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The question of free will, moral liberty, or theliberum arbitrium of theSchoolmen, ranks amongst the three or four most importantphilosophical problems of all time. It ramifies into ethics,theology,metaphysics, andpsychology. The view adopted in response to it will determine a man's position in regard to the most momentous issues that present themselves to thehumanmind. On the one hand, does man possess genuine moral freedom, power of real choice,true ability to determine the course of his thoughts and volitions, to decide which motives shall prevail within his mind, to modify and mould his own character? Or, on the other, are man's thoughts and volitions, his character and external actions, all merely the inevitable outcome of his circumstances? Are they all inexorably predetermined in every detail along rigid lines by events of the past, over which he himself has had no sort of control? This is the real import of the free-will problem.
(1) Ethically, the issue vitally affects the meaning of most of our fundamental moral terms andideas. Responsibility, merit,duty, remorse,justice, and the like, will have a totally different significance for one who believes that all man's acts are in the last resort completely determined by agencies beyond his power, from that which these terms bear for the man who believes that each human being possessed of reason can by his own free will determine his deliberate volitions and so exercise a real command over his thoughts, his deeds, and the formation of his character.
(2) Theology studies the questions of theexistence,nature and attributes of God, and His relations with man. The reconciliation ofGod's fore-knowledge and universal providential government of the world with the contingency of human action, as well as the harmonizing of the efficacy ofsupernatural grace with the free natural power of the creature, has been amongst the most arduous labours of thetheological student from the days ofSt. Augustine down to the present time.
(3) Causality, change, movement, the beginning of existence, are notions which lie at the very heart ofmetaphysics. The conception of the human will as a free cause involves them all.
(4) Again, the analysis ofvoluntary action and the investigation of its peculiar features are the special functions ofPsychology. Indeed, the nature of the process of volition and of all forms of appetitive or conative activity is a topic that has absorbed a constantly increasing space inpsychological literature during the past fifty years.
(5) Finally, the rapid growth of sundry branches of modernscience, such as physics, biology, sociology, and the systematization of moral statistics, has made thedoctrine of free will a topic of the most keeninterest in many departments of more positiveknowledge.
The question of free will does not seem to have presented itself very clearly to the early Greekphilosophers. Some historians have held that the Pythagoreans must have allotted a certain degree of moral freedom to man, from their recognition of man's responsibility forsin with consequent retribution experienced in the course of the transmigration ofsouls. TheEleatics adhered to apantheistic monism, in which they emphasized the immutability of one eternal unchangeable principle so as to leave no room for freedom. Democritus also taught that all events occur by necessity, and the Greekatomists generally, like their modern representatives, advocated a mechanical theory of theuniverse, which excluded all contingency. WithSocrates, the moral aspect of allphilosophical problems became prominent, yet his identification of all virtue withknowledge and his intense personal conviction that it is impossible deliberately to do what one clearly perceives to be wrong, led him to hold that the good, being identical with thetrue, imposes itself irresistibly on the will as on theintellect, when distinctly apprehended. Every man necessarily wills his greatest good, and his actions are merely means to this end. He who commitsevil does so out ofignorance as to the right means to thetrue good.Plato held in the main the same view. Virtue is the determination of the will by theknowledge of the good; it istrue freedom. The wicked man isignorant and a slave. Sometimes, however,Plato seems to suppose that thesoul possessed genuine free choice in a previous life, which there decided its future destiny.Aristotle disagrees with bothPlato andSocrates, at least in part. He appeals to experience. Men can act against theknowledge of thetrue good; vice isvoluntary. Man is responsible for his actions as the parent of them. Moreover his particular actions, as means to his end, are contingent, a matter of deliberation and subject to choice. The future is not all predictable. Some events depend on chance.Aristotle was not troubled by the difficulty of prevision on the part of hisGod. Still his physical theory of theuniverse, the action he allots to thenoûs poietkós, and the irresistible influence exerted by the Prime Mover make the conception of genuine moral freedom in his system very obscure and difficult. TheStoics adopted a form of materialisticPantheism.God and the world are one. All the world's movements are governed by rigid law. Unvariedcausality unity of design, fatalistic government, prophecy and foreknowledge--all these factors exclude chance and the possibility of free will.Epicurus, oddly in contrast here with his modern hedonistic followers, advocates free will and modifies the strictdeterminism of theatomists, whose physics he accepts, by ascribing to the atoms aclinamen, a faculty of random deviation in their movements. His openly professed object, however, in this point as in the rest of his philosophy, is to release men from the fears caused bybelief in irresistible fate.
