upon any object, however evil, and find it good. Thus no matter how good or how evil an object of intellect may be in itself, it is “indifferent” in so far as it may be judged either good or bad by a particular judgment of intellect. Note, however, that the intellect, which is a faculty for truth, is not merely deceived in finding evil in a good object or good in an evil object. Its judgment in these cases (apart from the relatively infrequent case of a mistaken mind which is called an erroneous conscience) is not mistaken, but perverse, and hence blameworthy. The intellect is perverse by reason of perversity in the will which controls its effort, study, attention, focussing. And perversity of the will is due to an abuse of freedom of choice, and is often induced by previously acquired habit of acting, especially such habits as inordinately strengthen the sentient appetites or passions and so make their appeal to the will almost the equivalent of an imperious command.—But to revert to the statement that the intellect is capable of objectively indifferent judgments,—a statement that needs further illustration. Honesty is desirable, is good, but it is something that requires care and effort, and its reward is not an immediate intense enjoyment. Dishonesty is evil, undesirable, but it may offer promise of independence from poverty, release from trying labor, enjoyment of comfort and ease. Hence the intellect, which is capable of viewing honesty indifferently, may focus upon the desirable and really good features of it (the will holding the light of intellect steadily upon these), and the resultant practical judgment, “I will be honest” is followed by honest conduct, or the resistance of a temptation to dishonesty. On the other hand, the intellect may be focussed (under control of will) on the desirable features of dishonesty, and the practical judgment follows which declares it an object to be embraced; and there results an act of theft or a continued policy of cheating. Now, even the man who is daily defrauding his employers, is not in love with dishonesty as such; he must suffer many an hour of remorse, many a keen realization of the evil of his ways. Such the speculative judgments of his intellect. But as long as he continues his evil practice, he is judging practically that the way of thievery is good, despite its accompanying evil of remorse and conviction of an unworthy life. Even if the culprit pleads inability to extricate himself from the toils of evil; even if he says, “I’m so deep in this thing now, and am caught in so many complex compulsions that force me to continue, that I’m really unable to avoid dishonesty, however much I long to be free of iteven then, we say, he still chooses the evil he deplores as good. For, despite the circumstances which make him long to be free from evil, he chooses the dishonesty as something more easily endured than the disgrace and discomfort that would follow its discontinuance. He chooses the dishonesty,—however much he bewails it,—as the lesser of evils, and hence, relatively, as good. What is said of dishonesty may be said of any evil that the will may choose: of impurity, of infidelity, of evil speech, of laxity in religious practice. In some cases the actual effort required to amend is regarded as too great a burden (i. e., an evil) to be undertaken even to achieve the admittedly (by speculative judgment) good end. And so, for example, purity is judged (practically) as evil, and impurity as good; laxity in religion is judged as good, and fervor as evil. Thus, saint and sinner alike in every human act (that is, in every fully deliberate act), manifest the truth that the human will chooses only good.

Of the very important truth that the human will is free we have now to offer some proofs, and to show wherein the opposed doctrine is fallacious. We shall consider: 1. The Existence of Freedom of the Will, and 2. The Error of Determinism.

