[197]. Death, however, though the most striking, is not the only illustration of this apparently irrational interference of accident with intelligent purpose. Mental and bodily disablement, or even adverse external fortune, may have the same effect upon the self. This must be taken into account in any attempt to deal with the general problem.
[198]. Dr. McTaggart’s phrase is more exactly adequate to describe my view than his own, according to which “immortality” is capable of philosophical proof. (See the second chapter of his Studies in Hegelian Cosmology.) I have already explained why I cannot accept this position. I believe Dr. McTaggart’s satisfaction with it must be partly due to failure to raise the question what it is that he declares to be a “fundamental differentiation” of the Absolute.
[199]. I ought perhaps to say a word—more I do not think necessary—upon the doctrine that immortality is a fundamental “moral postulate.” If this statement means no more than that it would be inconsistent with the rationality of the universe that our work as moral agents should be simply wasted, and that therefore it must somehow have its accomplishment whether we see it in our human society or not, I should certainly agree with the general proposition. But I cannot see that we know enough of the structure of the universe to assert that this accomplishment is only possible in the special form of immortality. To revert to the illustration of the text, (1) our judgment that the world must be a worthless place without immortality might be on a level with the child’s notion that “grown-up” life, to be worth having, must be a life of continual play and no work. (2) If it is meant, however, that it is not “worth while” to be virtuous unless you can look forward to remuneration—what Hegel, according to Heine, called a Trinkgeld—hereafter for not having lived like a beast, the proposition appears to me a piece of immoral nonsense which it would be waste of time to discuss.
CHAPTER IV
THE PROBLEM OF MORAL FREEDOM
[§ 1.] The metaphysical problem of free will has been historically created by extra ethical difficulties, especially by theological considerations in the early Christian era, and by the influence of mechanical scientific conceptions in the modern world. § 2-3. The analysis of our moral experience shows that true “freedom” means teleological determination. Hence to be “free” and to “will” are ultimately the same thing. Freedom or “self-determination” is genuine but limited, and is capable of variations of degree. [§ 4.] Determinism and Indeterminism both arise from the false assumption that the mechanical postulate of causal determination by antecedents is an ultimate fact. The question then arises whether mental events are an exception to the supposed principle. [§ 5.] Determinism. The determinist arguments stated. [§ 6.] They rest partly upon the false assumption that mechanical determination is the one and only principle of rational connection between facts. [§ 7.] Partly upon fallacious theories of the actual procedure of the mental sciences. Fallacious nature of the argument that complete knowledge of character and circumstances would enable us to predict human conduct. The assumed data are such as, from their own nature, could not be known before the event. [§ 8.] Indeterminism. The psychical facts to which the indeterminist appeals do not warrant his conclusion, which is, moreover, metaphysically absurd, as involving the denial of rational connection. [§ 9.] Both doctrines agree in the initial error of confounding teleological unity with causal determination.
§ 1. The problem of the meaning and reality of moral freedom is popularly supposed to be one of the principal issues, if not the principal issue, of Metaphysics as applied to the facts of human life. Kant, as the reader will no doubt know, included freedom with immortality and the existence of God in his list of unprovable but indispensable “postulates” of Ethics, and the conviction is still widespread among students of moral philosophy that ethical science cannot begin its work without some preliminary metaphysical justification of freedom, as a postulate at least, if not as a proved truth. For my own part, I own I cannot rate the practical importance of the metaphysical inquiry into human freedom so high, and am rather of Professor Sidgwick’s opinion as to its superfluousness in strictly ethical investigations.[[200]] At the same time, it is impossible to pass over the subject without discussion, if only for the excellent illustrations it affords of the mischief which results from the forcing of false metaphysical theories upon Ethics, and for the confirmation it yields of our view as to the postulatory character of the mechanico-causal scheme of the natural sciences. In discussing freedom from this point of view as a metaphysical issue, I would have it clearly understood that there are two important inquiries into which I do not intend to enter, except perhaps incidentally.
One is the psychological question as to the precise elements into which a voluntary act may be analysed for the purpose of psychological description; the other the ethical and juridical problem as to the limits of moral responsibility. For our present purpose both these questions may be left on one side. We need neither ask how a voluntary act is performed—in other words, by what set of symbols it is best represented in Psychology—nor where in a complicated case the conditions requisite for accountability, and therefore for freedom of action, may be pronounced wanting. Our task is the simpler one of deciding, in the first place, what we mean by the freedom which we all regard as morally desirable, and next, what general view as to the nature of existence is implied in the assertion or denial of its actuality.
That the examination of the metaphysical implications of freedom is not an indispensable preliminary to ethical study, is fortunately sufficiently established by the actual history of the moral sciences. The greatest achievements of Ethics, up to the present time, are undoubtedly contained in the systems of the great Greek moralists, Plato and Aristotle. It would not be too much to say that subsequent ethical speculation has accomplished, in the department of Ethics proper as distinguished from metaphysical reflection upon the ontological problems suggested by ethical results, little more than the development in detail of general principles already recognised and formulated by these great observers and critics of human life. Yet the metaphysical problem of freedom, as is well known, is entirely absent from the Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy. With Plato, as the reader of the Gorgias and the eighth and ninth books of the Republic will be aware, freedom means just what it does to the ordinary plain man, the power to “do what one wills,” and the only speculative interest taken by the philosopher in the subject is that of showing that the chief practical obstacle to the attainment of freedom arises from infirmity and inconsistency in the will itself; that, in fact, the unfree man is just the criminal or “tyrant” who wills the incompatible, and, in a less degree, the “democratic” creature of moods and impulses, who, in popular phrase, “doesn’t know what he wants” of life.
Similarly, Aristotle, with less of spiritual insight but more attention to matters of practical detail, discusses the ἑχούσιον, in the third book of his Ethics, purely from the standpoint of an ideally perfect jurisprudence. With him the problem is to know for what acts an ideally perfect system of law could hold a man non-responsible, and his answer may be said to be that a man is not responsible in case of (1) physical compulsion, in the strict sense, where his limits are actually set in motion by some external agent or cause; and (2) of ignorance of the material circumstances. In both these cases there is no responsibility, because there has been no real act, the outward movements of the man’s limbs not corresponding to any purpose of his own. An act which does translate into physical movement a purpose of the agent, Aristotle, like practical morality and jurisprudence, recognises as ipso facto free, without raising any metaphysical question as to the ontological implications of the recognition.