BOOK VI.
ON THE LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
Many complex problems have been resolved through the use of the Scientific Methods, and thus only. The most complex of all problems are the problems relating to Man himself; and of them those concerned with the Mind and Society have never been scientifically resolved. They can be rescued from empiricism, if at all, only by being submitted to some of the methods already characterised as applicable to science in general. Which of these methods must be selected, and why; what are the causes of previous failures; and what degree of success now is possible or probable, will be considered in this book, when a preliminary objection (based on the theory of free will), that men's actions are not, like other natural events, subject to invariable laws, has been first removed.
CHAPTER II.
LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.
The theory of free will, viz. that the will is determined by itself, and not by antecedents, was invented as being more in accordance with the dignity of human nature and our consciousness of freedom, than philosophical necessity. The latter doctrine, in laying down simply that our volitions and actions are invariable consequents of our antecedent states of mind, and that, given our motives, character, and disposition, other men could predict our conduct as certainly as any physical event, states indeed nothing which is in itself either contradicted by our consciousness, or degrading; yet the doctrine of causation, as applied to volition, is supposed, from the natural tendency of the mind to imagine falsely that a mysterious constraint is exercised by any antecedent over the consequent, to imply some state of dependence which our consciousness does contradict. Moreover, the erroneous notion that something more than uniformity of order and capability of being predicted is meant, has been favoured by the use of the ambiguous term necessity (which, it is true, commonly implies irresistibleness), to signify simply that the given cause will be followed by the effect subject to all possibilities of counteraction by other causes. Most necessarians have been themselves deceived by the expression: they are apt to be partially fatalists as to their own actions, with a weaker spirit of self-culture than the believers in free-will, and to fail to see that the fact of their character being formed for them, that is, by their circumstances, including their own organisation, is consistent with its being formed by themselves, as intermediate agents, moulding it in any particular way which they may wish. The belief that the wishing is excited by external causes, e.g. by education, casual aspirations, and experience of ills resulting from our previous character, can be of no practical harm, and does not conflict with our feeling of moral freedom, that is, of power, if we wish, to modify or conquer our own character.