The problem of free will assumed quite a new character with the advent of theChristian religion. Thedoctrine thatGod hascreated man, has commanded him toobey the moral law, and has promised to reward or punish him for observance or violation of thislaw, made the reality of moral liberty an issue of transcendent importance. Unless man is really free, he cannot bejustly held responsible for his actions, any more than for the date of his birth or the colour of his eyes. All alike are inexorably predetermined for him. Again, the difficulty of the question was augmented still further by theChristiandogma of the fall of man and hisredemption by grace.St. Paul, especially in hisEpistle to the Romans, is the great source of theCatholictheology of grace.
Among the earlyFathers of the Church,St. Augustine stands pre-eminent in his handling of this subject. He clearly teaches the freedom of the will against theManichæeans, but insists against theSemipelagians on the necessity of grace, as a foundation of merit. He also emphasizes very strongly the absolute rule ofGod over men's wills by Hisomnipotence and omniscience--through theinfinite store, as it were, of motives which He has had at His disposal from alleternity, and by the foreknowledge of those to which the will of each human being would freely consent. St. Augustine's teaching formed the basis of much of the latertheology of theChurch on these questions, though other writers have sought to soften the more rigorous portions of hisdoctrine. This they did especially in opposition toheretical authors, who exaggerated these features in the works of the greatAfrican Doctor and attempted to deduce from his principles a form of rigidpredeterminism little differing from fatalism. The teaching ofSt. Augustine is developed bySt. Thomas Aquinas both intheology andphilosophy. Will is rationalappetite. Man necessarily desires beatitude, but he can freely choose between different forms of it. Free will is simply this elective power. Infinite Good is not visible to theintellect in this life. There are always some drawbacks and deficiencies in every good presented to us. None of them exhausts ourintellectual capacity of conceiving the good. Consequently, in deliberate volition, not one of them completely satiates or irresistibly entices the will. In this capability of theintellect for conceiving the universal lies the root of our freedom. ButGod possesses aninfallibleknowledge of man's future actions. How is this prevision possible, if man's future acts are notnecessary?God does not exist in time. The future and the past are alike ever present to the eternal mind as a man gazing down from a lofty mountain takes in at one momentary glance all the objects which can be apprehended only through a lengthy series of successive experiences by travellers along the winding road beneath, in somewhat similar fashion theintuitivevision of God apprehends simultaneously what is future to us with all it contains. Further,God's omnipotent providence exercises a complete and perfect control over all events that happen, or will happen, in theuniverse. How is this secured without infringement of man's freedom? Here is the problem which two distinguishedschools in theChurch--both claiming to represent the teaching, or at any rate thelogical development of the teaching ofSt. Thomas--attempt to solve in different ways. Theheresies ofLuther andCalvin brought the issue to a finer point than it had reached in the time ofAquinas, consequently he had not formally dealt with it in its ultimate shape, and each of the twoschools can cite texts from the works of theAngelic Doctor in which he appears to incline towards their particular view.
