What is meant by free-will? Does it imply the power of producing events without antecedents? — of starting, as it were, upon a creative tour of occurrences without any impulse from within or from without? Let us consider the point. If there be absolutely or relatively no reason why a tree should fall, it will not fall; and if there be absolutely or relatively no reason why a man should act, he will not act. It is true that the united voice of this assembly could not persuade me that I have not, at this moment, the power to lift my arm if I wished to do so. Within this range the conscious freedom of my will cannot be questioned. But what about the origin of the 'wish'? Are we, or are we not, complete masters of the circumstances which create our wishes, motives, and tendencies to action? Adequate reflection will, I think, prove that we are not. What, for example, have I had to do with the generation and development of that which some will consider my total being, and others a most potent factor of my total being — the living, speaking organism which now addresses you? As stated at the beginning of this discourse, my physical and intellectual textures were woven for me, not by me. Processes in the conduct or regulation of which I had no share have made me what I am. Here, surely, if anywhere, we are as clay in the hands of the potter. It is the greatest of delusions to suppose that we come into this world as sheets of white paper on which the age can write anything it likes, making us good or bad, noble or mean, as the age pleases. The age can stunt, promote, or pervert pre-existent capacities, but it cannot create them. The worthy Robert Owen, who saw in external circumstances the great moulders of human character, was obliged to supplement his doctrine by making the man himself one of the circumstances. It is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste. How many disorders, ghostly and bodily, are transmitted to us by inheritance? In our courts of law, whenever it is a question whether a crime has been committed under the influence of insanity, the best guidance the judge and jury can have is derived from the parental antecedents of the accused. If among these insanity be exhibited in any marked degree, the presumption in the prisoner's favour is enormously enhanced, because the experience of life has taught both judge and jury that insanity is frequently transmitted from parent to child.
I met, some years ago, in a railway carriage the governor of one of our largest prisons. He was evidently an observant and reflective man, possessed of wide experience gathered in various parts of the world, and a thorough student of the duties of his vocation. He told me that the prisoners in his charge might be divided into three distinct classes. The first class consisted of persons who ought never to have been in prison. External accident, and not internal taint, had brought them within the grasp of the law, and what had happened to them might happen to most of us. They were essentially men of sound moral stamina, though wearing the prison garb. Then came the largest class, formed of individuals possessing no strong bias, moral or immoral, plastic to the touch of circumstances, which could mould them into either good or evil members of society. Thirdly came a class — happily not a large one — whom no kindness could conciliate and no discipline tame. They were sent into this world labelled 'incorrigible', wickedness being stamped, as it were, upon their organisations. It was an unpleasant truth, but as a truth it ought to be faced. For such criminals the prison over which he ruled was certainly not the proper place. If confined at all, their prison should be on a desert island where the deadly contagium of their example could not taint the moral air. But the sea itself he was disposed to regard as a cheap and appropriate substitute for the island. It seemed to him evident that the State would benefit if prisoners of the first class were liberated; prisoners of the second class educated; and prisoners of the third class put compendiously under water.
It is not, however, from the observation of individuals that the argument against 'free-will,' as commonly understood, derives its principal force. It is, as already hinted, indefinitely strengthened when extended to the race. Most of you have been forced to listen to the outcries and denunciations which rang discordant through the land for some years after the publication of Mr. Darwin's 'Origin of Species.' Well, the world — even the clerical world — for the most part settled down in the belief that Mr. Darwin's book simply reflects the truth of nature: that we who are now 'foremost in the files of time' have come to the front through almost endless stages of promotion from lower to higher forms of life.
If to any one of us were given the privilege of looking back through the aeons across which life has crept towards its present outcome, his vision, according to Darwin, would ultimately reach a point when the progenitors of this assembly could not be called human. From that humble society, through the interaction of its members and the storing up of their best qualities, a better one emerged; from this again a better still; until at length, by the integration of infinitesimals through ages of amelioration, we came to be what we are to-day. We of this generation had no conscious share in the production of this grand and beneficent result. Any and every generation which preceded us had just as little share. The favoured organisms whose garnered excellence constitutes our present store owed their advantages, first, to what we in our ignorance are obliged to call accidental variation;' and, secondly, to a law of heredity in the passing of which our suffrages were not collected. With characteristic felicity and precision Mr. Matthew Arnold lifts this question into the free air of poetry, but not out of the atmosphere of truth, when he ascribes the process of amelioration to 'a power not ourselves which makes for righteousness.' If, then, our organisms, with all their tendencies and capacities, are given to us without our being consulted; and if, while capable of acting within certain limits in accordance with our wishes, we are not masters of the circumstances in which motives and wishes originate; if, finally, our motives and wishes determine our actions — in what sense can these actions be said to be the result of free-will?
