Mind and Motion and Monism

by George John Romanes

And, similarly, it is equally free whether it be moral or immoral. The objection that an uncaused volition cannot be a responsible volition depends for its validity on the meaning which we attach to the term 'uncaused.' If it be meant that the volition arises without any regard at all to the surrounding conditions of life, and is carried into effect without the agent being able to control it by means of any other voluntary act; then, indeed, whatever else such an agent may be, he certainly is not moral. But if it be meant that among a number of uncompleted volitions drawing in different directions—and all 'uncaused' in the sense of belonging immediately to the Ego—one of them gains an advantage by a conscious reference of the mind to it as good or evil, then the agent who is capable of giving this advantage to that member of the system may properly be called moral. The man who willed to marry, and yet willed not to go through the marriage ceremony, was, as we have seen, irrational. Similarly, if any agent wills an action without being able to consider any of the consequences which it may involve as either moral or immoral, such an agent is what we must properly call unmoral. Even in such an agent, however, the Will may be free; only it would act without reference to any moral environment, just as the lunatic above supposed might endeavour to act without reference to any social environment.

Let us look at the whole matter in yet another light. We have repeatedly seen that the question of free-will, and therefore of moral responsibility, depends upon the question as to whether a man's action in the past might have been other than it was, notwithstanding that all the conditions under which he was placed remained the same. Now, to this question only one answer can be given by a dualistic theory of things, whether materialistic or spiritualistic. For it belongs to the essence of a dualistic theory to regard the principle of causation as a principle external to, and independent of, the human mind; consequently, all the conditions of mental causation being given, a certain result in the way of volition is necessarily bound to ensue—or, in other words, at any given time in a man's mental history, his action cannot have been other than it was. But now, according to the monistic theory, all causation has a psychical basis—being but the objective expression to us of the psychical activity of the World-eject. Consequently, according to this theory, the course of even strictly physical causation is inevitable or necessary only in so far as the psychical activity of the World-eject is held to be uniform, or consistent within itself. And forasmuch as all our knowledge of physical causation is necessarily empirical, we have but very inadequate means of judging how far this empirical index is a true gauge of the reality. We can, indeed, predict an eclipse centuries in advance; but we can only do so on the supposition that such and such physical conditions remain constant, and we have no right to affirm that such must be the case. Our knowledge of physical causation, being but empirical, is probably but a very inadequate translation of the psychical activity of the World-eject; and hence, not only have we no right to predict a future eclipse with certainty, but we have not so much as the right to affirm that even a past eclipse must have taken place of necessity. For we have no right to affirm that at any one period of cosmic history the action of the World-eject must have been what it was, or could not have been other than it was. Our knowledge of the obverse aspect of this action (in the course of physical causation) is, as I have said, purely empirical; and this is merely another way of saying that although we do know what the action of the World-eject has been at such and such a period of cosmic history, we can have no means of knowing what else it might have been. For anything that we can tell to the contrary, the whole history of the solar system, for example, might have been quite different from what it has been; the course which it actually has run may have been but one out of an innumerable number of possible alternatives, any other of which might just as well have been adopted by the World-eject.

Now, if this is true of natural causation in the case of the macrocosm, it would appear to be equally so of natural causation in the case of the microcosm. Indeed, prediction in the case of human activity is so much less certain than in the case of cosmic activity, that the attribute of free-will is generally ascribed to the former, while rarely suggested as possibly belonging to the latter. And similarly as regards past action. If we are unable to say that at any period in the past history of the solar system the World-eject might not have deflected the whole stream of events into some other channel, how can we be able to say that at any given period of his past history the Man-eject could not have performed an analogous act? Obviously, the only reason why we are not accustomed to entertain this supposition in either case, is because our judgements are beset with the assumption that the principle of causality is prior to that of mind—something of the nature of Fate superior even to the gods. And, no less obviously, if once we see any reason to regard the principle of causality as merely co-extensive with that of mind, the whole question as between Necessity and Free-will lapses; there is nothing to show that a man's action in the past might not have been other than it was. The only outward restraint placed upon the exercise of his Will is then seen to be imposed by the conditions of its executive capacity, and this restraint it is that constitutes man a rational agent. On the other hand, the structure of conscience—however we may suppose this to have been formed—imposes that further and inward restraint upon his Will, which constitutes man a moral agent. But neither of these restraints can properly be said to constitute bondage in the sense required by Necessitarianism, because neither of them requires that the man's Will must will as it does will; they require merely that his Will should act in certain ways if it is to accomplish certain results; and to this extent only is it subject to law, or to the incidence of those external influences which help to shape our motives.