TheDominican orThomist solution, as it is called, teaches in brief thatGod premoves each man in all his acts to the line of conduct which he subsequently adopts. It holds that this premotivedecree inclines man's will with absolutecertainty to the side decreed, but thatGod adapts this premotion to the nature of the being thus premoved. It argues that asGod possessesinfinite power He caninfallibly premove man--who is by nature a free cause--to choose a particular course freely, whilst He premoves the lower animals in harmony with their natures to adopt particular courses by necessity. Further, this premotivedecree being inevitable though adapted to suit the free nature of man, provides a medium in whichGod foresees withcertainty the future free choice of the human being. The premotivedecree is thus prior in order of thought to the Divine cognition of man's future actions.Theologians andphilosophers of theJesuit School, frequently styledMolinists, though they do not accept the whole of Molina's teaching and generally prefer Francisco Suárez's exposition of the theory, deem the above solution unsatisfactory. It would, they readily admit, provide sufficiently for theinfallibility of the Divine foreknowledge and also forGod's providential control of the world's history; but, in their view, it fails to give at the same time an adequately intelligible account of the freedom of the human will. According to them, the relation of the Divine action to man's will should be conceived rather as of a concurrent than of a premotive character; and they maintain thatGod'sknowledge of what a free being would choose, if thenecessary conditions were supplied, must be deemedlogically prior to anydecree of concurrence or premotion in respect to that act of choice. Briefly, they make a threefold distinction inGod'sknowledge of theuniverse based on the nature of the objects known--the Divineknowledge being in itself of course absolutely simple. Objects or events viewed merely as possible,God is said to apprehend by simple intelligence(simplex intelligentia). Events which will happen He knows by vision(scientia visionis). Intermediate between these are conditionally future events--things which would occur were certain conditions fulfilled.God'sknowledge of this class of contingencies they termscientia media. For instance Christ affirmed that, if certainmiracles had been wrought inTyre and Sidon, the inhabitants would have been converted. The condition was not realized, yet the statement of Christ must have beentrue. About all such conditional contingencies propositions may be framed which are eithertrue orfalse--and Infinite Intelligence mustknow alltruth. The conditions in many cases will not be realized, soGod mustknow them apart from any decrees determining their realization. He knows them therefore, thisschool holds,in seipsis, in themselves as conditionally future events. Thisknowledge is thescientia media, "middle knowledge", intermediate between vision of the actual future and simple understanding of the merely possible. Acting now in the light of thisscientia media with respect to human volitions,God freely decides according to His own wisdom whether He shall supply the requisite conditions, including His co-operation in the action, or abstain from so doing, and thus render possible or prevent the realization of the event. In other words, theinfinite intelligence ofGod sees clearly what would happen in any conceivable circumstances. He thus knows what the free will of any creature would choose, if supplied with the power of volition or choice and placed in any given circumstances. He now decrees to supply the needed conditions, including Hiscorcursus, or to abstain from so doing. He thus holds complete dominion and control over our future free actions, as well as over those of anecessary character. TheMolinist then claims to safeguard better man's freedom by substituting for thedecree of an inflexible premotion one of concurrence dependent onGod's priorknowledge of what the free being would choose. If given the power to exert the choice. He argues that he exemptsGod more clearly from all responsibility for man'ssins. The claim seems to the present writer well founded; at the same time it is only fair to record on the other side that theThomist urges with considerable force thatGod's prescience is not so understandable in this, as in his theory. He maintains, too, thatGod's exercise of His absolute dominion over all man's acts and man's entire dependence onGod's goodwill are more impressively and more worthily exhibited in the premotion hypothesis. The reader will find an exhaustive treatment of the question in any of theScholastic textbooks on the subject.
