________________________________________________
_ Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually
diminishes or increases according to the greater or lesser
connection with the external world, the greater or lesser remoteness
of time, and the greater or lesser dependence on the causes in
relation to which we contemplate a man's life.
So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the
external world is well known, where the time between the action and
its examination is great, and where the causes of the action are
most accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability
and a minimum of free will. If we examine a man little dependent on
external conditions, whose action was performed very recently, and the
causes of whose action are beyond our ken, we get the conception of
a minimum of inevitability and a maximum of freedom.
In neither case- however we may change our point of view, however
plain we may make to ourselves the connection between the man and
the external world, however inaccessible it may be to us, however long
or short the period of time, however intelligible or
incomprehensible the causes of the action may be- can we ever conceive
either complete freedom or complete necessity.
(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from the
influence of the external world, we never get a conception of
freedom in space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what
surrounds him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My
action seems to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my
arm in every direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in
which there was least obstruction to that action either from things
around me or from the construction of my own body. I chose one out
of all the possible directions because in it there were fewest
obstacles. For my action to be free it was necessary that it should
encounter no obstacles. To conceive of a man being free we must
imagine him outside space, which is evidently impossible.
(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the time
of the deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I
examine an action committed a second ago I must still recognize it
as not being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which
it was committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself:
could I have abstained from lifting my arm at the moment that has
already passed? To convince myself of this I do not lift it the next
moment. But I am not now abstaining from doing so at the first
moment when I asked the question. Time has gone by which I could not
detain, the arm I then lifted is no longer the same as the arm I now
refrain from lifting, nor is the air in which I lifted it the same
that now surrounds me. The moment in which the first movement was made
is irrevocable, and at that moment I could make only one movement, and
whatever movement I made would be the only one. That I did not lift my
arm a moment later does not prove that I could have abstained from
lifting it then. And since I could make only one movement at that
single moment of time, it could not have been any other. To imagine it
as free, it is necessary to imagine it in the present, on the boundary
between the past and the future- that is, outside time, which is
impossible.
(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes may be
increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom, that is,
an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of
the expression of will in any action, our own or another's, the
first demand of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause,
for without a cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to
perform an action independently of any cause, but my wish to perform
an action without a cause is the cause of my action.
But even if- imagining a man quite exempt from all influences,
examining only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by any
cause- we were to admit so infinitely small a remainder of
inevitability as equaled zero, we should even then not have arrived at
the conception of complete freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by
the external world, standing outside of time and independent of cause,
is no longer a man.
In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite
devoid of freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability.
(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space
in which man is situated, that knowledge can never be complete, for
the number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of
space. And therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men
are defined, there is no complete inevitability but a certain
measure of freedom remains.
(2) However we may prolong the period of time between the action
we are examining and the judgment upon it, that period will be finite,
while time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never
be absolute inevitability.
(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any
action, we shall never know the whole chain since it is endless, and
so again we never reach absolute inevitability.
But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of
freedom to equal zero, we assumed in some given case- as for
instance in that of a dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot- complete
absence of freedom, by so doing we should destroy the very
conception of man in the case we are examining, for as soon as there
is no freedom there is also no man. And so the conception of the
action of a man subject solely to the law of inevitability without any
element of freedom is just as impossible as the conception of a
man's completely free action.
And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to the law of
inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the knowledge of
an infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of
time, and an infinite series of causes.
To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law of
inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space, beyond
time, and free from dependence on cause.
In the first case, if inevitability were possible without freedom we
should have reached a definition of inevitability by the laws of
inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content.
In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability
we should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time,
and cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and
unlimited would be nothing, or mere content without form.
We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man's
whole outlook on the universe is constructed- the incomprehensible
essence of life, and the laws defining that essence.
Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give it
visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2) Time
is infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable
otherwise. (3) The connection between cause and effect has no
beginning and can have no end.
Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is but me,
consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing time by the
fixed moment of the present in which alone I am conscious of myself as
living, consequently I am outside time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I
feel myself to be the cause of every manifestation of my life.
Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability.
Consciousness gives expression to the essence of freedom.
Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man's
consciousness. Inevitability without content is man's reason in its
three forms.
Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines.
Freedom is the content. Inevitability is the form.
Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one
another as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and
separately incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability.
Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man's life.
Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define
one another as form and content, no conception of life is possible.
All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation
of free will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws
of reason.
All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain
relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of the essence
of life to the laws of reason.
The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious
of them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity,
animal force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life
in man and we call that freedom.
But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in itself but
felt by every man, is understood by us only to the extent to which
we know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the
first knowledge that all bodies have weight, up to Newton's law), so
too the force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which
everyone is conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as we know
the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the fact that
every man dies, up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and
historic laws).
All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life under the
laws of reason.
Man's free will differs from every other force in that man is
directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way
differs from any other force. The forces of gravitation,
electricity, or chemical affinity are only distinguished from one
another in that they are differently defined by reason. Just so the
force of man's free will is distinguished by reason from the other
forces of nature only by the definition reason gives it. Freedom,
apart from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason that
define it, differs in no way from gravitation, or heat, or the force
that makes things grow; for reason, it is only a momentary undefinable
sensation of life.
And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly
bodies, the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity,
or of chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content of
astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, just in the
same way does the force of free will form the content of history.
But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of
this unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the
subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free
will in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause
forms the subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of
metaphysics.
In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of
inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital
force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above
what we know of the essence of life.
So also in history what is known to us we call laws of
inevitability, what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for
history only an expression for the unknown remainder of what we know
about the laws of human life. _
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