Christianity and Ethics Part 7

III. On the theological side it is alleged that human freedom is incompatible with divine Sovereignty. A complete doctrine of freedom would require to be examined in the light of these three objections. For our purpose it will be sufficient to indicate briefly the value of these difficulties, and the manner in which they may be met.

I

The wonderful progress of the natural sciences in the second half of the nineteenth century has tended to banish the old idea of freedom from the realm of experience. Science, it is maintained, clearly shows that man belongs to a great world-movement, in relation to which his whole life and work are completely determined. Though even in earlier ages, and especially in Stoic philosophy, this conception of life was not ignored, it is more particularly in recent times, under the influence of the evolutionary theory, that the idea of determination has been applied with relentless insistence to the structure of the soul. There is, it is alleged, no room for change or spontaneity. Everything, down to the minutest impulse, depends upon something else, and proceeds from a definite cause. The idea of choice is simply the remnant of an unscientific mode of thinking. It might be sufficient to reply that in thus reducing life and experience to a necessary part of a world-whole, more is surrendered than even science is willing to yield. The freedom which some writers reject in the interests of science they attempt to introduce in an altered form. Why are these philosophers so anxious to conserve the ethical consequences of life? Is it not because they feel that there is something in man which will not fit into a rigid world-mechanism, and that conduct would cease {84} to have moral worth if life were reduced to a causal series of happenings? But it may be further argued that, if the mechanical conception of life, which reduces the spiritual to the natural, were consistently carried out it would lead not merely to the destruction of the moral life, but to the destruction of science itself. If man is merely a part of nature, subject entirely to nature's law, then the realities of the higher life--love, self-sacrifice, devotion to ends beyond ourselves--must be radically re-interpreted or regarded simply as illusions. But it is also true that from this standpoint science itself is an illusion. For if reality lies only in the pa.s.sing impressions of our sensible nature, the claim of science to find valid truth must end in the denial of the very possibility of knowledge. Does not the very existence of physical science imply the priority of thought? While in one sense it may be conceded that man is a part of nature, does not the truth, which cannot be gainsaid, that he is aware of the fact, prove a certain priority and power which differentiates him from all other phenomena of the universe?

If he is a link in the chain of being, he is at least a link which is conscious of what he is. He is a being who knows himself, indeed, through the objective world, but also realises himself only as he makes himself its master and the agent of a divine purpose to which all things are contributing, and for which all things exist. In all our reasoning and endeavour we must start from the unity of the self-conscious soul.

Whatever we can either know or achieve, is _our_ truth, _our_ act presented in and through our self-consciousness. It is impossible for us to conceive any standard of truth or object of desire outside of our experience. As a thinking and acting being man pursues ends, and has the consciousness that they are his own ends, subject to his own choice and control. It is always the self that the soul seeks; and the will is nothing else than the man making and finding for himself another world.

The attempt has recently been made to measure mental states by their physical stimuli and explain mental {85} processes by cerebral reaction.

It is true that certain physical phenomena seem to be invariably antecedent to thought, but so far science has been unable to exhibit the form of nexus between these physical antecedents and ideas. Even if the knowledge of the topography of the brain were immeasurably more advanced than it now is, even though we could observe the vast network of nerve-fibres and filaments of which the brain is composed, and could discern the actual changes in brain-cells under nerve stimulations, we should still be a long way off from understanding the nature and genesis of ideas which can only be known to us as immediate in their own quality.

All that we can ever affirm is that a certain physical excitation is the antecedent of thought. It is illegitimate to say that it is the 'cause'

of thought; unless, indeed, the word 'cause' be invested with no other meaning than that which is involved in such a conception. It is, however, in a very general way only, and within an exceedingly narrow range, that such measurement is possible. We do not even know at present what nerves correspond to the sensations of heat and cold, pain and joy; and all attempts to localise will-centres have proved unavailing.

The finer and more delicate feelings cannot be gauged. But even though the alleged parallelism were entirely demonstrated, the immediate and pertinent question would still remain, Who or what is the investigator?

