The problem of freedom

Preface

The following chapters are the substance of a course of lectures delivered in 1909 before the Lowell Institute of Boston. Delivered without notes, they were carefully reported and subsequently much revised.

The circumstances of their delivery were, I feel sure, favorable to certain good habits which I have tried to retain. My hearers, though exceptionally intelligent and critical, were for the most part untrained in the subject. Being hearers too and not readers, they constantly forced me, if I would be understood, to turn away from technicalities toward naturalness of speech ; they led me to emphasize crucial points in the argument; and then by short sentences, easy transitions, and homely illustrations, to make the necessarily close attention rewarding and agreeable. These are useful habits for any one who undertakes to treat contentious topics.

Nor do I see that such adjustments unfit a discussion for consideration by specialists.

VI PREFACE

Such men, it is true, rightly lay stress on fullness of knowledge, fresh points of view, candor in observation, and a scientific spirit. But lucidity is not unfriendly to these worthy qualities. Bishop Berkeley bids us " to think with the learned and speak with the vulgar." I wish I were able to conform myself to the precept of this profound and limpid writer. But at least I will offer here a fairly intelligible, systematic, and in some respects not unoriginal survey of an intricate, ancient, and ever-present problem.

Contents

I. The Meaning of Freedom

1. Repellent intricacy of the subject and its dogmatic

treatment in the past 1

Chapter I The Meaning Op Freedom

Few subjects are for ordinary mortals so difficult and dull as the question of freedom. In it mental confusion seems to have secured a kind of province of its own from which ordered thought has been so excluded that the small amount remaining suffices merely to provoke acrimony, but not to stir broad and dispassionate pursuit. From the first a certain meagreness has characterized the discussion of freedom. Neither of the parties contending over it has appeared able to advance beyond a few central assertions. How these were related to other beliefs or to the tangled facts of life has been but scantily explained. When Epicurus proclaimed us free, he spoke of an unintelligible accident which since the beginning of the world has somehow disturbed its normal course. And when the Stoics assert that necessity governs all, it is hard to see how the erroneous doctrine of freedom could arise, or indeed what room remains in a world like theirs for error, chance, or wrong. Nor is the lack of fullness and clarity less as we turn toward modern thought. What Augustine believed about free-will, what St. Thomas, no one can precisely say, though they and all the men of the Middle Ages wrangle over the matter with unceasing eagerness, virulence and uncertainty. The first appearance of the problem on English soil is in the dreary discussion of Thomas Hobbes with Bishop Bramhall, where neither seems to take any interest in what his opponent says and each considers what he says himself as too obvious for argument. Locke follows, a singularly candid writer and one ordinarily engaging; but his very ability to see much in many directions so confuses his account of Power that at the close of that laborious chapter a reader is hardly wiser than at the beginning. The smart epigrams of Hume's Essay on Liberty and Necessity, while making it evident that all who dissent from the simple doctrine there preached are probably fools, leave behind them an uncomfortable doubt whether Hume himself may not be about as blind as his adversaries.

In view of such slender results certain moralists of our time have begun to ask whether the age-long controversy might not now profitably cease and human conduct be approached from points of view more accessible and of a more comprehensive outlook. The most notable advocate of such a policy is Henry Sidgwick, who in his Methods of Ethics sums up with singular fairness the arguments for and against freedom, and concludes that they are substantially balanced, each side in itself convincing but neither providing room for the material presented by its opponent. Our wisest course is therefore to let the whole subject alone — an easy matter, since no practical issue is involved. Persons act, he thinks, substantially alike whether libertarians or determinists. Professor Sidgwick's plan has commended itself to several later writers. The valuable recent book by Professors Dewey and Tufts, a book remarkable for wide observation of human needs and daring suggestions of further moral advance, does not mention the subject of freedom. Many writers of to-day merely allude to it as something too difficult, too threadbare, or too unimportant for discussion.

4 THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM II

But it is not easy to relegate fundamental problems to darkness. The unknown allures. Thoughtful men do not rest comfortably in ignorance, but repeatedly rouse themselves to ask whether such ignorance is really necessary. In this case especially there is much which prompts to further inquiry. The question is a classical one, like the being of God, the nature of the state, or the significance of poetry. These matters each generation debates, and there are few surer signs of the intellectual earnestness of an age than the zeal it shows over such problems. No age settles them, each formulates them anew, but in wrestling with them each gains a power and insight not to be otherwise obtained. That is what we mean by calling freedom a classical problem. It is one to which the human mind, however discouraged, in variably returns, one which always proves itself capable of kindling passion, one too large for complete solution, but one where even partial insight broadens all other apprehension. It is incredible that our critical time should refuse to join the earlier inquiring multitude, acknowledge itself baffled, and take no share in what has invigorated the past. The fancy that it might is a dream of academic minds.

