"The times of this ignorance God overlooked, but now commandeth all
men every where to repent; because He hath appointed a day in the which
He will judge the world in righteousness."—St. Paul.
The relations existing between God and man, especially
the correlations of paternity and filiation, constitute the
ultimate foundations of Moral Government. This is the
conclusion of the preceding discussion. If God is intimately
near to man—if He is immanent in man, and man
is immanent in God—if God is "the Father of the human
spirit," and man "the offspring of God," then man
must bear some resemblance to God—he must have a spiritual
and immortal nature, must be a free personality,
must be capable of knowing and loving God, and therefore
must be under solemn responsibility to God, and
within the sphere of the eternal and immutable laws of
moral life; in a word, he must be the subject of moral
government.
We proceed now to consider, more especially, the nature,
the conditions, the methods, and the ends of moral
government.
I. The nature of moral government.—Government, in
general, is control—control with a view to the maintenance
of order. This may be effected by direct coaction or
forceful compulsion; or by the reaction of natural consequences;
or by the pervasive influence of moral motives.
The first is constraint, the second is restraint, the third is
authoritative direction. We must, therefore, distinguish
between physical, natural, and moral government.
The physical government of God is the absolute control
which He exercises over the material creation. He is the
Fountain-head of all the forces, and the Author of all the
laws according to which passive, unconscious matter is resistlessly
impelled; and because his power and wisdom
are infinite, and his purposes are immutable, therefore
material nature is uniform, and there is an all-pervading
order in the physical world.
The natural government of God is that constitution of
nature, and of man in so far as he is a part of nature, by
which the sensations of pleasure and pain result directly
and necessarily from the actions of man; and inasmuch
as he is able by an induction from experience to foresee
these consequences, and to determine his own conduct in
view of them, they are not improperly called rewards and
punishments. Thus it is found by experience that disease
and suffering result from acts of intemperance and licentiousness,
and men are restrained from the commission of
these acts by the fear of their foreseen results. This is
control by the reaction of natural consequences in that intermediate
sphere which we may designate the physico-moral
order of the world.
The moral government of God is that kind of control
which a wise and virtuous parent exercises over his family,
or a just and equitable magistrate over his subjects.[508]
It is a government by laws or rules addressed to the reason,
by moral motives which appeal to the conscience, and
by moral sanctions which appeal to the emotions. It is a
constitution in which God has declared his will to man,
and taught him, prior to the experience of retributive consequences,
what is right and what is wrong; a constitution
under which man is endowed with the capacity of perceiving
the inherent righteousness of the Divine law, of feeling
the imperative claims of duty, and of apprehending a
future retribution, and also a real causative power of self-determination
and choice. Finally, it is an economy in
which ample scope is afforded for the development of responsible
character. It is a probation in which there are
tests and temptations, in which forbearance is exercised
and consequences are delayed, in which remedial agencies
are plied and opportunities are afforded for repentance
and reformation, and in the final consummation of which
virtuous character shall receive its meet reward, and sinful
character its merited punishment. This is the ideal
order of moral life.
This twofold distinction between the physical and the
spiritual, and between the natural and the moral, runs
through the entire domain of existence and action, of being
and becoming.
The terms physical and spiritual are employed as collective
terms to connote the essential, changeless, and permanent
attributes of certain entities or realities which are
regarded as ultimate, viz., matter and spirit. The attributes
of matter are extension, divisibility, absolute incompressibility,
and inertia; the attributes of spirit are sensitivity,
reason, power, spontaneity, and memory. The term
physical is further employed to denote certain "affections
of matter"—that is, mechanical effects which are the
result of the action of force upon matter. It is true we
often speak of "physical forces," as though force were an
essential attribute of matter. But this is one of the many
ambiguities of language. All that we mean by physical
force is a force which acts upon matter, and produces in
the motions and collocations of matter its appropriate effects.[509]
Spirit-force is the only force in the universe; all
that our physical science deals with is "forms of energy
which have their origin in force." "Mind," says Dr.
Carpenter, "is the one and only source of power."[510]
The terms natural and moral are employed to denote
opposite modes of action and classes of effects. In the
one case the mode of action is fixed and uniform, and the
effect is necessary; in the other case the mode of action is
free and volitional, and the effect is contingent and variable.
The first is the order of nature where force reigns,
the second is the order of moral life where freedom prevails.
"Whatever is comprised in the chain and mechanism
of cause and effect, of course necessitated, and having
its necessity in some other thing antecedent or concurrent,
this is said to be natural, and the aggregate and system
of all such things is nature."[511] While, on the contrary,
that which lies within the agent's power, and to which he
determines himself by an act of free choice; and especially
that which the agent knows he ought to do, and in
choosing which he is conscious of power to put forth, in
the same unchanged circumstances, a different volition instead,
is called moral.
Thus does morality commence with "the sacred distinction"
between thing and person. "On this distinction
all legislation, human and Divine, proceeds." That which
fundamentally distinguishes a person from a mere thing
of nature is free causality—that is, "the power or immunity
to put forth in the same circumstances either of several
volitions." A thing is unconscious, involuntary, and
powerless, and consequently limited to one sole possible
eventuation. A thing has no responsibility for its movements,
which it has not willed, and of the nature and consequences
of which it is ignorant. A person alone is responsible,
because he is intelligent and free; that is, he
can foresee the consequences of his action, and freely determines
himself to its performance. A thing has no dignity;
dignity attaches only to personality. Personality is
inalienable, sacred, and inviolable; it can not be abrogated,
surrendered, or transferred, and it demands to be
respected. In a word, it has both duties and rights, while
things have neither.[512]
Thus do we find that all dignity, all sacredness, all responsibility,
all morality belong to and are predicable only
of the personal being, because intelligence and freedom are
the essential moments of personality.
Furthermore, the sphere of the moral is to be determined
by another important limitation. Not all the actions
of men are personal and responsible acts. Sensation is not
a voluntary operation. When the external object is brought
into proper relation with the animated organism, perception
necessarily occurs. The intuitive apperceptions of the
reason are impersonal; when a change transpires, the reason
necessarily affirms the existence of a cause. Reflex
nervous action is involuntary. Many muscular movements
are spontaneous, but not volitional. A responsible action
is an intentional action—that is, an act performed to realize
an end which lies within the agent's contemplation.
Spontaneity or self-determination only thereby becomes
will. A moral act is consequently a premeditated, intentional,
voluntary act, and the merit or demerit of an
agent is as his actual intention.
The last and most important limitation of the moral
sphere is to those voluntary actions which have relation
to personality, human and Divine. "The peculiar distinction
of moral actions, moral character, moral principles,
moral habits, as contrasted with the intellectual and
other parts of man's nature, lies in this, that they always
imply a relation between two persons."[513] Morality is the
relation of person to person.
We sum up what has been said in the preceding paragraphs
in these words: The moral government of God is
a legislation which has respect to personality, especially
the relations of person to person; and it is an administration
under which the subjects have power to resist and
violate its requirements, but which is provided with ample
means to vindicate its authority, and maintain the moral
order of the universe.
II. The subjective conditions of moral government.—It
will be apparent from what has been already said that
the following conditions are essential to moral government:
(1.) The subject of moral government must be intelligent.
He must be able to understand the Divine requirements,
to perceive their inherent rightness, and to feel the sense
of obligation to comply therewith. He must also be susceptible
of certain pleasurable or painful emotions which
follow as the direct consequences of his actions, and secure
an adequate retribution. In a word, he must have a
moral consciousness, or, briefly, a conscience.
(2.) The subject of moral government must be a free
power. He must be the efficient cause of his own action,
and he must be conscious of this power of self-determination—that
is, he must be conscious of power to put forth,
in the same unchanged circumstances, either of several volitions.
