Natural Ethics here conduct to a yawning chasm, but show no bridge across; while we are led most anxiously to long for one, and almost to expect that one will appear. They lead us to a place where we have no light, but where we are led to cry out for a light because of the very thickness of the darkness. How grateful should we be when a light is vouchsafed from heaven to show us that the gulf is spanned, and to disclose the way by which it may be crossed!

CHAPTER III.

THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.

WE have seen that conscience pronounces its decisions on acts of the will. Not only so, its judgments proceed on the supposition that the will is in the proper exercise of its full functions; in other words, that the will is free. In every act of will there is an essential freedom, of which the mind is conscious. The possession of a free will is thus one of the elements which go to constitute man a moral and responsible agent.

The will is free. In saying so, I mean to assert not merely that it is free to act as it pleases-indeed this maxim is not universally true, for the will may often be hindered from action, as when I will to move my arm, and it refuses to obey because of paralysis. I claim for it an anterior and a higher power, a power in the mind to choose, and, when it chooses, a consciousness that it might choose otherwise.

This truth is revealed to us by immediate consciousness, and is not to be set aside by any other truth whatever. It is a first truth equal to the highest, to no one of which will it ever yield. It cannot be set aside by any other truth, not even by any other first truth, and certainly by no derived truth. Whatever other proposition is true, this is true also, that man's will is free. If there be any other truth apparently inconsistent with it, care must be taken so to express it that it may not be truly contradictory.

It is a truth which may be expressed in words. It is so expressed when we say the mind has in itself the power of choice. But it cannot be drawn from any deeper fact, or resolved into any anterior principle. Any attempts to reduce it to simpler elements

271 will only perplex and confuse the whole subject. Thus, that which is free, is often supposed to be uncaused; whereas the uncaused, for aught I know, might, if there could be such a thing in creation, not be free. It is from the exercise of will that we get our very idea of freedom. As we survey the external world, including even our own bodily frame, we find it bound in the chain of physical causation, in which every movement of an object is determined from without. Even our very intellectual and emotive states are under laws of association and potencies which control them. It is in the sanctuary of the will that freedom alone is to be found.

So much is clear, so very clear that any attempts to make it clearer will only darken it. The difficulties which encompass this subject do not arise from free will itself, but from its connexion with other truths. First, there is the Divine Foreknowledge and the Divine Sovereignty, doctrines which recommend themselves to high reason, and which are found in the Word of God. Secondly, there is the appearance of causation in the mind, even in its voluntary acts. The attempt to reconcile these with creature freedom has engaged the subtlest, and perplexed the clearest minds, since men began to ask the how, the why, and the wherefore. It is my humble but decided opinion that the human understanding cannot thoroughly clear up the subject. I certainly do not profess to be able to throw light upon it. I must content myself with remarking on some of the more prevalent theories, and expounding the view which seems to me to be upon the whole the most satisfactory.

Among the speculative thinkers of the present day there are two favourite modes by which they try to extricate themselves from the difficulties which beset the subject. One was introduced by Kant, who has been followed by a long train of theologians and metaphysicians. According to this view, the mind knows only phenomena, and not things, and the law of cause and effect is a mental framework giving a form to our knowledge of phenomena. It applies therefore to appearances and not to things, which, for aught we know, or can know, in this world, may or may not obey the law of causation. Kant acknowledges that we are led by the speculative principles of the mind to look on even the will as

under the dominion of cause, but then it is quite conceivable that the thing itself may after all be free, and we are led to believe it to be free by the Practical Reason. Now I have to remark, first of all, on this theory, that it must be taken in its entirety. We are not at liberty (as some would do) to adopt it merely so far as it may suit our purpose, and refuse the very foundation on which it is built. We must, in particular, admit as a fundamental principle that we can never know things, and that causation has no respect whatever to things, but is a mere subjective principle of the mind. But I have failed in one of the main ends of this treatise if I have not succeeded in showing that the mind has knowledge of things in its primary exercises, that we know objects as having potency, and that the law of cause and effect refers to such objects. If we deny this, we are denying certain of the intuitions of the mind in some of their clearest enunciations; and if we deny them in one of their declarations, why not in others? and if we deny one set, why not every other set? till at last we know not what to believe and what to disbelieve. Those who believe that the mind can come to the knowledge of things, and that they discover power in things, cannot resort to this theory.

A more prevalent doctrine among those who hold firmly by the freedom of the will, is that causation does not extend to the production of volitions. Thus M. Cousin maintains that we obtain our very idea of causes from the exercise of will, which may be a cause, but cannot be an effect. The difficulties in the way of this theory arise, first, from the nature of our intuition in regard to cause, and, secondly, from certain facts which seem to show that there is causation in the will. The question is, first, whether causation reaches over our volitions, as it does over our other mental acts. A man does a malevolent or a benevolent deed; when this fact is presented, the question is, Do we, or do we not, look for a cause in the previous character and disposition of the individual, combined possibly with the circumstances in which he was placed? Do we not anticipate of the man thoroughly just, that he will ever do just acts? We are sure in regard to the good God, that He will and ever must be good. To confirm all this we have, secondly, facts, statistical facts. Knowing that if causes

keep the same, the same effects will follow, men draw out statistics of voluntary acts, which turn out to be quite as correct as statistics of the weather, or of the mortality of man. The number of thefts and murders that will be committed in a country next year, and the number of letters which will be posted, can be determined as accurately as the number of births or deaths. The facts cannot be denied, and they proceed on the principles of a sameness of causes producing a sameness of effects, which causes embrace voluntary

acts.1

To avoid these difficulties, I am inclined to admit that antecedent circumstances do act causally on the will. But, at the same time, I maintain that cause operates in a very different way upon the will from that in which it acts in other departments of nature. The mind has and must have the power of free choice: so says consciousness. But consciousness does not say, and cannot say,

1 Dr. Mansel, in Prolegomena Logica, App. D, has examined my views from the standpoint of his own doctrine of cause, which is, that "we have only two positive notions of causation; one, the exertion of power by an intelligent being; the other, the uniform sequence of phenomenon B from A," the latter being experiential. I have given a different account (supra, pp. 110-112, 140, 160), and my readers must judge for themselves. Dr. Mansel endeavours to get rid of the argument derived from the statistics of voluntary actions thus: "The resemblance, however, between statistical averages and natural laws fails at the very point on which the whole weight of the argument rests. A natural law is valid for a class of objects only because and in so far as it is valid for each individual of that class: the law of gravitation, for instance, is exhibited in a single apple as much as in an orchard; and is concluded of the latter from being observed in the former. But the uniformity represented by statistical averages is one which is observed in masses only, and not in individuals" (Aids to Faith, Art. Miracles, p. 19). There is no doubt a point of difference here, but it does not affect the question at issue. In the one we know what are the precise agents working in the individual case, in the other we do not, but in both there is causation. Averages can be struck, and predictions uttered, in regard to such phenomena as human mortality, simply because there is a set of causes in operation which produce uniform results, and there is uncertainty to us as to a particular case, simply because we do not know what causes have been at work. A chance event is not an uncaused one, but simply one whose cause is unknown to us. It lies with Dr. Mansel to show how general predictions could be uttered as to voluntary acts if there were no causation operating. I have given the view which seems sanctioned by our constitution. But on so tangled a subject I shrink from controversy. I must ever hold most resolutely to the fundamental doctrine of the freedom of the will. But I will listen most willingly to any one who can give a better account-that is, more in accordance with our constitution -of the expectation that the thoroughly good being will continue good, or of the possibility of giving statistics in anticipation of voluntary actions.