Now we not infrequently hear that, if the position taken by the determinist is right, our notions of the creditable or discreditable character of actions must be wholly erroneous. What the determinist really holds I have tried to make clear in an earlier number of this magazine.[1] He holds that human actions could be completely accounted for if we really knew all their antecedents. Among these antecedents he reckons the character, the inherent or acquired impulses, of the individual. It is only the fatalist that overlooks these, and fatalism is something very different indeed from determinism. The determinst maintains that the question: 'Why did this man act in this particular manner?' is never a foolish question, although we may in any particular instance be ignorant of the answer. He assumes that there is always some cause or causes that can account for the result. The 'free-willist,' on the other hand, maintains that no complete answer to such a question can be given, not because we are ignorant, but because human actions are not necessarily the results of causes. If we ask him: 'Why did this man elect to put his hand in his pocket and take out a copper for the beggar on the street?' he is capable of answering: Must because he did,' and this 'because' is no better than a 'woman's reason,' i. e., it is no reason at all. It amounts to asserting that, in so far as human actions are 'free,' they have no cause whatever, and the search for an explanation of their occurrence is wholly futile.
But what can induce any man to hold that we cannot regard actions as creditable in so far as they can be accounted for by antecedents of some sort, and that we must regard them as creditable only in so far as they are causeless? The position is one often enough taken, and probably there is no one of my readers who has done some reading in ethics who has not met with this opinion. It is clear that there is nothing in what I have said above about the credit we allow to good actions, that cannot be assented to by a determinist. He admits that men differ greatly in character, and that, in the same circumstances, two different men may act in very different ways. He admits that men's characters may change, and thinks it his duty to influence them to change in the proper direction. Rewards and punishments he regards as a part of the machinery which brings about the gradual moralization of the race. He sees no objections to distributing rewards where they will do the most good and the least harm; and he points to the actual practise of mankind in evidence of the fact that men generally have unconsciously embraced the principle upon which he insists, and do constantly act upon it. Yet the 'free-willist' maintains that he is wholly in error, and that credit and discredit must be allowed upon a very different principle. Does the 'free-willist' take this position 'freely,' i. e., for no reason at
- ↑ December, 1900.