Is it an ego, a thinking self? or is it only a complex of vibrations or mechanical impressions bound together in a particular body which, for convenience, is called an ego? Are the so-called ent.i.ties--personality, consciousness, self--but symbols, as Professor Mach says, useful in so far as they help us to express our physical sensations, but which with further research must be p.r.o.nounced illusions?[1] Monistic naturalism, which would explain all psychical experiences in terms of cerebral action, must not be allowed to arrogate to itself powers which it does not possess, and quietly brush {86} aside facts which do not fit into its system. The moral sanctions so universally and deeply rooted in the consciousness of mankind, the feelings of responsibility, of guilt and regret; the soul's fidelities and heroisms, its hopes and fears, its aims and ideals--the poetry, art, and religion that have made man what he is, all that has contributed to the uplifting of the world--are, to say the least, unaccounted for, if it must be held that 'man is born in chains.'

Primary facts must not be surrendered nor ultimate experiences sacrificed in the interests of theoretic simplicity. In the recent anti-metaphysical movement of Germany, of which Haeckel, Avenarius, Oswald and Mach are representatives, there is presented the final conflict. It is not freedom of will only that is at stake, it is the very existence of a spiritual world. 'Es ist der Kampf um die Seele.'[2]

If the world forms a closed and 'given' system in which every particular is determined completely by its position in the whole, then there can be no place for spontaneity, initiative, creation, which all investigation shows to be the distinctive feature in human progress and upward movement. So far from its being true that the world makes man, it would be nearer the truth to say that man makes the world. A 'given' world can never be primary.[3] There must be a mind behind it. We fall back, therefore, upon the principle which must be postulated in the whole discussion--the unity and self-determining activity of the self-conscious mind.

II

We may now proceed to the second problem of the will, the objection that human action is determined by motives, and that what we call freedom is nothing else than the necessary result of the pressure of motives upon the will. In other words, the conduct of the individual is always determined by the strongest motive. It will be seen on examination that this objection is just another form of that which we have already considered. Indeed, the {87} a.n.a.logy of mechanical power is frequently applied to the motives of the will. Diverse motives have been compared to different forces which meet in one centre, and it is supposed that the result in action is determined by the united pressure of these various motives. Now it may be freely admitted at the outset that the individual never acts except under certain influences. An uninfluenced man, an unbia.s.sed character cannot exist. Not for one moment do we escape the environment, material and moral, which stimulates our inner life to reaction and response. It is not contended that a man is independent of all motives. What we do affirm is that the self-realising potentiality of personality is present throughout. Much of the confusion of thought in connection with this subject arises from a false and inadequate notion of personality. Personality is the whole man, all that his past history, present circ.u.mstances and future aims have made him, the result of all that the world of which he is a part has contributed to his experience.

His bodily sensations, his mental acts, his desires and motives are not detached and extraneous forces acting on him from without, but elements which const.i.tute his whole being. The person, in other words, is the visible or tangible phenomenon of something inward--the phase or function by which an individual agent takes his place in the common world of human intercourse and interaction, and plays his peculiar and definite part in life.[4] But this totality of consciousness, so far from reducing man to a 'mere manufactured article,' gives to personality its unique distinction. By personality all things are dominated. 'Other things exist, so to speak, for the sake of their kind and for the sake of other things: a person is never a mere means to something beyond, but always at the same time an end in himself. He has the royal and divine right of creating law, of starting by his exception a new law which shall henceforth be a canon and a standard.'[5]

{88}

The objection to the freedom of the will which we are now considering may be best appreciated if we examine briefly the two extreme theories which have been maintained on the subject. On the one hand, _determinism_ or, as it is sometimes called, necessitarianism, holds that all our actions are conditioned by law--the so-called motive that influences a man's conduct is simply a link in a chain of occurrences of which his act is the last. The future has no possibilities hidden in its womb. I am simply what the past has made me. My circ.u.mstances are given, and my character is simply the necessary resultant of the natural forces that act upon me. On the other hand, _indeterminism_, or libertarianism, insists upon absolute liberty of choice of the individual, and denies that necessity or continuity determines conduct. Of two alternatives both may now be really possible. You can never predict what will be, nor lay down absolutely what a man will do. The world is not a finished and fixed whole. It admits of infinite possibilities, and instead of the volition I have actually made, I could just as easily have made a different one.

