"MIND," FOR JANUARY, ON FREE-WILL.* Mind continues to be very
ably conducted, and to represent, for the most part, the predominant philosophy of the day,—the philosophy of the empirical and physiological school,—with great clearness and thoughtfulness. The present number con- tains two papers of some mark, on "The Determinist and Free-will Controversy," one by Miss Bevington ; and the other by Professor Bain in criticism on Dr. Ward.
Miss Bevington's ideas are ably expressed, but we can hardly- call the paper, as a whole, able, because the ideas which are so ably expressed, are not specially relevant to her subject ; while the crux on which her subject turns is, we will not say ably ignored, because it is never able to ignore the point on which you are writing, but ignored with a certain ingenuity which will recommend itself to those who do not like to meet the real edge of an opponent's argument. Miss Bevington goes about to show that there is no inconsistency between the assertion that "we do as we will," and the assertion that "we will as we must;" nor, so far as we know, did any one ever assert that the two propositions are incompatible. The important question is, whether either one or the other is always true. No rational Free-whilst doubts that the cases are very many indeed in human life, in which we do not do "as we will," but "as we must." But every Free-willist holds that while there are many occasions on which we will as we must, there are many other occasions on which we will without any " must " in the matter. All this part of Miss Bevington's contention, therefore, is:wholly without interest for any one who has the least knowledge of the literature of the subject,—in which we should say, from in- ternal evidence, that she herself is hardly very well versed. It may be true, as Miss Bevington asserts, that "in argument,. we perpetually find the freedom of the will confounded with the existence of the will ;" but this is due, we take it, not to the Free-willists, but to the Determinists. Strictly speaking, there. is no particular reason why a Determinist should believe even in the existence of the will at all. He believes in a mind enter- taining opposite desires, and manifesting also other spontaneous vital activities which can hardly be called desires at all, but the phenomena of conflicting desires, or of the conflict of specific desires with the overflow of spontaneous energies, do. not seem to require the intervention of a will, and are, in fact, usually explained by Determinists in a fashion which explains away the volitional element so far as it is conceived to be really separate and distinct, and analyses it into elements of involun- tary energy. But however this may be, we quite admit that if a Determinist, on the ground of specific observation, recognisea something distinct from desire and involuntary energy, called will, there is no reason in the world why he should not main- tain that the will, though it exists, is as much determined in its modes of action by invariable antecedents, as any other mental function. Next, Miss Bevington appears to think it a great matter to enforce on her readers that Deter- minists do not deny, but assert, "the activity of the will,.
• Mind: a Quarterly Reeks of Psychology and Philosophy. ffo. .VIZ.
us a factor in human advancement,"--i.e., that the future largely depends on the set of human wills at the present moment, and must be worse, if the set of even one of those wills be for evil, than it would be if, the others re- maining the same, the set of that will were for good. Well, -of course we knew that before. To tell us that Determinists believe that a change of will,—or for that matter, a change of anything whatever,—for the better, will probably tell for the better on the future, is to tell us the A B C of Deter- ininist teaching. Miss Bevington therefore carefully explains what every one knows, but ignores the whole core of the mis- chief of Determinism, when she ignores the effect of fatalism on the mind of all who do not feel a very strong inclination to make a great effort on the side of duty. Such people are taught by her, and by all who hold the Determinist view, that if, in fact, they make no such effort, it is certain that they could not have made any, while if they do make it, it is equally certain that they could not have avoided making it. No sane man denies that those who at any time are passionately desirous to do their duty at any cost, will probably do what they think their duty, whether they are Determinists or not. In other words, Deter- minists or Indeterminists will generally do what they desire, —right or wrong,—unless they have a very strong conviction that, when they desire what is wrong, they can resist their desires, and that they ought to do so. But where there is no passionate desire to do right, it will make an enormous difference to a man whether he holds that if he fails to do his duty, his antecedents only, and not himself, are in fault ; or whether he holds that, his ante- cedents being precisely what they are, he may either do his duty or not do it, and that the choice lies with himself. No reason- ings of Miss Bevington's, or any one else's, can possibly get rid of the soothing and deadening effect produced by a belief in fatalism on the consciousness of low achievement. We could not have been, Miss Bevington maintains, otherwise than what we are. If so, what can a man want more than this conviction, to reconcile himself to acquiescing in any moral defeat, no matter how shameful—as Free-willists alone, however, can consistently call it—that defeat may be. There is and can be nothing truly shameful in being what you could not possibly have helped being, any more than there is anything truly shameful in in- heriting an hereditary stain or an hereditary temptation from your parents. The true shame is in so living, if you could live otherwise, as voluntarily to accommodate yourself to that stain, or to yield to that temptation. But if you could not live other- wise, then there is no such thing as true shame at all. Miss Bevington never touches on this point, and her whole paper, therefore, is one in which we discover nothing but a careful and rather able beating of the air.
