THE LIMITS OF FREE-WILL. T HE case of the "Conscious Automaton,"
if he can be said to have a case, does not certainly consist in the con- spicuously false analysis which he makes of the phenomena of volition, but in the tendency of the free-willist to exag- gerate greatly the sphere within which there can be said to be moral freedom. It is perfectly true that nothing can be con- ceived that is more important and more significant than the part which free volition plays in the drama of human life. It represents the woof where the constituents of our life over which we have no control represent the warp. It impresses more or less of deliberate purpose on the whole wealth of human faculty, and stamps with its seal even the passive sufferings of which our existence is partly made up. The voluntary efforts by which we mould what would otherwise be the drift of our characters, whether in doing or in en- during, to our higher purposes, are all unintelligible without free-will. And yet it is true that probably of all the minutes of an average life, barely one in a day dates a fresh volition, though, of course, very many date the direct consequences of former volitions which have long been in- corporated in our habits and assimilated into the very tissue of our active or passive moods. It is effort, and effort only, which betrays free-will. A mind that is the sport of its various desires, and that yields itself without a struggle to the resultant of its contending desires, is no more conscious of effort than a straw which dances on the eddies of a whirlpool, and is borne hither and thither as those eddies may determine, is conscious of effort. We may all of us satisfy ourselves of this by carefully watching ourselves during the conflict of various desires and emotions, when we deliberately give ourselves up to the spontaneous operation of those complex feelings. We are conscious of the vehemence of some, of the steady persistence of others, of the submergence and disappointment of those which are overwhelmed, of the victory and gratification of those which carry the day. But we are not conscious of effort, unless we ourselves bring out of our own will and pur- pose some new force which allies itself with one or more of our desires, and which forcibly suppresses, or at least sub- dues and mortifies, those which rage against our deliberate purpose. Effort is self-created force from within,—from within the very innermost source of personality. It often gives the victory to the desire which is intrinsically the weakest, and defeats the passion which is intrinsically the richest in spontaneous vigour. But efforts of this heroic kind are rarely, perhaps, as numerous as the years of a human life ; and even genuine but much less costly efforts are numbered rather by days than hours or minutes. Of those vital conditions over which we neither have, nor even so much as imagine that we have, any control, we can enumerate a host without even a moment's hesitation.
No man supposes that he is responsible for his own physical constitution, for his own keenness or defectiveness
of sight or hearing, for his height or his descent, or for his hereditary tastes and prepossessions. Nobody supposes that he can be independent of the climatic influences in which he was born, or the scenery and human associations which have moulded his habits and expectations. No man supposes that by the exercise of his own free-will he could have supplied all the defects of a bad education, and cancelled all the evil influences of vicious companionship. No man supposes that
he could have made his original faculties and instincts different from what they were, or that he could have warded off all the attacks of disease, or materially altered the character of his earliest affections. All these influences are of the very warp of our nature, and are conditions as determinate as the solar light and heat and the atmospheric and magnetic currents by which our bodies are affected, and our perceptions and sensa- tions developed. Free volition starts and sustains many a new exercise of energy, alters essentially many a habit of thought, and many a sphere of practical activity ; but it can only work on a mighty web of determinate conditions so numerous and so complex, that it is safe to attribute the actual complexion of any man's mind and character to a thousand potent influences over which he has no control, for every one which he either has actually moulded or might have moulded by his own free-will.
And we may note especially that the most conspicuous parts of character, those on which the charm or repulsive- ness of character depends, are very seldom completely, or even in any large degree, under the control of the will. The sweetest and most affectionate persons are usually sweet and affectionate by nature rather than by virtue of any self-educa- tion or self-control. No man who was naturally secretive and self-occupied ever became characteristically frank and ingen- uous by any amount of effort that he could apply in the period of this brief existence, though, of course, many a one of this type has become far less secretive and self-occupied, far more nearly of the type at which he aims, than he was in his childhood and youth. No man who was by nature timid, and even cowardly, ever succeeded in making himself distinctly bold and remark- able for courage within the period of this life, though such a one may and often does succeed in stiffing his timidities, and forcing his naturally cowardly impulses into the background,— into the suppressed and conquered region of his life. Still, it remains true that most of those who particularly attract and fascinate their fellow-men, attract and fascinate them not by any qualities which the exercise of free-will has given them, but by the beauty of inborn and inherited dispositions, and that most of those who repel us by their hardness and dryness and self-consciousness and vanity and pride, repel us by virtue of dispositions which they could no more extirpate than they could extirpate the faults of their physical constitution or raise the temperature of their blood.
How, then, it may be asked, is the part which free-will plays in the life of man so all-important, if it can only modify, and that not always with very much visible effect, the original constitution which nature and circumstance and in- heritance combined to confer? It is all-important, because it is the one helm by which we guide our course, by which we impose the tendencies which change our characters for the better or the worse, by which we arrest degeneration and stimulate aspiration, by which we determine whether the higher or lower impulses of our nature shall have their way, whether we shall serve the desires and aims which most exalt us, or the desires and aims which most debase us,—in a single word, by which we become responsible beings. It is quite true that in the case of so short a life as that which men pass on earth, they cannot revolutionise entirely the very grain of their character. If that grain is coarse, they may render it somewhat finer; if it is fine, they may make it finer still; but they can only work on the conditions into which they are born, and can neither eradicate all that they find faulty, nor, as a rule, even transfigure the surrounding influences and circum- stances which tend to aggravate those faults. Still, everything is saved if responsibility for the limited changes of which life admits is saved, and that is precisely what the gift of free- will really saves. We are not responsible for the conditions, favourable or unfavourable, with which we start in life ; but we are responsible for the full use and development of the favourable conditions, and the attenuation and repression of the unfavourable. The petty mind cannot suddenly spring into grandeur and magnanimity; but the petty mind may become fair and open to the knowledge of its own stiffness and limita- tions. The ambitious mind cannot suddenly abolish the tempta- tions which spring from its own restlessness and audacity, but it may force itself to see the manifold snares and sins to which these audacities lead, and so bank-up its eagerness audits insa- tiable cravings, as to control and turn to a nobler use the im- prisoned force of which it can dispose. The strict limitations of free-will are visible on every side. Free-will is no magician
to transform by a wave of the wand sullen passions into exalted affections, or plodding industry into flashing genius, —a hut into a palace, or a rusty knife into a Damascene scimitar. But it is free-will, and free-will alone, that can transmute mere graceful dispositions into high and steadfast character ; that can imbue the finer feelings with the depth and constancy of deliberate purpose ; that, in short, can saturate the automatic spiritual vitality of childhood and youth with the full personality of those fixed intentions and motives which lift instinct and impulse into the loftier region of divine life.
Previous page