In short, he must have a free will.
These, then, are the essential conditions of moral agency—the
possession of a conscience, and the power to obey or
disobey the requirements of moral law. Both these conditions
of accountability exist in man. By virtue of his
constitution as a spiritual being made in the image of God,
he is capable of perceiving what is inherently right, just,
and good. His reason intuitively apprehends the good,
and affirms the imperative obligation to choose the good.
His judgment pronounces upon the relation of human conduct
to the law of right, affirming man has or has not done
right. And his emotive nature yields him complacence
and joy as the reward of well-doing, or inflicts pain and
remorse as the punishment of wrong-doing. In the words
of Chalmers, "he is endowed with a conscience which performs
within his bosom all the offices of a lawgiver and a
judge."
The possession of this faculty necessarily supposes the
existence of power in the agent to comply or not to comply
with its behests. A moral law is designed only for
the government of a free being, and nothing is moral or
immoral which is not voluntary. If there is no self-determination,
there is no proper personality to which the law
of reason can attach. Remorse, on the one hand, satisfaction
on the other, are emotions which are inconceivable
and impossible in a being who is not consciously free.
The nature and authority of conscience is a question
which is earnestly discussed. Among philosophers and
theologians there are diverse and conflicting opinions. It
has been variously characterized as a witness of our past
actions; as a judgment passed upon our actions; or as a
feeling arising in view of our actions. By one, conscience
is regarded as an appetite—a craving for the right, but
not a faculty intuitively perceiving the right. Another
defines it "as a capacity and a tendency to inquire into
duty, but not as supplying a law of duty."[514] While a
third regards it as a state of the sensibility—"a simple
feeling, emotion, or vivid sentiment which arises immediately
in the mind in presence of certain actions, and to
which we give the name of moral approbation."[515]
These definitions of conscience may all be regarded as
containing some truth. They are all defective, however,
in this one respect—they fail to recognize an internal law
which constitutes a subjective standard of right, and an
intuitive perception of moral distinctions and qualities in
human action.
As an essay toward a clearer apprehension of the nature
of conscience, we present the following propositions:
1. Conscience is not a distinct faculty of the mind.
Conscience (conscientia = joint or double knowledge) is
the knowledge of self in relation to a known law of right
and wrong. Conscience and consciousness may therefore
be regarded as, in some respects, identical. The terms in
their etymology and their general import are synonymous.
There is, however, a technical distinction to be made.
Consciousness expresses self-knowledge in general. Conscience
expresses self-knowledge relative to responsibility.
Consciousness is the recognition by the thinking subject of
its own states and affections. Conscience is the knowledge
of an act or an affection as having some moral quality—as
being right or wrong.
2. Conscience is, like consciousness, a complex phenomenon,
the result of the simultaneous action of the primary
powers of the mind. The simplest fact of consciousness
is a synthesis of sensation and reason in a primitive psychological
judgment. Sensation alone is not knowledge,
and it becomes consciousness only as it is illuminated and
informed by the reason. And so a mere state of the sensibility—a
mere feeling of approbation or disapprobation—does
not constitute conscience until it is informed by the
reason. Conscience is the unity of feeling and reason in
a judgment which has respect to voluntary action.
3. Conscience is the common field in which is revealed
the result of the operation of all our faculties in their
especial relation to moral law. As consciousness is the
common field in which the results of the operation of all
our faculties come to light, so conscience is that department
of the same field in which is revealed the action of
the mind in relation to the unchangeable principles of order
and right which dwell in the bosom of the Infinite.
Conscience is pre-eminently the Godward side of our mental
being, which reflects the moral character of God, and
brings us into relationship with Him. It is that which
carries us per saltum to the immediate recognition of a
God, the Lawgiver and the Judge who is over man, and
which holds him in mysterious but indissoluble bonds of
obligation. Conscience is therefore,
(1.) The reason intuitively apprehending universal moral
ideas and laws. It furnishes the idea of the good. It affirms
that the good is universally obligatory. It asserts
that the good has desert, worthiness, and dignity. And it
demands for the good an appropriate recognition and a
just reward.
(2.) The understanding apprehending the relations in
which we stand to God, to our fellow-beings, and to self
as a moral personality endowed with reason and freedom.
(3.) The judgment comparing the acts of a voluntary
agent existing in certain relations with the immutable
ideas and laws of the reason, and affirming this is right
and worthy of praise and reward, or that is wrong and deserving
of blame and punishment.
(4.) A particular state of the sensibility—the painful or
pleasurable emotions which spontaneously arise in presence
of right or wrong in our own actions or in the actions of
our fellow-men.
Thus conscience is, as it were, the focal point at which
are united and blended the varied acts and states of the
soul in its immediate relation to the moral law. It is the
synthesis of moral ideas, cognitions, and feelings in a moral
judgment.
The co-operation of these powers and susceptibilities of
the soul in their relation to the good has a parallel and an
illustration in their operation in relation to the beautiful.
The ideas of order, proportion, harmony, fitness, and unity
in variety are unquestionably fundamental and necessary
ideas of the reason. In the Divine reason these
ideas have always existed as the laws in accordance with
which He fashioned the material universe. And inasmuch
as the human reason is configured to the Divine, these
ideas must also exist in the human mind. Like statuary in
the inner palaces of the soul, they are the models by which
we recognize and the standards according to which we
judge the forms of beauty in the external world. The
correspondence between these external forms and the inner
ideals of the reason is recognized by the judgment.
And the delight we experience in presence of the beautiful
in nature and art is a particular direction of the sensibility.
This is not, however, the chronological order in which
the idea of the beautiful is developed in the mind. The
sense of beauty first reveals itself in the spontaneous consciousness
in presence of the order and harmony and
fitness which pervade the universe. We experience delight
without being able to specialize the precise causes of
our pleasure. But the reflective consciousness, which is
pre-eminently analytic, brings out into clear light the fundamental
ideas of order, harmony, fitness, and unity, which
had a prior existence in the reason, and have now recognized
themselves as mirrored in the universe. The repeated
observation of the forms of beauty around us, and
the comparison of these with the standard ideas of the
reason, will result in the beau-ideal of a pure and correct
taste—true αἰσθητικόν.
So in relation to the idea of the good. It does not
stand forth to the eye of consciousness, in the first instance,
as an abstract conception. The moral sense—the
affection of the sensibility in presence of voluntary and
responsible action—is first revealed in the spontaneous
consciousness. When we behold an act of justice, of kindness,
of beneficence, we experience the fullest satisfaction.
We admire and esteem the actor. We feel that his conduct
is praiseworthy, and that he is deserving of honor
and reward. These sentiments spring up spontaneously
and involuntarily in our bosoms long before we have defined
their reason and law. The reflective consciousness
subsequently elicits the rational ideas which underlie these
emotions—the ideas of the useful, the just, the beneficent,
the noble, and the perfect, all which are finally embraced
in the idea of the good. And the repeated comparison
of the conduct of voluntary agents existing under
certain relations, with the fundamental ideas of the reason,
these standards of right erected in the soul, will result in
an ideal of moral excellence—a true ἐθικόν.
If this doctrine of conscience be the product of a true
psychological method, it will enable us to account for the
apparent want of uniformity in its suffrages in individual
cases, and the varied phenomena presented in different
men.
Conscience, like consciousness, has its gradual development.
