Prophylaxis.—Serious Occupation.—Of course, the real way out of the trouble is to have to do certain important things that occupy the mind and require the doing of many other things as subsidiaries which must be accomplished in order to carry out the greater resolution. Men who have important affairs on their hands seldom are bothered by doubts and hesitancy. Women who have not much to do make mountains out of the molehills of their little occupations and every trifle must be adjudged. The larger interests must be cultivated, the smaller ones must be turned over to the automaton which every one of us can develop in our persons if we only set about it resolutely. Each thing that comes up must be settled at once and action must replace contemplation. The Hamlet in us all must be put down and resolution must not be allowed to be sicklied over with the pale cast of thought. We must do [{738}] things and not think about them too much. The doubters can learn this lesson. They will never be entirely without hesitancy, but they can remove many of their difficulties, and live to accomplish much in spite of their make-up.
Physical Treatment.—The physical treatment of the doubting state consists, of course, in bringing the individual's physical condition as near as possible up to the normal. When the state occurs in people who are under weight its betterment is rather easy. The special feature of the physical condition that needs seeing to is an ample supply of fresh air. People who live in ill-ventilated places, or who do not get out into the air enough, are almost sure to suffer from the tendency to avoid the making of decisions. The man of decision usually is a vigorous outdoor-air individual. Even the perfectly healthy man who has been in the house for some reason for days together gets into a state of mind where the making of decisions becomes objectionable. He wants to push things away from him. In individuals who already have a natural tendency this way this is greatly exaggerated by confinement. Arrangements must be made, therefore, that will ensure getting out for some time, not once but twice every day. The regular making of decisions for this purpose is of itself a good mental discipline. It must not be omitted even for rain or snow, unless there are additional reasons of some kind. An abundance of fresh air in the sleeping-room is extremely important and must be secured.
Mental Treatment.—The mental treatment consists in diversion of mind. Usually the doubters have no interests that appeal to them deeply and in which they have to make prompt regular decisions. If possible, these must be secured. They must form habits of doing things regularly and of making up their minds to do them, and then not have to repeat the adjudication and resolution. In recent years people realize, quite apart from its religious significance, the value of what older religious writers called examination of conscience. Regularly before they go to sleep these people must be told to call up what they have done during the day and to note their faults in the matter of putting off doing things and making decisions slowly. They must, however, not only realize their faults, but they must make up their mind to correct them during the following day. They must not leave the arrangement of what they shall do next day to chance, but must decide just how and when they shall do things and then, as far as possible, keep to this program. The program must, of course, be sensible and considerate. This preliminary arrangement can be made to mean much more than might be thought. Some people thus learn to correct entirely their tendency to doubt whether they should do things or not and lessen greatly the difficulties they have in making decisions.
CHAPTER VI
RESPONSIBILITY AND WILL POWER
The development of science (meaning by that term knowledge with regard to physical nature in contradistinction to philosophy or the relation of nature to man) in modern times has brought about in some minds a hesitant, if [{739}] not frankly contradictory attitude towards the question of free will. There are many scientists who not only doubt the existence of free will, but insist that there cannot be such a thing. For them, man like the animals is determined to do things from without rather than from within. The stronger motive compels him. There may be a weighing in the balance of motives, but that is a question of intellect and not of will. It is true that the stronger motive may be one that is less alluring to nature or to sense than some of the others which clamor for a hearing, but it is eventually the stronger motive that compels. A man may desire something that does not belong to him very much, but the consciousness that it does not belong to him and that to take things that do not belong to him is unworthy of him will override his covetousness and so he remains honest if he has been trained to regard things that way. After all, the old maxim, "Honesty is the best policy," is founded on some such reasoning as this, since only one who is at heart dishonest would consider men as swayed by the thought that to be honest is the most profitable, instead of being the right, and therefore the only proper thing.
The argument for free will that appeals to most men is the consciousness that we are free and that at any given moment we can do a thing or not do it, just as suits us. If two things are presented to us we can do that one which seems right to us to do, or we can do both of them, or we can permit ourselves to be led into the wrong, though always acknowledging to ourselves that it is the wrong and feeling downcast, or at least disturbed, that we should let ourselves be led away from higher motives. Even in this case the determinist insists that we are determined from without by motives due to our training, to our education along certain lines with the influence of the environment in which we live, to the special sentiment that we have within us as a consequence of the influences of preceding life. Such determination, however, does not come from without us, but from within. It is the result of the formation of our wills in a particular direction. The argument is, therefore, a begging of the question. A man may have formed the habit of doing evil things and then finds it easy to do them without compunction. On the other hand, the exercise of his will in doing what he considers right, in spite of the fact that it may not be pleasant at the moment, is a training of the will founded on its essential freedom. There is an essential distinction between right and wrong, and we have it in our power, as many a man has done, to follow the right even though it costs our life.
