A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory Part 2

This natural necessity, or co-action, it is admitted on all hands, destroys accountability for external conduct, wherever it obtains. Indeed, if a man is compelled to do a thing against his will, this is not, properly speaking, his act at all; nor is it an omission of his, if he wills to do a thing, and is necessarily prevented from doing it by external restraint. But it should be observed that natural necessity, or co-action, reaches no deeper than the external conduct; and can excuse for nothing else. As it does not influence the will itself, so it cannot excuse for acts of the will. Indeed, it presupposes the existence of a volition, or act of the will, whose natural consequences it counteracts and overcomes. Hence, if the question were-Is a man accountable for his external actions, that is, for the motions of his body, we might speak of natural necessity, or co-action, with propriety; but not so when the question relates to internal acts of the will. All reference to natural necessity, or co-action, in relation to such a question, is wholly irrelevant. No one doubts, and no one denies, that the motions of the body are controlled by the volitions of the mind, or by some external force.

The advocates for the inherent activity and freedom of the mind, do not place them in the external sphere of matter, in the pa.s.sive and necessitated movements of body: they seek not the living among the dead.

But to do justice to these ill.u.s.trious men, they did not attempt, as many of their followers have done, to pa.s.s off this freedom from external co-action for the freedom of the will. Indeed, neither of them contended for the freedom of the will at all, nor deemed such freedom requisite to render men accountable for their actions. This is an element which has been wrought into their system by the subsequent progress of human knowledge. Luther, it is well known, so far from maintaining the freedom of the mind, wrote a work on the "Bondage of the Human Will," in reply to Erasmus. "I admit," says he, "that man's will is free in a certain sense; not because it is now in the same state it was in paradise, _but because it was made free originally, and may, through G.o.d's grace, become so again_."(3) And Calvin, in his Inst.i.tutes, has written a chapter to show that "man, in his present state, is despoiled of freedom of will, and subjected to a miserable slavery." He "was endowed with free will," says Calvin, "by which, if he had chosen, he might have obtained eternal life."(4) Thus, according to both Luther and Calvin, man was by the fall despoiled of the freedom of the will.

Though they allow a freedom from co-action, they repudiate the idea of calling this a freedom of the will. "Lombard at length p.r.o.nounces," says Calvin, "that we are not therefore possessed of free-will, because we have an equal power to do or to think either good or evil, _but only because we are free from constraint_. And this liberty is not diminished, although we are corrupt, and slaves of sin, _and capable of doing nothing but sin_.

Then man will be said to possess free-will in this sense, not that he has an equally free election of good and evil, but because he does evil voluntarily, _and not by constraint_. That indeed, is true; but what end could it answer to deck out a thing so diminutive with a t.i.tle so superb?"(5) Truly, if Lombard merely meant by the freedom of the will, for which he contended, a freedom from external restraint, or co-action, Calvin might well contemptuously exclaim, "Egregious liberty!"(6) It was reserved for a later period in the history of the Church to deck out this diminutive thing with the superb t.i.tle of the freedom of the will, and to pa.s.s it off for the highest and most glorious liberty of which the human mind can form any conception. Hobbes, it will be hereafter seen, was the first who, either designedly or undesignedly, palmed off this imposture upon the world.

It is a remarkable fact, in the history of the human mind, that the most powerful and imposing arguments used by the early reformers to disprove the freedom of the will have been as confidently employed by their most celebrated followers to establish that very freedom on a solid basis. It is well known, for example, that Edwards, and many other great men, have employed the doctrine of the foreknowledge of G.o.d to prove philosophical necessity, without which they conclude there can be no rational foundation for the freedom of the will. Yet, in former times, this very doctrine was regarded as the most formidable instrument with which to overthrow and demolish that very freedom. Thus Luther calls the foreknowledge of G.o.d a thunderbolt to dash the doctrine of free-will into atoms. And who can forbear to agree with Luther so far as to say, that if the foreknowledge of G.o.d proves anything in opposition to the freedom of the will, it proves that it is under the most absolute and uncontrollable necessity? It clearly seems, that if it proves anything in favour of necessity, it proves everything for which the most absolute necessitarian can contend.

