liberty to act according to our choice:’ is this the theory? ‘No, more than that; for that,’ we shall be told, ‘is not near enough. Not only must you be free to do what you will, but also you must have liberty to choose what you will to do. It must be your doing, that you will to do this thing, and not rather that thing; and, if it is not your doing, then you are not responsible.’
So far, I believe, most persons would agree that the doctrine has not gone beyond a fair interpretation of common consciousness. On the whole I think this is so, if we except perhaps a class of acts we have mentioned above, sudden so-called ‘instinctive’ actions. For if responsibility must imply choice, and if it can be maintained that no alternatives, in these cases, came before the mind at all, that all reflection, and therefore all choice, was absent—then, on that showing, we should not in these cases be accountable; and hence, as a consequence, the free-will doctrine would come into collision with the vulgar mind, which holds that a man can act freely without exercising choice.
Let us pass by this, however, as a point which we need not discuss, and, on the whole, we are still at one with ordinary notions. To proceed,—we are free to choose, but what does that mean? ‘It means,’ will be the answer, ‘that our choice is not necessitated by motives; that to will and to desire are different in kind; that there is a gap between them, and that no desire, or complication of desires, carries with it a forcing or compelling power over our volitions. My will is myself, and myself is superior to my desires, and exercises over them an independent faculty of choice, wherein lies freedom and with it responsibility.’ And all this again, in the main, does not appear contrary to ordinary beliefs, unless it implies that we are able to act altogether in the absence, and independent of, desire; and that seems certainly a curious idea, though we need not stop to consider it here.
But it is not right that we should learn the teaching of Freewill, as the opposite (real or supposed) of Necessitarianism, because as yet we do not know what the latter is. We must therefore ask, not what the Free-will theory is not, but what it is. What is then liberty of choice? ‘Self-determination. I determine myself to this or that course.’ Does that mean that I make myself do the act, or merely that my acts all issue from my will?
