In the philosophy of Solomon, as recorded in Ecclesiastes, we read: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.... To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”
With Christianity came the dogma of “predestination” and “election.” This was promulgated, on the very threshold, by Paul, a man of the sublimest genius; adorable, venerable and heroic. Thus he addressed the church at Rome: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God,—to them who are the called according to His purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be first born among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”
This idea is necessarily involved in the theology of St. Augustine, who maintained that “grace is effectual from its nature, absolutely and morally, not relatively and gradually.” It remained for John Calvin to erect the assertions of Paul into a cognate and masterly system. He insisted upon the purpose of God from eternity, respecting all events.
Briefly, of the religion of the world, to-day, ninety per cent are predestinarian in theory or practice, consciously or unconsciously. Of Christendom, those who agree with Arminius are in a small minority, relatively:—a minority whose creed involves not only the limitation of divine knowledge, but a paralysis of divine power and the moral chaos of a universe. That religion is necessarily puerile and unphilosophic which attempts to reconcile the omnipotence of God with the freedom of man. Either Nature is ordered for the best—so as to produce the highest good; or else, everything is purposeless and for the worst. In a word, either optimism or pessimism must wholly prevail: logically, a middle ground is impossible. We must choose between Leibnitz or Schopenhauer.
Literature and religion aside, the greatest intellects have promulgated a “philosophy of necessity.” Everything that exists, wrote Oersted in substance, depends upon the past, prepares the future, and is related to the whole. “Everything throughout creation is governed by law: but over most of the tracts that come within the active experience of mankind, the governing hand is so secret and remote, that until very large numerical masses are brought under the eye at once, the controlling power is not detected.” Jonathan Edwards said: “Nothing comes to pass without a cause. What is self-existent must be from eternity, and must be unchangeable; but as to all things that begin to be, they are not self-existent, and therefore must have some foundation for their existence without themselves.” Spinoza urged that “In no mind is there an absolute or free volition; but it is determined to choose this or that by a cause, which likewise has been fixed by another, and this again by a third, and so on forever.” Emanuel Kant contended that “every action or phenomenon, so far as it produces an event, is itself an event or occurrence, which pre-supposes another state wherein the cause is to be met with; and thus everything that happens is but a continuation of the series, and no beginning which occurs of itself is possible; consequently, all the actions of the natural causes, in the succession, are themselves again effects.” Our own Emerson asserted the omnipotence and omnipresence of law: “That the wilful and the fantastic, the low and the lofty, are encircled by a necessity.” Whatever limits us, we call fate. If we are brute and barbarous, the fate takes a brute and dreadful shape. If we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form.... The limitations refine as the soul purifies, but the ring of necessity is always perched at the top.
None greater than these may be found in the noble realm of speculative thought. They are unequalled by few, if any. The whole field of modern science, also, is in accord with their deductions: Teaching that nature is an inevitable sequence, and that all phenomena, material and mental, are linked together by an inevitable connection. In the words of Herbert Spencer: “Various classes of facts unite to prove that the law of metamorphosis which holds among the physical forces, holds equally between them and the mental forces. Those modes of the unknowable which we call motion, light, heat, chemical affinity, etc., are alike transferable into each other, and into those modes of the unknowable which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, and thought; these in their turns being directly or indirectly re-transferable into the original shapes.”
Would you dethrone man, I am asked? No; I surrender to the behests of philosophy as fortified by the deductions of science. Years ago it was argued by Comte that, in social order, the higher must subordinate itself to the lower. That the organic finds itself controlled and limited by the inorganic world, and man has to work out his destiny in submission to all the necessities, physical, chemical and vital, which are pre-supposed in his existence. “The higher,” he continued, “can overcome the lower only by obedience; if it is to conquer, it must at least ‘stoop to conquer.’” And as was once stated by Doctor Conolly, “All the superiority of man, all those faculties which elevate and dignify him, this reasoning power, this moral sense, these capacities of happiness, these high aspiring hopes, are felt and enjoyed and manifested by means of the nervous system. Its injury weakens, its imperfections limit, its destruction ends them.”
But, it may be asked, is not this a denial of “free-will?” Yes, as popularly understood. A “free-will,” in the metaphysical sense, is impossible. The conception is unknown to the best modern psychology. The abstract will, of certain metaphysicians, is a phantasm. Individual volitions, only, come within our actual experience. They have been generalized, by mental philosophers, into a self-existent, self-sustaining, and self-procreating entity. However, an abstraction is not an essence. Such men but tell us what a “free will” should be; that it exists has never been demonstrated. Again, the phenomenon “will” is now known to be transmitted from generation to generation. Heredity teaches that its energy and its weakness are connected with certain states of the organism. “We can no longer doubt the transmission takes place by means of the organs, and, in fact, that the ‘will’ is physiological.” Moreover, in a philosophical sense, the idea is “at war” with a uniform law of cause and effect. Chance events are inconceivable in a universe of causation. Freedom of the will, therefore, is a delusion. For ages men believed that the sun revolved around the earth, because it seemed to do so. A similar illusion is at the base of our ethical system, since we enjoy only the appearance of liberty. “Our apparent freedom consists in the absence of all physical restraints, and in our power to do as we please; but what we please to do depends upon our mental constitution and the circumstances in which we are placed.” The idea was beautifully expressed by Emerson in his poem “Fate.”
“Deep in the man sits fast his fate,
To mold his fortune, mean or great:
Unknown to Cromwell as to me
Was Cromwell’s measure or degree;
Unknown to him as to his horse,
If he than his groom be better or worse,
He works, plots, fights in rude affairs,
With Squires, Lords, Kings, his craft compares,
Till late he learned, through doubt and fear,
Broad England harbored not his peer.
Obeying time, the last to own
The genius from its cloudy throne,
For the prevision is allied
Unto the thing so signified;
Or say, the foresight that awaits,
Is the same genius that creates.”
In human history, as in physical nature, therefore, every event is linked to its antecedent by an unavoidable connection, and such precedent is connected with an anterior effect; and thus the whole would form a necessary chain, in which, indeed, each man may play his part, but can by no means determine what the part shall be.