The will and its world. Psychical and ethical

Front matter

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Contents

PAOB.

The Will and its Divisions .... 24

Pabt First.

Introduction

Another book on the Will ; the subject cannot settle itself and get quiet, as it ought, after having produced so much controversy. Moreover, the whole work turns upon Free Will as its center and pivot — that Free Will which in recent years has so often been supposed to be an old worn-out coat belonging to the past, and unworthy of even being looked at by any man with modern ideas.

Still the matter will not sink itself out of sight at the bidding of science or of any other authority, and there is no final resting-place in this as in so many other things. E^ch generation, and in some degree each man born into the world, has to fighl anew the battle of Free Will, which is verily the soul of every kind of freedom, moral, political, soclalt religious; life itself may be regarded as a winning or a losing of the battle for freedom.

During a long time theology was the chief scene of this conflict, and the Church divided upon the lines of Necessitarianism and Libertarianism ; but the past generation has seen a new kind of Necessitarianism arising, that of physical science, which has leaped into the arena with a mighty flourish of trumpets, loudly proclaiming the defeat and total disappearance of Free Will from the face of the earth, and triumphantly pointing to its last evanishment down the alldevouring throat of unalterable, irresistible Law. Such a proclamation is made with great assurance and even haughtiness by the philosopher of science, Mr. Herbert Spencer (and it is repeated in chorus by a large number of his disciples) ; it is he who declares, in his well-known treatise on Psychology, that Free Will is born of *< an illusion," and therewith dismisses contemptuously the whole subject, disdaining to discuss it at any length in his rather lengthy book.

A somewhat different yet decidedly significant attitude is taken by a distinguished writer on Ethics, Professor Sidgwick, who proposes to eliminate ** the theoretical question as to the freedom of the Will " from the sphere of ethical science entirely (see his Methods of Ethics^

INTBODUCTION, 7

5lh ed.tP* 66). This famous moral teacher, accordiDgly, gives us much instruction in a morality which has no need of freedom, and seeks to unfold a responsibility which has no connection with the liberty of choice. So he is going to make ** no decision " upon this subject, but will get along somehow without entering upon the exceedingly vexatious discussion of Free Will. It is not an easy, still a very necessary task, one may well think. This utterance of Prof. Sidgwick, which seems to have in it the note of despair, has been oftener cited than any other opinion in his book probably, so characteristic is it as an echo of the worried thought of the present age. ** The conflict of arguments " between the two opposing sides is indeed wearisome, and frequently profitless ; but what if there be a different way of winning the fortress of Free Will? It may here be added that another equalfy distinguished writer on Ethics, Dr. James Martineau {Types of Ethical Theoi*y^ 3rd ed., Vol. II., p. 42), emphatically protests against such a ** neutral ** position in ethical science on the subject of Free Will, as that which has just been considered.

It is an amusing fact that the very words in which Free Will has at divers times expressed itself, have found bitter enemies. A well-known Professor of Psychology in Harvard University has thought that the problem would be much illuminated, and made more easy of solution, by getting rid of the term freedom in all discussion of the subject. So he proceeds to carry out his plan in a specimen ess&y which he has given to the world. But the promised relief does not seem to come, the old difficulty remainsy as it does not lie in the word but in the thing. Then why banish that favorite vocable of our nation, yea of the whole world? If nobody else, the schoolboy will not suffer it to die, since it is always the burden of his chosen declamation. For our part, we do not conceal our liking for the word, and we also cherish a belief in its great usefulness, when employed aright, in Psj'^chology.

In a far more savage manner the word self-determination has been condemned by a Professor in Columbia University. Hear his cry of damnation, which becomes almost frantic: *^ Self-determination is a term to juggle with, and for that reason every scientific psychologist ought to detest it." (Giddings, The Principles of Sociology J p. 381 • ) We had heard that science did not detest anything or anybody, but had reached the lofty, serene point of accepting all, yea the devil himself, as a necessary stage in the grand universal movement of evolution. But the Professor vehemently calls upon his brethren, the scientific psychologists, to hate that damnable word self-determination in language which recalls that of Macbeth when he finds out that he has been deceived by the lying oracles of the witches, and through them brought face to face with grim death:

And be these jaggling fiends no more believed That keep the word of promise to oar ear Bot break it to oor hope.