Without entering upon a detailed criticism of these two positions, it may be said that both contain an element of truth and are not so contradictory as they seem. On the one hand, all the various factors of the complex will may seem to be determined by something that lies beyond our control, and thus our will itself be really determined. But, on the other hand, moral continuity in its last a.n.a.lysis is only a half truth, and must find its complement in the recognition of the possibilities of new beginnings. The very nature of moral action implies, as Lotze has said, that new factors may enter into the stream of causal sequence, and that even though a man's life may be, and must be, largely conditioned by his circ.u.mstances, his activity may be really originative and free. What the determinists seem to forget is, as Green says, that 'character is only formed through a man's conscious presentation to himself of objects as _his_ good, as that in which his self-satisfaction is found.'[6] {89} Desires are always for objects which have a value for the individual. A man's real character is reflected in his desires, and it is not that he is moved by some outside abstract force, which, being the strongest, he cannot resist, but it is because he puts _himself_ into the desire or motive that it becomes the strongest, the one which he chooses to follow.

My motives are really part of myself, of which all my actions are the outcome. Human desires, in short, are not merely external tendencies forcing a man this way or that way. They are a part of the man himself, and are always directed towards objects related to a self; and it is the satisfaction of self that makes them desirable.

On the other hand, the fallacy lurking in the libertarian view arises from the fact that it also makes a hard and fast distinction between the self and the will. The indeterminists speak as if the self had amongst its several faculties a will which is free in the sense of being able to act independently of all desires and motives. But, as a matter of fact, the will, as we have said, is simply the man, and it cannot be separated from his history, his character, and the objects which his character desires. To speak, as people sometimes do in popular language, of being free to do as they like--that is, to be influenced by no motive whatever, is not only an idea absurd in itself, but one which, if pushed to its consequences, would be subversive of all freedom, and consequently of all moral value. 'The liberty of indifference,' if the phrase means anything at all, implies not merely that the agent is free from all external compulsion, but that he is free from himself, not determined even by his own character. And if we ask what it really is that causes him to act, it must be answered, some caprice of the moment, some accidental impulse or arbitrary freak of fancy. The late Professor James makes a valiant attempt to solve the 'dilemma of determinism' by resorting to the idea of 'chance' which he defines as a 'purely relative term, giving us no information about that which is predicated, except that it happens to be disconnected with something else--not controlled, secured or {90} necessitated by other things in advance of its own actual presence.'[7]

'On my way home,' he says, 'I can choose either of two ways'; and suppose 'the choice is made twice over and each time falls on a different street.' 'Imagine that I first walk through Divinity Avenue, and then am set again at the door of this hall just as I was before the choice was made. Imagine then that, _everything else being the same_,[8] I now make a different choice and traverse Oxford Street. Looking outwardly at these universes of which my two acts are a part, can you say which is the impossible and accidental one and which the rational and necessary one?'

Perhaps an outsider could not say, but Professor James, if he examined his reasons, could say. He a.s.sumes that 'everything else is the same.'

But that is just what cannot be. A new factor has been introduced, it may be a whim, a sudden impulse, perhaps even a desire to upset calculation--a something in his character in virtue of which his second choice is different from his first. It is an utter misnomer to call it 'chance.' Even though he had tossed a coin and acted on the throw, his action would still be determined by the kind of man he was.

Let us not seek to defend freedom on inadequate grounds, or contend for a spurious liberty. No view of the subject should indeed debar us from acknowledging 'changes in heart and life,' but a misunderstanding of the doctrine of freedom may tend to paralyse moral initiative. The attempt to sunder the will and the understanding and discover the source of freedom in the realm of the emotions, as the voluntarists seek to do, cannot be regarded as satisfactory or sound philosophy. In separating faith and knowledge the Ritschlian school tends to make subjective feeling the measure of truth and life; while recent psychological experiments in America with the phenomena of faith-healing, hypnotism and suggestion, claim to have discovered hitherto unsuspected potencies of the will. This line of thought has been welcomed by many as a relief from the mechanical theory of life and as a witness to moral {91} freedom and Christian hope. But so far from proving the sovereignty and autonomy of the will, it discloses rather the possibilities of its abject bondage and thraldom.

No one can doubt the facts which Professor James and others, working from the side of religious psychology, have recently established, or discredit the instances of conversion to which the annals of the Christian life so abundantly testify. But even conversion must not be regarded as a change without motives. There must be some connection between motive, character and act, otherwise the new spiritual experience would be simply a magical happening lacking all moral significance. If there were no continuity of consciousness, if I could be something to-day irrespective of what I was yesterday, then all we signify by contrition, penitence, and shame would have no real meaning. Even the grace of G.o.d works through natural channels and human influences. The past is not so much obliterated, as taken up into the new life and transfigured with a new value.

