[202]. Evaded, because, even granting the satisfactoriness of the solution for the special case of Adam, there would still be the problem of reconciling the alleged “free will” of his descendants with their inheritance of “original sin.” The more rigid Calvinism, with its insistence on the natural corruption of man’s heart and the absoluteness of predestination, seems to secure logical consistency at the expense of outraging our moral convictions. Like so many popular theological problems, this of the conflict between God’s omniscience and justice arises from a misconception of the issue. It is only when the category of time is illogically applied to the ex hypothesi perfect, and therefore timeless, nature of God that God’s knowledge comes to be thought by as fore knowledge before the event, and thus occasions the difficulty which the “free-will” theory was intended to remove. See on this point, Royce, The World and the Individual, vol. ii. lect. 8, and compare Bradley, Ethical Studies, p. 19. Of course, the case would be altered if we thought of God as finite and imperfect, and therefore in time. But there would then be no longer any reason for believing either in His omniscience or His omnipotence, and so no problem would arise.
[203]. Remember that abstention from acting is itself action, just as in Logic every significant denial is really an assertion. Hence our proviso meets the case of wilful neglect to inform myself of the material circumstances.
[204]. The only automatic acts of which we really know the psychical character are our own “secondarily automatic” or “habitual” acts. It is, of course, a problem for the casuist how far any particular reaction has become so completely automatic as to be no longer an occasion for the imputation of merit or guilt.
[205]. For purposes of law it may often be impossible to draw the distinction, and we may have to acquiesce in the rough-and-ready alternative between entire accountability and complete non-accountability. But in passing moral judgment on ourselves or others in foro conscientiæ, we always recognise that accountability is a thing of degrees. On this point see Mr. Bradley’s previously quoted article in Mind for July 1902.
[206]. It must, however, be carefully noted that will in the sense in which it is equivalent to freedom must be taken to include what some writers, e.g., Bradley, call a “standing” will—i.e. any series of acts originally initiated by an idea of the resultant changes, which is approved of by us unconditionally. In the actual execution of such a series of acts many of the stages are habitual reactions which, as such, are not accompanied by the “idea” of their specific result as a determining condition of their occurrence. The sphere of moral freedom is arbitrarily restricted when it is assumed that an actual volition is indispensable for every stage of the “free” action.
[207]. The reader should study for himself Locke’s famous chapter (Essay, bk. ii. chap. 21). Locke’s treatment, hampered as it is by his unfortunate retention of the discussion of his first edition side by side with a somewhat modified re-statement, compares favourably for clearness and sound sense with that of most subsequent philosophers, notably with Kant’s unintelligible attempt to reconcile the absolute freedom of man as “noumenon” (a fictitious quality of a fictitious being) with his equally absolute unfreedom as “phenomenon” (another equally palpable fiction).
For Leibnitz’s criticism of Locke, see Nouveaux Essais, II. xxi., particularly §§ 8-25. (The English translation by Langley can only be used with extreme caution.) On the whole question the reader should also consult Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, bk. ii chap. 1; Bradley, Ethical Studies, Essay 1, and article in Mind for July 1902; W. R. B. Gibson, “The Problem of Freedom” (in Personal Idealism).
[208]. Then, are “animals” free? I see no reason to deny that, since their life, in as its degree, must have teleological continuity to be a life at all, they too must possess a rudimentary degree of freedom, though a degree not sufficient to fit them for a place as ἴσοι καὶ ὄμοιοι in human society, and therefore, for the special purposes of human ethical systems, negligible. Similarly, a human imbecile may possess a degree of freedom which is important for the educator who is interested in the “care of the feeble minded,” and yet may rightly be treated for the different purposes of a penal code as simply unfree.
[209]. Compare with what follows, Bradley, Ethical Studies, Essay 1, and the notes appended to it. For a typical statement of the determinist case in its more sober form, see Mill, System of Logic, bk. vi. chap. 2. It is harder to find a reasonable statement of the opposite view, as most capable moral philosophers have adopted the doctrine of self-determination. For a defence of thoroughgoing Indeterminism, see James, The Will to Believe (Essay on The Dilemma of Determinism). In Professor Sidgwick’s statement of the indeterminist view (see, e.g., his posthumous lecture on T. H. Green’s doctrine of freedom in Lectures on the Ethics of Green, Spencer, and Martineau, pp. 15-28), Indeterminism seems to me to be qualified to the point of being in principle surrendered.
[210]. See the admirable discussion of this experience in Dr. Stout’s Manual of Psychology,3 bk. iv. chap. 10, § 7.