EVER since men have reasoned, the philosophers have obscured
this matter: but the theologians have rendered it unintelligible
by absurd subtleties about grace. Locke is perhaps the first
man to find a thread in this labyrinth; for he is the first who,
without having the arrogance of trusting in setting out from
a general principle, examined human nature by analysis. For three
thousand years people have disputed whether or no the will is
free. In the "Essay on the Human Understanding," chapter
on "Power," Locke shows first of all that the question
is absurd, and that liberty can no more belong to the will than
can colour and movement.
What is the meaning of this phrase "to be free"?
it means "to be able," or assuredly it has no sense.
For the will ''to be able '' is as ridiculous at bottom as to
say that the will is yellow or blue, round or square. To will
is to wish, and to be free is to be able. Let us note step by
step the chain of what passes in us, without obfuscating our
minds by any terms of the schools or any antecedent principle.
It is proposed to you that you mount a horse, you must absolutely
make a choice, for it is quite clear that you either will go
or that you will not go. There is no middle way. It is therefore
of absolute necessity that you wish yes or no. Up to there it
is demonstrated that the will is not free. You wish to mount
the horse; why? The reason, an ignoramus will say, is because
I wish it. This answer is idiotic, nothing happens or can happen
without a reason, a cause; there is one therefore for your wish.
What is it? the agreeable idea of going on horseback which presents
itself in your brain, the dominant idea, the determinant idea.
But, you will say, can I not resist an idea which dominates me?
No, for what would be the cause of your resistance? None. By
your will you can obey only an idea which will dominate you more.
Now you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your
wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty"
does not therefore belong in any way to your will.
You ask me how thought and wish are formed in us. I answer
you that I have not the remotest idea. I do not know how ideas
are made any more than how the world was made. All that is given
to us is to grope for what passes in our incomprehensible machine.
The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free.
A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what
the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to
say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated.
Where will be liberty then? in the power to do what one wills.
I wish to leave my study, the door is open, I am free to leave
it.
But, say you, if the door is closed, and I wish to stay at
home, I stay there freely. Let us be explicit You exercise then
the power that you have of staying; you have this power, but
you have not that of going out.
The liberty about which so many volumes have been written
is, therefore, reduced to its accurate terms, only the power
of acting.
In what sense then must one utter the phrase-" Man is
free "? in the same sense that one utters the words, health,
strength, happiness. Man is not always strong, always healthy,
always happy.
A great passion, a great obstacle, deprive him of his liberty,
his power of action.
The word "liberty," "free-will," is therefore
an abstract word, a general word, like beauty, goodness, justice.
These terms do not state that all men are always beautiful, good
and just; similarly, they are not always free.
Let us go further: this liberty being only the power of acting,
what is this power? it is the effect of the constitution and
present state of our organs. Leibnitz wishes to resolve a geometrical
problem, he has an apoplectic fit, he certainly has not liberty
to resolve his problem. Is a vigorous young man, madly in love,
who holds his willing mistress in his arms, free to tame his
passion? undoubtedly not. He has the power of enjoying, and has
not the power of refraining. Locke was therefore very right to
call liberty "power." When is it that this young man
can refrain despite the violence of his passion? when a stronger
idea determines in a contrary sense the activity of his body
and his soul.
But what! the other animals will have the same liberty, then,
the same power? Why not? They have senses, memory, feeling, perceptions,
as we have. They act with spontaneity as we act. They must have
also, as we have, the power of acting by virtue of their perceptions,
by virtue of the play of their organs.
Someone cries: "If it be so, everything is only machine,
everything in the universe is subjected to eternal laws."
Well! would you have everything at the pleasure of a million
blind caprices? Either everything is the sequence of the necessity
of the nature of things, or everything is the effect of the eternal
order of an absolute master; in both cases we are only wheels
in the machine of the world.
It is a vain witticism, a commonplace to say that without
the pretended liberty of the will, all pains and rewards are
useless. Reason, and you will come to a quite contrary conclusion.
If a brigand is executed, his accomplice who sees him expire
has the liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if
his will is determined by itself, he will go from the foot of
the scaffold to assassinate on the broad highway; if his organs,
stricken with horror, make him experience an unconquerable terror,
he will stop robbing. His companion's punishment becomes useful
to him and an insurance for society only so long as his will
is not free.
Liberty then is only and can be only the power to do what
one will. That is what philosophy teaches us. But if one considers
liberty in the theological sense, it is a matter so sublime that
profane eyes dare not raise themselves to it.
Philosophy
& Classics
The Uncle
Taz Library