Accordingly, a distinguished Calvinistic divine has said, that if our volitions be foreseen, we can no more avoid them "than we can pluck the sun out of the heavens."(7)

But though the reformers were thus, in some respects, more true to their fundamental principle than their followers have been, we are not to suppose that they are free from all inconsistencies and self-contradiction. Thus, if "foreknowledge is a thunderbolt" to dash the doctrine of free-will into atoms, it destroyed free-will in man before the fall as well as after. Hence the thunderbolt of Luther falls upon his own doctrine, that man possessed free-will in his primitive state, with as much force as it can upon the doctrine of his opponents. He is evidently caught in the toils he so confidently prepared for his adversary. And how many of the followers of the great reformer adopt his doctrine, and wield his thunderbolts, without perceiving how destructively they recoil on themselves! Though they ascribe free-will to man as one of the elements of his pristine glory, yet they employ against it in his present condition arguments which, if good for anything, would despoil, not only man, but the whole universe of created intelligences-nay, the great Uncreated Intelligence himself-of every vestige and shadow of such a power.

It is a wonderful inconsistency in Luther, that he should so often and so dogmatically a.s.sert that the doctrine of free-will falls prostrate before the prescience of G.o.d, and at the same time maintain the freedom of the divine will. If foreknowledge is incompatible with the existence of free-will, it is clear that the will of G.o.d is not free; since it is on all sides conceded that all his volitions are perfectly foreseen by him.

Yet in the face of this conclusion, which so clearly and so irresistibly follows from Luther's position, he a.s.serts the freedom of the divine will, as if he were perfectly unconscious of the self-contradiction in which he is involved. "It now then follows," says he, "that free-will is plainly a divine term, and can be applicable to none but the Divine Majesty only."(8) ... He even says, If free-will "be ascribed unto men, it is not more properly ascribed, than the divinity of G.o.d himself would be ascribed unto them; which would be the greatest of all sacrilege. Wherefore, it becomes theologians to refrain from the use of this term altogether, whenever they wish to speak of human ability, and to leave it to be applied to G.o.d only."(9) And we may add, if they would apply it to G.o.d, it becomes them to refrain from all such arguments as would show even such an application of it to be absurd.

In like manner, Calvin admits that the human soul possessed a free-will in its primitive state, but has been despoiled of it by the fall, and is now in bondage to a "miserable slavery." But if the necessity which arises from the power of sin over the will be inconsistent with its freedom, how are we to reconcile the freedom of the first man with the power exercised by the Almighty over the wills of all created beings? So true it is, that the most systematic thinker, who begins by denying the truth, will be sure to end by contradicting himself.

In one respect, as we have seen, Calvin differs from his followers at the present day; the denial of free-will he regards as perfectly reconcilable with the idea of accountability. Although our volitions are absolutely necessary to us, although they may be produced in us by the most uncontrollable power in the universe, yet are we accountable for them, because they are our volitions. The bare fact that we will such and such a thing, without regard to how we come by the volition, is sufficient to render us accountable for it. We must be free from an external _co-action_, he admits, to render us accountable for our external actions; but not from an internal necessity, to render us accountable for our internal volitions. But this does not seem to be a satisfactory reply to the difficulty in question. We ask, How a man can be accountable for his acts, for his volitions, if they are caused in him by an infinite power?