But if this is so, is it not obvious that the sense of moral responsibility is rationally justified? This sense goes upon the supposition that a man's conduct in the past might have been different from what it was. Clearly, therefore, no question of moral responsibility can ever obtain in cases where the general system of external causation, or natural law, rendered an alternative line of action physically impossible. The question of moral responsibility can only obtain in cases where two or more lines of conduct were alike possible, so far as the external system of causation is concerned—or where the Will was equally free to choose between two or more courses of bodily action. In other words, the question of moral responsibility has nothing to do with the only kind of bondage to which, according to our present point of view, the Will is subject—namely the bondage of being rationally obliged to will only what is capable of performance. The question of moral responsibility has only to do with the system of causation which is inherent in the mind itself; not with the system that is external to the mind. And as the theory of Monism identifies the mind with this its own inherent system of causation—or regards a man's Will as the originator of a particular portion of general causality—it follows from the theory that a man is justly liable to moral praise or blame as the case may be: the moral sense no longer appears as a gigantic illusion: conscience is justified at the bar of reason.

It appears to me impossible that any valid exception can be taken to the above reasoning, if once the premiss is granted—namely, that the principle of Causality admits of being regarded as identical with that of Volition. For if Cause is but another name for Will—whether the Will be subjective or ejective—it follows that my will is a first cause, which is determined by other causes only in so far as the executive capacity of my body is so determined. As the whole stress of any objection to the present argument must thus be brought to bear upon the validity of this its fundamental premiss, a few words may now be said to show that the premiss is not wholly gratuitous. Of course the reason why at first sight it is apt to appear, not only gratuitous, but even grotesque, is because in these days of physical science the minds of most of us are dominated by the unthinking persuasion that the principle of causality is the most ultimate principle which our minds can reach. Most of us accept this persuasion as almost of the nature of an axiom, and hence the mere suggestion that our own volitions are really uncaused appears to us of the nature of a self-evident absurdity. A little thought, however, is enough to show that the only ground of reason which this strong prepossession can rest upon, is the assumption that the principle of causality is logically prior to that of mind. Therefore it is the validity of this assumption that we have here to investigate.

In the first place, then, the assumption is ipso facto irrational. For it is evident that in order to make the assumption there must already be a mind to make it. In other words, the very conception of the principle of causality implies a thinking substance wherein that conception arises, and therefore, as a mere matter of formal statement, it is impossible to assign logical priority to this conception over the thing whereby it is conceived.

In the next place, when we carefully analyze the nature of this conception itself, we find that it arises immediately out of our conception of Being as Being. This is shown by the idea of equivalency between cause and effect, which is an essential feature of the conception of causality as such. In other words, the statement of any causal relation is merely a statement of the fact that both the matter and the energy concerned in the event were of a permanent nature and unalterable amount. Therefore, if the ultimate Reality is mental, Causation must be ontologically identical with Volition. And that the ultimate Reality is either mental, or something greater, seems to be proved by the consideration that if it be supposed anything less, there must be an end of the conception of equivalency as between cause and effect, and so of the conception of causality itself; for, clearly, if my mind has been caused by anything less than itself, there is an end of any possible equivalency between the activity of that thing as a cause, and the occurrence of my mind as an effect[13].

Lastly, the conception of causality essentially involves the idea of finality as existing somewhere. Here I cannot do better than quote some extracts from Canon Mozley's essay on 'The Principle of Causation,' as he manages very tersely to convey the gist of previous philosophizing upon this subject.

'He (Clarke) brings out simply at bottom the meaning and significance of an idea in the human mind, that there is implied in the very idea itself of cause, firstly, that it causes something else; and secondly, that it is uncaused itself.... An infinite series of causes does not make a cause; ... an infinite succession of causes rests, by the very hypothesis, upon no cause; each particular one rests on the one which follows it, but the whole rests upon nothing.... If from one cause we have to go back to another, that which we go back from is not the cause, but that which we go back to is. The very idea of cause, as I have said, implies a stop; and wherever we stop is the cause.... A true cause is a First Cause.... The atheistic idea thus does not correspond to the idea of reason. The atheist appears to acknowledge the necessity of a cause, and appears to provide for it; but when we come to his scheme it fails exactly in that part of the idea which clenches it, and which is essential to its integrity; it fails in providing a stop; ... One might say to him, Why do you give yourself the trouble to supply causation at all? You do so because you consider yourself obliged in reason to do it, but if you supply causation at all, why not furnish such a cause as reason has impressed upon you, and which is inherent in your mind—a cause which stands still, an original cause? If you never intended to supply this, it must have been because you thought a real cause was not wanted; but if you thought a cause not wanted, why not have said from the first that causes were not wanted, and said from the first that events could take place without causes?'

Or, to quote a more recent authority, and one speaking from the side of physical science, Prof. Huxley writes:—