Indeed, as we look closely into the writings of those who professedly banish this question, we find that in reality they themselves unconsciously assume the truth of one or the other of the opposed doctrines. Nor can they do otherwise if they discuss ethics at all, for every part of that science is rooted here and changes meaning with our understanding of freedom. Accordingly, though at first sight forbidding, one can hardly imagine a subject which under examination proves more profoundly interesting. Here we try to learn what our nature is. Do we resemble the things around us, driven by blind law and incapable of modifying it ? Or are we guardians of law and is the world in some degree directed by our thought? Only so far as we believe it to be, do we count ourselves capable of conduct ; for I suppose everybody sharply distinguishes movement from conduct. Things are as busy as we, but we do not call their motions acts. Acts are movements so guided that they in some sense reflect our purposes. And what is that sense ? What right have we to contrast ourselves as persons with the objects around us as things ? No doubt we constantly do so, but is the distinction sound or superficial? In short, is or is not human action a subtler variety of physical motion?

These weighty questions I propose to discuss in this book, and I believe them to be questions which nearly all my readers will already have agitated within their own breasts. To many such self-explorers there will have come a kind of despair, making them ready to say, " I do not know : I may be free, I may be determined ; I cannot tell." But surely no present bewilderment can close the door on knowledge. That was a sagacious remark made long ago by Aristotle that " if we must not philosophize, then we must philosophize." He meant that reason is defeated only by itself. In order to know that a problem is insoluble we must have reasons for its insolubility, and so must already have advanced far in our acquaintance with it. Problems set by our own nature are unescapable. Closing the eyes does not rid us of them. It is wise, then, from time to time systematically to face them and also, patiently holding them before our hearts and minds, to allow them to illuminate and be illuminated by the daily experiences of life. The latter important sort of exploration must be conducted by each person for himself. To the former I here invite my readers.

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For anything like success in so difficult a search an open mind is the first requisite. Hunters after truth we must be, and heedless of everything else. Hortation, enthusiasms, the desire to say something uplifting, will be out of place here. We are to keep close to reality through all its windings and be firm against exactitude where it does not exist. If we gradually come to believe that the larger truth probably lies in a certain direction, we must still be as interested in detecting what hinders our taking that direction as in the considerations which favor it. Delight in discovering difficulties is a good preservative against error. Of course, then, we must start with no side of our own. Do not let us suppose we are called on to save freedom, to snatch the precious thing from unbelievers who, probably with malicious intent, are attacking it. Nor, on the other hand, let us for a moment imagine that the champions of freedom are shown by their holding such a doctrine to be irrational or insincere. Conceivably they have not been bought up by religion, party, or social prejudice, but may have been led to their conclusions by what they themselves have seen. Partisanship is of course common, but it has no more natural connection with one side of this controversy than with the other. The best we can do is to banish it from our own mind and assume it to be absent from the mind of him who differs from us. In short, in order to make any progress in these perplexing regions our method and interest must be dispassionate and scientific.

Yet if scientific, that interest will have in it much that is dramatic too. The drama brings before us clashing forces, each relatively justified. That is not first-rate drama where a good character is overthrown by a knavish one. In the best drama noble human nature is arrayed against noble human nature, and our sympathies go forth to both sides. In Sophocles's masterpiece of Antigone, the state is set against the family, and we are aware how poor mankind would be if either were destroyed. It is this jarring of mighty opposites, each necessary for the well-being of man, which gives splendor to the piece. In Romeo and Juliet the family and the individual clash. Just such tragedy is en volved in the problem of freedom. Two importances are here in conflict. The libertarians are keepers of a great truth. They vindicate the work of man, the dignity of the person, his capacity for self -guidance. And certainly life would not be worth living if these interests were insecure. But the determinist has a matter of no less consequence in his charge, for he is defending order, law, the fact that in this universe all parts are influenced by all. He will not, then, allow a single portion to set up for itself, as if it possessed all worth. He compels each to be submissive to the whole. Who can say which of the two claims is superior? We cannot discard either, opposed though they seemingly are. It must be our endeavor to do entire justice to both, reproducing in our own minds the full stress of that on which each insists.

