But on such conditions, how can human volitions really be free? How can man be really at liberty to will of his good pleasure, if what he is prompted to will depends on the influence which the circumstances that happen to surround him may exercise on the constitution and character, which he has derived from pre-existing circumstances? How can his will be free, if that will be moulded and shaped by circumstances over which he has no control? I have, I am aware, by the mode I have adopted of reconciling free-will with foreknowledge, incurred the obligation of reconciling it with another co-existence of yet greater apparent incompatibility. By admitting that 'human volitions take place as inevitable effects of antecedent causes,' that they must be such, and cannot be other than such, as antecedent causes make them, I have admitted that the will, though independent of law, is absolutely subject to, and must implicitly obey, causes. Freewill, then, must be shown to be compatible not with foreknowledge only, but with necessity also. For there is no use in attempting to ignore necessity; no use in exclaiming with Professor Huxley: 'Fact I know, and Law I know; but what is Necessity but an empty shadow of the mind's own throwing?'[24] A shadow it most certainly is not, though it is a bugbear, and the veriest that was ever suffered to torment a morbid imagination. It is an indisputable reality, a substantial, but at the same time perfectly harmless, or rather salutary reality, whose terrors need only to be boldly confronted in order to disappear and to transform themselves into highly attractive recommendations. For what, after all, does it imply? What but that effects must follow their causes, and causes precede their effects, as plainly they must, unless cause and effect be utterly unmeaning expletives. Of course we must on all occasions be affected by surrounding circumstances, in modes exactly accordant with our idiosyncracies, moral and physical. Of course, too, our volitions must exactly correspond with our contemporaneous affections. When we are empty, we must, if in health, feel hungry, and desire to eat; when full, we must, unless we are hogs, be satisfied, and prefer to ruminate. Most men are so organised that when tickled they must laugh; when wronged, must frown or sigh. The sight of distress makes them pity, and desire to see it relieved. That of virtue makes them admire, and desire to see it rewarded. That of vice makes them angry, and desire to see it punished. Would we have all these things reversed? Would it be well for us that our being starved or surfeited should make no difference in our wish to feed, or our willingness to fast? Should we like the chances to be equal whether we should desire distress to be alleviated or aggravated? If not, what is the bondage under which we groan? What the liberty wherewith we long to be made free? Our sole grievance is that, according to actual arrangements, there must be reasons for our wishes, and that on those reasons our wishes must depend. Should we then prefer that there were no such reasons? Would we have our wishes to be independent of reason, and adrift before irrational caprice? Probably we may, on second thoughts, be content to forego an enfranchisement like this; but, if not, we may at least console ourselves for its indefinite postponement, by reflecting that Omnipotence itself is, equally with ourselves, subject to the sort of necessity under which we are groaning; equally destitute of the sort of free-will to which we aspire. It is manifest that, since there cannot be omnipotence without boundless liberty, omnipotence must possess completest freedom of will. Yet even the Will of Omnipotence is subject to the despotism of causation. Divine perfection cannot but be at all times affected in modes as exactly corresponding with its own excellence as human imperfection is in modes corresponding with its deficiencies, and the movements of the Divine Mind cannot but correspond with the affections of the Divine Mind. Those movements are not unmeaning, purposeless, wayward. They, too, have their appropriate springs, and proceed by regular process from legitimate causes, the chief of those causes being the infinite perfection of the Divine Nature. Divine Power cannot then, any more than human, be directed by its owner's will to purposes against which its owner's nature revolts. But is this inability a matter to lament over? Those must be greatly at a loss for a grievance who make one of its being impossible for them to will things which they have over-ruling reasons for not willing. Besides, does man, in order to believe himself free, require more freedom than his Maker? The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. Surely it is sufficient that the disciple be as his master, and the servant as his lord.[25]
The fact, then, that human conduct is subject to causation, and may by adequate intelligence be predicted in its minutest details until the end of time, no more proves that it is governed by invariable laws, which act irrespectively of human volitions, than the corresponding fact with reference to Divine conduct impairs the freedom of the Divine Will. There is no one living to whom such a doctrine—degrading man, as it does, into a helpless puppet, robbing him of all moral responsibility and of every motive for either exertion or self-control—can be more utterly repugnant than to Mr. Mill, who nevertheless, although dissenting from Mr. Buckle's more extreme opinions, makes use of some expressions which may be construed into a qualified approval of his general views. Even Mr. Mill speaks of 'human volitions as depending on scientific laws,' thereby implying that the circumstances from which human motives and, consequently, human actions result are continually recurring with a certain regularity. He speaks of 'general laws affecting communities, which are indeed modified in their action by special causes affecting individuals, but which, if their effects could be observed over a field sufficiently wide and for a period sufficiently long to embrace all possible combinations of the special causes, would be found to produce constant results.'