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principles of Hume. In particular, he attacked the
notion of " constraint " suggested in the words necessity
and necessarianism , whereas only sequence is affirmed.
Given a perfect knowledge of character and motives,
we could infallibly predict action. The alleged con-
sciousness of freedom is disputed. We merely feel
that we choose, not that we could choose the opposite.
Moreover the notion of free will is unintelligible. The
truth is that for the Sensationalist School, who believe
the mind to be merely a series of mental states, free
will is an absurdity. On the other side, Reid, and
Stewart, and Hamilton, of the Scotch School, with
Mansel, Martineau, W. J. Ward, and other Spiritualist
thinkers of Great Britain, energetically defended free
will against the disciples of Hume. They maintained
that a more careful analj'sis of volition justified the
argument from consciousness, that the universal con-
viction of mankind on such a fact may not be set aside
as an illusion, that morality cannot l^e founded on an
act of self-deception, that all languages contain terms
involving the notion of free will and all laws assume its
existence, and that the attempt to render necessarian-
ism less objectionable by calling it determinism does
not diminish the fatalism involved in it.
The truth that phenomenalism logically involves determinism is strikingly illustrated in Kant's treat- ment of the question. His well-known division of all reality into phenomena and noumena is his key to this problem also. The world as it appears to us, the world of plienomena, including our own actions and mental states, can only be conceived under the form of time and subject to the category of causality, and therefore everythmg in the world of experience happens alto- gether according to the laws of nature; that is, all our actions are rigidly determined. But, on the other hand, freedom is a necessary postulate of morality: "Thou canst, because thou oughtest." The solution of the antinomy is that the determinism concerns only the empirical or phenomenal world. There is no ground for denying liberty to the Ding an sich. We may believe in transcendental freedom, that we are noumenally free. Since, moreover, the belief that I am free and that I am a free cause, is the foundation stone of religion and morality, I must believe in this postulate. Kant thus gets over the antinoniy by con- fining freedom to the world of noumena, which lie out- side the form of time and the category of causality, whilst he affirms necessity of the sensible world, bound by the chain of causality. Apart from the general ob- jection to Kant's system, a grave difficulty here lies in the fact that all man's conduct — his whole moral life as it is revealed in actual experience either to others or himself — pertains in this view to the phenomenal world and so is rigidly determined.
Though much acute philosophical and psychological analysis has been brought to bear on the prol^lcm dur- ing the last century, it cannot be said that any great additional light has been shed over it. In Germany, Schopenhauer made will the noumenal basis of the world and adopted a pessimistic theory of the universe, denying free will to be justified by either ethics or psychology. On the other hand, Lotze, in many re- spects perhaps the acutcst thinker in Germany since Kant, was an energetic defender of moral liberty. Among recent psychologists in America Professors James and Ladd are both advocates of freedom, though laying more stress for positive proof on the ethical than on the psychological evidence.
The Argument. — As the main features of the doc- trine of free will have been sketched in the history of the problem, a very brief account of tlic argument for moral freedom will now suffice. Will viewed as a free power is defiiird by defenders of free will as the capac- ity of self-delcnuiriiilion. By sel/ is here un<lerstood not a single present mental state (James), nor a series of mental states (Hume and Mill), but an abiding rational being which is the subject and cause of these
states. We should distinguish between (1) spontane-
ous acts, those proceeding from an internal principle
(e. g. the growth of plants and impulsive movements
of animals); (2) voluntary acts in a wide sense, those
proceeding from an internal principle with apprehen-
sion of an end (e. g. all conscious desires); and, finally,
(3) those voluntary in the strict sense, that is, deliber-
ate or free acts. In such, there is a self-conscious
advertence to our own causality, or an awareness that
we are choosing the act, or acquiescing in the desire of
it. Spontaneous acts and desires are opposed to co-
action or external compulsion, but they are not there-
by morally free acts. 'They may still be the necessary
outcome of the nature of the agent as, e. g. the actions
of lower animals, of the insane, of yoimg children, and
many impulsive acts of mature life. The essential
feature in free volition is the element of choice — the
I'is clediin, as St. Thomas calls it. There is a concom-
itant interrogative awareness in the form of the query,
"shall I acquiesce or shall I resist? Shall I do it or
something else?", and the consequent acceptance or
refusal, ratification or rejection, though either may be
of varying degrees of completeness. It is this act of
consent or approval, which converts a mere involun-
tary impulse or desire into a free volition and makes
me accountable for it. A train of thought or volition
dehberately initiated or acquiesced in, but afterward
continued merely spontaneously without reflective
advertence to our elective adoption of it, remains free
in cciusii, and I am therefore responsible for it, though
actually the process has passed into the department of
merely spontaneous or automatic activity. A large
part of the operation of carrjang out a resolution, once
the decision is made, is commonly of this kind. The
question of free will may now be stated thus: "Given
all the conditions requisite for eliciting an act of will,
except the act itself, does the act necessarily follow?"
Or, "Are all my volitions the inevitable outcome of
my character and the motives acting on me at the
time?" Fatalists, necessarians, determinists say
"Yes". Libertarians, indeterminists or anti-deter-
minists say "No. The mind or soul in deliberate ac-
tions is a free cause. Given all the conditions requisite
for action, it can either act or abstain from action. It
can, and sometimes does, exercise its own causality
against the weight of character and present motives."
Proof. — The evidence usually adduced at the pres-
ent day is of two kinds, ethical and psychological —
though even the ethical argument is itself psychologi-
cal. (1) Ethical Argument. — It is argued that neces-
sarianism or determinism in any form is in conflict
with the chief moral notions and convictions of man-
kind at large. The actual imiversality of such moral
ideas is indisputable. Duty, moral obligation, respon-
sibility, merit, justice signify notions universally pres-
ent in the consciousness of normally developed men.
Further, these notions, as universally imderstood,
imply that man is really master of some of his acts,
that he is, at least at times, capable of self-determina-
tion, that all his volitions are not the inevitable out^
come of his circumstances. When I say that I ought
not to have performed some forbidden act, that it was
my duty to olaey the law, I imply that I could have
done so. The judgment of all men is the same on this
point. When we say that a person is justly held re-
sponsible for a crime, or that he deserves praise or
reward for an heroic act of self-sacrifice, we mean that
he was author and cause of that act in such fashion
that he had it in his power not to perform the act. We
exempt the insane or the cliild, because we believe
them devoid of moral frecdum and <letermined inevit-
ably by the motives which ha[)pcni'd to act on them.
So true is this, (hat determinists have had to admit
that, the meaning of these terms will, according to
their view, have to be changed. But this is to admit
that their theory is in direct conflict with universal
psychological facts. It thereby stands disproved.