and we are told, Because they are _his_ acts. This eternal repet.i.tion of the fact in which all sides are agreed, can throw no light on the point about which we dispute. We still ask, How can a man be responsible for an act, or volition, which is necessitated to arise in his mind by Omnipotence? If any one should reply, with Dr. d.i.c.k, that we do not know how he can be accountable for such an act, yet we should never deny a thing because we cannot see how it is; this would not be a satisfactory answer. For, though it is certainly the last weakness of the human mind to deny a thing, because we cannot see how it is; yet there is a great difference between not being able to see _how a thing is_, and being clearly able to see that it _cannot be anyhow at all_,-between being unable to see how two things agree together, and being able to see that two ideas are utterly repugnant to each other. Hence we mean to ask, that if a man's act be necessitated in him by an infinite, omnipotent power, over which he had, and could have, no possible control, can we not see that he _cannot_ be accountable for it? We have no difficulty whatever in believing a mystery; but when we are required to embrace what so plainly seems to be an absurdity, we confess that our reason is either weak enough, or strong enough, to pause and reluctate.

Section II.

The manner in which Hobbes, Collins, and others, endeavour to reconcile necessity with free and accountable agency.

The celebrated philosopher of Malmsbury viewed all things as bound together in the relation of cause and effect; and he was, beyond doubt, one of the most acute thinkers that ever advocated the doctrine of necessity. From some of the sentiments expressed towards the conclusion of "The Leviathan," which have, not without reason, subjected him to the charge of atheism, we may doubt his entire sincerity when he pretends to advocate the doctrine of necessity out of a zeal for the Divine Sovereignty and the dogma of Predestination. If he hoped by this avowal of his design to propitiate any cla.s.s of theologians, he must have been greatly disappointed; for his speculations were universally condemned by the Christian world as atheistical in their tendency. This charge has been fixed upon him, in spite of his solemn protestations against its injustice, and his earnest endeavours to reconcile his scheme of necessity with the free-agency and accountability of man.

"I conceive," says Hobbes, "that nothing taketh beginning from itself, but from the action of some other immediate agent without itself. And that therefore, when first a man hath an appet.i.te or will to something, to which immediately before he had no appet.i.te nor will, the cause of his will is not the will itself, but something else not in his own disposing; so that it is out of controversy, that of voluntary actions the will is the necessary cause, and by this which is said, the will is also caused by other things whereof it disposeth not, it followeth, that voluntary actions have all of them necessary causes, and therefore are necessitated." This is clear and explicit. There is no controversy, he truly says, that voluntary actions, that is, external actions proceeding from the will, are necessitated by the will. And as according to his postulate, the will or volition is also caused by other things of which it has no disposal, so they are also necessitated. In other words, external voluntary actions are necessarily caused by volitions, and volitions are necessarily caused by something else other than the will; and consequently the chain is complete between the cause of volition and its effects. How, then, is man a free-agent? and how is he accountable for his actions?

Hobbes has not left these questions unanswered; and it is a mistake to suppose, as is too often done, that his argument in favour of necessity evinces a design to sap the foundations of human responsibility.

He answers these questions precisely as they were answered by Luther and Calvin more than a hundred years before his time. In order to solve this great difficulty, and establish an agreement between necessity and liberty, he insists on the distinction between co-action and necessity.

Sir James Mackintosh says, that "in his treatise _de Servo Arbitrio_ against Erasmus, Luther states the distinction between co-action and necessity as familiar a hundred and fifty years before it was proposed by Hobbes, or condemned in the Jansenists."(10) According to his definition of liberty, it is merely a freedom from co-action, or external compulsion.

