By a free agent is understood an agent that is able to act without restraint, or spontaneously. The word 'free,' therefore, bears a very different meaning when applied exclusively to the Will, and when applied more generally to the living organism. For we may properly say that a man, or an animal, is free when he, or it, is at liberty to act in accordance with desire. Touching the fact of freedom in this sense there is, of course, no question. We have not to consider the possible freedom of man, but the possible freedom of Will; we have not to contemplate whether a man may be free to do what he wills, but whether he can be free to will what he wills. Such being the question, we have to consider it in relation to the three philosophical theories already stated—Materialism, Spiritualism, and Monism.
For the theory of Materialism the present question has no existence. If this announcement appears startling, it can only be because no materialist has ever taken the trouble to formulate his own theory with distinctness. For, as previously shown, Materialism necessarily involves the doctrine of conscious automatism; but, if so, the Will is concluded not to be an agent at all, and therefore it becomes idle to discuss whether, in any impossible exercise of its agency, it is free or subject to restraint. The most that in this connexion could logically stand to be considered by the advocates of Materialism would be whether or not the adventitious and inefficacious feelings of subjectivity which are associated with cerebral activity are determinate or free; but this would probably be regarded on all hands as a somewhat useless topic of discussion, and certainly in any case would have no reference to the question of free agency. The point to be clearly understood is that, according to the materialistic theory, a motor is distinct from a motive, although in some unaccountable manner the motor is able to cause the motive. But the motive, when thus caused, is not supposed to exert any causal influence on bodily action; it is supposed to begin and end as a motive, or never itself to become a motor. In other words, as before stated, the Will is not supposed to be an agent; and, therefore, to this theory the doctrine of free-will and of determinism are alike irrelevant. We need not wait to prove that this important fact is habitually overlooked by materialists themselves, or that whenever a materialist espouses the cause of determinism, he is thereby and for the time being vacating his position as a materialist; for if, according to his theory, the Will is not an agent, he is merely impugning his own doctrines by consenting to discuss the conditions of its agency.
The theory of Spiritualism and the theory of Monism agree in holding that the Will is an agent; and, therefore, to both of these theories the question whether the Will is a free agent is a real question. Here, then, it devolves upon us to consider carefully the logical status of the rival doctrines of so-called Liberty and Necessity. For convenience of arrangement in what follows, we may best begin with the doctrine of Necessity, or Determinism.
CHAPTER VI.
THE WILL IN RELATION TO MONISM.
We have now seen that, according to Materialism, the Will is not an agent, while according both to Spiritualism and to Monism the Will is an agent. Touching the further question, whether the Will is a free agent, we have seen that while the question does not exist for Materialism, it appears to require a negative answer both from Spiritualism and from Monism. For, as regards its relation to Spiritualism, when once the ground is cleared of certain errors of statement and fallacies of reasoning, we appear to find that unless the will is held to be motiveless—which would be to destroy not only the doctrine of moral responsibility, but likewise that of universal causation—it must be regarded as subject to law, or as determined in its action by the nature of its past history and present circumstances. Lastly, the theory of Monism appears likewise to deny the possibility of freedom as an attribute of Will; for, according to this theory, mental processes are one and the same with physical processes, and hence it does not appear that the doctrine of determinism could well be taught in a manner more emphatic.
Thus far, then, the doctrine of determinism is seen to be victorious over the doctrine of freedom all along the line. By Materialism the question of freedom is excluded ab initio; by Spiritualism and by Monism, so far as yet seen, it can be logically answered only in the negative. From which it follows that the sense of moral responsibility is of the nature of a vast illusion, the historical genesis of which admits of being easily traced, and the authority of which is thus destroyed. Although it may still serve to supply motives to conduct, it seems that it can do so only in the way that belongs to superstition—that Conscience, as I have before said, is the bogey of mankind, and that belief in its authority is like belief in witchcraft, destined to dwindle and to fade before the advance of a better or more complete knowledge of natural causation.
But the discussion must not end here. Hitherto I have presented the case Liberty versus Necessity with all the impartiality of which I am capable; but I have done so without travelling an inch beyond those limits of discussion within which the question has been debated by previous writers. I believe, indeed, that I have pointed out several important oversights which have been made on both sides of the question; but in doing this I have not gone further than the philosophical basis upon which the question has been hitherto argued. My object, however, in publishing these papers is not that of destructive criticism; and what I have done in this direction has been done only in order to prepare the way for what is now to follow. Having shown, as it appears to me conclusively, that upon both the rival theories of Materialism and Spiritualism—the doctrine of Liberty, and therefore of Moral Responsibility—must logically fall, I now hope to show that this doctrine admits of being re-established on a basis furnished by the theory of Monism.
It often happens that an elaborate structure of argument, which is perfectly sound and complete upon the basis furnished by a given hypothesis, admits of being wholly disintegrated when the fundamental hypothesis is shown to be either provisional or untrue. And such, I believe, is the case with the issue now before us. For the issue Liberty versus Necessity has hitherto been argued on the common assumption that natural causation is not merely the most ultimate principle which the human mind can reach; but also a principle which is, in some way or another, external to that mind. It has been taken for granted by both sides in the controversy that if our volitions can be proved to depend upon natural causation, as rigid in its sequences within the sphere of a human mind as within that of a calculating machine, there must be an end of the controversy; seeing that our volitions would be thus proved to be rigidly determined by those same principles of fixed order, or 'natural law,' which are external to, or independent of, the human mind—quite as much as they are external to, or independent of, the calculating machine. Now, it is this assumption which I challenge. The theory of Monism entitles one to deny that when we have driven the question down to the granite bed of natural causation, nothing more remains to be done; according to this theory it still remains to be asked, What is the nature of this natural causation? Is it indeed the ultimate datum of experience, below which the human mind cannot go? And is it indeed so far external to, or independent of, the human mind, that the latter stands to it in the relation of a slave to a master—coerced as to action by the conditions which that master has laid down?