Though natural and necessary to every human
soul whose powers are normally developed, it is not exercised
at the beginning of its existence, but only after certain
conditions of growth and stages of growth have been
attained. This development may be arrested or it may be
perverted. The absence of proper conditions, the lack of
suitable discipline and culture in any one of the faculties
whose operation enters into the concrete phenomena, will
modify the general result. An excess of sensibility will
give a morbid conscience; the lack of sensibility, a slumbering
conscience. A defective apprehension of the relations
in which we stand to God and to our fellow-men will
prevent our seeing our specific duties. Inattention to the
character of our own motives, or ignorance of the real intentions
of other men, may mislead the judgment in discriminating
between the quality of actions. There are
also natural differences in the soundness and accuracy of
the judgments of individual men. We meet those who
with a limited acquaintance with particular facts and abstract
notions are nevertheless endowed with sound practical
judgment; while others, with a larger knowledge of
facts and general principles, are strangely defective in
judgment. Finally, unless men accustom themselves to
reflection, to analysis, the ideas of the just, the right, the
good, do not come clearly into the light of consciousness.
Hence the different manifestations of conscience in individual
men.
We claim, however, that the moral ideas of the reason
are in all men identical; that they exist and operate, even
though unconsciously, in all minds, determining their moral
judgments; and that when the same relations of personality
are clearly before the mind the moral judgments
of men are uniform.
In spite of all the topical moralities to which factitious
circumstances may have given birth, there is unquestionably
a universal and immutable morality. In every nation
under heaven, veracity, justice, and beneficence are
separated by a clear, unmistakable line from falsehood,
injustice, and cruelty; nor can all the casuistry and sophistry
in the universe transpose or confound them. Custom,
prescription, conventions of human opinion, factitious
circumstances, can never blur over and obliterate these
lines which separate right and wrong. Beneath all these
apparent differences, the conscience will make her voice
heard in the depth of the soul, in the common sentiments
of mankind, and in the statutes of universal jurisprudence.
The great ideas of justice and right were prominent and
well defined among the nations of antiquity. "Nemesis
and Themis were not only their abstractions and deities—they
were embodied in their systems of jurisprudence.
Law secured property and sanctified life. Law guarded
every relation and ordered every act. Law was the theme
of their philosophy and the burden of their song. We are
not unacquainted with the jealousies and disputes of their
schools of philosophy. They placed the good of man and
the reason of morality in the most incongruous things, but
they never differed concerning the conduct which was
right. Epicurus and Zeno knew no divergence here."[516]
Indeed, they asserted the immutability of moral law for
all times and places—
"The unwritten laws of God that know not change;
They are not of to-day nor yesterday,
But live for ever."[517]
"There is," says Cicero, "one true and original law, conformable
to nature and reason, diffused over all, invariable,
eternal, which calls to the fulfillment of duty and to abstinence
from injustice, and which calls with that irresistible
voice which is felt in all its authority wherever it is heard.
This law can not be curtailed or abolished, nor affected in
its sanctions by any law of man. A whole senate, a whole
people, can not dispense with its paramount obligation.
It requires no commentator to render it distinctly intelligible,
nor is it different at Rome, at Athens, now and in
ages before and after, but in all ages and all nations it is
and has been and will be one and everlasting—one as
that God, its author and promulgator, who is the common
Sovereign of all mankind, is Himself one. Man is truly
man as he yields himself to this Divine influence. He can
not resist it but by flying, as it were, from his own bosom,
and laying aside the general feelings of humanity, by
which very act he must already have inflicted on himself
the severest of punishments, even though he were to avoid
what is usually accounted punishment."[518]
Among the most savage tribes, as among the most refined
and polished nations, are also to be found the same
common principles of morality. Theft, murder, adultery
are offenses condemned and punished by every nation under
heaven. The high qualities of virtue are the things
which win esteem and command respect in every country,
however rude. Were proof demanded, we might bring it
at once from the darkest corners of the earth. The savage
Fijian regards theft, adultery, abduction, incendiarism,
and treason as serious crimes.[519] And Dr. Livingstone tells
us that, "On questioning intelligent men among the Backwains
as to their former knowledge of good and evil, of
God, and of a future state, they have scouted the idea of
any of them ever having been without a tolerably clear
conception on all these subjects. Respecting their sense
of right and wrong, they profess that nothing we indicate
as sin ever appeared to them as otherwise, except the
statement that it was wrong to have more wives than
one."[520]
We conclude that the universal consciousness of our
race, as revealed in human history, languages, legislations,
and sentiments, bears testimony to the fact that the ideas
of right, duty, accountability, and moral desert are native
to the human mind; and consequently the existence of the
first condition of moral government—namely, the possession
by its subject of a conscience—is an unquestionable fact.
The second condition of moral government is the existence,
in the subject, of free self-determining power: the
agent must be the real cause and the sole cause of his own
actions; he must have freedom both to and from the act.
Under a reign of necessity there can be no moral government
and no just retribution. It is, at best, a mere
physical or natural government; for moral government
must be of beings who are free and self-determined, and
not of mere machines. To blame a necessitated thing is
irrational, to punish it is a cruelty and an injustice. The
necessitarian himself is unable to conceal his conscious
embarrassment in presence of these difficulties, and to save
his theory he becomes reckless in assertions. He affirms
that "the whole system of morality—its duties and responsibilities;
the whole scheme of moral government, with its
rewards and punishments—remains, on his theory, as entire
and stable as ever."[521] This affirmation runs athwart all
the dictates of common-sense, and collides with the universal
conviction of humanity. He is the only consistent
necessitarian who rejects the Christian doctrine of sin, denies
all accountability and retribution, and reduces the
government of God to mere physical impulsion and the
management of a universal mechanism. The necessitarian
dogma can not be made to quadrate with our primitive
convictions; it is out of harmony with all our instinctive
beliefs. The innate idea of right, the native sense of duty
and accountability, the consciousness of sin, our faith in
the justice of God, our religious hopes and fears, all impel
us onward to find a rational and valid basis for human
responsibility and moral government in the freedom of
the will.
That man does possess an alternative power of self-determination
and choice is evident:
1. From the direct testimony of consciousness. We
know that any doing of ours might have been reserved—we
feel, by that same direct consciousness which certifies
our existence and our reason, that we have the fullest
power of choice. No subtlety, no abstraction of argument,
can convince us that we are otherwise than free.
"Men are not conscious of compulsion of any kind, not
conscious of certain mental states, called choices, which
are either wholly or partially independent of their free
agency; but they are perfectly and distinctly conscious of
entire liberty, and of complete inward power to choose."[522]
That we have a direct consciousness of freedom is the
doctrine of most of the writers on moral science. Cousin
is emphatic in the assertion of this doctrine: "I am conscious
of this sovereign power of the will. I feel in myself,
before its determination, the force that can determine
itself in such a manner or in such another. At the same
time that I will this or that I am equally conscious of the
power to will the opposite; I am conscious of being master
of my resolution, of the ability to arrest it, continue it,
repress it."[523] The distinguished Professor of Moral Philosophy
in the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Calderwood,
teaches the same doctrine: "It is in our consciousness of
self-control for the determination of activity that we obtain
our only knowledge of causation. Every one knows
himself as the cause of his own actions. In the external
world we continue ignorant of causes, and are able only
to trace uniform sequence, as Hume and Comte have insisted.
But in consciousness we distinguish between sequence
and causality. We are conscious of our own
causal energy by knowing the origin of our activity in
self-determination."[524]
The direct consciousness of freedom is denied by Sir
William Hamilton. This denial is a necessary consequence
of his doctrine of relativity. If we are not conscious of self
as a reality, but only of certain modes or affections, then,
of course, we can not be conscious of self as a free power.
But as Mansel has forcibly replied: "Does it not rather
appear a flat contradiction to maintain that I am not immediately
conscious of myself, but only of my sensations
or volitions? Who, then, is the I that is conscious; and
how can I be conscious of such states as mine? In this
case it would surely be more accurate to say, not that I
am conscious of my sensations, but that the sensation is
conscious of itself; but, thus worded, the glaring absurdity
of the theory would carry with it its own refutation....