Such then will be our somewhat scholastic and technical task. I shall try to examine our subject as a matter of simple science, careless of consequences. And I cannot help hoping that some of my readers engaged in practical affairs may like to look into the mind of a quiet scholar and see how he goes about his strange business. To many he will seem to be magnifying niceties and concerning himself too seriously with abstract ideas. I can only answer that a dispassionate search into the principles which underlie life, and in the long run shape it, is to me engrossing and fruitful beyond anything else. Out of such cool contemplation comes a strength and happiness which permeates all my more superficial experiences. Something similar I anticipate for my readers. While the discussion will not be aimed primarily at practical ends, the very fact that for the time likes and dislikes are laid aside, while exact observation and coherent thought summon us to do their bidding, should refresh and strengthen for the common affairs of the day. A sustained argument, too, though calling for close attention, may have, if well knit, plainly worded and freed from extraneous matter, the unfolding interest of a story. But clearness is vital. To it I sacrifice every other grace of style.

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Two nearly related questions confront us at the start : What do we mean by freedom?

THE MEANING OF FBEEDOM 11

and do we possess anything of the sort ? These two questions usually considered together, I sharply divide. This chapter treats only of the first. Nothing in it favors either determinism or libertarianism. All it seeks is to discover what we have in mind when talking of freedom. We may be altogether deluded. Possibly there is no such thing. No human being may ever have been able to do otherwise than he has done. But even if freedom is not a matter of reality, it is a matter of thought. In ordinary conversation we constantly speak of it. " Peter acted freely, " we say, " in going to New York.'* What have we in mind ? If I make out here merely the contents of our consciousness, I shall be satisfied. We may then proceed to inquire whether this imagined freedom actually exists. But such an inquiry would be futile until we know what we seek to assert by either affirming or denying that Peter is free. And since in this chapter we are arguing no ethical doctrine, but only attempting a bit of psychological analysis, I will state a case of purported freedom and trace as accurately as possible what I at least am there thinking of, begging my readers to follow carefully and observe whether it is what they too have in mind.

12 TEE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM

Suppose I find that my tall clock has stopped and I say to some one, "Look into the case and see what the matter is." He, having looked, calls out, " Of course it must stop. The pendulum is not free." I ask, "Not free? How so?" To which he replies, "Somebody has stuffed paper into the clock-case. Every time the pendulum swings, it touches the paper slightly, and so is not free." Thus far, I suppose, there will be no dispute. All will agree that when interference is present freedom ceases. This, however, describes freedom only negatively, — free from, — and suggests that in order to be altogether free our pendulum must be rid of everything except itself . But how far can our thought travel in such a direction? Shall all environing influences be removed? Gravitation, for example, is tugging continually at the ball and drawing it toward the centre of the earth. Here is interference. And if by some magic art we could remove gravitation, should we then have made the pendulum more free? I begin to doubt and to see that this is not exactly what I meant by saying there should be no interference. Gravitation or weight is, after all, constitutive of the pendulum, so that we could not do away with it and retain the pendulum itself. Something similar appears also elsewhere. At its upper end the pendulum is attached to a pivot, which never ceases to interfere with its motions, holding it rigidly in place. Suppose we detach it, will it gain or lose freedom? Evidently lose, for it will then be so free as hardly to be free at all. Negative freedom — freedom/rom — has been so greatly enlarged that positive freedom — freedom to — disappears. Adjustment to environment, which seemed at first an interference with freedom, is to some extent necessary. Let us then recast our definition with this fact in view.

