DR. WARD ON FREE-WILL.*
IT is one of the striking characteristics of the favourite psy- chology of the day, that it does not merely deny the old philo- sophical assumptions on which the true ideal of man and the belief in God depend, but is very apt to pass them by as assumptions which are simply unintelligible, and which cannot really be treated as bond fide assumptions at all. Thus in Dr. Bain's reply to Dr. Ward's former paper on "Free-will and Deter- minismi" in the Dublin Review, Dr. Bain asserts that Free-will, if it existed, would be " a mysterious uncertainty that baffles all prediction ;" that its acts would be a series of " caprices ;" that it would be " a power that comes from nothing, has no beginning, follows no rule, respects no known time or occasion, operates without impartiality,"—that it is " an influence that we can take no account of; that we do not know how to conciliate or to appease ; an inscrutable fate, realising all the worst results that have ever been attributed to the sternest deliverances of the necessitarian and the fatalist." Of course, what that means is not merely that the assumption of human freedom is false, but that it is inconceivable ; that it involves the thinker who makes it in all sorts of embarrass- ments, which really prove not so much that he has got hold of a false idea, as that he has not got hold of an idea at all ; that he is simply floundering about in the tangle of his own con- fusions, and soon proves to have been assuming just the oppo- site of what he supposed that he had assumed. Dr. Ward is naturally puzzled what to reply to assertions so " wild," and powerfully as he deals with the positive and substantial part of his subject, as we shall presently show, he hardly • The Dublin Review, for April, 1879. Article U., " By Dr. W. G. Ward. London: Burns end Oatse. makes any reply to these wild assertions at all, except to point out how inexact they are. Yet something further might, we think, be said in reply to this strange identification of free-will with " caprice." The true criticism ion such assertions is that Determinists and Indeterminists, as such, are not at issue at all as to the reasonableness or unreason- ableness of voluntary actions, but only as to the source of the power by which the action is determined. A Determinist is quite as much at liberty as an Indeterminist to ascribe an action which the doer had no power to prevent, to that doer's own caprice, though of course the Determinist must admit that that caprice was itself determined. An Indeterminist is quite as much at liberty as a Determinist to ascribe an action which he be- lieves the doer had full power to prevent, to a sound reason. The question of caprice or sound reason is not the critical question at all. Undoubtedly, many an action which the doer had no power to prevent, has been due to some capricious or fickle fascination which the idea of acting in this way had for the agent, and which carried him off his legs, as it were, and made him do what was irrational, and what he would not approve. So, too, many an action which the agent had full power to prevent is done from the best and wisest reason, —not that, if the action be really free, the reason exerted such -a fascination over the mind as in itself to determine the action, but that the mind, seeing what was rational, and deter- mining itself to do what was rational, supplied from its own stores the force which the mere intrinsic fascination of the reason, —if indeed it exerted any such fascination, — had failed to provide. The Determinist and Indeterminist differ only in this : that the former insists that if you do a thing because you think it reasonable, the reasonableness really con- strains you to do it,—and supplies the force which produces the action, as well as the rule which guides it. On the contrary, the Indeterminist asserts that whereas many highly rational actions have no attraction in themselves at all,—whereas the good reasons for doing them look as blank and uninteresting as if they were not reasons at all but pure irrelevancies,—yet the mind can, by its own resources, provide the force which determines these actions,—can compel itself to do, because it is rational, a deed. of which the mere recognised rationality would have no exciting influence on it at all. The Determinist is com- pelled to assume, against all the evidence of self-knowledge, that whenever we defer to reason, the desire to act reason- ably overcomes the will. The Indeterminist replies that he is often wholly unconscious of any such desire ; that the force which constrains him to act reasonably is often not a desire at all,—is, on the contrary, frequently produced for the occasion out of himself ; and that though he conforms to reason, he is no more moved by a desire to be rational, than the ship is moved by the compass, instead of by wind or steam. Reason may show us what to do, without helping us to do it. That is for the self - -determining power of the soul itself to effect. But the Determinist has to believe that whenever we succeed in acting rationally in op- position to irrational desires, it is because the desire to act ration- ally was, after all, stronger than the desire'to act otherwise,—an -assumption which most men know to be frequently quite contrary to the fact. The notion that because the final character of the action is not caused by the long train of previous antecedents, it must be in any sense capricious, is an absurd one. Capricious actions are actions not rationally guided, whether the force which produces them be involuntary and due to unregulated desires, or voluntary and furnished by the combined effort of both desires and will. What the Determinists and the Indeterminists really differ about may be put thus :—The Indeterminists think that in many cases you cannot go behind the answer to the questions—who re- solved on this, and why was it resolved on ? The Determinists think you can always state a still more fundamental question- -and one which admits of an answer, even if you cannot answer it —namely, what was it which compelled the agent in question to take the resolve which he ultimately did take ? And this the Indeterminists—rightly, as we think—deny.
