“Is there one human creature who could be so certain that you are absolutely the person for whom we take you, as not by possibility to be deceived? Even your mother, after her heart had yearned to the first faint cry of her own baby, may have been deceived. Suppose that her own had died, and that you were presented to her. How do you know what or where you were before sensible objects began to make impression on your faculties? You have no more actual connection with your former being, even during the first six or eight months,—I might go on to say the first year of childhood—when you slept in your nurse’s arms, than you have with that oak that overshadows your window, if you estimate that connection by your power of tracing its links without any hiatus in the chain.
“You were pleased the other day with that admirable essay, which you were reading, entitled “Historical doubts respecting the existence of Napoleon Buonaparte,” in which the argument is so perfectly established that, if we give reins to scepticism, we have no demonstrative proof, at this moment, that the wonderful Buonaparte who swayed the world by the magic of an almost preternatural influence for a few years, and is now forgotten, put himself under the protection of Captain Maitland, and visited Spithead on board the Bellerophon. What wonder that you should know no more than that your boat put off from the shore, on which you saw a dense crowd of assembled spectators, that you neared the stern of a great vessel, saw a little man with a star on his breast and a cocked hat upon his head, were told and believed that it was the royal prisoner, the usurper of France, the wizard Corsican at whom you gazed from your wherry, when you have no demonstration that you are General Douglas, no irrefragable proof that you belong to that line of Scottish heroes from whom you believe yourself to be sprung, and may not be, on the contrary, a foundling transplanted from the parish of St. Giles’ into your splendid cradle, where first you received the fond caresses of your reputed parents.
“See then how much we are obliged to take for granted; and is there any greater difficulty in believing that consciousness of identity, which we never doubted, may form a part of our essence hereafter, than that it is inseparable from our existence here, however the continuity of remembrance may be interrupted? All analogy is with me, and I now find this idea, which once was a stumbling block, easy and familiar.
“Then, as to the soul’s existence after being separated from the body. Let us only consider how unreasonably we argue, when we confound the mental and corporeal functions, simply because we see them combined. Analogy here also is against such reasoning. A spark of electricity or galvanism is only rendered apparent to the eye by certain circumstances. As long as these subtle fluids pass quietly through conductors, they are wholly invisible, and pervade the earth and atmosphere entirely unseen: yet we doubt not the existence of electricity and magnetism, because they float invisibly in æther. We never doubt the existence of the sun’s light, though the substitution of a wooden block for a transparent window of glass shall totally obstruct his rays. These are mere analogies; but they are in our favour. We see the operations of the spirit through the means of our bodily organs, as we perceive the light of the sun through glass, which is so constituted as to transmit its beams to our senses; but we have no more right to confound the vehicle, or medium, with the matter of light, or the power of thought, conveyed in the one case than in the other. Will you call me fanciful if I say that I consider all intellectual energy, all that we denominate soul, as emanating from divinity; and I find no more difficulty now in imagining a certain portion of this divine principle arrested and concentrated in the organic structure which we call man, than I find in collecting the sun’s rays in a burning glass or a prism.
“Mingling with the dross incident to a temporary junction with the base particles of matter, the spirit partakes of the feculence of the channel through which it permeates (if you will permit me to use the language of metaphor), just as the rays of the sun are broken, refracted, or reflected by the cloudy atmosphere, or shattered glass, through which they pass. Remove the medium, and the emancipated essence regains its source; with this difference, that while the light, which is only material, the magnetism and electricity, which are unconscious forces, recover all their purity with their liberated expansion, the soul of man, on which the boon of immortality is conferred,—the soul which shall not be extinguished like that splendid orb that illumines our nether sphere shall receive its final billet, and be admitted into one or the other of two classes of spiritualized existence, according to the use which has been made during its sojournment in the body, of free will, bestowed upon the human species at its creation.”