A leading feature in the teaching of theReformers of the sixteenth century, especially in the case ofLuther andCalvin, was the denial of free will. Picking out from the Scriptures, and particularly fromSt. Paul, the texts which emphasized the importance and efficacy of grace, the all-rulingprovidence of God, His decrees of election orpredestination, and the feebleness of man, they drew the conclusion that the human will, instead of being master of its own acts, is rigidly predetermined in all its choices throughout life. As a consequence, man ispredestined before his birth to eternal punishment or reward in such fashion that he never can have had any real free-power over his own fate. In his controversy withErasmus, who defended free will,Luther frankly stated that free will is a fiction, a name which covers no reality, for it is not inman's power to think well or ill, since all events occur by necessity. In reply toErasmus's "De Libero Arbitrio", he published his own work, "De Servo Arbitrio", glorying in emphasizing man's helplessness and slavery. Thepredestination of all futurehuman acts byGod is so interpreted as to shut out any possibility of freedom. An inflexible internal necessity turns man's will whithersoeverGod preordains. WithCalvin,God's preordination is, if possible, even more fatal to free will. Man can perform no sort of good act unless necessitated to it byGod's grace which it is impossible for him to resist. It is absurd to speak of the human will "co-operating" withGod's grace, for this would imply that man could resist thegrace of God. Thewill of God is the very necessity of things. It is objected that in this caseGod sometimes imposes impossible commands. BothCalvin andLuther reply that thecommands of God show us not what we can do but what we ought to do. In condemnation of these views, theCouncil of Trent declared that the free will of man, moved and excited byGod, can by its consent co-operate withGod, Who excites and invites its action; and that it can thereby dispose and prepare itself to obtain the grace of justification. The will can resist grace if it chooses. It is not like a lifeless thing, which remains purely passive. Weakened and diminished by Adam's fall, free will is yet not destroyed in the race (Sess. VI, cap. i and v).
Although fromDescartes onward, philosophy became more and more separated fromtheology, still thetheological significance of this particular question has always been felt to be of the highest moment.Descartes himself at times clearly maintains the freedom of the will (Meditations, III and IV). At times, however, he attenuates this view and leans towards a species of providential determinism, which is, indeed, thelogical consequence of the doctrines ofoccasionalism and the inefficacy of secondary causes latent in his system.
Malebranche developed this feature ofDescartes's teaching. Soul and body cannot really act on each other. The changes in the one are directly caused byGod on the occasion of the corresponding change in the other. So-called secondary causes are not really efficacious. Only the First Cause truly acts. If this view be consistently thought out, thesoul, since it possesses no genuinecausality, cannot be justly said to be free in its volitions. Still, as aCatholictheologian,Malebranche could not accept this fatalistic determinism. Accordingly he defended freedom as essential to religion and morality. Human liberty being denied,God should be deemed cruel andunjust, whilstduty and responsibility for man cease to exist. We must therefore be free.Spinoza was morelogical. Starting from certain principles ofDescartes, hededuced in mathematical fashion an iron-boundpantheistic fatalism which left no room for contingency in theuniverse and still less for free will. InLeibniz, the prominence given to the principle of sufficient reason, thedoctrine that man must choose that which theintellect judges as the better, and the optimistic theory thatGod Himself has inevitably chosen the present as being the best of all possible worlds, these views, whenlogically reasoned out, leave very little reality to free will, though Leibniz set himself in marked opposition to themonistic geometrical necessarianism ofSpinoza.
InEngland the mechanical materialism of Hobbes was incompatible with moral liberty, and he accepted with cynical frankness all thelogical consequences of his theory. Our actions either follow the firstappetite that arises in the mind, or there is a series of alternateappetites and fears, which we call deliberation. The lastappetite or fear, that which triumphs, we call will. The only intelligible freedom is the power to do what one desires. Here Hobbes is practically at one with Locke.God is the author of all causes and effects, but is not the author ofsin, because an action ceases to besin ifGod wills it to happen. StillGod is the cause ofsin. Praise and blame, rewards and punishments cannot be called useless, because they strengthen motives, which are the causes of action. This, however, does not meet the objection to thejustice of such blame or praise, if theperson has not the power to abstain from or perform the actions thus punished or rewarded. Hume reinforced the determinist attack on free will by his suggestedpsychological analysis of the notion or feeling of "necessity". The controversy, according to him, has been due to misconception of the meaning of words and theerror that the alternative to free will is necessity. This necessity, he says, iserroneously ascribed to some kind of internal nexus supposed to bind all causes to their effects, whereas there is really nothing more incausality than constant succession. The imagined necessity is merely a product of custom orassociation of ideas. Not feeling in our acts of choice this necessity, which we attribute to thecausation of material agents, we mistakenly imagine that our volitions have no causes and so are free, whereas they are as strictly determined by the feelings or motives which have gone before, as any material effects are determined by their material antecedents. In all our reasonings respecting otherpersons, we infer their future conduct from their wonted action under particular motives with the same sort ofcertainty as in the case of physicalcausation.