"I conceive liberty," says he, "to be rightly defined in this manner: Liberty is the absence of all the impediments to action that are not contained in the nature and intrinsical qualities of the agent: as for example, the water is said to descend freely, or to have liberty to descend by the channel of the river, because there is no impediment that way; but not across, because the banks are impediments; and though the water cannot ascend, yet men never say it wants liberty to ascend, but the faculty or power, because the impediment is in the nature of the water and intrinsical." According to this definition, though a man's volitions were thrown out, not by himself, but by some irresistible power working within his mind, say the power of the Almighty, yet he would be free, provided there were no impediments to prevent the external effects of his volitions. This is the liberty which water, impelled by the power of gravity, possesses in descending the channel of a river. It is the liberty of the winds and waves of the sea, which, by a sort of metaphor, is supposed to reign over the dominions of a mechanical and materialistic fate. It is the most idle of all idle things to speak of such a liberty, _or rather, to use the word in such a sense_, when the controversy relates to the freedom of the mind itself. What has such a thing to do with the origin of human volitions, or the nature of moral agency? Is there no difference between the motion of the body and the action of mind? Or is there nothing in the universe of G.o.d but mere body and local motion? If there is not, then, indeed, we neither have nor can conceive any higher liberty than that which the philosopher is pleased to allow us to possess; but if there be mind, then there may be things in heaven and earth which are not dreamed of in his philosophy.

The definition which Collins, the disciple of Hobbes, has given of liberty, is the same as that of his master. "I contend," says he, "for liberty, as it signifies a power in man to do as he wills or pleases." The doing here refers to the external action, which, properly speaking, is not an act at all, but merely a change of state in the body. The body merely _suffers_ a change of place and position, in obedience to the act of the will; it does not act, nor can it act, because it is pa.s.sive in its nature. To _do_ as one wills, in this sense, is a freedom of the body from co-action; it is not a freedom of the will from internal necessity.

Collins says this is "a valuable liberty," and he says truly; for if one were thrown into prison, he could not go wherever he might please, or do as he might will. But the imprisonment of the body does not prevent a man from being a free-agent. He also tells us truly, that "many philosophers and theologians, both ancient and modern, have given definitions of liberty that are consistent with fate and necessity." But then, their definitions, like his own, had no reference to the acts of the mind, but to the motions of the body; and it is a grand irrelevancy, we repeat, to speak of such a thing, when the question relates, not to the freedom of the body, but the freedom of the mind. Calvin truly says, that to call this external freedom from co-action or natural necessity a freedom of the will, is to decorate a most diminutive thing with a superb t.i.tle; but the philosopher of Malmsbury, and his ingenious disciple, seem disposed to confer the high-sounding t.i.tle and empty name on us, in order to reconcile us to the servitude and chains in which they have been pleased to bind us.

This idea of liberty, common to Hobbes and Collins, which Mackintosh says was familiar to Luther and Calvin at least a hundred and thirty years before, is in reality of much earlier origin. It was maintained by the ancient Stoics, by whom it is as clearly set forth as by Hobbes himself.

The well-known ill.u.s.tration of the Stoic Chrysippus, so often mentioned by Leibnitz and others, is a proof of the correctness of this remark: "Suppose I push against a heavy body," says he: "if it be square, it will not move; if it be cylindrical, it will. What the difference of form is to the stone, the difference of disposition is to the mind." Thus his notion of freedom was derived from matter, and supposed to consist in the absence of friction! The idea of liberty thus deduced from that which is purely and perfectly pa.s.sive, from an absolutely necessitated state of body, was easily reconciled by him with his doctrine of fate.

Is it not strange that Mr. Hazlitt, after adopting this definition of liberty, should have supposed that he allowed a real freedom to the will?

"I prefer exceedingly," says he, "to the modern instances of a couple of billiard-b.a.l.l.s, or a pair of scales, the ill.u.s.tration of Chrysippus." We cannot very well see, how the instance of a cylinder is so great an improvement on that of a billiard-ball; especially as a sphere, and not a cylinder, is free to move in all directions.

The truth is, we must quit the region of dead, inert, pa.s.sive matter, if we would form an idea of the true meaning of the term liberty, as applied to the activity of living agents. Mr. Hazlitt evidently loses himself amid the ambiguities of language, when he says, that "I so far agree with Hobbes and differ from Locke, in thinking that liberty, in the most extended and abstracted sense, is applicable to _material as well as voluntary agents_." Still this very acute writer makes a few feeble and ineffectual efforts to raise our notion of the liberty of moral agents above that given by the ill.u.s.tration of Chrysippus in Cicero. "My notion of a free agent, I confess," says he, "is not that represented by Mr.

