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AND THUS our conception of free will and necessity is gradually diminished or
increased according to the degree of connection with the external world, the
degree of remoteness in time, and the degree of dependence on causes which we
see in the phenomenon of man's life that we examine. So that if we examine the
case of a man in which the connection with the external world is better known,
the interval of time between the examination and the act greater, and the causes
of the action easier to comprehend, we form a conception of a greater element of
necessity and less free will. If we examine a man in a less close dependence on
external conditions, if his action is committed at a moment nearer the present,
and the causes leading him to it are beyond our ken, we form a conception of a
less element of necessity and a greater element of free will in his
action.
But in neither case, however we shift our point of view, however clear we
make to ourselves the connection in which the man is placed with the external
world, or however fully comprehensible it may appear to us, however long or
short a period of time we select, however explicable or unfathomable the causes
of the act may be to us, we can never conceive of complete free will, nor of
complete necessity in any action.
1. However carefully we imagine a man excluded from the influence of the
external world, we can never form a conception of freedom in space. Every act of
man's is inevitably limited by what surrounds him and by his own body. I raise
my arm and let it fall. My action seems to me free; but asking myself could I
raise my arm in any direction, I see that I moved it in the direction in which
there was least hindrance to the action arising from bodies around me or from
the construction of my own body. I chose one out of all the possible directions,
because in that direction I met with least hindrance. For my action to be
entirely free, it would have to meet with no hindrance in any direction. To
conceive a man quite free, we have to conceive him outside of space, which is
obviously impossible.
2. However near we bring the time of criticism to the time of action, we can
never form a conception of freedom in time. For if I examine an act committed a
second ago, I must still recognise that it is not free, since the act is
irrevocably linked to the moment at which it was committed. Can I lift my arm? I
lift it; but I ask myself: Could I not have lifted my arm in that moment of time
that has just passed? To convince myself of that, I do not lift my arm the next
moment. But I am not abstaining from lifting it that first moment of which I
asked myself the question. The time has gone by and to detain it was not in my
power, and the hand which I then raised and the air in which I raised it are not
the same as the hand I do not raise now or the air in which I do not now raise
it. The moment in which the first movement took place is irrevocable, and in
that moment I could only perform one action, and whatever movement I had made,
that movement could have been the only one. The fact that the following moment I
abstained from lifting my arm did not prove that I could have abstained from
lifting it. And since my movement could only be one in one moment of time, it
could have been no other. To conceive it to oneself as free, one must conceive
it in the present on the boundary between the past and the future, that is,
outside time, which is impossible.
3. However we increase the degree of difficulty of comprehending the causes
of the act, we never reach a conception of complete free will, that is, absolute
absence of cause. Though the cause of the expression of will in any act of our
own or another's may be beyond our ken, it is the first impulse of the intellect
to presuppose and seek a cause, without which no phenomenon is conceivable. I
raise my arm in order to perform an act independent of any cause, but the fact
that I want to perform an act independent of any cause is the cause of my
action.
But even if by conceiving a man entirely excluded from external influence,
and exercising only a momentary act in the present, not called forth by any
cause, we were to reduce the element of necessity to an infinitesimal minimum
equivalent to nil, we should even then not have reached a conception of complete
free will in a man; for a creature, uninfluenced by the external world, outside
of time, and independent of cause, is no longer a man.
In the same way we can never conceive a human action subject only to
necessity without any element of free will.
1. However we increase our knowledge of the conditions of space in which a
man is placed, that knowledge can never be complete since the number of these
conditions is infinitely great, seeing that space is in finite. And so long as
not all the conditions that may influence a man are defined, the circle
of necessity is not complete, and there is still a loophole for free will.
2. Though we may make the period of time intervening between an act and our
criticism of it as long as we choose, that period will be finite, and time is
infinite, and so in this respect too the circle of necessity is not
complete.
3. However easy the chain of causation of any act may be to grasp, we shall
never know the whole chain, since it is endless, and so again we cannot attain
absolute necessity.
But apart from that, even if, reducing the minimum of free will till it is
equivalent to nil, we were to admit in some case—as, for instance, that of a
dying man, an unborn babe, an idiot—a complete absence of free will, we should
in so doing have destroyed the very conception of man, in the case we are
examining; since as soon as there is no free will, there is no man. And
therefore the conception of the action of a man subject only to the law of
necessity, without the smallest element of free will, is as impossible as the
conception of a completely free human action.