The same line of argument was adopted by the Associationist School down to Bain and J. S. Mill. For the necessity of Hobbes orSpinoza is substituted by their descendants what Professor James calls a "soft determinism", affirming solely the invariable succession of volition upon motive. J. S. Mill merely developed with greater clearness and fuller detail the principles of Hume. In particular, he attacked the notion of "constraint" suggested in the words necessity and necessarianism, whereas only sequence is affirmed. Given a perfectknowledge of character and motives, we couldinfallibly predict action. The alleged consciousness of freedom is disputed. We merely feel that we choose, not that we could choose the opposite. Moreover the notion of free will is unintelligible. Thetruth is that for the Sensationalist School, who believe the mind to be merely a series ofmental states, free will is an absurdity. On the other side, Reid, and Stewart, and Hamilton, of the Scotch School, with Mansel, Martineau, W.J. Ward, and other Spiritualist thinkers of Great Britain, energetically defended free will against the disciples of Hume. They maintained that a more careful analysis of volition justified the argument from consciousness, that the universal conviction ofmankind on such a fact may not be set aside as an illusion, that morality cannot be founded on an act of self-deception; that all languages contain terms involving the notion of free will and alllaws assume its existence, and that the attempt to render necessarianism less objectionable by calling it determinism does not diminish the fatalism involved in it.
Thetruth that phenomenalismlogically involvesdeterminism is strikingly illustrated inKant's treatment of the question. His well-known division of all reality into phenomena and noumena is his key to this problem also. The world as it appears to us, the world of phenomena, including our own actions andmental states, can only be conceived under the form of time and subject to the category ofcausality, and therefore everything in the world of experience happens altogether according to thelaws of nature; that is, all our actions are rigidly determined. But, on the other hand, freedom is anecessary postulate of morality: "Thou canst, because thou oughtest." The solution of the antinomy is that the determinism concerns only the empirical or phenomenal world. There is no ground for denying liberty to theDing an sich. We maybelieve intranscendental freedom, that we are noumenally free. Since, moreover, thebelief that I am free and that I am a free cause, is the foundation stone of religion and morality, I mustbelieve in this postulate.Kant thus gets over the antinomy by confining freedom to the world of noumena, which lie outside the form of time and the category ofcausality, whilst he affirms necessity of the sensible world, bound by the chain ofcausality. Apart from the general objection toKant's system, a grave difficulty here lies in the fact that all man's conduct--his whole moral life as it is revealed in actual experience either to others or himself--pertains in this view to the phenomenal world and so is rigidly determined.
Though much acutephilosophical andpsychological analysis has been brought to bear on the problem during the last century, it cannot be said that any great additional light has been shed over it. InGermany, Schopenhauer made will the noumenal basis of the world and adopted a pessimistic theory of theuniverse, denying free will to be justified by either ethics orpsychology. On the other hand, Lotze, in many respects perhaps the acutest thinker inGermany sinceKant, was an energetic defender of moral liberty. Among recentpsychologists in America Professors James and Ladd are both advocates of freedom, though laying more stress for positiveproof on theethical than on thepsychological evidence.