Here my brother heaved a sigh, which seemed to issue from the very centre of his heart: “Aye, Caroline,” said he, “there’s the rub; there is the inscrutable mystery, the impenetrable veil;” “Which,” answered I, “no mortal intellect—no human eye will ever pierce.”—“Then how believe what I despair of comprehending?” “If,” replied I, “we turn a subject according to two opposite theories, and after the clearest investigation which we are enabled to bestow upon each, find that both involve an equal measure of incompatibility with our reason and experience, we arrive at least naturally at a state of neutrality which would leave us unbiased and ready to lean to one side or the other, as new motives might be suggested to incline the understanding through force of evidence or probability, towards the adoption of one scheme in preference to the other, its own powers being confessedly unequal to unravel the difficulties of either. Let us view the wonderful question of free-will in this light: that the Almighty could decree man to be free, we have no reason to deny. Omnipotence can achieve all things; and even were we inclined to declare, that not being satisfied that free-will exists, we will not give credit to the Great Framer of the universe for more than we see, still we are pinned on the other side; for if we only admit what we see, we cannot by the same rule consistently negative that which we do not see. Ignorance is not entitled to predicate for or against. We can only with propriety say, that what is hidden, is hidden. But my experience tells me that I am free; and that when not coerced from without, when not restrained by extrinsic force, I follow the dictates of my will, I find that no temptation assails me with such violence as to make it impossible that I should not have resisted its approaches: and find that the common sense of all mankind is with me, since every human law is founded on the distinction between voluntary and compulsory action. Every species of control, moral or physical, is taken into account; every aberration which disturbs the balance of the mental faculties is allowed to operate favourably in excusing the delinquent who is brought to judgment; and nothing but free, determined wickedness is punished by the laws of man. Whatever injury has been sustained by society, crime is not imputed to the person who has been an unwilling instrument of wrong. So far there is no contrariety in the decisions; no variety amongst the opinions of men. What says the Bible, which we have already agreed should be the lamp of our feet, provided that we submit to be guided where our own light is not sufficient? It tells us, that God placing us here in a merely probationary state, and designing us for an ulterior destiny, made us free in order to our being accountable. Now that we should be accountable without being free is a solecism which no human sagacity could comprehend, not merely because it is too high for us to reach, but because it absolutely contradicts that reason through the means of which we come at the ideas of truth and falsehood. The Bible says, that “good and evil are placed before us,” and that we are responsible at the bar of a future Tribunal for the choice which we make between them. Here is an exact accordance between revelation and the natural conclusions of reason. Again, if we consider what is most suitable to our ideas of grandeur and power in the Deity, we hesitate not in saying, that to form a free creature is a much more magnificent exhibition of Divinity than is manifested in the creation of puppets that must obey the original impulse imparted to them. How much grander is the idea of an Almighty Ruler who, giving the greatest latitude of action within its individual sphere, to each separate congeries of nerves and muscles, which He has ordained to be the seat of a human soul, can so order the ends of His astonishing plan, that not a tittle of His word shall be frustrated; not a particle of the great scheme subverted; than any notion which we can substitute of a Creator who had tied down and limited the work of His hands in the moment of casting the first specimen of its existence, so as to secure a monotonous and necessary result from the mechanical revolution of certain wheels, or the mindless operation of certain fixed springs, not one of which could by possibility vary in its round, or be altered in the quantum of its elasticity. Thus far reason and experience move harmoniously together, and authority confirms their joint conclusion. We feel that we are free; reason tells us that we ought to be free; and Scripture, which professes to be the revealed Word of God, informs us that we are free. The mass of probability appears, then, entirely on this side: let us now consider the other.
“If man be a mere machine, irresistibly governed according to fixed laws, from which he cannot swerve, and performing every action through the influence of an impelling power, which he is unable to resist; it is plain, first, that he cannot be an accountable creature, for accountableness can only be understood when there is liberty to do, or abstain from doing; and, secondly, this scheme involves an absolute contradiction between our experience and the fact, supposing us to be creatures of necessity, by which, if we be really overruled, and placed in duresse from which we have no power to emancipate ourselves; we are, then, put into the extraordinary predicament of being one thing, while we are so constituted as to believe ourselves to be another. That is to say, in fine, that we are conscious of freedom, though in reality we are bound; and are thus practically and irresistibly acting all our lives upon a fraud, a delusion, which compels us to give up the testimony of our senses, at the same time that we declare their evidence to furnish the most unquestionable source of knowledge that we possess, and to afford the principal rule upon which our whole conduct is regulated, either in public or private life.