[26] This proposition seems to proceed on the assumption that general causes are either of uniform operation, or that, if they vary in their effects, their variations, and also those of special causes, occur with a certain regularity, and constantly recur within a certain definite period. But this is precisely what cannot possibly happen. Among the general causes referred to, some few are continuous—those, namely, which are inherent in human nature; but even these are continually modified in their action by changes continually taking place in those other general causes which constitute the existing state of society, and which are not merely continually changing, but are continually becoming more and more different from what they were originally. So much is fully admitted by Mr. Mill himself, and indeed can be scarcely more strongly enforced than by his own words. 'There is a progressive change,' he says, 'both in the character of the human race, and in their outward circumstances, so far as moulded by themselves; in each successive age the principal phenomena of society are different from what they were in the age preceding, and still more different from any previous age.'[27] It is admitted, then, that there can be no recurrence of social phenomena; and it is obvious that, the longer the period of observation, the less possibility can there be of their recurring, since the greater is the certainty that new causes will come into operation. But, even though it were possible that all the external circumstances which have once influenced either communities or individuals could be repeated, the same circumstances could not a second time produce the same effects. Men of different characters are affected in very different ways by the same influences, and the characters of any particular generation of men are always very different from those of every preceding generation. Let it be supposed, for the sake of argument, that the French of the present day could be placed in precisely the same social condition in which their fathers were towards the close of the last century; still they would act very differently from their fathers. Nay, even though they should, with one single exception, have inherited the dispositions of their fathers, the difference of character in one single individual might suffice to give an entirely new turn to the course of events. If every other antecedent of the first French Revolution were again present, still there might be no second revolution, provided only that, instead of another Louis the Sixteenth, a Leopold of Belgium, or a Frederick the Great were king.[28] With the last mentioned on the throne, there would assuredly be no repetition of that vacillation of purpose which rocked the cradle and fostered the growth of popular fury till it culminated in a Reign of Terror. Since, then, there cannot be either a repetition of the same circumstances to act upon men, or a reproduction of the same sort of men to be acted upon by circumstances, human conduct can never exhibit a repetition of the same phenomena; experience of the past can never, in social or political affairs, furnish a formula for predictions as to the future. Accordingly Mr. Mill, in common with Mr. Stephen, disclaims the idea of positive, and pleads only for conditional, predictions. But the very term 'conditional predictions' involves a contradiction, since it is obviously impossible to see beforehand what perhaps may never come to pass. What is meant by the phrase is really nothing more than conjectures; and conjectures, however ingenious and reasonable, cannot be admitted within the pale of science. They cannot be accepted as fruits of a tree which has by the quality of its fruits proved its right to be entitled the Science of History.
With the view of enhancing the value of conditional predictions, it has been urged that they are of precisely the same description as those which we are in the habit of hazarding with respect to our familiar acquaintance. There are, it is said, 'general maxims regarding human conduct, by the application of which to given states of fact, predictions may be made as to what will happen;' and all that is necessary for the construction of historical science, is the employment of these maxims on a larger scale. If the premiss here be sound, the inference may be owned to be sufficiently legitimate. If there be any formula with which the actions of individuals are observed to correspond, there is every likelihood that the same formula may, by extension and amplification, be adapted to the actions of communities. But, although there are plenty of maxims telling men what they ought to do, there is not one—except that which declares that they must all die—which affords any positive information as to what they will do. 'Thou shalt not steal,' 'thou shalt not kill,' 'thou shalt not commit adultery;'—all these and many more are moral laws; but of not one of them—the more's the pity—is the observance sufficiently regular, to give it the smallest pretension to be styled a scientific law. General propositions, too, there are in abundance, representing with more or less accuracy the probable results of particular lines of conduct. Such are the proverbial sayings, that 'Honesty is the best policy,' that 'A rolling stone gathers no moss,' that 'The racecourse is the road to ruin.' But adages like these were never supposed to afford any basis for prophecy. It may be that an honest man more commonly gets on in the world than a knave, though there is also much to be said on behalf of the counter-proposition, that 'The children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light;' but, at any rate, there is no doubt that a man may be honest without being prosperous, and that he is often all the poorer for his probity. But, indeed, is there any one conceivable situation in life in which a positive rule can be laid down as to the course which men will follow? Can it even—to make use of an illustration which has been very effectively employed on the other side—can it even be said that a man will certainly marry a woman with whom he is deeply in love, who returns his affection, whom he can marry if he likes, and whom he has the means of maintaining in a suitable manner? Nine times out of ten he probably will; but in the tenth instance a Brahmin's passion may be checked by fear of contamination with a Pariah, or a King Cophetua's pride may prevent his wedding a beggar-maid, or the titled owner of an entailed estate may decline to illegitimatise his offspring by espousing his deceased wife's sister, or betrothed lovers may be parted by some such mysterious barrier as sprang up between Talbot Bulstrode and Aurora Floyd, or an Adam Bede, in spite of the example set by George Eliot's hero, may refrain from marrying Dinah for fear of breaking his brother Seth's heart.
