The ground assumed on this vexed question by Sir William Hamilton and Mansell is that liberty and ne- cessity are both incomprehensible, both being beyond the limits of legitimate thought ; that they are among those questions which admit of no certain answer, the very inabiUty to answer them proving that dogmatic decisions on either side are the decisions of ignorance, not of knowledge. '■' Iloin the wiU can possibly be free," says Hamilton, " must remain to us, under the present limitation of our faculties, wholly incomprehen- sible. We are unable to conceive an absolute com- mencement ; we cannot, therefore, conceive a free voli- tion. A determination by motives cannot, to our under- standing, escape from necessitation — nay, were we even to admit as true what we cannot think as possible, still the doctrine of a motiveless volition would be only cas- ualistic, and the free acts of an indift'ercnt are morally and rationally as worthless as the fore-ordained passions of a determined will. How, therefore, I repeat, moral liberty is possible in man or God we are utterly unable speculatively to understand. But practically the fact
LIBERTY
420
LIBNAH
that vrc are free is given to us in the consciousness of our moral accountability ; and this fact of liberty cannot l)e riarnucd on the ground that it is incomprehensible, for I lie philosophy of the conditions proves, against the necessitarian, that things there are which mat/, nay, must be true, of which the understanding is wholly un- able to construe to itself the possibility. But this phi- losophy is not only competent to defend the fact of our moral liberty, possible, though inconceivable, against the assault of the fatalist; it retorts against himself the very objection of inconceivability by which the fatalist had thought to triumph over the libertarian. It shows tliat the scheme of freedom is not more inconceivable than the scheme of necessity; for, whilst fatalism is a recoil from the more obtrusive inconceivability of an absolute commencement, on the fact of which commence- ment the doctrine of liberty proceeds, the fatalist is shown to overlook the equal but less obtrusive incon- ceivability of an infinite non-commencement, on the as- sertion of which non-commencement his own doctrine of necessity must ultimately rest. As equally unthink- able, the two counter, the two one-sided schemes, are thus theoretically balanced." Sir William, however, as it seems to us, in this extract does not closely adhere to the conditions of the problem. According to his own admission, it is not the fact of a self-de- termining power in the will that is "inconceivable," but only the mode (the how) of its exercise. This, like many other well-known processes, is a mystery. Again, it is not claimed that the wiU acts icithout motive, but only that it is not conti-olled by external motive; that it has the power of itself choosing what motive shall be strongest with it, irrespective of the intrinsic force of that motive. It is this distinction that preserves — as no other can — the truly moral character of the agent.
'•The endless controversy concerning predestination and free-willj" says Mansell, " whether viewed in its speculative or in its moral aspect, is but another exam- ple of the hardihood of human ignorance. The ques- tion has its philosophical as well as its theological as- pect : it has no difficulties peculiar to itself; it is but a special form of the fundamental mystery of the co-ex- istence of the infinite and the finite." " The vexed question of liberty and necessity, whose counter argu- ments become a by-word for endless and improfitable wrangling, is but one of a large class of problems, some of wliich meet us at every turn of our daily life and conduct, whenever we attempt to justify in theory that which we are compelled to carry out in (iractice. Such problems arise inevitably whenever we attempt to pass from the sensible to the intelligible world, from the sphere of action to that of thought, from that which appears to us to that which is in itself. In religion, in morids, in our daily business, in the care of our lives, in the exercise of our senses, the rules which guide our practice cannot be reduced to principles which satisfy our reason." Those theologians, on the other hand, who deny that the divine predestination extends to the individual acts of men in general, think that they thits more effectually obviate tlie whole difficulty. In the divine furekuowledge of all human actions they admit the nrtdinty of their occurrence, but find no causative power, such as seems to enter essentially into the prede- terminations of an Almighty will. As to the argument that such foreknowledge rests upon, and therefore im- plies fore-ordination, they coiUend that this is a reversal of the true order (comj). l!om. viii, 29), and that God's jirescience is a simple knowing belbrehand by his pe- culiar power of intuition, not any conclusion or infer- ence from what he may or may not determine. Sec Prescience.
See Hobbes's treatise Of Liberty and Necessity ; also his Opinion about Liberty and Necessity ; also Questions concernimf Liberty, Necessity, (Did Chance clearly stated and <)(bated between Dr. Jiramhall and Thomas Jlobbes ; Leibnitz's Lssai-s de Theodicee, a collection of jiapers which passed between Mr. Leibnitz and Dr. Clarke;
Collins's Philosophical Inquiry conceminy Human Lib- erty ; Clarke's Remarks upon a Book entitled ".1 Philo- sophicul Liquiry concerning Human Liberty ;' Edwards's Inquiry into tlie Freedom of the Will; Essay on the Ge- nius and Writings of Edwards, prefixed to the London ' edition of his works, 1834, by H. Kogers ; J. Taylor's introduction to his edition of Edwards On the Will; Hartley's Observatiotis on Man ; Bchham's Elements of the Philosophy of the Mind ; Cousin's Elements of Psy- chology (Prof. Henr}''s translation) ; Sir William Ham- ilton's Philosophy, and Lectures on Metaphysics ; ]\Ian- sell's Limits of Religious Thought ; Herbert Spencer's First Principles ; Stewart's Philosophy of the A ctive and Moral Poicers of Man; Tappan's Pevieiv of Edwards's Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will; MilX.s System of Logic; Jouffroy's Introduction to Ethics; Elakey's His- tory of the Philosophy of Miiul; Hazard, On the Will; Bledsoe, On the Will; Whedon, On the Will. See Ne- CESSITAIUANS. (E. de P.)