Urged on by innumerable impulses, and indued with an intelligence which enlightens our exertions, and enables us to appreciate their results, we have free will to guide and direct us.
But free will implies error as possible, and error in its turn implies suffering as its inevitable effect. I defy any one to tell me what it is to choose freely, if it be not to run the risk of making a bad choice, and what it is to make a bad choice if it be not to prepare the way for suffering.
And this is, no doubt, the reason why those schools who are content with nothing less than absolute good are all materialist and fatalist. They are unable to admit free will. They see that liberty of acting proceeds from liberty of choosing; that liberty of choosing supposes the possibility of error; and that the possibility of error is the possibility of evil. Now, in an artificial society, such as our organisateurs invent, evil cannot make its appearance. For that reason, men must be exempted from the possibility of error; and the surest means to accomplish that is to deprive them of the faculty of acting and choosing—in other words, of free will. It has been truly said that Socialism is despotism incarnate.
In presence of these fooleries, it may be asked, By what right does the organizer of artificial systems venture to think, act, and choose, not only for himself, but for every one else? for, after all [p473] he belongs to the human race, and in that respect is fallible; and he is so much the more fallible in proportion as he pretends to extend the range of his science and his will.
No doubt the organisateur finds this objection radically unfounded, inasmuch as it confounds him with the rest of mankind. But he who professes to discover the defects of the Divine workmanship, and has undertaken to recast it, is more than a man; he is an oracle, and more than an oracle. . . . .
Socialism has two elements: the frenzy of contradiction, and the madness of pride!
But when free will, which is the foundation of the whole argument, is denied, is not this the proper place to demonstrate its existence? I shall take good care not to enter upon any such demonstration. Every one feels that his will is free, and that is enough. I feel this, not vaguely, but a hundred times more intensely than if it had been demonstrated to me by Aristotle or by Euclid. I feel it with conscious joy when I have made a choice which does me honour; with remorse, when I have made a choice which degrades me. I find, moreover, that all men by their conduct affirm their belief in free will, although some deny it in their writings.[109] All men compare motives, deliberate, determine, retract, try to foresee; all give advice, are indignant at injustice, admire acts of devotion. Then all acknowledge in themselves and in others the existence of free will, without which, choice, advice, foresight, morality, virtue, are impossible. Let us take care how we seek to demonstrate what is admitted by universal practice. Absolute fatalists are no more to be found, even at Constantinople, than absolute sceptics are to be met with at Alexandria. Those who proclaim themselves such may be fools enough to try to persuade others, but they are powerless to convince themselves. They prove with much subtlety that they have no will of their own; but when we see that they act as if they had it, we need not dispute with them.
Here, then, we are placed in the midst of nature and of our fellow-men—urged on by impulses, wants, appetites, desires—provided with various faculties enabling us to operate on man and on [p474] things—determined to action by our free will—indued with intelligence, which is perfectible and therefore imperfect, and which, if it enlightens us, may also deceive us with reference to the consequences of our actions.
Every human action—giving rise to a series of good or bad consequences, of which some fall back on the agent, and others affect his family, his neighbours, his fellow-citizens, and sometimes mankind at large—every such action causes the vibration of two chords, the sounds of which are oracular utterances—Responsibility and Solidarity.