Hobbes, namely, one that when all things necessary to produce the effect are present, can nevertheless not produce it; but I believe a free-agent of whatever kind is one which, where all things necessary to produce the effect are present, can produce it; its own operation not being hindered by anything else. The body is said to be free when it has the power to obey the direction of the will; so the will may be said to be free when it has the power to obey the dictates of the understanding."(11) Thus the liberty of the will is made to consist not in the denial that its volitions are produced, but in the absence of impediments which might hinder its operations from taking effect. This idea of liberty, it is evident, is perfectly consistent with the materialistic fatalism of Hobbes, which is so much admired by Mr. Hazlitt.

Section III.

The sentiments of Descartes, Spinoza, and Malebranche, concerning the relation between liberty and necessity.

No one was ever more deeply implicated in the scheme of necessity than Descartes. "Mere philosophy," says he, "is enough to make us know that there cannot enter the least thought into the mind of man, but G.o.d must will and have willed from all eternity that it should enter there." His argument in proof of this position is short and intelligible. "G.o.d," says he, "could not be absolutely perfect if there could happen anything in this world which did not spring entirely from him." Hence it follows, that it is inconsistent with the absolute perfections of G.o.d to suppose that a being created by him could put forth a volition which does not spring entirely from him, and not even in part from the creature.

Yet Descartes is a warm believer in the doctrine of free-will. On the ground of reason, he believes in an absolute predestination of all things; and yet he concludes from experience that man is free. If we ask how these things can hang together, he replies, that we cannot tell; that a solution of this difficulty lies beyond the reach of the human faculties. Now, it is evident, that reason cannot "make us know" one thing, and experience teach another, quite contrary to it; for no two truths can ever contradict each other. Those who adopt this mode of viewing the subject, generally remind us of the feebleness of human reason, and of the necessary limits to all human speculation. Though, as disciples of Butler, we are deeply impressed with these truths, yet, as disciples of Bacon, we do not intend to despair until we can discover some good and sufficient reason for so doing. It seems to us, that the reply of Leibnitz to Descartes, already alluded to, is not without reason. "It might have been an evidence of humility in Descartes," says he, "if he had confessed his own inability to solve the difficulty in question; but not satisfied with confessing for himself, he does so for all intelligences and for all times."

But, after all, Descartes has really endeavoured to solve the problem which he declared insoluble; that is, to reconcile the infinite perfections of G.o.d with the free-agency of man. He struggles to break loose from this dark mystery; but, like the charmed bird, he struggles and flutters in vain, and finally yields to its magical influence. In his solution, this great luminary of science, like others before him, seems to suffer a sad eclipse. "Before G.o.d sent us into the world," says he, "he knew exactly what all the inclinations of our wills would be; _it is he that has implanted them in us_; it is he also that has disposed all things, so that such or such objects should present themselves to us at such or such times, by means of which he has known that our free-will would determine us to such or such actions, _he has willed that it should be so; but he has not willed to constrain us thereto_." This is found in a letter to the Princess Elizabeth, for whose benefit he endeavoured to reconcile the liberty of man with the perfections of G.o.d. It brings us back to the old distinction between necessity and co-action. G.o.d brings our volitions to pa.s.s; he wills them; they "spring entirely from him;" but we are nevertheless free, because he constrains not our external actions, or compels us to do anything contrary to our wills! We cannot suppose, however, that this solution of the problem made a very clear or deep impression on the mind of Descartes himself, or he would not, on other occasions, have p.r.o.nounced every attempt at the solution of it vain and hopeless.