The query will rise. Who has been deceiving the Professor, juggling with that detestable compound self-detejminaUonf Let the culprit be pointed out that he receive the penalty due to his misdeeds. So we start out in search of the rascal with no little zeal, but we soon find that just this word or its equivalent has been em* ployed by the greatest thinkers, sages, and moralists from antiquity down to the present time. Plato and Aristotle are, then, the offenders in the old ages ; Kant and Hegel employ the term in our century, not juggling with it, but having evidently an honest purpose in the pursuit of truth ; in our own generation and in our own tongue the word is found scattered up and down the pages of Thomas H%wfj Green, one of the siucerest souls and probably the greatest ethical writer that the Anglo-Saxon race has produced. These are some of the jugglers, we suppose; not till Mr. Herbert Spencer arrived with his evangel proclaiming that Free Will is a cheat and an illusion did we get the truth or even an honest expression of it among men. Such is one of the recent utterances ot what may be called scientific dogmatism upon the subject of Free Will, scaling heights which theological dogmatism hardly attained in its palmiest days.

Assured now that we are in good company, we shall still find use for the word self-determination, making it the central fact of the present book, showing it to be the great end which human activity is seeking to realize. Indeed the very conception and starting-point of the Will rests upon what we shall call the self-determined.

And now let it be confessed there is a good reason for the repugnance which some writers have shown to all discussion of the freedom of the Will. That it has often been fruitless, landing the reader into an intolerable dualism which leaves only discord in his soul, is apparent enough. But the old method of discussing this subject need not be deemed the final one, or the only way of closing with the problem. That method may be named argumentation by crisscross ; it piles up a great breastwork of so-called arguments on one side, then it makes a similar pile on the other side, while from both opposing sides is kept up an eternal cross-fire of assertions, denials, rebuttals, and re-assertions. But it is found that, after a thunderous fire and a prodigious noise lasting through generations, each

INTBODUCTIOK. 11

side continues to hold its own fort in about the same condition as when the battle started. Thus the whole thing has the appearance of a prolonged sham-battle, in which nobody gets hurt. No wonder that earnest people, with work to do in the world, become disgusted and resolve to enlist on neither side of such a resultless conflict, sweeping the entire matter out of their mental horizon.

Still the subject is sure to come back, it cannot be wholly excluded from our soul, being just the subject of man's freedom. The question will arise : if you can get nothing in that way, why not cast about for another way? And here we brush upon the secret hope from which has sprung the present book. Let it be imparted in| a whisper to the reader that the author has endeavored to strike out into a new path in this exposition of the Will. Not a mass of new argu- h ments but a new method is the claim, possibly i delusive, but honestly believed ; so much of faith in his own work will be charitably tolerated in an author by his readers, for every author simply has to be something of an Egotist, else he would not write a book. He must think that he has done a deed which no one else has done, otherwise what is the use of his giving himself so much trouble to do a piece of work over again? Some points of this procedure may be here set forth.

I. The exposition which does not rest in mere argumentation, external definition, or arbitrary division « but regards these simply as stages or a stage in the movement of mind, belongs to what we have called the Psychosis. The science of {Psychology must show an inner unfolding; it I most have distinctions, but these are to spring from its own internal process, self-generated, I not projected from the outside into the science at any point, according to some external criterion of the psychologist. He must indeed have insight, but insight into the very process of his Ego, which is itself insight. The self-activity of mind is to be made real, objective in its own procedure; not simply the Ego but the science of the Ego is to be self-active, moving forward through itself and positing its own distinctions.

The Psychosis, then, is the Ego or mind itself grasping the movement of mind in every special activity of itself. However minutely specialized !the mental act may be, the total process of mind is present and cannot be separated from its own specialization. That is, both elements, the particular and the universal, are not only on hand and united, but united in a process, which is the soul of both; this process knowing itself, and setting itself forth in its distinctive stages as process, is the Psychosis. The complete movement of Psychology must, therefore, be an evolution which shows, on the one hand, the special act or

INTBODUCTION. 18

the 80*called faculty (the phase of distinction or specialization), and, on the other hand, the total activity of the Ego in that special act.

Such a procedure, as far as we are aware, is opposed to the usual method of psychologists,' who have the habit of making their distinctions anywhere and as they please, and of arranging! these distinctions in any order which may happen; to be convenient. We have a strong conviction that this is a fundamental defect in the psycho- i logical science of to-day. It is handed over to boundless caprice which means chaos, and there is rarely the attempt to reveal the mind as ordered from within throughout its manifold activities. But it has not only an order, it has also a principle of ordering, both of which go together, are indeed one process, which, however, must separate itself and posit its distinctions as essential.