Instead of saying that freedom is the absence of interference, suppose we now call it the absence of alien interference. Some pressures assist the pendulum to do its work, others prevent. The intruding paper, the sticky oil, the too-narrow case are alien interference. Lying outside the pendulum, they intrude upon its actions, oblige it to express them rather than itself, and so check its freedom ; whereas interferences of the pivot, of gravitation, further the pendulum's designed end. These may be thought of as integral parts of itself. Here then will be our amended definition : the freedom of the pendulum will mean its ability to express itself, unhampered by alien interference. So we ourselves, in order to be free, must be detached from certain portions of our environment. In the circumstances of each of us there is much which is not favorable to our best working. Environment of this sort we seek to abolish and so secure a negative freedom. But this is done only with a view to positive freedom, the development and expression of our powers themselves. Accordingly, in order to decide in any specific case whether we are free, we should need to know whether the circumstances are likely to help or hinder our interests. Shall we not say, then, that in the absence of alien interference, as thus explained, we have a full statement of what is intended by human freedom ? I could not say so. Something is still lacking. The pendulum does not offer a precise picture of myself. Its movements are of a different type. We suppose at least that it does not know what it is about, and that I do. It has no consciousness. Possibly if we were challenged to prove this, we might have difficulty in doing so. But at any rate there are no signs that the pendulum is conscious, whereas when anything affects us it affects us all through and we perceive ourselves to be affected. A curious double agency is ours, of doing and at the same time knowing that we are doing. The two go together — not always, it is true. Many a blind movement going forth from every one of us allies us with the world of things. But these movements do not fall within the field of ethics. As moral or personal beings we are concerned with conduct only so far as it is conscious. If the consciousness is slight, then we are but slightly moral. The pendulum, having none at all, cannot illustrate what personal freedom would be.

Yet perhaps we can best set forth freedom as we conceive it in ourselves if we retain our illustration and hypothetically modify it. Let me endow the pendulum with a consciousness it probably does not possess. I will assume that it is aware of what is going on as it leaves the level, mounts to the right, returns on its perfect curve downward, and so climbs to the left. Let it even feel a quiet joy in its beautiful movement. Would there under such conditions be in it all that, rightly or wrongly, we think we find in ourselves ?

Once more something is lacking ; for the pendulum might be merely a spectator, a spectator of itself, conscious of all its motions^ though without ability to change them. We ordinarily believe that in us consciousness is a factor and that the actions which proceed from us are not precisely what they would be if consciousness did not interfere. The pendulum, we have assumed, has but one way of acting and merely contemplates itself acting thus. To make it adequately representative we should take one further step. Having begun the process of enriching it with what does not properly belong to it, we may as well endow it with consciousness in our sense of that term. Its ranjje of action will then be immensely enlarged. Formerly on reaching its summit, it turned and went down. There was nothing else to do. And at each stage of the descent there was ever but one thing before it, one fixed action following upon each which it had seen itself perform. But suppose, when the pendulum arrives at the point where it is usually conscious of descending, it could say to itself, " Shall I turn or shall

I rise, or shall I stay where I am ? " Suppose it were not confined to a single issue, compelled, however consciously, to take the exact plunge it had taken before. Several possibilities are now open to it, on any one of which its attention may fasten. Only so does consciousness become a factor and the pendulum differ utterly from all which swing in our houses.

Now something of this sort we truly or falsely assume in ourselves. We go on the supposition that every instant opens before us varied possibilities of action, and that we may select, choose, decide which one of them shall be realized. We are not shut up to the single actual present, but through imagination press forward to a diversified future, foreseeing there many events which would differently affect our well-being, and finding that as we put our mind on this one or that among them it ordinarily occurs. Imagination is not, then, as we are apt to suppose, the peculiar endowment of a poet. It and the attention following in its train are the working factors of our daily lives. Through them we multiply the pendulum's single issue into dual or plural possibilities. And this is the full measure of what we have in mind when we talk of being free. We mean that what will happen is not fixed, either in the nature of the environment or ourselves (negative freedom), but that there are before us alternative possibilities either one of which, by suitable attention on our part (positive freedom), will issue in an actual event. When I rise from this table I can go to walk, to bed, or to the bookcase. Consciousness, fastening on the first, lets the other two go. I say, therefore, that I went freely to walk, but please myself with thinking that I might just as freely have lain down or read.

Perhaps it will be convenient for future reference if we now gather up the results of our analysis and state them as a formal definition. This will furnish a clear answer to the first of our two inquiries, " What do we mean when we call ourselves free?" and will enable us to advance without ambiguity to our second and more important one, " Is there any sufficient evidence that we really are free?" Throughout this book, then, I shall mean by freedom that self-guidance through which, for purposes of our own, we narrow a dual future possibility to a single actual result.

TEE MEANING OF FREEDOM 19

VI

It is so important, however, that all the clauses of this definition should be clearly understood and felt to be necessary that T pass them briefly in review. Self-guidance needs little comment. The pendulum has made its meaning sufficiently plain. When that was directed by anything except itself, it ceased to be free. Alien interference and freedom were seen to be incompatible ; I can be free only so far as I guide myself. We may not always be sure whether an interference is or is not alien ; but we know that to whatever degree it is, we are under constraint.

