CHAPTER XVI
DEGENERATION AND WILL
THE WILL MAY BE DEGENERATE—A COMMON-SENSE VIEW OF FREEDOM—BELIEF IN ABSOLUTE FREEDOM NOT BENEFICIAL—EXPERIENCE MAY BREAK DOWN THE WILL—IS TEMPTATION GOOD FOR US?—DEGENERACY IS BASED ON NORMAL IMPULSES—“NATURAL DEPRAVITY”—THE CONSTRUCTIVE METHOD IN REFORM
The human will, I take it, is no separate faculty, but the whole mind functioning as a guide to action, its power being shown in grasping the material which life offers and moulding it to rational ends. A person with a vigorous will shows an onward growth which is in great measure foreseen and intentional; he forms ideals and strives to realize them. It does not follow, however, that this striving is in a right direction. The will, like every form of life, is tentative and may take a degenerate course, that is, a course which the better moral judgment will declare to be wrong. As we see will actually working, in individuals, in nations, or in what form you please, it is a creative power, to be sure, but uncertainly guided, feeling its way and liable to err. We know that a boy may devote really first-rate powers to the leadership of a pernicious gang, or a nation devote an admirable organization to an unjust war.
We may, from this point of view, distinguish two types of degeneracy, one a strong type, in which the will is vigorous, but at variance with higher social standards, and a weak type, in which it is ineffectual, though possibly directed toward the good. With the latter we are all familiar, and it is perhaps more common than the other. Most of us who fail to help the world along do so not because we do not mean well, but because we lack force and persistency in well-doing.
As to freedom, I may say at once that I am no mechanist or predestinationist, but believe that the human will, individual and collective, an organic whole of onward life, is a true creative process, whose working may perhaps be anticipated by the imagination, which shares in its creative nature, but not by mere calculation. I do not care, however, to discuss the metaphysics of the matter, but would wish to present it in a common-sense way which would appeal to every one’s observation.
If we consider fairly the question of what the will can actually do we see that its strength, whatever our philosophy of it may be, is in fact limited—though we cannot exactly define the limits—and is greater or smaller according to our native force and the influences that help or hinder us. Our freedom is not a power to escape from our history and environment, but something that works along with these, enabling us to do things original but not discontinuous. While I believe that the human spirit is part of a creative onward whole, building up life to unknown issues, I believe also that the growth of this whole is gradual and connected.
The matter is not at all mysterious when you consider it in practice. Is a man, for example, free to paint a good picture? We know that if he has good natural gifts and lively ambition, has been trained in a good school and inspired by great examples, he stands a good chance to do so; but that if nature or circumstance has denied him any of these essentials he stands little or no chance. History shows that good pictures are never painted except when certain conditions concur. There is nothing mystical about freedom in this case; it is just every-day life.
The same principle applies to moral achievement. If we have a man of natural energy and breadth of human sympathy whose experience has afforded him noble suggestions and examples, we need not be astonished at some exalted action; and if we know him intimately enough we shall be able to trace some history of this action in his previous conduct. But if he was born feeble-minded he cannot have large conceptions, and if his associates have been wholly depraved—supposing that possible—his conduct will share this depravity.
Free will, if you call it that, is then simply a power of creative growth, which we all have in some degree, and starts from our actual situation. No one is free to do anything he has not worked up to.
I hold, for many reasons, that it is a bad thing to teach absolute freedom of the will, as bad as to teach fatalism. It leads to discouraging judgments of conduct, both our own and that of others, and to a neglect of the training process by which everything good must be prepared. The logical outcome of the doctrine of unlimited freedom would seem to be that one should make a great effort to achieve at once what he wants, without regard to his preparation. The logical outcome of the view I suggest is that one sets about moulding his whole life into a process from which success will naturally flow. No thoughtful observer will doubt which is the better method.