Professor Bain, naturally enough, after his long philo- sophical experience, knows what he is about rather better than Miss Bevington. But Professor Bain's reply to Dr. Ward seems to us extremely inadequate and deficient in grasp. In the April and October numbers of the Dublin Review for 1879,—to the former of which we ventured at the time to call the attention of our readers,—Dr. Ward had insisted with great ability on those phenomena of moral conflict which are inconsistent with the doctrine of Determinism. Dr. Ward's view is that in a case of moral conflict, we know perfectly well whither the spontaneous impulse of the will,—i.e., whither the resultant of all the attractions and repulsions acting on the will, —would take us, and that we also know that we sometimes put out a great "anti-impulsive effort,"—i.e., create proprio motu, and while having full power to leave it uncreated, a force which neutralises and vanquishes this resultant of all the attractions and repulsions acting upon us, and carries the day against it. Now Professor Bain replies to Dr. Ward in the first instance, by insisting on the improbability that any break in the law of uniformity of cause and effect should be dis- covered at all, after it had been verified in so wide a scientific domain ; but he seems quite to ignore the fact that what is maintained by Free-willists, and also by all men who are not philosophers, and who only judge their moral actions by the light of common-sense, is, that the region of the will is quite a new region, where we should as little expect to find a mere repeti- tion of all the principles which obtain in the field of physics and physiology, as we should expect to find among the laws of life a mere repetition of the laws of chemical combination or .crystallisation. But next Professor Bain replies to Dr. Ward that "the mind's anti-impulsive efforts are due to the stored-up recollections of the past, and are no more exempted from the law of uniformity than the impulses of the present are so exempted." But we should answer that, so far as "the stored-up recollections of the past" conflict with the desires and impulses of the moment, they would tell on the resultant impulse itself, and would not appear in the form of "an anti-impulsive effort." Take the common case of a public man's struggle with the wish to gratify an intimate personal friend, by appointing him to an office for which he does not consider him the most fitting candidate. It is precisely " the stored-up recollections of the past" which con- stitute that wish. Without "the stored-up recollections of the past," there would be no strong spontaneous impulse to overcome. There is nothing in the world in "the stored-up recollections of the past," which tends to take them out of the category of those influences which go to constitute the spontaneous impulse of the agent at the moment. On the contrary, they inevitably enter into it, and are part of the resultant which determine—not necessarily of course what you do, but what you would do if you allowed the will to drift with the resultant stream of influence caused by the setting-off of one wish,—including, of course, the wish to do your duty, whether that be feeble or strong,—against another wish. Professor Bain does not then in the least explain the phenomena of " anti-impulsive " effort, by his "stored-up recollections of the past." In fact, he only attempts to ex- plain that anti-impulsive effort as if it were identical with those among the various conflicting desires which happen to act in the same direction; and this is precisely the confusion which every one's own moral experience will, with Dr. Ward, earnestly repudiate. And even if, in the next place, the "anti-impulsive effort" were,—what it certainly is not,—no- thing but the desires and aspirations attaching to that side of the conflict which we are disposed to think the best of, why do we connect the idea of " effort " with that side of the conflict, more than with the other side ? Professor Bain holds that the sense of effort "does not accompany all voluntary actions, but only that class where the active power is not fully equal to the work." But in the case of conflicting desires, neither set of desires, so long as there is conflict, can be fully equal to the work, and we ought to feel as much sense of effort, therefore, in connection with one set as with the other,—nay, more, perhaps, with the set which go to the wall, whichever that may be, than with the set which ultimately conquer. But will any one in his senses say that the statesman who, by a great effort, conquered his eager desire to gratify his friend at the expense of the public service, is conscious of making as much or more effort on the side of the conquered impulse, as he made to subdue it ? If we understand Professor Bain aright, he ought so to consider. That desire is equally a part of him, in Professor Bain's view ; it is equally, indeed, a part of "the stored-up recollections of his past," and it is also that part of him which is least adequate to its work, be- cause it gets beaten in the fight. Surely, then, if Professor Bain's explanation of the phenomenon of conflict will hold water at all, he ought to talk as truly of the effort made by the states- man to appoint his relative, which failed, as he would of the effort made to do his duty, which succeeded. The truth is, that the Determinist's view of moral conflict must necessarily identify voluntary effort with desire of some sort; there is nothing else for him to make of it, and this Professor Bain virtually admits. But when you come to try and apply this false and artificial conception to the facts of moral experience, it is so unnatural, so completely out of relation to those facts, that the fictitious character of the whole explanation becomes visible at once, as any one, we think, will see who reads with any care this feeble reply of a very able and learned man to Dr. Ward's striking articles on the subject.
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