In order to possess freedom we must have a dual future possibility, dual at least. There must jijbe as many as two different courses open to us, possibly more. Often, I suppose, we have a multitude of things in mind which we believe we might accomplish. Two at least we must have, e.g., doing this or not doing it. When the pendulum became free it ceased to be confined to a single issue, being then capable of either descending or not descending. The possibility of freedom is staked on that of the ambiguous future. Where either the environment or our own constitution permits only a single event to be realized, freedom ceases. Of course, at the last every result is simple ; but for the free being no particular one is predestined for issue. A process of selection from a multitude, all alike possible, brings one to existence and checks the rest. This selective preference employed in positive freedom is usually indicated by the word " rather/' a word which I have expanded into the phrase for " purposes of our own."

We often figure freedom as groundless selection. I choose A or B out of pure caprice, counting one of them of no more consequence than the other. But I do not find that men restrict themselves to this narrow usage and I shall show hereafter that arbitrary selection is in reality destructive of freedom. As I wish to formulate a definition acceptable to libertarians of every sort, I shall not fashion it for the few who champion this liberty of indifference. The great body of libertarians understand the ambiguous future, on which freedom turns, in a far less extreme sense. They say that action is undertaken with a view to supplying some one of our many needs, perhaps the need of action itself. Did we not know ourselves to be incomplete, we should remain inert. I stand here and continue to stand until I am tired. Only when I need a seat do I move toward one. In that seat I stay until some sort of action occurs to me which promises to remove defects which I at the moment experience. I go to dinner because I feel myself hungry and desire to remove that hunger. Desire is precisely this recognition of a contrast between my actual self and what I might better be. The representations which lead up to action are always of a supposedly possible future self. These are examined to see how betterment may most probably arise. I may be mistaken in regard to this, may think I shall better myself by some course when in reality I shall not. But no matter. It is this thought that guides me. And so long as my turning in any direction is prompted by the aim at betterment, I call myself free.

Our fathers used to discuss our problem in terms of Free Will. Is the will free, they asked, to choose its own good? Such language is no longer heard. Scholars now agree that no detachable piece of us — the will — is free, but either nothing or the whole of us. Will is merely the act of self -direction. The antithesis, then, to the free will would not be the constrained will, but no will at all ; and the real problem is not whether the will is free, but whether the person is so.

And is he? To that question we have come at last, and to it must devote the remainder of this volume. We now know precisely the point which evidence must illuminate. Is there ever an ambiguous future before us? Do several possibilities sometimes disclose themselves? And can I by attention shut off one of these and adopt another, thus enabling my powers to go forth more largely ? These are different aspects of that second question with which this chapter opened. Discussion of it was at that time postponed until some agreement could be had as regards what should be discussed. The absence of such preliminary definition has been the commonest cause of the small results thus far obtained in this controversy. Doctrines have been attacked which were not those maintained, and others defended though not attacked, while each antagonist has often had but a hazy notion of what he himself was championing. Ambiguity, in short, has been here as elsewhere the deadly enemy of scientific advance. Against such ambiguity this chapter is a guard. We now understand what it is to be free and may decline controversy with those who accept or deny freedom of other sorts. All we wish to learn is whether we are justified in counting ourselves free in the sense here explained.

Chapter II I

It Is highly improbable that any such power as has just been defined exists. The evidence against an ambiguous future, narrowed by ourselves, is so strong that whoever examines this alone can hardly fail to regard freedom as a fantastic dream. To bring out this adverse evidence in all its cogency is our business now. Putting ourselves sympathetically at the point of view of the determinist, we shall endeavor to see what he has seen. His truth must be our truth too. Truths neglected by him may appear hereafter, but for the present we want to feel the utmost force of the determinist's positive doctrine. By libertarians this is often overlooked or, still worse, misrepresented. We must examine it with friendly eyes. Those aspects of it which are tolerably familiar I shall treat briefly, developing at greater length certain turns of the argument not so generally understood. In this way I hope to clear determinism of misconception and to set it forth as something having a rightful place in human thought. Probably the evidence for it can be most compactly summed up under three heads : that which is derived from the nature of the world, from the nature of the human mind, and from the nature of society. Experimental, psychological, and social proofs I offer in its behalf, taking them up in the order named.