Equally vain would be the search for any rule invariably applicable to political affairs. Even general propositions which sound like truisms are not universally true. It cannot even be said that misgovernment always produces discontent, or that the combination of superior strength and superior strategy is always successful in war; for examples might be cited of nations remaining patient under an iron despotism, and perhaps also of campaigns lost by armies with every advantage of skill, numbers, and discipline on their side. No better specimen can be given of what are popularly spoken of as historical laws than one propounded by Mr. C. Merivale, whose careful study of Roman annals has taught him to regard it as 'a condition of permanent dominion that conquerors should absorb the conquered gradually into their own body, by extending, as circumstances arise, a share in their own exclusive privileges to the masses from whom they have torn their original independence.' The principle thus laid down is of great value, but it must not be mistaken for an index pointing unerringly to a goal which will certainly be obtained by following its direction. At least the offer of Austrian citizenship had no perceptible effect in overcoming the exclusiveness of Hungarian nationality; nor in inducing Venetia to become a willing member of a Teutonic Federation, and to lend the same assistance to the House of Hapsburg, as Gaul and Spain did to the Cæsars, in suppressing insurrection on the banks of the Danube. History supplies many principles similar to the one evolved by Mr. Merivale, all more or less useful for the guidance of the statesman. So far as they are just, they indicate the results which would spring from the adoption of certain lines of policy, unless something unforeseen should happen. It is true that something unforeseen is almost sure to happen and to divert or impede the course which events would otherwise take; but still, it is most important to be able to perceive clearly the influence exerted by certain causes, how much soever that influence may be disturbed by other causes; since, if it does nothing else, it will at least prevent the disturbing causes from producing what would otherwise have been their full effect. On principles which indicate only a few out of many causes in simultaneous operation, it is evident that nothing deserving to be called predictions can be founded; but from them, nevertheless—inasmuch as they teach that some causes act for good and others for evil, as far as their action extends—practical rules of government may be deduced. Such rules, however, which at best can only furnish a loose and shifting basis for doubtful conjectures, stand without the confines of positive knowledge; they occupy a middle-ground between science and nescience, and constitute what, until very lately, was thought to be designated with sufficient distinctness as the 'Philosophy of History.' By that term, Mr. Stephen in one place says, is really meant all that he ever meant by the Science of History; and the observation, were it not apparently inconsistent with his general reasoning, might seem to imply that the only question between him and his opponents is whether a thing, the existence of which is not disputed, ought or ought not to receive a new appellation. But it is otherwise, at any rate, with Mr. Mill. The language used by him on this as on all other subjects, is too clear and precise to admit of its being supposed that he has used a new phrase without attaching to it a new signification, or to permit the present writer to believe, as he fain would do, that a point of nomenclature is the only point of difference between himself and one from whom it is so difficult to differ without diffidence and self-distrust.
CHAPTER III.
DAVID HUME AS A METAPHYSICIAN.
But the mischief lieth here; that when men of less leisure see them who are supposed to have spent their whole time in the pursuit of knowledge professing an entire ignorance of all things, or advancing such notions as are repugnant to plain and commonly received principles, they will be tempted to entertain suspicions concerning the most important truths which they had hitherto held sacred and unquestionable.—Berkeley's Hylas and Philonous.
In no department of science is it possible for an enquirer to advance considerably beyond all his predecessors without serving as a light by whose aid his successors may advance somewhat beyond him. This is the only apology that I feel disposed to offer for the freedom with which I am about to criticize one who, having been, by judges so competent as Adam Smith and Professor Huxley, pronounced to be 'by far the greatest philosopher' and 'acutest thinker' of his own age, would, doubtless, be at least on a level with the greatest philosophers of the present age if he were living now. The veriest cripple that can manage to sit on horseback may contrive to crawl some few steps beyond the utmost point to which his steed has borne him, and, if those steps be uphill, may, by looking back on the course he has come, perceive where the animal has deviated from the right road. Yet he does not on that account suppose that his own locomotive power is in any respect to be compared to his horse's; neither need an annotator on Hume, when pointing to holes in his author's metaphysical coat, be supposed not to be perfectly aware that it is the strength, not of his own eyes, but of the spectacles furnished to him by his author, that enables him to perceive them.
The concentrated essence of Hume's metaphysics is to be found in 'An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding,' forming part of a volume of Essays which Hume published somewhat late in life, and which he desired might 'alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.' To a formal, though necessarily rapid, examination of the results of this 'Enquiry,' the present chapter will be almost exclusively devoted. Often as the operation has been performed already, there are two reasons why its repetition here may not be without utility: for, first, its subject is a treatise containing the germs of much subsequent and still current speculation which, in so far as it is merely a development of those germs, cannot but be infected by whatever unsoundness may be inherent in them; and, secondly, because the subject, hackneyed as it may seem, is so far from being exhausted, that there is scarcely one among the doctrines embodied in it to which, as I proceed at once to show, fresh objection, more or less grave, may not be taken by a fresh investigator.