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Here, again, we are confronted with the question of moral responsibility, which, as it has been much talked of lately, it is desirable to meet. With the view of removing the fear of our falling back into the condition of 'the ape and tiger,' so sedulously excited by certain writers, I propose to grapple with this question in its rudest form, and in the most uncompromising way. 'If,' says the robber, the ravisher, or the murderer, 'I act because I must act, what right have you to hold me responsible for my deeds?' The reply is, 'The right of society to protect itself against aggressive and injurious forces, whether they be bond or free, forces of nature or forces of man.' 'Then,' retorts the criminal, 'you punish me for what I cannot help.' 'Let it be granted,' says society, 'but had you known that the treadmill or the gallows was certainly in store for you, you might have "helped." Let us reason the matter fully and frankly out. We may entertain no malice or hatred against you; it is enough that with a view to our own safety and purification we are determined that you and such as you shall not enjoy liberty of evil action in our midst. You, who have behaved as a wild beast, we claim the right to cage or kill as we should a wild beast. The public safety is a matter of more importance than the very limited chance of your moral renovation, while the knowledge that you have been hanged by the neck may furnish to others about to do as you have done the precise motive which will hold them back. If your act be such as to invoke a minor penalty, then not only others, but yourself, may profit by the punishment which we inflict. On the homely principle that "a burnt child dreads the fire," it will make you think twice before venturing on a repetition of your crime. Observe, finally, the consistency of our conduct. You offend, you say, because you cannot help offending, to the public detriment. We punish, is our reply, because we cannot help punishing, for the public good. Practically, then, as Bishop Butler predicted, we act as the world acted when it supposed the evil deeds of its criminals to be the products of free-will.' [Footnote: An eminent Church dignitary describes all this, not unkindly, as 'truculent logic.' I think it worthy of his Grace's graver consideration.]
'What,' I have heard it argued, 'is the use of preaching about duty, if a man's predetermined position in the moral world renders him incapable of profiting by advice?' Who knows that he is incapable? The preacher's last word is a factor in the man's conduct, and it may be a most important factor, unlocking moral energies which might otherwise remain imprisoned and unused. If the preacher thoroughly feel that words of enlightenment, courage, and admonition enter into the list of forces employed by Nature herself for man's amelioration, since she gifted man with speech, he will suffer no paralysis to fall upon his tongue. Dung the fig-tree hopefully, and not until its barrenness has been demonstrated beyond a doubt let the sentence go forth, 'Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?'
I remember when a youth in the town of Halifax, some two-and-thirty years ago, attending a lecture given by a young man to a small but select audience. The aspect of the lecturer was earnest and practical, and his voice soon rivetted attention. He spoke of duty, defining it as a debt owed, and there was a kindling vigour in his words which must have strengthened the sense of duty in the minds of those who heard him. No speculations regarding the freedom of the will could alter the fact that the words of that young man did me good. His name was George Dawson. He also spoke, if you will allow me to allude to it, of a social subject much discussed at the time — the Chartist subject of levelling.' Suppose, he says, two men to be equal at night, and that one rises at six, while the other sleeps till nine next morning, what becomes of your levelling? And in so speaking be made himself the mouthpiece of Nature, which, as we have seen, secures advance, not by the reduction of all to a common level, but by the encouragement and conservation of what is best.
It may be urged that, in dealing as above with my hypothetical criminal, I am assuming a state of things brought about by the influence of religions which include the dogmas of theology and the belief in freewill — a state, namely, in which a moral majority control and keep in awe an immoral minority. The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Withdraw, then, our theologic sanctions, including the belief in free-will, and the condition of the race will be typified by the samples of individual wickedness which have been above adduced. We shall all, that is, become robbers, and ravishers, and murderers. From much that has been written of late it would seem that this astounding inference finds house-room in many minds. Possibly, the people who hold such views might be able to illustrate them by individual instances.
The fear of hell's a hangman's whip,
To keep the wretch in order.