The truth of spontaneity and initiative in life has lately found in M.

Bergson a fresh and vigorous advocacy, and we cannot be too grateful to that profound thinker for his rea.s.sertion of some neglected aspects of freedom and his philosophical vindication of the doctrine which puts it in a new position of prominence and security. 'Life is Creation.'

'Reality is a perpetual growth, a Creation pursued without end.' 'Our will performs this miracle.' 'Every human work in which there is invention, every movement that manifests spontaneity brings something new into the world. In the composition of the work of genius, as in a simple free decision, we create what no mere a.s.semblage of materials could have given.'[9] But yet he says that 'life cannot create absolutely because it is confronted with matter. . . . But it seizes upon this matter which is necessity itself, and strives to introduce into it the greatest possible amount of indetermination and liberty.'[10] Even Bergson, though he emphasises so strongly immediacy and incalculableness in {92} all human action, cannot deny that the bodily arrangements and mechanisms are at least the basis of the working of the soul. Man cannot produce any change in the world except in strict co-ordination with the forces and qualities of material things. The idea in his consciousness is powerless save in so far as it is a guide to combinations and modifications which are latent in reality. The man who works with his hands does not create out of nothing a new totality. Even genius is conditioned by the elements he works with and upon. He can do nothing with his materials beyond what it is in themselves to yield. This sense of co-operation is strongly marked in the higher grades of activity. The world may be in the making, as Bergson says, but it is being made of possibilities already inherent in it. Life may be incalculable, and you can never know beforehand what a great man, indeed, what any man may achieve, but even the originality of a Leonardo or a Beethoven cannot effect the impossible or contradict the order of nature. The sculptor feels that the statue is already lying in the marble awaiting only his creative touch to bring it forth. The metal is alive in the worker's hands, coaxing him to make of it something beautiful.[11] Purpose does not come out of an empty mind. Freedom and initiative never begin entirely _de novo_. Life is a 'creation,' but it is also, as M. Bergson labours to prove, an 'evolution.' Our ideals are made out of realities.

Our heaven must be shaped out of the materials of our earth.

A moral personality is a self-conscious, self-determining being. But that is only half the reality. The other half is that it is a self-determining consciousness _in a world_. As Bergson is careful to tell us, the shape and extent of self-consciousness are determined by our relation to a world which acts upon us and upon which we act. Without a world in which we had personal business we should have no self-consciousness.

The co-operation of spontaneity and necessity is implied {93} in every true idea of freedom. If a man were the subject of necessity alone he would be merely the creature of mechanical causation. If he had the power of spontaneity only his so-called freedom would be a thing of caprice. Necessity means simply that man is conditioned by the world in which he lives. Spontaneity means, not that he can conjure up at a wish a dream-world of no conditions, but that he is not determined by anything outside of himself, since the very conditions amid which he is placed may be trans.m.u.ted by him into elements of his own character. Moral decisions are never isolated from ideals and tasks presented by our surroundings.

The self cannot act on any impulse however external till the impulse has transplanted itself within and become our motive.

'Our life,' says Eucken, 'is a conflict between fate and freedom, between being "given" and spontaneity. Spiritual individuality does not come to any one, but has first to be won by the work of life, elevating that which destiny brings. . . . The idea of freedom calls man to independent co-operation in the conflict of the worlds. It gives to the simply human and apparently commonplace an incomparable greatness. However powerful destiny may be, it does not determine man entirely: for even in opposition to it there is liberation from it.'[12]

III

It will not be necessary to dwell at any length on the third difficulty--the incompatibility of divine sovereignty and grace with moral personality.

How to reconcile divine power and human freedom is the great problem which meets us on the very threshold of the study of man's relation to G.o.d. The solution, in so far as it is possible for the mind, must be sought in the divine immanence. G.o.d works through man, and man acts through G.o.d. Reason, conscience, and will are equally the testimony to G.o.d's indwelling in man and man's {94} indwelling in G.o.d. It is, as St.