Self-personality is revealed to us with all the clearness of
an original intuition."[525] With an inconsistency which
shows the fallacy of Sir William Hamilton's whole theory
of relativity, he admits that, "As clearly as I am conscious
of existing, so clearly am I conscious at every moment of
my existence that the conscious Ego is not itself a mere
modification, nor a series of modifications of any other
subject, but that it is itself something different from all its
own modifications, and a self-subsistent entity."[526]
If, then, we admit, as we must admit, the existence of an
immediate consciousness, not merely of the phenomena of
mind, but of the personal self as actively and passively
related to them, we must also admit the direct testimony
of conscience to the fact of liberty. "I am conscious not
merely of the phenomenon of volition, but of myself as
producing it, and as producing it by choice, with a power
to choose the opposite alternative."
The necessitarians are all compelled to concede that the
universal conviction of our race is, and always has been,
that man is free. They have, however, asserted that this
dictate of common-sense is not to be accepted as philosophically
true. Lord Kames admits the natural conviction
of freedom from necessity, though he declares it to be
an illusion:
"Man fondly dreams that he is free to act;
Naught is he but the powerless, worthless plaything
Of the blind force that in his will itself
Works out for him a dread necessity."
And Hommel, certainly one of the ablest and most decided
of fatalists, says, "I must believe that I have a feeling
of liberty, at the very moment I am writing against
liberty, upon grounds which I regard as incontestable.
Zeno was a fatalist only in theory; he did not act in conformity
with his convictions."[527]
The possession of alternative power is a fact of consciousness
as clear and indubitable as the fact of personal
existence. It is admitted by the necessitarians that all men
have "a natural conviction of freedom;" they believe themselves
to be free beings, and they act upon this belief in
all the relations of life. If this fact of consciousness is an
illusion, then our existence is also an illusion, for that same
intuition which certifies to me that I exist certifies also
that I am free. If the testimony of consciousness is invalidated,
there is no criterion for truth. If one of its deliverances
is found to be false, how can we vindicate the
veracity of any? "Our faculties are bestowed upon us as
the instruments of deception; the root of our nature is a
lie, and universal skepticism is the only goal."
2. The idea of moral obligation necessarily presupposes
the freedom of the will. This is a principle so obvious
that it needs no elucidation. If man have duties, he must
possess the power of fulfilling them. He ought to be free
if he ought to obey law, or human nature is in contradiction
with itself. The direct certainty of obligation implies
the corresponding certainty of freedom. Hence Kant's
well-known canon, "I ought, therefore I can." Though
denying the direct consciousness of freedom, Kant maintained
with earnestness that the fact of liberty is guaranteed
by the existence of the moral law, whose categorical
imperative thou shalt necessarily implies a corresponding
thou canst. To the same effect are the words of Sir William
Hamilton: "The fact that we are free is given to us
in the consciousness of an uncompromising law of duty....
Our consciousness of the moral law, which without a
moral liberty in man would be a mendacious imperative,
gives a decided preponderance to the doctrine of freedom
over the doctrine of fate."[528] Physical causation and moral
obligation can not coexist side by side. In proportion as
we extend the domain of necessity we must diminish that
of duty.
3. The sense of responsibility presupposes the freedom
of the will. This sense of responsibility is native to the
human mind. Every man feels himself to be accountable
for his own conduct, not only at the bar of his own conscience,
but before the moral judgment-seat of his fellow-men.
Every where he recognizes the right of his fellow-men
to inquire into his character, to sit in judgment upon
his conduct, and to esteem and treat him accordingly. We
necessarily impute blame when an unjust action is performed
by another; we feel conscious of guilt and unworthiness
when a wrong is done by ourselves. These
are facts of universal consciousness. But these sentiments
are irrational and absurd if man is a mere machine impelled
by natural causes, and has no self-determining power.[529]
Whatever disasters may overtake us in the course of
nature, however we may suffer by the wild tornado or the
blighting mildew, how much soever of our property may be
swallowed up by the ocean tempest or the devouring flame,
we impute no blame; and we experience here emotions essentially
different from those which we experience when a
wrong is intentionally inflicted upon us by our fellow-men.
"Suppose yourself to have been the victim of some act of injustice
and villainy by which you were reduced to penury,
and your family to want and indigence. By what philosophy
can you eradicate the sense of wrong or cease to impute
blame to the man whose perfidy has despoiled your
life? You may forgive him, and follow him with your
prayers to the last hour of your life, but you will still pray
for him as a guilty man whose crime has been the burden
of your life." Now what is this radical and fundamental
difference between the events of the material universe
and the actions of men? and what is the rational basis
for the different feelings we experience and the diverse
judgments we pass in regard to them?
There is only one answer to this question. The ultimate
ground-difference is found in the fact that one class
of events is necessary—there is no adequate power in the
thing to be or do otherwise; the other class of actions is
free—they need not have been performed, the actor had
full power for a contrary choice. In the world of nature
force reigns; in the world of moral life liberty prevails.
The fundamental principle of difference is the freedom
of the will.
This second condition of moral government—namely,
the possession of free alternative power on the part of the
subject to comply, or refuse to comply, with the requirements
of moral law—is thus established, first, by the direct
testimony of consciousness, from which there can be no
appeal, and, secondly, by necessary inference from collateral
facts of consciousness, which can not be invalidated
by counter-proofs.
Unhappily, the restlessness of speculative minds, the
necessities of false theories in philosophy, or the unwarrantable
assumptions of dogmatic theologians, have led to
the disregard of the affirmations of universal consciousness.
Men have asked, How can freedom be possible in a
dependent creature? How can it be consistent with our
belief in the principle of universal causation? How can
it be harmonized with the fact that man always acts under
the influence of motives? How can it be reconciled with
the omnipotence and absolute prescience of God?
We shall now address ourselves to the consideration of
the arguments against the doctrine of the freedom of the
will which are suggested by these queries.
1. The first is the Metaphysical or Causational Argument.
The rational intuition that "every event must
have a cause" is a universal and necessary truth. It must
therefore be rigorously applied to all mental as well as to
all physical phenomena. Every volition must have a cause,
and if caused it can not be free. This is the grand argument
upon which the necessitarian mainly relies, and it is
urged with eloquence and force by Edwards, Chalmers,
and McCosh.
Now that "every event must have a cause" is an à
priori truth, which is as readily accorded by the freedomist
as it is vehemently insisted upon by the necessitarian.
No philosophic writers have more ably and clearly
enounced this law of causality than the freedomists Reid,
Stewart, and Cousin. They rely upon it as one of the
main pillars of the Theistic argument. And they apply it,
in all its integrity, to mental as well as to physical phenomena.
They hesitate not to say that "every volition must
have a cause." That cause is the efficient creative power
which resides in a free, spiritual personality. And that
power is not, like a material or physical cause, shut up to
one sole mode of effectuation: it is an alternative power,
a pluri-efficient cause. Where, then, is the discrepancy
between the universal principle of causality and the doctrine
of alternative causation? Is the infinite First Cause
confined to one solely possible mode of effectuation? If
so, how will you account for the endlessly varied effects
which appear in the physical universe? God is the Eternal
One; whence the plurality and diversity of his creative
acts if He be not an equipotent cause? And yet, of
all the events which have transpired in the universe, whether
natural or supernatural, we affirm "every event must
have had a cause."[530] The endless diversity of effects which
originate in the alternative causation of God is in perfect
harmony with this universal law of causality.