It has been Dr. Ward's great merit, in the able and striking articles on Determinism and Indeterminism which he has con- tributed to the Dublin Review, to bring out the very core of the controversy, by denominating all the various attractions—the in- voluntary motives, inward and outward, which act on the agent, and which, if yielded to, would determine his action in some particular line of direction, that course being the resultant of these various impressions,—as the practical impulse of the moment, and then demanding whether we are not often conscious of dis-
tinctly putting forth out of our own selves a counteracting force, which he calls an " anti-impulsive effort." He brings out this distinction with great vividness, in the following striking passage :-
" Let it be distinctly observed that we rest our case, not on the mere fact of an agent putting forth effort of the will, however intense; but anti-impulsive effort. Here, again, we drew our illustration from some gallant soldier. Such a man will very often put forth intense effort; brave appalling perils ; confront the risk of an agonising death. But to what end is this effort directed P He puts it forth, in order that he may act in full accordance with his preponderating spontaneous impulse ; in order that he may achieve what is his strongest present desire; in order that he may defend his country, overcome his coimtry's foe, obtain fame and distinction, gratify his military ardour, &c.' Such efforts as these—efforts directed to the gratification of a man's strongest present desire—we called con- genial' efforts ; and undoubtedly the fact of such efforts being fre- quently put forth affords no argument whatever against Determinism. These efforts may be not less intense—they may (if you will) be in- definitely more intense—than those which we commemorated in the preceding case. The two classes of effort mutually differ, not in degree, but in kind. As regards our present argument, their differ- ence is fundamental : that difference being, that congenial' efforts are in accordance with the agent's strongest present desire, whereas anti-impulsive' efforts are in opposition to it. And we may be permitted perhaps to point the contrast more emphatically, by in- troducing what may in some sense be called a theological con- sideration; though in truth the fact to which we refer is an observed fact of experience, like any other. What soldier then could be found who would bear insult, contumely, and contempt with perfect patience, unless he were supported by earnest and unfaltering prayer ? But certainly with a very large number there is no need of earnest and unfaltering prayer, in order to heroic action in the field. There have been not so very few warriors of truly amazing intrepidity, who have not exactly been men of prayer. So essentially different in kind are the two classes of effort. There is a very familiar use of language, which will throw still further light on the point before us. What we have called anti-impulsive effort,' is continually spoken of in un- scientific language as self-control' or self-restraint.' Take the pious soldier who receives a stinging insult and bears it patiently : what is most remarkable in his conduct is his 'self-restraint.' But no one would commemorate the 'self-restraint' of one who should be so carried away (breathlessly, as it were) by military ardour, by desire of victory, by zeal for his country's cause, by a certain savage aggressiveness, which is partly natural and partly due to past habit— who should be so carried away (we repeat) by these and similar im- pulses, that (under their influence) he faces appalling danger without so much as a moment's deliberation or reflection."
And in a subsequent part of the article, Dr. Ward, using the same illustration, draws a still more striking contrast between the resultant impulse of any man's nature, and the anti-impul- sive effort with which he strives to counteract that impulse, in relation to the sort of causation,—the causation of blind and involuntary causes, or the causation of conscious and voluntary causes—in which they originate:— "Let us take the particular case to which we have so often re- ferred. I have just received some stinging insult ; and I am at this moment conscious of two entirely different psychical phenomena, which irresistibly force themselves on my attention. One of these is my preponderating spontaneous impulse, which powerfully prompts me to plans of retaliation. The other phenomenon is my firm and unfaltering resistance to that impulse. The two phenomena continue in mutual company for a considerable period ; and we are now to oonsider the proximate cause of each. Now, as to the former, we are in one most important respect altogether accordant with the Determinists. We hold, as they do, that, by the very constitution of my nature, my preponderating spontaneous impulse follows, by in- fallible and inevitable consequence, from antecedent phenomena ; that it is most strictly determined by the law of prevenance" [i.e., invariable antecedence and consequence]. "It results, therefore, from our principles, that the proximate causes of this preponderating spontaneous impulse,—viz., my soul and my body,—are here acting as ' blind' causes. But now as to the ac- companying phenomenon, my resistance to this impulse,—what is its proximate cause ? Its proximate cause is manifestly my soul. For we heartily follow Mr. Lucas (the Month, Febrnary,1878, p. 244) in holding that no one in these days need concern himself to maintain, in scholastic language, a real distinction between the soul and its faculties.' But in this case does my soul act as a blind' cause ? Most certainly not. A blind cause is necessitated to act according to the law of phenomenal prevenance ; whereas we trust we have abundantly shown, both in our articles of 1874 and in the earlier part of our pre- sent paper, that the law of prevenance issues in my preponderating spontaneous impulse, and by no means in my active resistance to that impulse. My soul, then, in producing a psychical phenomenon of this latter kind, acts as an 'originative' cause : it acts in virtue of a power (which it is thereby shown, within certain limits, to possess) of choosing an alternative. As a blind cause, it is co- operating with my body in producing its own preponderating spontaneous impulse ; and at the same moment, as an originative cause, it is effecting its own free resistance to that impulse. And here we would earnestly press on our reader's notice a fact of extreme importance, which (we are confident) will be admitted as certain by every one who fairly examines what takes place in his awn mind. Consider those various periods of time during which I am occupied in vigorously resisting certain solicitations—e.g., to revenge- fulness—which intensely beset me. It is a matter of direct, un-
mistakable, clamorous consciousness, that during those periods it is my own soul and no external agency which is putting forth active and sustained anti-impulsive effort. Nor, indeed, is this remark less applicable to all cases of anti-impulsive effort ; though, of course, where the effort is less vigorous, the consciousness of which we speak is less obtrusive."
These passages speak for themselves. Until the arguments which they contain are met by the exponents of the prevailing school of philosophy, instead of being evaded,—as Dr. Bain evades them,—that school cannot pretend that it really fights its battles on psychological ground. The truth really is that it borrows from the study of external nature so very strong a prepossession, which it imports into this controversy, that it has never really fought out the battle in modern times on strictly psychological ground at all. The new Determinists are usually; careful physiologists, and carry the prepos- sessions peculiar to their favourite science, almost without sifting, into the new province. For such writers, the careful study of these admirable essays of Dr. Ward's would be the most useful of disciplines.
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