This we may call absolute compulsion; and ordinary examples are any forcible action on my body, direct or by creation of physical circumstances; and, again, the production of any psychical state not under the control of my will.
Here there is little difficulty, since, properly speaking, I neither do nor abstain. The only thing which in any degree can make me accountable here, is that it is my fault that I was able to be compelled. Then all is, to some extent, the issue of my action or omission; in either case, of my will.
The real problem is what follows. When I have to say anywhere, ‘I did it,’ can I then escape imputation by pleading compulsion? Can my will be forced?
This has been denied. It has been said that compulsion of the will is hypothetical and ‘relative’ only, not absolute; that all it means is, if I will to have or be without this or that, then something else must follow, as a consequence which I can not escape. Choose to defy consequences on one side, and to renounce them on the other, and there can be no compulsion. ‘No one can be compelled to anything, unless he wills to let himself be compelled.’ (See Hegel, xviii. 35; viii. 128.)
I do not think this will hold. We see at once that, in a given case, there may be only one or two courses for me (my not-acting is a course of action); and all of these I may dislike and disapprove. But one course I must accept. In short, I may be compelled to an alternative; and here whether what I do is morally imputable, depends on whether it is my fault that I am in the position I am in.
But let us pass by this, since the far more serious question awaits us, ‘Apart from alternatives, can I not be made to do this or that? Can not the will be forced to this or that result?’
It all depends on the way in which we use ‘will.’ If by ‘will’ we mean ‘choice,’ ‘volition,’ the conscious realizing of myself in the object of one desire (in the widest sense), which has been separated from and put before the mind, as a possibility not yet real—then the will can not be forced. For, supposing you could produce a state of mind, which certainly would issue in such and such a volition, yet the result, when produced, comes from the self. There is no saying, ‘I did not will it;’ or, ‘If I could have willed, I would have willed otherwise.’[1]
- ↑ Hence what issues from volition can not issue from compulsion. But the question arises, ‘Can a volition be compelled into existence?’ This we must answer in the negative. Force and compulsion are terms not here applicable. For directly to produce a volition in another is absolutely impossible; and supposing that, by compulsion, you can produce a state of mind, on which the volition follows; yet you have not compelled the volition. That is not the effect of the state you have produced. It is the reassertion of the self, which has been drawn back from the whole content of the self; and the whole self asserts itself in the act. Compulsion may lead to volition, it can not cause it.