Bad Temper.—A typical example of supposed determinism, which proves exactly the opposite of what is sometimes urged, may be noted with regard to exhibitions of temper. As Clouston declares in his "Unsoundness of Mind" (Methuen, London, 1911), "an uncontrollable temper is in many cases very like and nearly allied to an unsoundness of mind. It is certain that bad temper may gradually pass into technical insanity and that a considerable number of persons who are passing or have passed into insanity exhibit as the most marked symptom morbidness and violence of temper. 'It's just temper. Doctor,' is one of the most common remarks that I have heard made to me by patients' friends. I think that it is quite certain that in most cases much might be done in youth to establish a reasonable control over temper where it is inclined to be uncontrolled, so preventing serious discomforts in life both to its possessor and to others. In many cases I am satisfied that [{740}] this education would have the effect of preventing unsoundness of mind also, arising out of uncontrolled temper." There are many examples in the literature of hagiology particularly, from which it is clear that men have learned to control even violent tempers and by self-discipline and training in self-control have even become rather quiet, gentle individuals. The truth of such examples is attested too well to be discredited. This question of training, then, is extremely important.
It has been pointed out that the consciousness of freedom to which an appeal is made in this argument for free will is shared with us by the insane even in the performance of many acts that we know are compelled in certain ways. Insane persons reason themselves into a peculiar state of mind, in which they represent to themselves that they have been persecuted, for instance, by a particular person and then they become persecutors in turn and do harm. As they see their act, it is often a species of self-defense. They themselves have no consciousness, or, at most, a very dim and hazy realization of the inner compulsion to which they are subjected at the time of the act and sometimes talk quite rationally and discuss the motives which impelled them to do things, just as if they were free. We recognize, however, the distinction between this delusion of the insane and the rational state of mind of the sane. We have no definition for insanity, that is, no formula of words, which will absolutely include all the insane and at the same time exclude all the sane, but we have a practical working knowledge that enables us to judge rather well between those who are compelled to do things by delusions, and those who do them from motives that are rationally weighed and that influence a will that is free to follow them as it pleases. We hold the rational man responsible for his acts because he knows he was free not to do them. We punish him partly because he should not have done them and partly because we want him not to do them again, and we know that punishment will help him to keep from committing crime, because it will support his free will against his inclinations, when the time of trial comes again.
Above all, we are conscious of our own responsibility. We know that when we do wrong we are worthy of blame. We know that when we allow covetousness to lead us into the appropriation of what does not belong to us we are deserving of punishment, because we need not have done it, but we yielded to unworthy motives. We know that while anger may be blind we can control it, at least those of us who are fully in possession of our intellectual and voluntary powers, so as to keep from doing violence, even in the heat of it. This dealing with ourselves is the best proof that we have of our recognition of our freedom of will. We are responsible, and what we genuinely do not will to do is not accomplished. Our will may be bent by many attractions, but we know that these motives are not compelling unless we allow them to be. When a child tells us that he did something because he could not help it, we either feel sorry for him because he is not yet in possession of his full faculties or else we laugh at this excuse. There is a tendency to admit this excuse as having a meaning, but only by those who themselves come into court with hands assoiled in some way and who are looking for pardon from others for offenses, and who, above all, want to feel that they can pardon, or at least excuse, themselves.
In recent years we have seriously impaired the idea of responsibility in [{741}] the minds of the general public by a foolishly sentimental mercifulness to criminals. If a man under indictment for murder can show that he has ever previously in his life acted even slightly irrationally, or if he has been peculiar in certain ways, provided, of course, he has money enough to pay for the opinions, there will be an abundance of expert testimony to declare that he is irresponsible and should not be punished. As a consequence, in many cases justice fails. We are reaping the harvest of this pseudo-scientific invasion of law. Human life is cheaper in no country in the world than it is in America. Our murder rate is going up by leaps and bounds, while that of Canada remains almost stationary, and the reason is that while nine out of ten of all our murderers do not receive the death penalty and many of them escape serious punishment of any kind, nearly as large a proportion of Canadian murderers are punished by death. A man may have his responsibility somewhat impaired and yet retain sufficient free will so that he deserves to be punished for serious crimes. It is hard to decide in certain cases, but in most cases the decision is not difficult if, with the right sense of justice, morbid sentimentality is put aside.