Paul says, G.o.d who worketh in us both to will and to do. But just because of that inherent power, it is we who work out our own character and destiny. The divine is not introduced into human life at particular points or in exceptional crises only. Every man has something of the divine in him, and when he is truest to himself he is most at one with G.o.d. The whole meaning of human personality is a growing realisation of the divine personality. G.o.d's sovereignty has no meaning except in relation to a world of which He is sovereign, and His purposes can only be fulfilled through human agency. While His thoughts far transcend in wisdom and sublimity those of His creatures they must be in a sense of the same kind--thoughts, in other words, which beings made in His image can receive, love and, in a measure, share. And though G.o.d cannot be conceived as the author of evil, He may permit it and work through it, bringing order out of chaos, and evolving through suffering and conflict His sovereign purposes.

The problem becomes acutest when we endeavour to harmonise the antinomy of man's moral freedom and the doctrine of grace. However insoluble the mystery, it is not lessened by denying one side in the interest of unity.

Scripture boldly affirms both truths. No writer insists more strenuously than the Apostle Paul on the sovereign election of G.o.d, yet none presents with greater fervour the free offer of salvation. In his ethical teaching, at least, Paul is no determinist. Freedom is the distinctive note of his conception of life. Life is a great and solemn trust committed to each by G.o.d, for the use or abuse of which every man will be called to account. His missionary zeal would have no meaning if he did not believe that men were free to accept or refuse his message. Paul's own example, indeed, is typical, and while he knew that he was 'called,'

he knew, too, that it lay with him to yield himself and present his life as a living sacrifice to G.o.d. Jesus, too, throughout His ministry, a.s.sumed the ability of man freely to accept His call to righteousness, and though He speaks {95} of the change as a 'new birth,' a creation from above, beyond the strength of man to effect, He invariably makes His appeal to the will--'Follow Me,' 'Come unto Me.' He a.s.sumes in all His dealings with individuals that they have the power of decision. And so far from admitting that the past could not be undone, and no chain of habit broken, the whole purpose of His message and lifework was to proclaim the need and possibility of a radical change in life. So full of hope was He for man that He despaired of none, not even of those who had most grievously failed, or most utterly turned their back on purity.

The parables in the Third Gospel of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son lay emphasis upon the possibility of recovery, and, in the case of the prodigal, specially on the ability to return for those who have gone astray.

The teaching of Scripture implies that while G.o.d is the source of all spiritual good, and divine grace must be present with and precede all rightful action of the human will, it rests with man to respond to the divine love. No human soul is left dest.i.tute of the visiting of G.o.d's spirit, and however rudimentary the moral life may be, no bounds can be set to the growth which may, and which G.o.d intends should, result wherever the human will is consentient. While, therefore, no man can claim merit in the sight of G.o.d, but must acknowledge his absolute dependency upon divine grace, no one can escape loss or blame if he wilfully frustrates G.o.d's design of mercy. Whatever mystery may attend the subject of G.o.d's sovereign grace, the Bible never presents it as negating the entire freedom of man to give or withhold response to the gift and leading of the divine spirit.

In the deepest New Testament sense to be free is to have the power of acting according to one's true nature. A man's ideal is his true self, and all short of that is for him a limitation of freedom. Inasmuch as no ideal is ever completely realised, true freedom is not so much a possession as a progressive appropriation. It is at once a gift and a task. It contains the twofold idea of emanc.i.p.ation {96} and submission.

Mere deliverance from the lower self is not liberty. Freedom must be completed by the appropriation of the higher self and the acceptance of the obligations which that self involves. It is to be acquired through submission to the truth. 'Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' A man is never so free as when he is the bondsman of Christ. The saying of St. Paul sums up the secret and essence of all true freedom: 'The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.'

[1] Mach, _Erkenntniss und Irrtum_. Vorwort. See also _Die a.n.a.lyse der Empfindungen_, p. 20. 'Das Sich ist unrettbar,' he says.

[2] Cf. W. Schmidt, _Der Kampf um die Seele_, p. 13.

[3] Cf. Eucken.

[4] Cf. Wallace, _Logic of Hegel, Proleg._, p. 233.

[5] Wallace, _Idem_, p. 235. Cf. Aristotle's wise man whose conduct is not _kata logon_ but _meta logon_.

[6] _Proleg._, section 108.

[7] _The Will to Believe_, p. 154.

[8] _The italics are ours_.

[9] _Creative Evolution_ (Eng. trans.), p. 252.

[10] _Idem_, p. 265.

[11] Cf. Morris, _Lects. on Art_, p. 195; Bosanquet, _Hist. of Aesthetic_, p. 445; also _Individuality and Value_, p. 166.

[12] _Life's Basis and Life's Ideals_, p. 181 f.