As the main features of thedoctrine of free will have been sketched in the history of the problem, a very brief account of the argument for moral freedom will now suffice. Will viewed as a free power is defined by defenders of free will as the capacity of self-determination. Byself is here understood not a single presentmental state (James), nor a series ofmental states (Hume and Mill), but an abiding rational being which is the subject and cause of these states. We should distinguish between:
In such, there is a self-conscious advertence to our owncausality or an awareness that we are choosing the act, or acquiescing in the desire of it. Spontaneous acts and desires are opposed to coaction or external compulsion, but they are not thereby morally free acts. They may still be thenecessary outcome of the nature of the agent as, e.g. the actions of lower animals, of the insane, of young children, and many impulsive acts of mature life. The essential feature in free volition is the element of choice--thevis electiva, asSt. Thomas calls it. There is a concomitant interrogative awareness in the form of the query "shall I acquiesce or shall I resist? Shall I do it or something else?", and the consequent acceptance or refusal, ratification or rejection, though either may be of varying degrees of completeness. It is this act of consent or approval, which converts a mere involuntary impulse or desire into a free volition and makes me accountable for it. A train of thought or volition deliberately initiated or acquiesced in, but afterward continued merely spontaneously without reflective advertence to our elective adoption of it, remains freein causa, and I am therefore responsible for it, though actually the process has passed into the department of merely spontaneous or automatic activity. A large part of the operation of carrying out a resolution, once the decision is made, is commonly of this kind. The question of free will may now be stated thus. "Given all the conditions requisite for eliciting an act of will except the act itself, does the act necessarily follow?" Or, "Are all my volitions the inevitable outcome of my character and the motives acting on me at the time?"Fatalists, necessarians, determinists say "Yes". Libertarians, indeterminists or anti-determinists say "No. The mind orsoul in deliberate actions is a free cause. Given all the conditions requisite for action, it can either act or abstain from action. It can, and sometimes does, exercise its owncausality against the weight of character and present motives.
The evidence usually adduced at the present day is of two kinds, ethical andpsychological--though even the ethical argument is itselfpsychological.
It is argued that necessarianism or determinism in any form is in conflict with the chief moral notions and convictions ofmankind at large. The actual universality of such moralideas is indisputable. Duty, moralobligation, responsibility, merit,justice signify notions universally present in the consciousness of normally developed men. Further, these notions, as universally understood, imply that man is really master of some of his acts, that he is, at least at times, capable of self-determination, that all his volitions are not the inevitable outcome of his circumstances. When I say that I ought not to have performed some forbidden act, that it was myduty to obey thelaw, I imply that I could have done so. The judgment of all men is the same on this point. When we say that aperson is justly held responsible for a crime, or that he deserves praise or reward for an heroic act of self-sacrifice, we mean that he was author and cause of that act in such fashion that he had it in his power not to perform the act. We exempt the insane or the child, because we believe them devoid of moral freedom and determined inevitably by the motives which happened to act on them. Sotrue is this, that determinists have had to admit that the meaning of these terms will, according to their view, have to be changed. But this is to admit that their theory is in direct conflict with universalpsychological facts. It thereby stands disproved. Again, it may be urged that, iflogically followed out, the deterministdoctrine would annihilate human morality, consequently that such a theory cannot betrue. (SeeFATALISM.)
Consciousness testifies to our moral freedom. We feel ourselves to be free when exercising certain acts. We judge afterwards that we acted freely in those acts. We distinguish them quite clearly from experiences, in which we believe we were not free or responsible. The conviction is not confined to theignorant; even the deterministpsychologist is governed in practical life by thisbelief. Henry Sidgwick states the fact in the most moderate terms, when he says:
Certainly in the case of actions in which I have a distinct consciousness of choosing between alternatives of conduct, one of which I conceive as right or reasonable, I find it impossible not to think that I can now choose to do what I so conceive, however strong may be my inclination to act unreasonably, and however uniformly I may have yielded to such inclinations in the past (Methods of Ethics).
The force of the evidence is best realized by carefully studying the variousmental activities in which freedom is exercised. Amongst the chief of these are:voluntary attention, deliberation, choice, sustained resistance to temptation. The reader will find them analyzed at length by the authors referred to at the end of this article; or, better still, he can think them out with concrete examples in his own inner experience.
The main objection to this argument is stated in the assertion that we can be conscious only of what we actually do, not of our ability to do something else. The reply is that we can be conscious not only of what we do, but of how we do it; not only of the act but of the mode of the act. Observation reveals to us that we are subjects of different kinds of processes of thought and volition. Sometimes the line of conscious activity follows the direction of spontaneous impulse, the preponderating force of present motive and desire; at other times we intervene and exert personalcausality. Consciousness testifies that we freely and actively strengthen one set of motives, resist the stronger inclination, and not only drift to one side but actively choose it. In fact, we are sure that we sometimes exert free volition, because at other times we are the subject of conscious activities that arenot free, and weknow the difference. Again, it is urged that experience shows that men are determined by motives, and that we always act on this assumption. The reply is that experience proves that men are influenced by motives, but not that they are always inexorably determined by the strongest motive. It as alleged that we always decide in favour of the strongest motive. This is eitheruntrue, or the barren statement that we always choose what we choose. A free volition is "a causeless volition". The mind itself is the cause. (For other objections seeFATALISM; THE LAW OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY; and the works referred to at the end of this article.)
