THE EXTENT OF FREE-WILL.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I have to thank you for the very courteous tone of your comment on may article in the current number of the Dublin Review concerning " The Extent of Free-will." But since you profess yourself unable " to know precisely what I mean in that article," and since, in fact, you ascribe to me throughout a meaning entirely different from what I intended, I hope you will not consider me unreasonable in asking you to insert a few words" of explanation.
Your whole misapprehension concerns the sense in which I use the word " free." You give me a choice among various possible significations of the word. When I say that a man is " free " at some given moment, do I mean that " he is free to do whatever he knows to be the rightest thing ?" or "free to do all which he sees to be right ? " or "free to act with as much efficacy and effectiveness" as that which a more virtuous man would dis- play?
I assure you I mean nothing of the kind. My article is avowedly a continuation of previous articles on Free-will ; and in those articles I explained, with (I really think) unexceptionable clearness, what I denote by the term "free." That term refers, primarily, of course, to the internal acts of the will itself. And I say that every such act is "free " when it is not infallibly- and inevitably determined by the agent's existing circumstances,. whether external or internal ; but when, on the contrary, he has full, proximate power of choice between the performing it and the (in any shape) abstaining from its performance. So in this very article," I cannot be free at this moment in eliciting any given act, unless I have a proximate power at this moment either to do it or abstain from doing it." Again, whenever I am free, I have " true, proximate choice—whatever I am about at the moment—between continuing to do it, and abstaining there- from."
I agree substantially—though not, perhaps, in every par- ticular—with the doctrine of your article ; and I think the question you have raised is one of very great importance, both speculative and practical. I only protest that it is not a question on which I have touched in the article you criticise.—I am,.
Sir, &e.,
W. E. WARD.
P.S.—On reflection, I fear that one sentence in the above may be misunderstood. All Catholics hold firmly that no onto is ever necessitated to commit what he knows and remembers to be mortal sin, but that he has always access to divine aids sufficient for its avoidance. Even this, however (I mast main- tain), is quite external to anything which I have said in my article.
[We are sorry for our misunderstanding, but we are stilt unable to reconcile Dr. Ward's doctrine on page 77 of his pamphlet, that a man's bad actions cannot cease to be guilty, —must, even as we understand his drift, become more guilty,— as he falls lower and lower, with any form of our doctrine, that even the power to act rightly in future in relation to any given temptation, is positively and steadily diminished by habitually yielding to it, and finally ceases altogether.—En. Spectator.]
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