1. The Existence of Freedom of the Will—Our will has freedom of choice. The first, the direct, and the most evident proof of this fact is found in consciousness. Man is aware that he is not the victim of a nature that forces his actions in all things; he is aware that he is not the helpless prey of circumstances; he is aware that he is not compelled to yield to the attractions of any object, however powerful these may be. In a word, man is aware that he is master of his human conduct. Let us make no mistake; we do not assert that man has control over every activity, even every conscious activity, or that he exercises what control he has by continuous volitions or will-acts. What we do assert is that man is master of his human acts, that is, of such acts as he deliberately and advertently performs, and which he knows as the fruit of his own decisions. A good deal of man’s ordinary daily life runs along on the wheels of habit and takes a course determined by the man’s character and the attractions of the various objects and situations that he encounters. But the even current of a man’s life (colored by his character and by the motives found in the attractiveness or repulsiveness of particular objects and situations) is willed in its cause, for the man is its cause; and now and again, during a day or week or month, the man must advert more or less directly to the sort of life he regularly leads, and, so adverting, must give practical approval to it, must will it in short. Only occasionally, perhaps, in a person’s ordinary day, is there demand for a special, clearly realized, and deliberate choice or volition. Such clearly realized will-acts are most evident in the judgments of conscience on the moral qualities of a situation to be faced and decided. It is particularly in conscience-judgments that a man is reflectively aware that his decision, his volition, his will-act, is the essential factor which makes his “doing” or “avoiding” his own activity, of which he is cause, author, and responsible determinant. —Man is conscious of the control he wields over his own acts. And he experiences this consciousness before, during, and after his deliberate volitions. Before he acts, he may, and frequently does, take counsel with himself or seek advice of others. He weighs reasons pro and con; he considers advantages or disadvantages to follow. During the action, he is aware that he is doing what he might have left undone, doing one thing while he might have chosen to omit it or to have done something else, even something opposite. After acting, man is conscious of self-approval or remorse; he is glad or sorry that he has acted as he did. Consciousness, is therefore, an evident proof of the existence of free-will. And of what value is consciousness? It is of basic value in human certitude. Simple consciousness of manifest facts is the foundation of all recognition of truth; it makes science possible. Denial of the value of consciousness is the denial of value in human knowledge; it leads directly to the darkness, silence, and self-contradiction of universal skepticism.

Everyone is conscious of self-direction and control in many acts. Nor is the experience merely an individual one. The collective activity of mankind is a further manifestation of the fact. Men gather into communities, set up governments, pass laws, take and ask advice, exhort and command, take a person’s word or bond, regard their activities as worthy of praise or blame. Now, all these things manifest the common consciousness of mankind in the matter of human freedom. Why have laws, if men are necessitated and hence obliged to act as they do? We do not pass laws for dogs or horses, for trees or running brooks, but for men; and we pass laws for men because we know that men are free and may abuse freedom, and hence must be urged to live in a manner consonant with peace and progress and civic security. The urgency of law is made manifest to men by sanctions, that is, by the penalties attached to its violation. Obviously, the very existence of laws is proof unquestionable that man is free, and is required, under punishment threatened, to use his freedom reasonably, and not to abuse it by disrupting the peace or safety of the community. Why should men seek advice, if they are necessitated and hence not free to follow it? Why should our very schools be equipped with “advisers” and vocational guides, and psychologists, if their suggestions and prescriptions are meaningless in the face of fatalistic necessity controlling man’s every act ? How is it that we take a man’s promise to pay a debt, if the man be not free to pay his debts ? We are forced to admit that the consciousness of individual men, and of mankind as a whole, is inevitably a declaration of the truth of human freedom, that is, of the freedom of choice which belongs to the will of a man.

A second proof of the freedom of will is found in very nature of the will itself. The will, as we have many times noticed, is an appetite, a tendency towards something. Now, a tendency is not necessitated except by that which meets its drive perfectly and at all points. It is manifest that no creatural good, no earthly “value,” meets perfectly the appetite of will. The longest life will end, the keenest enjoyment must fade, the greatest riches must be left behind. Our desires reach beyond all limited goods, all particular “values.” The “longing after immortality” which the poet ascribes to man’s spirit, is only one phase of man’s longing after infinity, after boundless good ceaselessly to be possessed. Since there is nothing on earth that is unbounded, since death puts a termination to anything that might appear to be of limitless value, it follows that nothing on earth can fully and perfectly satisfy the appetite we call the will. Hence, nothing on earth can necessitate the will. But if the will is not necessitated, nor can be, the will is free. That is, it is free as an appetency, free to choose, free to go after and possess what is manifested to it as satisfying. In a word, it has freedom of choice.

A third proof of the freedom of the will is found in the nature of the intellect, the guiding light which the will controls and follows. The intellect apprehends what is good in general, in universal. And, in its practical judgments, it attracts the will to particular goods. And indeed in the different objects that fall under its light, the intellect can see good in various, and in opposite, features. Intellect is capable of objectively indifferent judgments because it can find any object good and desirable, or evil and undesirable, as it views different aspects and circumstances. But the concept of good is one concept. If, therefore, the one reality called good in general, can be presented in a plurality and a variety of particular manifestations, it follows that there is room and need for election or choosing on the part of the faculty which tends to lay hold of good. In a word, it follows that the will is not necessitated but is called upon to choose. The will, therefore, has freedom of choice.