Thus to conceive a human action subject only to the law of necessity without
free will, we must assume a knowledge of an infinite number of conditions
in space, an infinitely long period of time, and an infinite chain
of causation.
To conceive a man perfectly free, not subject to the law of necessity, we
must conceive a man outside of space, outside of time, and free from
all dependence on cause.
In the first case, if necessity were possible without free will, we should be
brought to a definition of the laws of necessity in the terms of the same
necessity, that is, to mere form without content.
In the second case, if free will were possible without necessity, we should
come to unconditioned free will outside of space, and time and cause, which by
the fact of its being unconditioned and unlimited would be nothing else than
content without form.
We should be brought in fact to these two fundamental elements, of which
man's whole cosmic conception is made up—the incomprehensible essence of life
and the laws that give form to that essence.
Reason says: 1. space with all the forms given it by its visibility—matter—is
infinite, and is not thinkable otherwise.
2. Time is infinite movement without one moment of rest, and it is not
otherwise thinkable.
3. The connection of cause and effect has no beginning, and can have no
end.
Consciousness says: 1. I alone am, and all that exists is only I;
consequently I include space.
2. I measure moving time by the unchanging moment of the present, in which
alone I am conscious of myself living; consequently I am outside of time,
and
3. I am outside of cause, since I feel myself the cause of every phenomenon
of my life.
Reason gives expression to the laws of necessity. Consciousness gives
expression to the reality of free will.
Freedom unlimited by anything is the essence of life in man's consciousness.
Necessity without content is man's reason with its three forms of thought.
Free will is what is examined: Necessity is what examines. Free will is
content: Necessity is form.
It is only by the analysis of the two sources of knowledge, standing to one
another in the relation of form and content, that the mutually exclusive, and
separately inconceivable ideas of free will and necessity are formed.
Only by their synthesis is a clear conception of the life of man
gained.
Outside these two ideas—in their synthesis mutually definitive as form and
content—no conception of life is possible.
All that we know of men's life is only a certain relation of free will to
necessity, that is, of consciousness to the laws of reason.
All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain relation
of the forces of nature to necessity, or of the essence of life to the laws of
reason.
The forces of the life of nature lie outside us, and not subject to our
consciousness; and we call these forces gravity, inertia, electricity, vital
force, and so on. But the force of the life of man is the subject of our
consciousness, and we call it free will.
But just as the force of gravitation—in itself incomprehensible, though felt
by every man—is only so far understood by us as we know the laws of necessity to
which it is subject (from the first knowledge that all bodies are heavy down to
Newton's law), so too the force of free will, unthinkable in itself, but
recognised by the consciousness of every man, is only so far understood as we
know the laws of necessity to which it is subject (from the fact that every man
dies up to the knowledge of the most complex economic or historic laws).
All knowledge is simply bringing the essence of life under the laws of
reason.
Man's free will is distinguished from every other force by the fact that it
is the subject of man's consciousness. But in the eyes of reason it is not
distinguished from any other force.
The forces of gravitation, of electricity, or of chemical affinity, are only
distinguished from one another by being differently defined by reason. In the
same way the force of man's free will is only distinguished by reason from the
other forces of nature by the definition given it by reason. Free will apart
from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason defining it, is in no way
different from gravitation, or heat, or the force of vegetation; for reason, it
is only a momentary, indefinite sensation of life.
And as the undefined essence of the force moving the heavenly bodies, the
undefined essence of the force of heat, of electricity, or of chemical affinity,
or of vital force, forms the subject of astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany,
zoology, and so on, so the essence of the force of free will forms the subject
matter of history. But even as the subject of every science is the manifestation
of that unknown essence of life, yet that essence itself can only be the subject
of metaphysics, so too the manifestation of the force of free will in space, and
time, and dependence on cause, forms the subject of history, but free will
itself is the subject of metaphysics.
In the experimental sciences, what is known to us we call the laws of
necessity; what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital force is simply an
expression for what remains unexplained by what we know of the essence of life.
So in history what is known to us we call the laws of necessity; what is
unknown, we call free will. Free will is for history simply an expression for
what remains unexplained by the laws of men's life that we know.
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