But on a closer examination it will be found that when
the necessitarian attempts to invalidate our consciousness
of alternative power by the application of the causational
argument he adroitly shifts his ground. He assumes another
proposition, which is neither equivalent to the above axiom,
nor in itself axiomatic and self-evident, nor justifiably
assumed without proof. McCosh says "the doctrine of
necessity is founded on the intellectual intuitions of man's
mind, which lead us, in mental as in material phenomena,
to anticipate the same effects to follow the same causes"[531]—that
is, every cause is inalternative or unipotent; one
effect, and only one can follow.
Now that a given phenomenon must have a cause is one
assertion; that the same cause will again and forever produce
the same effect is another. The first is an axiom, the
second is an induction. That "every event must have a
cause" is a rational intuition. That "like causes will produce
always like effects" is a generalization from our limited
experience, and on a further analysis will be found
to apply only to our cognitions of the material universe.
It is grounded simply on what we know empirically of the
uniformity of nature. Now we have no à priori intuitive
conviction of the uniformity of nature. As the result of
maturer thought, McCosh admits this in his work on the
"Intuitions of the Mind:" "It is vain to speak of the belief
in the uniformity of nature as a self-evident, a necessary,
or a universal truth" (page 276). It is perfectly conceivable
that the world might have been so constituted
that there should have been no regularity in the succession
of events. The causes of all the events in nature
might have been supernatural, and consisted in the immediate
free volitions of the Deity, or subordinate angelic
agencies.[532] They might have been all "miraculous," and
yet the true law of causality would not have been violated,
or in any way invalidated. And so when man, in the
exercise of his free alternative power, produces a new succession
of events in physical nature, or moves disorder and
ἀνομία into the moral sphere, this is no way inconsistent
with the axiom that "every event has a cause."
"In our very definition of freedom of will we assume in
the volitional sphere the inapplicability of the maxim that
'like causes ever and always produce like effects.' We
assume that either one of several effects is legitimate from
the same cause. And while we admit that in non-volitional
causation the law that 'every event must have a cause'
means that every event must have its own peculiar cause,
adequate for itself alone, in volitional causation an event
may have a cause adequate either for it or for other event;
and whichever event exists, the demands of the laws of
causation are completely satisfied."[533]
Driven from this boasted stronghold, the necessitarian
resorts to his favorite dialectic strategy. He demands the
explanation of equipotent causation, how one cause can be
adequate to several effects. He asks, What causes the
will to put forth one particular volition rather than
another?
Now when we have shown that, as a fact of consciousness
and experience, a personal, spiritual cause is adequate
to several results, we are entitled in reason and justice to
protest against any attempt to push the inquiry a step farther.
We have attained an ultimate fact, and we have no
right to cast doubt upon its authority by raising perplexing
questions as to the how or why of that which is. This is
precisely the method by which the atheist Holyoake would
invalidate the argument for the existence of the infinite
First Cause. He subjects the Deity to this universal law
of causality, and asks, What caused the Creator to create?
"The atheist holds that the universe is an endless series of
causes and effects ad infinitum, and therefore the idea of
a first cause is an absurdity and a contradiction." The
"infinite series" of Edwards and of Holyoake are constructed
on the same principle. They both ask a cause
for the cause.
When, therefore, it is asked, What causes the will to
effect one volition rather than another? our answer is,
Nothing whatever!
"Of its own effect, WILL, in its proper conditions, is not
a partial, but a full and adequate cause. Put your finger
upon any effect (volition) and ask, What caused this result
exclusively of the others? and the reply is, The will, or the
agent in willing. Ask then what caused the will in its
conditions to cause the volition, and the reply is, Nothing.
Nay, you are a bad philosopher in asking; for for its
own effect will or the willing agent is a complete cause:
as complete a cause as any cause whatever; and every
complete cause produces its effect UNCAUSEDLY. The volition,
like every other effect, is completely accounted for
when a complete cause is assigned. To ask what caused
the complete cause to produce the effect is to ask the cause
of causation."[534]
But such an "alternative" power, the necessitarian affirms,
is incomprehensible and inexplicable. To which we
need only reply in the language of Hamilton, "The scheme
of freedom is not more incomprehensible than the scheme
of necessity."[535] "Omnia exeunt in mysterium"—there is
nothing the absolute ground of which is not a mystery.
In saying so much, however, we by no means grant the
affirmation of Hamilton that "we are unable to conceive
an absolute commencement [of being or motion]; we can
not therefore conceive a free volition."[536] This is not admitted
by Mansel, the disciple and annotator of Hamilton,
as flowing even from his mental "law of the conditioned."
"It may be true, as a fact, that no material atom has been
added to the world since the first creation; but the assertion,
however true, is certainly not necessary. The Power
which created once must be conceived as able to create
again, whether that ability is actually exercised or not.
The same conclusion is still more evident when we proceed
from the consideration of matter to that of mind. Of
matter we maintain that the creation of new portions is perfectly
conceivable as a result, if not as a process. Every
man who comes into the world comes into it as a distinct individual,
having a personality and consciousness of his own;
and that personality is a distinct accession to the number
of persons previously existing.... I believe that every
new person that comes into the world is, as a person, a
new existence."[537] So a volition is a new existence, an absolute
origination, "a beginning of motion" which has its
source in the primordial power of the human spirit as spirit.
The fact is undeniable, the mode is inexplicable. But
the inconceivability of the mode in which the will creates a
volition no more renders the fact doubtful than the impossibility
of conceiving how a new and distinct self-conscious
personality comes into existence invalidates the fact that "I
exist, and know myself as a distinctly existing being."
2. The Psychological Argument.—This may be briefly
stated in the following terms:
It is a fact of observation and experience that motives do
stand to the will in the relation of causes which necessitate
volition. They have an exact mathematical commensurability,
and their prevalence is in the precise ratio of their
antecedent intrinsic strength. If motives are wanting,
there can be no choice; but when the same motives are
presented to the same mind, it obeys them with such remarkable
uniformity that human actions may be reduced
to statistical tables as reliable and as accurate as tables of
mortality.
We might here at once, and with justice, enter our caveat
against the attempt to invalidate a primitive datum of
consciousness by alleged deductions from the exterior phenomena
of human life and history. A primitive datum of
consciousness is unquestionable and infallible. A process
of induction is liable to the interpolations of error. The
latter is therefore a lesser authority than the former, and
a merely derivative assurance can not be argued against an
ultimate fact. We must regard it as a philosophic canon
that an experience cognition can not conflict with an intuitive
belief. The exterior phenomena of life and history,
properly interpreted, must harmonize with the interior
facts and laws of the human mind, for what is history
but the development, under the conditions and relations of
time, of the primitive powers, ideas, and laws of humanity?
If, then, consciousness attests the presence in man's spiritual
nature of a power, in the same circumstances, to choose
either of several ways, we may confidently expect that the
phenomena of the moral world will not belie that testimony.
Now it is a palpable fact that an unbroken law of
continuity and uniformity pervades the material universe.
It is locked up in an unchangeable status. There is no deviation
and no progression. All things remain as they were
since the beginning. The fundamental fact lying at the
basis of this undeviating uniformity of nature is that
material causes are unipotent, and shut up to one solely
possible mode of effectuation.[538] And it is equally palpable
that the phenomena of the moral world, the sphere of
human life and history, reveal contingency, diversity, alteriety,
and progression. Humanity has not revolved in
cycles, neither has it run in the inflexible grooves of an anterior
causation, nor remained in the dead-lock of an unchangeable
status. History is not an inflexible frame-work
in which all events have been shaped by necessity; it is a
development of the inherent powers and capabilities of humanity,
and it teaches us that new trains of causes have
been originated, and new conditions have been superinduced
by man. The ground-fact which underlies all the
diversity, contingency, and progress which appear in the
moral world is that volitional causes are equipotent and
efficient for any one of the several results.[539] In moral development
the progressive principle is just the freedom of
the will. The facts of the inner and outer world are therefore
in harmony.