Thus we witness in mind everywhere the Psychosis with its threefold movement. Such is the ordering principle which unifies all mental phenomena and makes a science of mind possible. (The threefold movement of the Ego or of mind we have more fully set forth in another work. See Psychology and the PsycJiosiSj Introduction passim.)

II. This recurring triplicity often rouses objection. It is declared to be something artificial or something foisted upon the mental process from the outside. Still the claim here made is that

U THE WILL AND ITS WOBLD.

such is the very movement of mind itself, its fundamental form, which it, being self-conscious, must see and unfold as its own.

Again it is objected that this perpetual iteration of the threefold process confines the spirit, forces it by an iron necessity into a pre-determined system, and is thus prejudicial to that freedom which should at least reign within the domain of thought. But such a freedom is really disorder, it subjects the science to caprice and takes it away from the control of law, to discover and to utter which is the psychologist's business. Now we believe most fervently in freedom, outer and inner; but freedom, too, must be ordered, must have its principle, which is just the ground of its necessity. That is, freedom is necessary ; note the two opposing terms in this sentence, which, however, are smelted into one thought by the process just described. Liberty and law must be united in the psychological as well as in the political sphere. Mind becomes scientifically free only in following the law of mind, just as the citizen is free only in obeying the law of the land. We must see the universal principle working in every detail, ordering it and holding it united in the total movement of the science.

We should never forget, however, that this ordering of the Ego is its own; Mm law imposed OQ itself is it9 own lair, ms^cle by itself

UiTBODUCTION. 15

for itself. In other words, it is self-legislative, like the free nation; its government is self-government, which constitutes the liberty of science as well as of the State. Otherwise freedom may lead to anarchy in both. Nor again should the law be external, applied from the outside and forcing conformity to itself; thus we begin to feel this tyranny of system which is always the forerunner of rebellion and overthrow.

So we affirm that in a true method alone can the science of mind find its true freedom. The Ego is unquestionably limit-transcending by its very nature, but just this characteristic is what must be taken up and incorporated into its process. It posits all distinction, limitation, specialization ; then it reaches beyond these and returns to itself as the source ; in this way it is the self -limited, self-diflferentiated, self-determined. Hence its fundamental act manifests the law of its freedom and not its freedom from law; hence, too, it shows not simply an outward order in Psychology but a self-ordering, not simply an outward restraint in morals, but self-restraint, not simply an outward government in institutions, but self-government. Therein the externality of law is always moving out of itself and becoming internal, and the tyranny of system is perpetually correcting itself, through an inner and not an outer revolution, the former of which means a ceaseless unfolding within, while the latter is the shock of violence from without, whether this be political, physical, or psychical.

III. We shall, accordingly, apply the Psychosis throughout the present book as the only true method by which the freedom of the Will can be maintained in its pure movement, and at the same time can be brought into an order, or into a system, if you please; for there is no science of anything without some kind of a system. Liberty and order must be united ; just that which is ordered is the free, self-active mind, which is also the orderer. The very essence of the Will is freedom, hence our subject by its very nature is strongly recalcitrant to any subordination of any kind ; still the need is so much the greater, for the sake of freedom itseir, which is always running the danger of flying off into chaos both theoretically and practically, both in a book and in a society.

When the psychologist throws in his distinctions at any place, without indicating their genesis or inner process, he is capricious, we might say, anarchic in his method ; he abuses his freedom, which becomes license in his work. On the other hand, when the psychologist forces his distinctions from the outside at a given place in his exposition, because his theory demands that they appear just there, without the inner selfunfolding which is the characteristic of mind, he

18 tyrannioal, he is a psychological despot in the city of his science. Psychology, however, will endure neither the anarchist nor the tyrant in the long run ; its true administration must not be chaotic nor despotic, subject neither to capricious freedom nor to iron necessity. Still it must have both freedom and necessity in their positive union, which is the Psychosis.