In his attempt to reconcile the free-agency of man with the divine perfections, Descartes deceives himself by a false a.n.a.logy. Thus he supposes that a monarch "_who has forbidden_ duelling, and who, certainly knowing that two gentlemen will fight, if they should meet, _employs infallible means to bring them together_. They meet, they fight each other: their disobedience of the laws is an effect of their free-will; they are punishable." "What a king can do in such a case," he adds, "G.o.d who has an infinite power and prescience, infallibly does in relation to all the actions of men." But the king, in the supposed case, does not act on the minds of the duellists; their disposition to disobey the laws does not proceed from him; whereas, according to the theory of Descartes, nothing enters into the mind of man which does not spring entirely from G.o.d. If we suppose a king, who has direct access to the mind of his subject, like G.o.d, and who employs his power to excite therein a murderous intent or any other particular disposition to disobey the law, we shall have a more apposite representation of the divine agency according to the theory of Descartes. Has anything ever been ascribed to the agency of Satan himself which could more clearly render him an accomplice in the sins of men?

From the bosom of Cartesianism two systems arose, one in principle, but widely different in their developments and ultimate results. We allude to the celebrated schemes of Spinoza and Malebranche. Both set out with the same exaggerated view of the sublime truth that G.o.d is all in all; and each gave a diverse development to this fundamental position, to this central idea, according as the logical faculty predominated over the moral, or the moral faculty over the logical. Father Malebranche, by a happy inconsistency, preserved the great moral interests of the world against the invasion of a remorseless logic. Spinoza, on the contrary, could follow out his first principle almost to its last consequence, even to the entire extinction of the moral light of the universe, and the enthronement of blind power, with as little concern, with as profound composure, as if he were merely discussing a theorem in the mathematics.

"All things," says he, "determined to such and such actions, are determined by G.o.d; and, if G.o.d determines not a thing to act, it cannot determine itself."(12) From this proposition he drew the inference, that things which are produced by G.o.d, could not have existed in any other manner, nor in any other order.(13) Thus, by the divine power, all things in heaven and earth are bound together in the iron circle of necessity. It required no great logical foresight to perceive that this doctrine shut all real liberty out of the created universe; but it did require no little moral firmness, or very great moral insensibility, to declare such a consequence with the unflinching audacity which marks its enunciation by Spinoza. He repeatedly declares, in various modes of expression, that "the soul is a spiritual automaton," and possesses no such liberty as is usually ascribed to it. All is necessary, and the very notion of a free-will is a vulgar prejudice. "All I have to say," he coolly remarks, "to those who believe that they can speak or keep silence-in one word, can act-by virtue of a free decision of the soul, is, that they dream with their eyes open."(14) Though he thus boldly denies all free-will, according to the common notion of mankind; yet, no less than Hobbes and Collins, he allows that the soul possesses "a sort of liberty." "It is free," says he, in the act of affirming that "two and two are equal to four;" thus finding the freedom of the soul which he is pleased to allow the world to possess in the most perfect type of necessity it is possible to conceive.

But Spinoza does not employ this idea of liberty, nor any other, to show that man is a responsible being. This is not at all strange; the wonder is, that after having _demonstrated_ that "the prejudice of men concerning _good_ and _evil_, merit and demerit, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and deformity," are nothing but dreams, he should have felt bound to defend the position, that we may be justly punished for our offences by the Supreme Ruler of the world. His defence of this doctrine we shall lay before the reader without a word of comment. "Will you say,"

he replies to Oldenburg, "that G.o.d cannot be angry with the wicked, or that all men are worthy of beat.i.tude? In regard to the first point, I perfectly agree that G.o.d cannot be angry at anything which happens according to his decree, but I deny that it results that all men ought to be happy; for men can be excusable, and at the same time be deprived of beatification, and made to suffer a thousand ways. A horse is excusable for being a horse, and not a man; but that prevents not that he ought to be a horse, and not a man. He who is rendered mad by the bite of a dog, is surely excusable, and yet we ought to constrain him. In like manner, the man who cannot govern his pa.s.sions, nor restrain them by the fear of the laws, though excusable on account of the infirmity of his nature, can nevertheless not enjoy peace, nor the knowledge and the love of G.o.d; and it is necessary that he should perish."(15)