The theory of the necessitarian assumes that the will is
a mere passivity, a simple conductor of the impulse which
motive power exerts, a mere transition-point where ideal
force is transformed into physical force, and desires, inclinations,
moral convictions, divine influences become necessary
acts. Motives thus prevail by their antecedent intrinsic
power just as physical forces prevail in mechanical
and vital dynamics. And, proceeding upon this assumption,
he labors to construct a science of Ethology in which
he would anticipate human action by statistics, and show
how individual character must be in accordance with
physical and mental causation. Whereas consciousness
asserts that the will "is not a bleak mechanical thing."
It is a free alternative power. It is a full, complete, adequate
cause. It is spirit, not matter.
Now it is freely granted that the mind acts in view of
motives, acts in accordance with motives, acts in a certain
qualified sense under the influence of motives; but the
freedomist emphatically denies that the will is necessitated
to action by motives. Motives may be reason for
action, conditions under which will acts, but they are not
causes of action. They may solicit, invite, urge to action,
but they can not constrain, compel, and force action.[540]
Motives have no fixed correlation to the will. They address
themselves to the feelings, the judgment, the conscience,
and not directly and immediately to the will.
They may awaken desire, fear, inclination, preference, a
sense of obligation; but these are all states of the intellect
and sensibility, and may coexist in the same mind with a
state of indetermination and non-differentiation in the will.
That which is desirable may appeal to the feelings, that
which is eligible to the judgment, that which is obligatory
to the conscience, and these may excite the mind in different
degrees of intensity; but none of them have power to
move the will. We may be able intellectually to perceive
that some motives are intrinsically "higher" than others,
that some have a prevolition power to excite all minds
more intensely than others; but they do not prevail and
secure action in any ratio with their supposed à priori
strength. They can only become real motives for the
will by its voluntary placing its interest in them and
making them objects of its choice.[541] All the actual
strength which a motive has is derived from the action
of the will. On this subject we offer the following propositions:
(1.) The so-called strength of a motive is the degree of
probability that the will will act in accordance with or
on account of it. "And it is most important to remark
that the result is not always, nor in most cases, necessarily
as the highest probability. The will may choose for the
higher or for the lower. And as the will may choose for
a lower rather than a higher probability, so the will may
choose on account of what is called antecedently a weaker
over a stronger motive. And hereby is once for all established
the difference between mechanical force and motive
influence—that whereas in the former, by necessity,
the greater effect results from the greater force, in the
latter the less is possible from the greater, the greater from
the less."[542] That result is not as the highest probability
Dr. Whedon has shown most conclusively from the
doctrine of Contingencies or Probabilities. And on this
he grounds his doctrine of contingent motive probability.
"This contingent character of motive influence is correspondent
with the alternative character of that which is
its sole possible object—will. An alternative will and a
contingent motive influence are correlatives. They mutually
explain and sustain each other. To admit either is to
admit both. And so a unipotent will and a necessary motive
influence are correlatives. He who is compelled to
admit one is compelled to admit the other. It will be a
mere controversy about a word to say that an influence
which does not produce effect is no influence. That may
legitimately be called an influence, it is important to add,
which is conceived as possessing an intrinsic probability
for result, though the higher probability be a contingency
for which there exists power of failure. If so, then the
doctrine of contingent motive influence is established, and
the doctrine of volitional necessity is at an end. The relation
between physical force and effect is necessity. The
relation between motive and volition is contingency."[543]
(2.) The so-called strength of a motive is the comparative
prevalence which the will assigns to it by its own
action. It is impossible to erect any standard by which
the intrinsic "strength" of motives can be determined previous
to volition. "A cold intellection is not intrinsically
commensurable with a deep emotion, nor a sentiment of
taste with a feeling of obligation, nor a physical appetite
with a sense of honor." Now by what standard can the
comparative force of these influences be determined?
There is no more commensurability between them than
between "the brightness of day and the force of magnetic
attractions." Or if we could possibly determine, by some
rational à priori method, that a feeling of obligation is
intrinsically stronger than a physical appetite, or that the
love of life is stronger per se than a sense of duty, we
can not affirm that the one or the other shall therefore
uniformly and necessarily prevail. These influences derive
all their prevalency, and consequently their comparative
strength of motive, from the will alone. The will
places its interest in the one or the other. It decides the
mental position. "It settles the question of preferences
between alternatives, dismisses the counter-motive from
view, and closes the debate."[544]
The "strength" of a motive, in its relation to the will,
can only be known by the test of prevalency. This is unwittingly
conceded by the necessitarian. He says "the
strongest motive prevails because that is the strongest
which the will chooses." This really concedes the position
assumed by Dr. Whedon, that "the strength of a motive
is the comparative prevalence which the will, in its own
action, assigns to it, or the nearness to which the will
comes to acting on account of it." Men do not always
choose that which is most desirable, nor that which is most
eligible, nor that which appears most obligatory. But
from whatever motive men may choose to act, however
base and unworthy, the necessitarian affirms it was intrinsically
the strongest motive because it was chosen; which
simply amounts to this—the strongest motive is always
chosen because the motive chosen is always the strongest
motive.
The attempts of the necessitarian to fix upon some
standard by which to estimate the antecedent strength of
motives have all signally failed. The most plausible is
that of Edwards. He asserts that the volition is always
as the greatest apparent good. But by what standard is
that good estimated, by which faculty is it recognized and
pronounced good? by the reason, the conscience, the judgment,
or the appetites? Can that be pronounced good
which is chosen in obedience to passion and lust? Does
the man who inflicts a premeditated injury upon his neighbor
choose the greatest apparent good? Does the murderer
believe that in taking away the life of his fellow-man
"the volition is as the greatest apparent good?"
Certainly not. "Never," says Bushnell, "was there a case
of wrong, a sinful choice, in which the agent believed he
was choosing for the strongest, weightiest, or most valuable
motives." The great mass of sinful men are conscious
of choosing sinful indulgence against their "highest good."
(3.) Motives are the conditions, but not the causes of volition.
"Of volition the cause, the sole cause, is will. Motives
are collateral conditions ... for the volition to be;
with which there is adequate power for the volition not
to be.... The motive is only the occasion, and all its acts of
excitement amount to no more than this, that they stand
as probable conditions opening the way toward which the
will thereby acquires opportunity to act with full adequate
power of not acting."[545] The relation between motive and
volition is not a necessary but a contingent relation. The
will is the controlling conscious self in the exercise of direct
causative power in producing volition.
Some modern writers of the necessitarian school, McCosh
for example, admit the existence of "self-activity" in the
will. But what can be the meaning of "self-activity" if
the will have not the power of either resisting or yielding
to motives presented, and in the same unchanged circumstances
of choosing a different alternative? To be moved
absolutely by motives is not self-movement. A power to
move in only one given direction is a mere nature-force;
it can not be self-activity. The distinguished writer above
named also admits that "causation in the will is entirely
different from causation in other actions."[546] If he mean
that motives act upon the will in a manner "entirely different"
from that by which physical causes secure action
or change in the material world, what right has he to call
it causation at all? And if he mean that volitional
causation is "alternative," and not, like physical causation,
"unipotent," then the controversy is at an end.
(4.) We have no such experience of "uniformities of volition"
as shall enable us to generalize a universal law
of volitional causation. The facts of uniformity which
present themselves in the continuous life of some men
who were absorbed in one great life-purpose, as also in
the conduct of aggregate masses of men, are not denied.