A fourth and final proof of the freedom of the will is found in the absurdities which follow upon its denial. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” is a reliable test of doctrines. Therefore if the doctrine which denies freedom of the will is found to lead logically to impossibilities and absurdities, it is not a true doctrine; consequently, its contradictory doctrine is true, viz., that the will is free. Now, denial of free-will does, in fact, lead to impossibilities and absurdities. We have seen some of these in the discussion of our argument from consciousness, to wit, that denial of human freedom makes nonsense of human laws, educative methods, business practices, etc. Further, we must declare that this denial is entirely destructive of morality. For it takes away responsibility. And if a man have no free-will, and no choice in his conduct, no control of his acts, it follows that there is no such thing as right and wrong, no such thing as merit and demerit. Saint and sinner, the good man and the roue, the solid citizen and the gangster, are equally blameless in the face of fated necessity. Prisons then are torture chambers, but, of course, men are fated to build prisons and confine prisoners. Good conduct and evil conduct are equally valueless, but men are forced by blind necessity to praise the one and condemn the other. No sense or reason is to be found, therefore, in the common conduct of mankind; we are all blind fools together. Morality comes to naught, and with morality all social sense and social security perish. Here is the fruit of the denial of human free-will. But we cannot, without denying all value to human knowledge, accept this fruit as the true food of minds. We find it absurd; we find it impossible to accept. Therefore, we find the denial of free-will impossible. We are driven to conclude that human free-will is a fact.

2. The Error of Determinism—Those who deny the freedom of the will are called determinists, and their doctrine is determinism. Alternative synonyms for these terms are necessarians and necessarianism. We who assert the freedom of the will are called indeterminists or libertarians. Notable names among determinists of one type or another are: Kant (1724- 1804); Hume (1711-1776); Spinoza (1632-1677); Hobbes (1588-1679); Locke (1632-1704); Mill (1806-1873); Bain (1818-1903); Spencer (1820- 1903); Sidgwick (1838-1900); Lewes (1817- 1878).

Determinists declare that we always act of necessity in response to the strongest motive. We answer, if this means that we act in response to what the will allows the intellect to dwell upon and present as the ultimate practical judgment, the statement simply means, “the ultimate practical judgment is the ultimate practical judgment,” or, “the motive which prevails is the motive which prevails.” We have no quarrel with this sort of elementary da-da-ism. But if the statement means that man is controlled by the most alluring, most pleasurable object, we answer that it is not so. Surely no adult has lived many years of life without sometimes refusing the most pleasurable and attractive offerings of sense or intellect, turning the mind by resolute will to the contemplation of other things. The familiar instance of St. Francis and the leper is a striking example of this sort of will-act. Let us quote the words of that great Christian philosopher, lately gone to his great reward, Mr. G. K. Chesterton: “Francis Bernardone saw his fear coming up the road towards him; the fear that comes from within and not without; though it stood white and horrible in the sunlight. For once in the long rush of his life his soul must have stood still. Then he sprang from his horse, knowing nothing between stillness and swiftness, and rushed on to the leper and threw his arms round him.” Heroism, strong resistance to temptation, steady adherence to the day’s duty and long routine,—here are examples of will-acts, —specially exercised in themselves or in cause,— which effectively give the lie to the doctrine that man always acts under the compulsion of the most pleasurable object.

Determinists declare that free-will acts would be causeless acts. The statement is wholly false. The will is the cause of its acts, and the motive which invites this cause to go into action is some particular good grasped by the intellect and presented to the will which allows the intellect to “hold steady” on that object and judge it finally as the thing to be willed. Shakespeare put into the mouth of Julius Caesar the proper answer to the objection based on “causeless actions”: “The cause is in my will; I will not come. That is enough to satisfy the Senate.”

Determinists shift the argument, admit that there is a cause for will-acts, and then claim that all causation is necessitated; hence, the will, while it is the cause of its acts, is not the free cause. We appeal to consciousness and the common sense of mankind to refute this assertion. We are clearly aware that we are the authors and the causes of our will-acts, and that we may consider before acting what we are to do, and then follow a course that is, indeed, finally chosen, but which might have been rejected in favor of another course, even its opposite.