It was as difficult for Father Malebranche to restrain his indignation at the system of Spinoza, as it was for him to expose its fallacy, after having admitted its great fundamental principle. This is well ill.u.s.trated by the facts stated by M. Saisset: "When Mairan," says he, "still young, and having a strong pa.s.sion for the study of the 'Ethique,' requested Malebranche to guide him in that perilous route; we know with what urgency, bordering on importunity, he pressed the ill.u.s.trious father to show him the weak point of Spinozism, the precise place where the rigour of the reasoning failed, the _paralogism_ contained in the demonstration.

Malebranche eluded the question, and could not a.s.sign the _paralogism_, after which Mairan so earnestly sought: 'It is not that the paralogism is in such or such places of the _Ethique_, it is everywhere.' "(16) In this impatient judgment, Father Malebranche uttered more truth than he could very well perceive; the paralogism is truly everywhere, because this whole edifice of words, "this frightful chimera," is really a.s.sumed in the arbitrary definition of the term substance. We might say with equal truth, that the fallacy of Malebranche's scheme is also everywhere; for although it stops short of the consequences so sternly deduced by Spinoza, it sets out from the same distorted view of the sovereignty and dominion of G.o.d, from which those consequences necessarily flow.

Spinoza, who had but few followers during his lifetime, has been almost idolized by the most celebrated savants of modern Germany. Whether this will ultimately add to the glory of Spinoza, or detract from that of his admirers, we shall leave the reader and posterity to determine. In the mean time, we shall content ourselves with a statement of the fact, in the language of M. Saisset: "Everything," says he, "appears extraordinary in Spinoza; his person, his style, his philosophy; but that which is more strange still, is the destiny of that philosophy among men. Badly known, despised by the most ill.u.s.trious of his contemporaries, Spinoza died in obscurity, and remained buried during a century. All at once his name reappeared with an extraordinary eclat; his works were read with pa.s.sion; a new world was discovered in them, with a horizon unknown to our fathers; and the G.o.d of Spinoza, which the seventeenth century had broken as an idol, became the G.o.d of Lessing, of Goethe, of Novalis."

"The solitary thinker whom Malebranche called a wretch, Schleiermacher reveres and invokes as equal to a saint. That 'systematic atheist,' on whom Bayle lavished outrage, has been for modern Germany the most religious of men. 'G.o.d-intoxicated,' as Novalis said, 'he has seen the world through a thick cloud, and man has been to his troubled eyes only a fugitive mode of Being in itself.' In that system, in fine, so shocking and so monstrous, that 'hideous chimera,' Jacobi sees the last word of philosophy, Sch.e.l.ling the presentiment of the true philosophy."

Section IV.

The views of Locke, Tucker, Hartley, Priestley, Helvetius, and Diderot, with respect to the relation between liberty and necessity.

Locke, it is well known, adopted the notions of free-agency given by Hobbes. "In this," says he, "consists freedom, viz., in our being able to act or not to act, according as we shall choose or will."(17) And this notion of liberty, consisting in a freedom from external co-action, has received an impetus and currency from the influence of Locke which it would not otherwise have obtained. Neither Calvin nor Luther, as we have seen, pretended to hold it up as the freedom of the will. This was reserved for Hobbes and his immortal follower, John Locke, who has, in his turn, been copied by a host of ill.u.s.trious disciples who would have recoiled from the more articulate and consistent development of this doctrine by the philosopher of Malmsbury. It is only because Locke has enveloped it in a cloud of inconsistencies that it has been able to secure the veneration of the great and good.

It is remarkable, that although Locke adopted the definition of free-will given by Hobbes, and which the latter so easily reconciled with the omnipotence and omniscience of G.o.d; yet he expressly declares that he had found it impossible to reconcile those attributes in the Divine Being with the free-agency of man. Surely no such difficulty could have existed, if his definition of free-agency, or free-will, be correct; for although omnipotence itself might produce our volitions, we might still be free to act, to move in accordance with our volitions. But the truth is, there was something more in Locke's thoughts and feelings, in the inmost working of his nature, with respect to moral liberty, than there was in his definition. The inconsistency and fluctuation of his views on this all-important subject are fully reflected in his chapter on power.