We affirm that the correct definition of a free will supposes
that it may choose in a generally uniform manner.
Much of the uniformity in the life of an individual may
be accounted for by corporeal nature—disposition, standard
purpose, and habit. "Upon a basis of corporeal,
psychological, and mental nature are overlaid a primary
stratum of dispositions blending the natural and the volitional,
and a secondary formation of generic purposes
wholly volitional, and formed by repetition into a tertiary
of habits; and thus we have, in his mingled constitution
of necessitation and freedom, an agent prepared for daily
free responsible action."[547]
Now it may be readily granted that character forms a
basis of reliable probability as to how in given circumstances
a man will act. We may be able to judge, with
some degree of accuracy, how a man will work in his freedom;
but we can never calculate with absolute certainty,
because we have numberless examples of men acting
strangely "out of character," and disappointing our most
confident expectations.
"There is often the action, great or small, which reverses
the record of a life or a protracted course of action.
He who well watches his neighbor, however blind he may
be to his own practical self-contradictions, is sure to find,
even in the life most uniform in its great outline, plenty
of minor inconsistencies. Or as Müller, in his 'Doctrine of
Sin,' well says, that both our observation and our subject's
temptation may occur just at the moment of one of his
great volitional turning-points. From the apostasy of the
first angels and the fall of man, through the whole course
of human history, we have innumerable instances of revolutionary
volitions, not only out of the previous character,
but shaping a new character. The one disastrous sin of
Moses, the one great complicated crime of David, the apostasy
of Solomon, the wisest of men, are all proofs how, not
only in contrasted traits, but in revolutionary acts, a man
may be
'The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.'"[548]
Statistics are cited by Buckle, in his "History of Civilization
in England," showing that crimes, suicides, marriages,
etc., occur with remarkable uniformity, as the result
of general conditions of human society; and he thence infers
that all the actions of men are governed by a uniform
law of causation. This uniformity may, however, be as
easily accounted for on the doctrine of freedom as on the
doctrine of necessity. In the calculations of contingencies,
while results of compared large aggregates in the
same conditions may approach equality, the contingency
of each individual case remains still a contingency. The
actuary of an insurance company can assert with accuracy
the average duration of human life in different countries;
but were he to attempt to predict the duration of any one
individual life he had insured, he would certainly fail.
The insured may falsify his predictions by a voluntary act
of suicide. So though large aggregations of free volitions,
surrounded by the same motives, may approach equality,
the freedom of the individual will remains.[549]
And as Mansel very justly remarks, "it is precisely because
individual actions are not reducible to any fixed law,
or capable of representation by any numerical calculation,
that the statistical averages acquire their value as substitutes.
No one dreams of applying statistical averages to
calculate the period of the earth's rotation by showing that
four-and-twenty hours is the exact medium of time, comparing
one month's or one year's revolution with another's.
It is only when individual movements are irregular that it
is necessary to aim at a proximate regularity by calculating
in mass."[550]
3. The Theological Argument.—The main points of
the theological argument may be thus presented: Freedom
in a created being is incompatible with the absolute
sovereignty and prescience of God. To suppose a being
capable of acting either of several ways is to suppose a
being out of the control of God. And a free agent can
not possess power to do otherwise than God foreknows he
will do.
In regard to the first of these supposed incompatibilities,
we need only remark that if the Deity, in order to the existence
of an equitable moral government, and the consequent
possibility of free responsible action by the creature,
shall please to subject his omnipotence to conditional limitations,
the necessitarian has no business to object.[551] We
need feel no solicitude about the Divine sovereignty.
God will take care of his own honor and defend his own
high and holy prerogatives. Such self-limiting laws prescribed
by Divine wisdom and love do not place man
beyond Divine control. The necessitarian will not deny
that such self-limitation is essential to the very existence
of the kingdom of nature. God has established an order
in nature, a uniformity of antecedence and sequence, with
which Omnipotence shall not interfere. "Such a Divine
law of non-usance of power is still more necessary in the
kingdom of living agents, and most of all in the realm of
responsible agents; it being observable that the more close
the Divine self-restraint, and the larger the amount of
powers in the agent left untouched, the more the creative
system rises in dignity, and the higher God appears as a
sovereign. Even in the system of living necessitated
agents, as necessitarians must admit, God forbids Himself
to disturb the agent's uniform and perpetual acting according
to strongest motive."
The second of these incompatibilities is really predicated
upon our ignorance, and not upon our knowledge. We
can not understand how the Divine Intelligence foreknows
all future events. To enable us to understand the exact
manner in which an Infinite Intelligence contemplates succession
in time, it would be necessary that we should be
infinite also. The fact that God foreknows all future
events is all that is revealed to us; the manner of it
He has left in darkness, and we can throw no light upon
it by our verbal speculations.
Of one thing we may rest assured, that as perception
precedes volition in the finite intelligence, so knowledge
must precede determination in the Divine Mind. God
can not will or act in absolute darkness. Divine predestination
must be conditioned on Divine foreknowledge.[552]
His foreknowledge does not depend upon his will, or on the
adjustment of motives to make us will thus and thus; but
He foreknows every thing first conditionally, in the world
of possibility, before He creates, or determines any thing to
be, in the world of fact. Otherwise, all his purposes would
be grounded in ignorance, not in wisdom, and his knowledge
would consist in following after his will, to learn
what it had blindly determined.[553]
Another important principle clearly and vigorously maintained
by Dr. Whedon is "that the freeness of an act is
not affected by the consideration of its being foreknown."
First, because the Divine knowledge must always correspond
to the reality. A free action must be known
as free. "If there be in the free agent, ascertainable by
psychology, or required by intuition, or supposably seen
by the Divine eye, the power of putting forth the volition
with full power of alteriety, then God knows that power."[554]
Secondly, the occurrence of an event or act may be certain
to Divine foreknowledge, and yet perfectly contingent in
itself. Foreknowledge renders nothing necessary; it is
the consequence, not the cause of events.
If there be a necessity at all in the case, "the necessity
lies not upon the free act, but upon the foreknowledge.
The foreknowledge must see to its own accuracy. Pure
knowledge, temporal or eternal, must conform itself to
the fact, not the fact to the knowledge."[555] The real difficulty
is, not how an act can be a free act and yet be
foreknown (for the act of knowledge can not change the
object of knowledge), but how God can possibly know
with certainty a future contingency which may or may
not happen.
It is a clear and immediate revelation of consciousness
that man has a free power of self-determination. No revelation
can contradict this revelation. This fact of consciousness
can not be invalidated by any conceptions of
the logical understanding in regard to the omnipotence or
prescience of God, for these by their very nature transcend
all human comprehension.
III. The method of moral government.—We have seen
that government, in general, is control exercised with a
view to the maintenance of order. In the material world,
order is secured by the direct compulsion of omnipotent
force. The things of nature are inertly passive under
the hand of God. They can offer no resistance to the Divine
control, and consequently, in the sphere of nature,
there can be no real disorder. But in the realm of self-determining
powers there is the possibility of collision, because
there is the power to resist the will of God. And,
as a matter of fact, we know there is opposition, lawlessness,
and sin. In that sphere, where above all others the
demand of the reason is for order, there is the presence
of disorder—that is, there is disconformity to law and
consequent suffering.
And now the question arises, By what method is order
to be maintained in the sphere of freedom? How are beings
that have the power to determine for themselves what
they will choose and do, to be brought to act in harmony
with the eternal laws of righteousness and love?
There are inconsiderate souls who dream that this may
be achieved by force. God, say they, is omnipotent; if
He will the non-extension of evil, He is able to destroy
it; if He desire the maintenance of moral order, He can
compel it. Such reckless declaimers know not what they
say.
