by law.

Others have denied this assumption and have insisted that mind at least, or the human will, is free and uncaused.1

7. Reconciliation of Freedom and Determinism. — Now what shall be our conclusion on this point? In a certain sense we may accept a kind of freedom. All systems assume that the principle of being, whether it be matter or mind, or both, or neither, has neither beginning nor end, has nothing outside of itself upon which it depends, and that it is therefore uncaused or unexplainable. We must also maintain that the principle is determined in the sense that it shows uniformity of action, or is governed by law. This does not mean, however, that it is forced or compelled or coerced or pushed into action, but that it acts with regularity and uniformity.2 Even the atom of materialism is free in the sense of not being coerced by anything outside of itself; it is determined in that it does not act capriciously and contrary to law, but uniformly and lawfully. And the human mind or will may be said to possess similar characteristics. The will is determined in the sense that it has uniform antecedents, that it does not act capriciously and without reason, but according to law. The will is free in the sense that it is not coerced by anything outside of itself. "If the nature of causality," as Paulsen aptly says, "consisted of

1 For example, Descartes.

2 See Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, English translation, pp. 318 ff.

an external necessity which excludes inner necessity, they would be right who rebel against its application to the mental sphere. Only in that case they ought to go a step farther and maintain that the causal law is invalid not only for the will, but for the entire soul-life. But if we define the notion of causality correctly, if we mean by it what Hume and Leibniz meant by it, that is, the regular harmony between the changes of many elements, then it is plain that it prevails in the mental world no less than in nature. It may be more difficult to detect uniformity in the former case or to reduce it to elementary laws than in the latter. Still it is evident that such uniformity exists. Isolated or lawless elements exist in neither sphere; each element is definitely related to antecedent, simultaneous, and succeeding elements. We can hardly reduce these relations to mathematical formulæ anywhere; but their existence is perfectly plain everywhere. Everybody tacitly assumes that under wholly identical inner and outer circumstances the same will invariably ensue; the same idea, the same emotion, and the same volition will follow the same stimulus. Freedom by no means conflicts with causality properly understood; freedom is not exemption from law. Surely ethics has no interest in a freedom of inner life that is equivalent to lawlessness and incoherency. On the contrary, the occurrence of absolutely disconnected elements, isolated volitions standing in no causal connection with the past and future, would mean derangement of the

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will, nay, the complete destruction of psychical existence. If there were no determination whatever of the consequent by the antecedent, then, of course, there could be no such thing as exercise and experience, there could be no efficacy in principles and resolutions, in education and public institutions." 1 8. Criticism of Indeterminism. But we cannot maintain that the will is free in the Scotian sense.2 (1) Wherever in the world we have a phenomenon we seek for its cause in some antecedent phenomenon or sum of phenomena. If we acknowledge the application of the causal law to the events of physical nature, and deny its validity in the mental sphere, we present an exception to the uniformity of nature. And as Bain says: "Where there is no uniformity, there is clearly no rational guidance, no prudential foresight." Every act, be it ever so insignificant, has its antecedent cause. I can sit down or get up as I please, but whether I please or not depends upon conditions which may be apparent or concealed. James holds in his article on "The Dilemma of Determinism "3 that the world would be no less rational if actions like the bending into one street rather than into another were left to absolute volition. However, such a slight deviation from the law would be, as far as the principle is con

1 Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 221. See also his Ethics, p. 460 note.

2 See § 6. Parts of what follows are taken from my article in the Philosophical Review, referred to on page 311 note.

3 The Will to Believe.

cerned, as great a miracle as though the planet Jupiter should sway from its path. It would make the entire universe irrational. In the words of Riehl: "However infinitely small the difference between such a world and the real one might appear to the fancy, for the understanding an infinitely small deviation from the law of determination of occurrences, from the general law of causality, would still remain an infinitely great miracle. There would arise out of the ability to perform apparently insignificant acts with absolute freedom, the ability to pervert the entire order of nature in continually increasing extents. element of irrationality, an exception to the law of causation, could not but make the whole of nature irrational, just as a very little amount of ferment is able to produce fermentation in an entire organic mass. Nature could not exist alongside of an undetermined power of freedom." 1

The consequences of a single

(2) In order to escape these difficulties many devices are resorted to. We must think in terms of causality; true. But, nevertheless, the will is free. In order to make these two contradictions agree, causality is simply interpreted to mean freedom or non-causality. In other words, a special theory of causality is often manufactured to meet the requirements of the libertarian doctrine. Dr. Ward 2 is guilty of such a fabricated scheme of harmonizing 1 Riehl, Kriticismus, Vol. II, Part II, p. 243. 2 Dublin Review, July, 1874.

un

opposites. He will not grant that "free" and " caused" are synonyms. There are two kinds of causation; in the one case it means a law of uniform

phenomenal sequence. By this kind of causation the physical world is ruled, the important exception being miracles. But there is also such a thing as originative causation. An intelligent substance, for example, acts as an originative cause. Such a sub

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stance is the human soul. Dr. Ward bases his interpretation of the causal law on the hypothesis of freedom, which is the very thing to be proved. say, he exclaims, there is no such a thing as an originative cause? Look at the human will. You have anti-impulsive will-acts due to the soul's power of absolute choice. You say, he continues, that free will violates the causal principle? Not at all, for what does causation signify but originative cause? -It is evident we have here an excellent example of the circulus vitiosus.

1

Martineau 1 may be accused of the same vicious reasoning. The will, he says, is a cause, i.e., “it is something which terminates the balance of possibilities in favor of this phenomenon rather than that." This notion he applies to the universe, then back again to the will. He wants to show that the idea of causality applied does not make for determinism, but for freedom; he begins by assuming that causality equals freedom. His false reasoning is very apparent. Determinists say, according to him,

1 Study of Religion, Vol. II, Bk. III, pp. 196-324.