IV. It will be our object, therefore, to eschew, the old expository method, as far as we may bei able, the method which imports its distinctions into the science from the outside, and thus makes it wholly separative, unfree in its movement, determined externally by the capricious Ego of the expositor. This separative stage, which gives psychological distinctions, is indeed necessary to the- science, but it must not be dragged in exter- (\ti.i nally.itmust be unfolded through the inner movement of the subject-matter ; its distinctions, even when valid in content, ought not to be capricious in the ordering.

For instance, the distinction of Intellect into Sense- perception, Representation, and Thought, taken externally, is separative, yet they must be seen to be one process, which is that of the Ego itself. Out of every division unity is to be restored. Still the divisive act must be, the separation into activities or into the so-called faculties cannot be thrown out of psychology; but we must not stop with that, we must unify the mind, wbich is also present in separation, by the Psychosis. For the Ego which is making divisions in itself, is one, and is to attain that oneness through its division, and is also to formulate just this process of itself as the basic principle of its method. Your Ego is not to leave out itself in distinguishing itself into Sense-perception, Bepresentation, and Thought; on the contrary, it is i always to come back to itself and behold its own process ; thus it is the process of Self beholding the process of Self.

y. In like manner the scientific method (that of physical science) must be eschewed as alien to Psychology, specially alien to the Psychology of the Will ; in fact, it notoriously leaves Free Will out of its horizon, having no concept or category, whereby it can account for or express the same. For this reason scientists as a body are, and cannot help being, determinists. To be sure they may in individual cases rise out of the limits of their vocation, which, however, is not easy. Beally the Ego has to account for science, science cannot account for the Ego.

The scientificially trained man, when he enters the domain of Psychology is pretty sure to become the victim of his method. He is apt to take the procedure derived from Natural Science and clap it on anywhere and everywhere, to the free movement of the Ego. Who cannot see that Mr. Herbert Spencer is often completely victimized by his system, especially when he enters a spiritual realm, like Ethics and Religion? The essential point is frequently left out, remaining probably unseen, because it does fit into the ^ fore-ordained formulas of his system.

We make haste to apply the same criticism to a pre-established metaphysical method, which can proceed just as externally as a physical method. Both commit the same mistake though coming from opposite poles of thought. Every student will feel this difficulty sooner or later in the case of Hegel, though on many points sympathetic with the gre^t thinker. His massive terminology is not infrequently thrust upon some domain of nature or spirit, regardless of inner development. The result is a tyranny of system which affects the free reader, somewhat as German militarism afiects the free citizen.

Still we shall have to re-affirm that the Ego must have a system, if it is to have a science; but this system is to be its own, self-derived, not taken from physical or metaphysical systems external to it and hence alien. The system of Psychology must be a free one, generated out of the Ego by itself and imposed upon itself through itself. Thus the free system can become the system of freedom, and can unfold and formulate the Will, whose essence is just this freedom or self-determination.

So the danger of system is great, but the danger of no-system is even greater, the latter being disorder, a headlong topple toward chaos. /^ ' I 'i If the system is inadequate » let it be revised » or

' '* ' '• transformed, or supplanted by something better ; but let us not rush to the opposite extreme and think of getting rid of all system — a state of mind which tinds so much expression in these days.

In this book, therefore, we shall have a system, and not fail to make a strict use of it, but the very object of such a system is to secure, to ^ order, and to formulate the absolute freedom of the Ego. Perfect order united with absolute freedom is the ideal striven for, though doubtless often unattained; still the effort is something, even if unsuccessful. Whenever the triplicity herein employed becomes burdensome, formal, cramping, it may bo the fault of the author, and sometimes it is that of the reader; the exposition may get stilted and mechanical, not making the forms of thinking fluid to thinking ; or the effort may not bo given to understand it or make it real, by the spirit of the reader, whose function it is to fuse all this formulation into the pure activity of his own Ego. Be careful, then, not to be the victim of my system, which you will be, if you merely take its ordering externally and learn that by the way of memory and of information. All these distinctions and definitions belong to the separative stage of the

INTBODUCTION. 21

Ego, till the latter brings them back into the process of itself by an original fiat of its own. This is the reader^s part, which no book can give him, however much it may stimulate him ; his self-activity must come from himself, this being just what makes him an Ego.

System, then, is not to be abolished, in spite of much frantic declamation against it, but it must be elevated into a system of freedom. Especially is this requirement imperative in a book on the Will, whose essence is the self-determined.