Free will does not mean capability of willing in the absence of all motive, or of arbitrarily choosing anything whatever. The rational being is always attracted by what is apprehended as good. Pureevil, misery as such, man could not desire. However, the good presents itself in many forms and under many aspects--the pleasant, the prudent, the right, the noble, the beautiful--and in reflective or deliberate action we can choose among these. The clearvision of God would necessarily preclude all volition at variance with this object, but in this world we never apprehend Infinite Good. Nor does thedoctrine of free will imply that man is constantly exerting this power at every waking moment, any more than the statement that he is a "rational" animal implies that he is always reasoning. Much the larger part of man's ordinary life is administered by the machinery of reflex action, the automatic working of the organism, and acquired habits. In the series of customary acts which fill up our day, such as rising, meals, study, work, etc., probably the large majority are merely "spontaneous" and are proximately determined by their antecedents, according to the combined force of character and motive. There is nothing to arouse special volition, or call for interference with the natural current, so the stream of consciousness flows smoothly along the channel of least resistance. For such series of acts we are responsible, as was before indicated, not because we exert deliberate volition at each step, but because they are freein causa, because we have either freely initiated them, or approved them from time to time when we adverted to theirethical quality, or because we freely acquired the habits which now accomplish these acts. It is especially when some act of a specially moral complexion is recognized asgood orevil that the exertion of our freedom is brought into play. With reflective advertence to the moral quality comes the apprehension that we are called on to decide between right and wrong; then the consciousness that we are choosing freely, which carries with it the subsequent conviction that the act was in the strictest sense our own, and that we are responsible for it.
Our moral freedom, like othermental powers, is strengthened by exercise. The practice of yielding to impulse results in enfeebling self-control. The faculty of inhibiting pressing desires, of concentrating attention on more remote goods, of reinforcing the higher but less urgent motives, undergoes a kind of atrophy by disuse. In proportion as a man habitually yields to intemperance or some other vice, his freedom diminishes and he does in atrue sense sink into slavery. He continues responsiblein causa for his subsequent conduct, though his ability to resist temptation at the time is lessened. On the other hand, the more frequently a man restrains mere impulse, checks inclination towards the pleasant, puts forth self-denial in the face of temptation, and steadily aims at a virtuous life, the more does he increase in self-command and therefore in freedom. The wholedoctrine ofChristian asceticism thus makes for developing and fostering moral liberty, the noblest attribute of man. William James's sound maxim: "Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day", so that your will may be strong to stand the pressure of violent temptation when it comes, is the verdict of the most modernpsychology in favour of the discipline of theCatholicChurch.
The literature of the free-will controversy is enormous, nearly all the leading philosophers having dealt with the problem. Perhaps the best general historical treatment of all the branches of the question--fatalism, predestination, necessarianism, determinism--is to be found in FONSEGRIVE,Essai sur le libre arbitre (2nd ed., Paris, 1896). See also ALEXANDER,Theories of the Will (New York, 1884); JANET AND SEAILLES,History of Problems of Philosophy (tr. New York and London, 1902).
APA citation.Maher, M.(1909).Free Will. InThe Catholic Encyclopedia.New York: Robert Appleton Company.http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06259a.htm
MLA citation.Maher, Michael."Free Will."The Catholic Encyclopedia.Vol. 6.New York: Robert Appleton Company,1909.<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06259a.htm>.
Transcription.This article was transcribed for New Advent by Rick McCarty.
Ecclesiastical approbation.Nihil Obstat. September 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor.Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.
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