Having thus rectified the doctrine of determinism by including a place within it for the idea of freedom, Fouillée proceeds by careful analysis to show the error of belief in freedom understood as that of an indifferent will. This raises as many fallacious views as that of a determinism bereft of the idea of freedom. The capricious and indifferent liberty he rejects, and in so doing shows us the importance of the intelligent power of willing, and also reaffirms the determinists’ thesis of inability to do certain things. The psychology of character shows us a determined freedom, and in the intelligent personality a reconciliation of freedom and determinism is seen to be effected. Fouillée shows that if it were not true that very largely what we have been makes us what we are, and that what we are determines our future actions, then education, moral guidance, laws and social sanctions would all be useless. Indifferentism in thought is the reversal of all thought.
Fouillée sees that the antithesis between Freedom and Necessity is not absolute, and he modifies the warmth of Renouvier’s onslaughts upon the upholders of determinism. But he believes we can construct a notion of moral freedom which will not be incompatible with the determinism of nature. To effect this reconciliation, however, we must abandon the view of Freedom as a decision indifferently made, an action of sheer will unrelated to intelligence. Freedom is not caprice; it is, Fouillée claims, a power of indefinite development.
Yet, in the long and penetrating Introduction to his volume on the Evolutionnisme des Idées-forces, Fouillée points out that however much science may feel itself called upon to uphold a doctrine of determinism for its own specific purposes, we must remember that the sphere of science is not all-embracing. There is the sphere of action, and the practical life demands and, to a degree demonstrates, freedom. Fouillee admits in this connection the indetermination of the future, pour notre esprit. We act upon this idea of relative indeterminism, combining with it the idea of our own action, the part which we personally feel called upon to play. He recognises in his analysis how important is this point for the solution of the problem. We cannot overlook the contribution which our personality is capable of making to the whole unity of life and experience, not only by its achievements in action, but by its ideals, by that which we feel both can and should be. Herein lies, according to Fouillée’s analysis, the secret of duty and the ideal of our power to fulfil it, based upon the central idea of our freedom. By thus acting on these ideas, and by the light and inspiration of these ideals, we tend to realise them. It is this which marks the point where a doctrine of pure determinism not only shows itself erroneous and inadequate, but as Fouillee puts it, the human consciousness is the point where it is obliged to turn against itself “as a serpent which bites its own tail.”[[18]] Fatalism is a speculative hypothesis and nothing else. Freedom is equally an hypothesis, but, adds Fouillée, it is an hypothesis which is at work in the world.
[18] Evolutionnisme des Idées-forces, Introduction, p. lxxiv.
In the thought of Guyau there is a further insistence upon freedom in spite of the fact that his spiritualism is super-added to much which reveals the naturalist and positive outlook. He upholds freedom and, indeed, contingency, urging, as against Ravaisson’s teleology, that there is no definite tendency towards truth, beauty and goodness. At all times, too, Guyau is conscious of union with nature and with his fellows in a way which operates against a facile assertion of freedom. In his Vers d’un Philosophe he remarks:
“Ce mot si doux au coeur et si cher, Liberté,
J’en préfèrs encore un: c’est Solidarité.”[[19]]
[19] Vers d’un Philosophe, “Solidarité,” p. 38.
The maintenance of the doctrine of liberty, which in view of the facts we are bound to maintain, does away, Guyau insists, with the doctrine of Providence; for him, as for Bergson, there is no prévision but only nouveauté in the universe. Guyau indeed is not inclined to admit even that end which Bergson seems to favour—namely, “spontaneity of life itself.” The world does not find its end in us, any more than we find our “ends” fixed for us in advance. Nothing is fixed, arranged or predetermined; there is not even a primitive adaptation of things to one another, for such adaptation would involve the pre-existence of ideas prior to the material world, together with a demiurge arranging things upon a plan in the manner of an architect. In reality there is no plan; every worker conceives his own. The world is a superb example, not of order, such as we associate with the idea of Providence in action, but the reverse, disorder, the result of contingency and freedom.
The supreme emphasis upon the reality of freedom appears, however, in the work of Boutroux and of Bergson at the end of our period. They arrive at a position diametrically opposed to that of the upholders of determinism, by their doctrines of contingency as revealed both in the evolution of the universe and in the realm of personal life. There is thus seen, as was the case with the problem of science, a complete “turn of the tide” in the development since Comte.
Boutroux, summing up his thesis La contingence des Lois de la Nature, indicates clearly in his concluding chapter his belief in contingency, freedom and creativeness. The old adage, “nothing is lost, nothing is created,” to which science seems inclined to attach itself, has not an absolute value, for in the hierarchy of creatures contingency, freedom, newness appear in the higher ranks. There is at work no doubt a principle of conservation, but this must not lead us to deny the existence and action of another principle, that of creation. The world rises from inorganic to organic forms, from matter to spirit, and in man himself from mere sensibility to intelligence, with its capacity for criticising and observing, and to will capable of acting upon things and modifying them by freedom.