VI. Very intense in certain quarters is the protest against the old faculty-psychology. But the protesters themselves will always be found, sooner or later, using its divisions. The truth is« we must have division, the faculties so-called ; equally certain is it that we must see the mind as one and a process. Hence the strong demand is for a method which will give both sides and , give them together — the separative and the unitary ; a method which, in specializing the mind, reveals its oneness. We are not going to get rid of the old faculty-psychology, which is a genuine evolution of the ages ; still we must supplement it by a procedure which will counteract its divisive, analytic, scattered character. The Psychosis, rightly seen into and applied, is intended to furnish all the division one wants and all the unity one wants; indeed it employs these as stages of the fundamental process of mind.

The Will, which is the theme of the present work, belongs primordially to the separative stage of the Ego, as we shall soon attempt to show ; still in this separation there is the total process of mind, which is also present in the method. The Will, though it be determined, must come back to itself, and thus be self-determined, too; both belong to its movement, and the procedure which leaves out one or the other, either the Determined or the Self-determined, or leaves them in an unreconciled opposition, must be pronounced inadequate.

In the present book we shall have to acknowledge the old faculty-psychology in its proper sphere ; indeed we cannot well help ourselves, since from it is derived quite the sum total of psychological nomenclature. One of its terms is the word Will itself, as distinct from Intellect, we cannot well abolish the language of our science, which is indeed the growth of ages and is inwoven into the very texture of our thinking. Still we may very properly seek to remedy the one-sidedness of the old faculty-psychology, which so exclusively dealt in and dwelt in the separative stage of the mind, and thereby lost sight of the latter's unity. But the remedy does not lie in its abolition, which would leave us a unity just as one-sided as separation, but in the process which giyes full validity to both sides. This process, as already stated, is the method of the present work, explicitly formulated and employed in every portion.

Yll. We cannot, therefore, bring ourselves to give up theoretical Free Will; just as little can we think of surrendering practical Free Will, as realized in moral conduct and in the institutions of civilization, specially in the State. The denial of inner liberty involves the denial of outer liberty; if there be no theoretical ground for individual freedom, there is no such ground for political freedom. The latter, indeed, springs from the former, as its eternal life-giving source. A dbcussion of Free Will is not purely a speculative play of idle minds; in these days man cannot think irrationally and act rationally ; thought and action. Will and Intellect, must go hand in hand, and find their complete harmony and reconciliation in the deed. A free country rests upon a Free Will ; a conviction of the excellence of free institutions comes not out of a belief in an enslaved volition. Determinism means absolutism in some form; assuredly it cannot be realized into the works of liberty, which signifies the self-determined. So in this inner realm of Will one can fling his banner to the breeze, inscribing on it the famous, all-compelling word, and <* shouting the battle-cry of freedom."

THE WILL AND ITS WORLD.

The reader uattirally tries to reach down, as soon as possible, to the fundamental fact of tbe Will. Let him bring before his mind his simplest action, he will be aware of a going forth out of himself, a separation within and a making of himself into an object of some sort. This is the primal manifestation of Will; the Ego as Will divides itself through its own inherent originative power of selfhood, and carries itself out into an action, which is different from itself as Ego, yet is its own, its very Self and essence.

At this point we undoubtedly have to think, and, to think the Will (or anything else), it must be seen in its process of creation, in fact creating itself. Let us, then, try to grasp the following statement: The Ego as Will passes with itself (24)

over into the object, but just in such a separation and objectifying of itself, it remains truly itself. In such an act the Ego is original, indeed selforiginative and is Will.

When I reach forth my hand to pluck a flower, there is a going forth of me out of myself, and a realizing of myself in an action ; yet I remain one with myself in that action ; if I divide within, and project myself into plucking the flower, I am the inner division and the outer deed. It is true that what I do is different from myself, yea, I make myself difierent from myself, still this difference is mine, is my Ego, or a stage of its process.

Here, then, we are trying to penetrate to the fundamental fact of the Will. We may now see, it to be the stage of separation in the process of the Ego, the second grand phase of its movement, which has, in the complete science of Psychology, two other stages — one going before, which is Feeling, and one coming after, which is Intellect. The Ego as Will is, therefore, primordially separative, and this characteristic it will manifest through all its development, which is to be set forth in the following treatise. Herein lies its contrast with the sphere of the Intellect, which is essentially the return or the third stage of the Ego, though, of course, there is no intellection without volition. We are never to forget that every stage has in it implicitly all stages,