DR. WARD ON THE EXTENT OF FREE-WILL.
DR. WARD publishes in the July number of the Dublin IlPvietv an able and extremely interesting article on the extent of Free-will, the drift of which is to show that "each man is free during pretty nearly the whole of his waking life." We do not in the least agree with Dr. Ward, if we understand rightly what he means; but as we agree quite as little with the proposition which he sets himself to refute, we are rot at all sure that we do know precisely what he means,—which is not usually a complaint that it is possible to make of Dr. Ward's writings. The proposition which Dr. Ward sets himself to refute is this :—" That a man is only free at that particular moment when, after expressly de- bating and consulting with himself as to the choice he shall make between two or more comparative alternatives, he makes his definitive resolve in one or the other direc- tion." This view, if it is really entertained by anybody, is refuted with great vigour by Dr. Ward, who establishes satisfactorily enough, that it is in no sense necessary to free- will that a man should fully have discussed with himself the alternative right or wrong course before him, nay, that one of the most common of all abuses of free-will is the failure to bring ourselves to this full consciousness of what we ought to do and do not do, although we are perfectly well aware, in the background of our mind, that we are persisting in the wrong course through personal reluctance even to consider the right. So far, we are entirely with Dr. Ward. The limitations on free- will, so far as they exist, are certainly not imposed by the mere absence of deliberateness in our resolves. There are numbers of cases in which we do wrong through evading all deliberation. There are numbers of instances in which we evade all delibera- tion because, being bent on the wrong course, we do not choose to give ourselves the additional pain of clearly realising to our- selves that we are bent upon it. But it does not in the least follow that because we are often quite free to do right, when we do not deliberate, we are always free to do what we know to be the lightest thing during nearly the whole of our waking lives. Of course, Dr. Ward means that we are free to choose as amongst the moral alternatives which we seriously consider to be open to us. He does not and cannot mean that an ordinary man who has never been inspired by any high moral ideal, is free to attain at one bound, as it were, the full purity and elevation of a saint's character. He does not and cannot mean that a man of the world, because he admires the nature which can extinguish all that is evil by one thought of God, can, without any preliminary discipline of his own character, cast out temptation as the teacher he admires can cast it out. Dr. Ward is much too great a psychologist to maintain for a moment that a man with one educa- tion and training, can, by an effort of free-will, exert the very same kind of moral force over himself as another man with quite another education and training can exert, even though the former sees that act of moral force to be what he needs, and though he earnestly desires to exert it. We are cer- tainly not free to repel evil with all the success with which we could repel it, if our ancestors had transmitted to us less re- bellious natures, and if we ourselves had from the first obeyed every admonition of conscience touching the regulation of the natures so transmitted to us. Therefore, when Dr. Ward says that he holds men to be free in almost every moment of their waking lives, he must mean, not, free to do all they perceive to be morally good, but rather, at most, free to exert themselves in the right direction ,—free to put out distinct "anti-impulsive efforts" against temptation,---however little those efforts really accomplish.
Dr. Ward tells us what the force of virtuous habit may do in helping us to put down, say, an impulse of vindictiveness, with- out even debating for a moment with ourselves as to its evil character. But what will he say as to the force of habit when exerted in the opposite direction ? Suppose the case of a man who has inherited a vehemently vindictive temper from a vindic- tive father, and who has himself never once resisted that temper, when it has urged him to vindictive thoughts and acts. Sup- pose him to be brought to a better frame of mind by any higher influence, and then to receive a "stinging insult." Does Dr. Ward suppose for a moment that such a man is " free " to resist that stinging insult with as much efficiency and effect as the man who has practised the forgiveness of injuries from his infancy ? In what sense does Dr. Ward mean that men are free at almost every moment of their waking lives ? Free to do all they see to be right? Or free only to make more or less of a struggle in that direction ? Is an habitual drunkard of long standing really free, at any moment when he is not in drink, to resist the temptation to drink ? If so, why is it so impossible to reclaim a drunkard without putting him, so to say, out of the way of the worst class of temp- tations by making him a total abstainer ? Are not half the benevolent moral devices of spiritual men directed to this very point, to attenuate the temptations of those who have a bad past, a bad inheritance of temptation to look back upon, so that they may solve very gradually, and rather by securing a de- crease in the amount of effort required, than by putting forth a moral force which they have not yet attained, the moral problem set to them. And if that be so, does it not imply that they are not free to resist temptation in its strongest forma, should it come upon them in those forms ? Dr. Ward says that if "the unrepentant novice in sin was indubitably committing mortal sin during nearly the whole of his waking life," "it would surely be startling and paradoxical indeed if his acts ceased to be mortally sinful, merely because (through a course of unscrupu- lous indulgence) he has come to