Determinists say that we judge of the activities of other men as the outcome of their character and their circumstances. While it is true that character (which is that “bundle of habits” which a man has acquired through the years) and circumstances have an influence, and even a great influence, on a person’s choice, we deny that we regard this influence as a necessitating one. Knowing the character of a man, and the circumstances in which he is placed, we may judge with a greater or lesser probability what he will do. But, even so, we do not think or assert that he must act according to our judgment. We have noticed that the will is subject to influences; our point is that it is not subject to necessitation. Astonishing conduct on the part of those we “know inside out”; unexpected nobility in one of abandoned life; surprising generosity in a miserly person,—these are experiences that most of us have encountered sometime in our lives. In actions that are not fully deliberate, a man is guided by character and the immediate circumstances; but we are not discussing indeliberate action. In many deliberate acts, man is guided by character and circumstances; that is to say, he is influenced by these forces; but we are not speaking of influences, but of necessitation. A man of virtue may be counted upon to resist evil temptations, while a man of bad life may be counted on to give in to them; but in each fully deliberate consent to, or rejection of temptation a man, no matter what his strength or weakness, freely makes his choice. A free-will act is not necessarily an easy act; and even the weakest man in the face of the strongest temptation can take his stand and offer effective resistance. (We make no account of grace here, for, while it is necessary, it is furnished always in sufficient measure.)

Determinists say that the statistics of the sociologist and criminologist prove that there is a constant ratio between social conditions and human conduct. The answer to this assertion is that it is not so. Statistics are valuable, but their value is not so inclusive as some sociologists would like to believe. They cannot touch the inner life of the individual man; they can only generalize about men in a group. They reach conclusions about a purely mythical figure,—handy for some purposes of social science,—called “the average man.” Using statistics, we can make some general conclusions about a society or group, and these may be right in the main, but they do not preclude notable and numerous exceptions. The cities of the plain had pretty generally gone bad, yet some were virtuous in the midst of almost universal defilement. Even if statistics had the value which certain determinists would like to give them, they could show no more than the existence of certain strong influences and occasions for the sort of conduct they indicate. We all admit the power of “environment”; we all acknowledge the inducements held out by a community to bring its members into comformity with its preferred type. But none of these inducements, occasions, or influences, exercises a necessitating force upon the free-will. Out of the vilest communities men of rare nobility have often emerged, as out of the most favorable and uplifting “environments” have sometimes come the basest of mankind.

Determinists have sometimes taken a theological turn, and have urged that a man’s will cannot be free because God knows what he is going to do at every moment of his life. The answer to this apparent difficulty lies in the fact that God’s knowledge does not necessitate man. I know what I am doing at this moment, but my knowledge of my activity is not the necessitating cause of it. I am freely doing what I am at because I choose to do it. A somewhat lame analogy may help the puzzled person who finds God’s knowledge an obstacle to free-will. Suppose I stand on a high hill looking down upon a road which swings in a mighty curve about its base. I see two motor-cars on the road, one on either side of the hill, moving towards each other. Neither motorist yet sees the other; neither knows that he is about to pass another car. From my point of eminence I can see, and can thus know, that the cars will pass. But my knowledge has no effect on motors or motorists; it is in no sense the cause of their passing. The analogy, inadequate as it is, turns the mind to the point that should be stressed in this question of divine foreknowledge and human free-will. If it be urged that God’s knowledge is not the detached knowledge of a human observer; that He is the first mover without which nothing and no one moves, we answer that God moves every being in accordance with its nature, and man’s nature, being intellectual, is necessarily free with the freedom of choice. It would be ascribing imperfection to God to assert that He could not make a creature endowed with such freedom; and, of course, He could not do so, were His perfect knowledge an obstacle to freely chosen action.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have learned the meaning of freedom or liberty. We have listed varieties of freedom: freedom of independence, freedom from force, freedom of choice; we have distinguished in freedom of choice the varieties called freedom of contradiction, freedom of contrariety (which, while found in the human will in this life, is an imperfection consequent upon human limitations), and freedom of specification. We have also listed the varieties called civil, religious, personal, domestic, and industrial liberty or freedom. We have explained at length the meaning of human freedom (or the freedom of the will) and have proved that man possesses this freedom. We have rounded out our study of the will by considering the fallacious objections brought by determinists against the fact of free-will in man.