Both in Great Britain and France, the most ill.u.s.trious successors of Locke soon delivered themselves from his inconsistencies and self-contradictions. Hartley was not in all respects a follower of Locke, it is true, though he admitted his definition of free-agency. "It appears to me," says Hartley, "that all the most complex ideas arise from sensation, and that _reflection is not a distinct source_, as Mr. Locke makes it." By this mutilation of the philosophy of Locke, it was reduced back to that dead level of materialism in which Hobbes had left it, and from which the former had scarcely endeavoured to raise it. Hence arose the rigid scheme of necessity, for which Hartley is so zealous an advocate. In reading his treatise on the "Mechanism of the Human Mind," we are irresistibly compelled to feel the conviction that the only circ.u.mstance which prevents the movements of the soul from being subjected to mathematical calculation, and made a branch of dynamics, is the want of a measure of the force of motives. If this want were supplied, then the philosophy of the mind might be, according to his view of its nature and operations, converted into a portion of mechanics. Yet this excellent man did not imagine for a moment that he upheld a scheme which is at war with the great moral interests of the world. He supposes it is no matter how we come by our volitions, provided our bodies be left free to obey the impulses of the will; this is amply sufficient to render us accountable for our actions, and to vindicate the moral government of G.o.d. Thus did he fall asleep with a specious, but most superficial dream of liberty, which has no more to do with the real question concerning the moral agency of man than if it related to the winds of heaven or to the waves of the sea.

Accordingly this is the view of liberty which he repeatedly holds up as all-sufficient to secure the great moral interest of the human race.

His great disciple, Dr. Priestley, pursues precisely the same course. "If a man," says he, "be wholly a material being, and the power of thinking the result of a certain organization of the brain, does it not follow that all his functions must be regulated by the laws of mechanism, and that of consequence his actions proceed from an irresistible necessity?" And again, he observes, "the doctrine of necessity is the immediate result of the materiality of man, for mechanism is the undoubted consequence of materialism."(18) Priestley, however, allows us to possess free-will as defined by Hobbes, Locke, and Hartley.

Helvetius himself could easily admit such a liberty into his unmitigated scheme of necessity, but he did not commit the blunder of Locke and Hartley, in supposing that it bore on the great question concerning the freedom of the mind. "It is true," he says, "we can form a tolerably distinct idea of the word _liberty_, understood in its common sense. _A man is free who is neither loaded with irons nor confined in prison_, nor intimidated like the slave with the dread of chastis.e.m.e.nt: in this sense the liberty of man consists in the free exercise of his power; I say, of his power, because it would be ridiculous to mistake for a want of liberty the incapacity we are under to pierce the clouds like the eagle, to live under the water like the whale, or to become king, emperor, or pope. We have so far a sufficiently clear idea of the word. But this is no longer the case when we come to apply liberty to the will. What must this liberty then mean? We can only understand by it a free power of willing or not willing a thing: but this power would imply that there may be a will without motives, and consequently an effect without a cause. A philosophical treatise on _the liberty of the will_ would be a treatise of effects without a cause."(19)

In like manner, Diderot had the sagacity to perceive that the idea of liberty, as defined by Locke, did not at all come into conflict with his portentous scheme of irreligion, which had grounded itself on the doctrine of necessity. Having p.r.o.nounced the term liberty, as applied to the will, to be a word without meaning, he proceeds to justify the infliction of punishment on the same grounds on which it is vindicated by Hobbes and Spinoza. "But if there is no liberty," says he, "there is no action that merits either praise or blame, neither vice nor virtue, nothing that ought to be either rewarded or punished. What then is the distinction among men?