treat his indifference to God's commandments as a simple matter of course, to which, there- fore, he gives no explicit advertence?' But surely it is quite true that the particular points in which a sinful life is to be regarded as sinful, do change with the degenera- tion of the character. An habitual drunkard undoubtedly com- mits a less sin, if he commits a sin at all, when, no longer him- self, he takes the fourth or fifth glass of spirits which finally pros- trates him, than he commits when he turns into the gin-palace with the full consciousness of the danger before him. Even Dr. Ward admits that ; for he requires as a condition of freedom that the man shall be master of himself. What we hold is, that moral no less than physical indulgence deprives a man of true mastery of himself ; that the man who, after a youth under bad influence and a manhood of vice, repents late in life, is indefinitely less guilty for such evil acts as he still, no doubt, again and again commits, while struggling back towards virtue, than a man who, after a youth under good influence and a manhood of respectability, lapses into evil towards the close of his life. It seems to us certain that the extent of our freedom is closely limited by our own past, and no doubt, also, to no slight extent, by the nature inherited from our ancestors. We do not feel the least doubt that the last guilty act of a guilty life is, taken alone, far less really guilty than the first, nor even that there must be some oases where such an act is so wholly a mere moral consequence of former acts, that, taken separately, it is not guilty at all. Of .course, it does not follow that the man is not guilty because his last act is not guilty. The man is as guilty for what he did in his youth and never repented of, as he is for what he does, having the power to resist it, in his old age. The very fact that he may not be exactly guilty—say for getting drunk under strong temptation —now, only shows how deep the guilt of his habit of intoxication was at the time when it was first formed. But it seems to us hardly arguable that the magnitude of the guilt of individual acts does not diminish with the gradual degeneration of the char- .acter. Indeed, do we not all habitually say of a man of degener- ated intellect, "He would have been capable of such an effort in his youth, but he is long past the stage at which it would be possible to him," and why should there be any difference in this respect between intellectual and moral capacity ? Of course, we do not for a moment mean that in this life, any man ever reaches a stage at which he has no moral freedom left. We only mean that the sins he could once have resisted, he ceases, after continual self-indulgence, to have adequate power to resist. In the end resistance can no more be expected of him than of the opium-eater, the habit of yielding to temptation being, indeed, in its relaxing effect upon the will, not at all unlike the habit of opium-eating. Of course, there is always some point at which a new stand may be taken. If the habitual .drunkard takes precautions in his best and clearest moments to guard against the opportunity of indulging himself in his weakest and most helpless moments, he will begin slowly to recover his moral force,—even though, when suddenly submitted to the full rush of temptation, he succumbs again. We do not shrink at all from saying that to a man who will not fight when he may, that which would have been a grievous sin once, ceases to be a fresh sin, and becomes a mere new attestation, as it were, .of the full significance of his former sin. It is only at the point where new encroachments on the sense of right take place, that the full responsibility for guilt is preserved. When the man is falling lower, his guilt is unquestionable ; when he is gaining ground, his credit is unquestionable ; but it seems to *us as impossible to suppose that the villain of sixty years' standing is as culpable for the habitual villainies of to-day as he was for his first act of villainy, as it would be to suppose that the virtuous man of sixty years' standing deserves as much credit for not stealing to-day, as he did when be first struggled -up out of that class of habitual thieves in which he had been born and bred. Our difference with Dr. Ward hinges on this question,—Does a man who habitually yields to sin lose power to resist it, or not ? If he does, he may, perhaps must, in the end, become simply incapable of resisting what he once resisted easily ; and if he is incapable of resisting it, as there is no freedom, there can, by Dr. Ward's own rule, be no .sin. In any case, as he loses power of resistance, the gravity .of the sin must dwindle, and the field of action in which free resistance is still possible must change. Where it would once have been almost impossible for him to feel tempta- tion at all, he will, as he falls lower, find his new field of ,probation ; and here, too, if he honestly resists, he will win back some of his old power. What we cannot for a moment conceive is, that there is no genuine dwindling of the power of will, when not honestly exerted, just as there is a genuine dwindling of the power of intellect, when not honestly exerted. And if there be such a dwindling of power, then there is certainly also a corresponding dwindling -of moral responsibility and culpability for transgressions which, before they became habitual, were heinous, and only -ceased to be so through the deterioration of the man into the brute. So far as we can see, it would be as wise to expect a deteriorated body to achieve the physical feats of youth and health, as to expect a deteriorated soul to achieve the moral Teats of innocence and virtue. The extent of free-will is limited, surely, by our own past. Only, so long as we remain here, there is always some point at which the straggle may be taken up anew, though it be on a much lower and humbler level than that of the days before degeneracy began.
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