“There is a sublime simplicity in the works of Providence, in comparison with which the strange incongruity which I have been describing would present a case so completely anomalous as to disturb the harmony of creation, and leave us a bewildered race, without helm or compass to guide our course. But a contradiction still more monstrous and difficult to reconcile would result from such an order of things as we are now supposing. The necessity which we are considering must either be independent of, or immediately proceeding from, God. If the former, it supersedes the Deity, or, identified with Him, is itself the sovereign ruler of the universe. If the latter, all the evil deeds of man are performed by the express order of that Being who threatens with eternal punishment those of his creatures who will not obey His commandment to be “holy even as He is holy.” The preposterous absurdities involved in this view are levelled at once by the belief that man at his birth is decreed to be a free agent, all whose actions are in his own power; who will never be tempted above what he is enabled to bear; and who, if he sincerely desire after righteousness, will never fail in attaining it.
“How far the ultimate ends of all that we see may be fixed by the fiat of Divine ordinances, is not our business to inquire into, any more than what future worlds the Creator may please to form when our planetary system shall have passed away. Our own actions are our immediate concern: thousands of events may hinge upon every one of them, with which we do not design the remotest connection; while the ends which we intend to bring about are never achieved. Yet, in secular matters, no man ever believes his free will to have been restrained. If he make a bad bargain, or act upon a false calculation, he may regret his want of prudence, or lament a deficiency of information; but it never occurs to the most sceptical amongst those with whom I have ever met, to fancy, for a single moment, that he might not have done differently, inquired farther, or been less precipitate.
“Whence this division? Why are temporal affairs regulated by the law of responsibility while spiritual conduct only is to be considered under the inflexible control of a necessary compulsion? The reason is plain: the creed of the fatalist is only adopted to screen him from the examination which he dreads, and serve as an opiate to his conscience. The fatalism of the ancient heathen world was more rational and consistent than that of modern infidelity, inasmuch as it was applied to earthly concerns, and frequently led to contentment under misfortune and privation. Perhaps you are ready to say how much less puzzling you would find the doctrine of free-will than that of necessity were it not for one stumbling block. How can fore-knowledge be reconciled with freedom? Were human analogies to satisfy our inquiry, there would be no difficulty to encounter in this question. In this world, the prophetic wisdom which, like that of Edmund Burke, looks deeply into the volume of futurity, and predicts events to come, is rarely, if ever concerned in the practical occurrence of them; but on the contrary, is generally in diametrical opposition, as he was to the horrors of that revolution which he so clearly foresaw. So far analogy separates fore-knowledge from necessity. Imagine once that man is created free by the Almighty’s decree, and the difficulty vanishes. If free, man is empowered to act for himself; and though beyond a certain limit he may not be able to see or to do, he has liberty within a given circuit, and that liberty once conferred, there is nothing more incomprehensible in the fore-knowledge of God, than in that of an earthly parent, who having endowed his children with a certain measure of power, limited by his discretion, and recallable at his will, foresees, without choosing to control its exercise. That species of active interference sometimes employed to bring about the designs of self-interest by people who plan devices, and then are busied in executing them; is not what we mean by fore-knowledge humanly speaking. What we speak of as such, is founded on information from without, and derived from our own judgment in drawing conclusions relative to future events from certain data presented to our understandings. I repeat, therefore, that so far from being accustomed to couple this species of wisdom with the facts which it predicts, there is, generally speaking, not the most remote connection between the prognostic and its fulfilment. Now, as all our ideas respecting the divine attributes, when we depend on reason alone for believing in them, are but an extension of those which we see in each other, we are not instructed by any analogy to expect that the prescience of the Almighty brings about the downfall of a nation as its necessary consequence, any more than that Burke’s foresight of the effects which would follow on the spread of infidelity and disloyalty should be instrumental in compassing the overthrow of monarchy in France. Nor should we reason so anomalously, were it not that in considering God as the creator of all those beings whose conduct he foresees, looking in short, upon the divine fore-knowledge as infallible, and not subject to the contingencies which accompany even the highest degree of human sagacity, we attach a characteristic to the prescience of the Deity which does not belong to that of man; and therefore while reason and analogy are professedly our guides, we desert their standard, and set up a new light for ourselves which is as remote from revealed as from natural religion, and leaves us inextricably bogged in a morass from which we shall in vain attempt to disentangle ourselves. If the Almighty made us free, we can imagine how he may fore-know our actions without controlling them; though he formed all created things, because in the very idea of freedom, such independence is essential; any compulsion would destroy liberty, and involve a contradiction in terms; but here is the final limit to which human understanding can attain.