Had it so pleased God, He could have made beings in
human form without any sense of moral right and wrong,
and without any power to commit sin; but they would not
have been rational beings, would not have been free beings,
would not have been moral beings; neither could they, in
any high and proper sense, be happy beings, because they
could experience no sense of rectitude, no approval of conscience,
no delight in moral excellence, no blessedness in
duty and sacrifice. God, indeed, has made many such
creatures that can not sin. The bee, the ant, the swine,
the ape—these can not sin; but they are mere things, not
free powers; they have no sense of dignity and moral
worth, no approving conscience, no joy of sacrifice, and no
immortal hopes. Lived there ever a sane man who would
change his lot with one of these, even though in being a
man he has the fearful power to sin, and in sinning, the
fearful susceptibility to suffer—yea, to suffer eternally? Is
there any thing on earth whose value does not fade away
when compared with the priceless value of being capable
of duty, of virtue, of devotion, and of sacrifice? In the
eyes of God, the humblest of moral beings is worth more
than all the firmament of stars, and all the teeming myriads
of brutal forms of sense that dwell upon the earth.
Because God preferred to rule over free powers, and not
mere things—free powers that could be governed by truth
and reason and love; because He loves moral character,
and cares for it more than all the things "that can be
piled in the infinitude of space, even though they were diamonds,"
therefore He bestowed on man this high capacity
of character—the capacity to know, to choose, to love, to
enjoy, and in a conscious communion with God to be
blessed forever.
But when God thus determines to create a rational and
free being—to make "man in his own image"—He determines
to make a being who in acting freely may act in opposition
to the mind of God, and in violation of his holy
law. In creating a free self-determined being who shall
be the cause of his own action, God puts his own omnipotence
under conditional limitations, and renders it morally
impossible for Him, by mere force, to constrain the
will of man. The notion of a free will, which is an efficient
cause, being governed by force, is a contradiction.
Omnipotence may, if it please, annihilate man, but it can
not control man in the sphere of his freedom. "Powers
governed by the absolute force or fiat of omnipotence
would in that fact be uncreate and cease."[556]
The moral government of God must deal with man as
man, must treat him as intelligent and free, and must govern
him solely by moral influences. He must be controlled
by the voice of reason and the sense of duty, by persuasion
and sympathy, by hope and fear; in short, by motives addressed
to the judgment, the conscience, and the heart. A
self-determined being can be brought into harmony with
the Divine order only by "the schooling of his consent."
He can be perfected—that is, fully established in harmony
with the character and will of God—by the discipline of
the will. He must, therefore, be placed in such circumstances
as invite consent, and at the same time permit resistance.
He is to be trained, furnished, and perfected, and
to this end he must be carried through just such experiences,
changes, and trials as will best help the formation
of a noble human character, and will best prepare man for
the plenitude and blessedness of that life for which the
present is a course of education and discipline.[557]
Furthermore, God's moral government of the world
must deal with the actual man—that is, with man as he
exists in society with certain hereditary taints that are not
his fault, and under certain unfavorable conditions in
which he has been placed without his consent. With reverence,
we affirm that God Himself is under moral obligation
to treat man equitably, to take account of the weakness
which he inherits, the perverted education that has
been given him, and the depraved associations that surround
him, and graduate his responsibility on the scale of
his available light. Finally, the moral government of God
must deal with the man that will be—with that fixed
character which may be formed by man in the exercise of
his free power of self-determination, amid the circumstances
of his earthly probation. This character must contain
within itself the elements of a blessed or a wretched
futurition, and thus a retribution be secured by fixed nature,
and inflicted by an inflexible necessity.
That the moral government of God is a probationary
economy, in which ample scope is afforded for the development
of character, and in which we are in the act of being
proved, is evident,
(1.) From the fact that all our future interests are dependent
upon our present conduct. God has endowed
us with some degree of foresight, and has thus made us
provident beings. We have a native tendency to take account
of and forecast the future. By the aid of reason
we can, in some measure, foresee the tendencies of our actions;
we can lay our plans for the future, and anticipate
events which are yet remote. We can also bring to our
aid the lessons of experience, and from this also we can
learn that our present action will have a powerful influence
upon our future condition. We know that the circumstances
which surround us to-day have been in a large
degree created or moulded by ourselves, and that many of
our misadventures and our miseries may be easily traced
back to particular acts of imprudence and folly on our
own part as the cause. So that there is no truth we more
certainly know than this, that our future happiness of the
next moment, and of every succeeding stage of our living,
is dependent upon our present conduct.
(2.) This is further evident from the fact that the present
scene is filled with moral tests and temptations.
There is in the present life an admixture of good and evil.
On the one hand there are numerous solicitations to evil;
on the other there are motives and inducements to virtue,
the plain intention of which is to prove us. In the
words of Bishop Butler, "We have here free scope and opportunity
for that good or evil conduct which God will
reward or punish hereafter." This is necessary to moral
government, because moral government can not exist without
freedom of choice, and consequently the existence of
those circumstances in which that freedom can be exercised.
That we have freedom of choice we know; and
our every-day experience of the temptations to wrong-doing,
and of the difficulties in the way of a uniform adherence
to virtue, teaches us that we are in a state of trial,
where our principles are being continually put to the test.
(3.) That our present life is a probation for a future life
is evident from the fact that in the present life punishment
is deferred, consequences are delayed, to give play
to the exercise of moral motives.
By "moral motives" we mean regard for what is right
and just, because it is right and just, respect for the voice
of conscience, and reverence for the will and requirements
of God. If the consequences of our moral conduct were
to follow immediately on the heels of the act, if reward or
punishment were instantly to ensue, then moral motives
could have no exercise. If there were no delay—no interval
between sin and its punishment, moral government
would cease, and a merely natural government would remain,
such as prevails over irrational creatures. Man would
then be influenced purely by motives of personal interest
or safety or enjoyment, and his obedience would not be
the result of moral motives, consequently neither virtuous
nor vicious. God has, therefore, put the consequences of
much of our conduct into the future, that we may have
room for free deliberate choice, while just so much of consequence
is permitted to appear as will clearly indicate
that we are under moral government, and awaken the anticipation
that all our conduct will be brought into judgment.
(4.) That our present life is a probation for a future life
is more fully proved by the fact that as a moral economy
the present life is incomplete. The present is a sphere
too contracted for the equitable administration of rewards
and punishments, because some of the last actions of men's
lives, some of their best actions or some of their basest actions,
would come under neither. The blood of the martyrs
who died for the faith, or of the patriot who bled for
his country, would cry alike in vain for vengeance or reward.
The man who first took away his brother's life, and
then his own, has evaded justice, and escaped punishment.
The hand of violence has robbed the virtuous man of his
present reward; and the suicide, by breaking in upon the
sanctuary of his own life, has defied and defeated the government
of God, if there be no future life.
In the present life retribution fails in uniformity. It is
a proposition which the reason of every man must approve—that
the government of God must be perfectly equitable,
and that under it every man must receive his just due.
But men do not receive their requital in this life, consequently
we are bound to affirm that in the present life the
Divine administration is incomplete. We can not conceal
from ourselves the fact that events occur in the present
life which we can not conceive as benevolently or righteously
consummated. These events lift the tyrant to
power, and trample down the patriot and the freeman.
The orphan eats the bitter bread of misery, while the man
who has robbed him of the paternal inheritance revels in
luxury. The ungodly prosper in the world, "their eyes
stand out with fatness, they have more than heart could
wish," while the righteous suffer affliction, and are in need.
And if there is no future life in which God will balance
accounts with the universe, and render to every man according
to his works, then moral government is incomplete,
injustice has triumphed, wrong has prevailed. An imperfect
retribution and an unequal providence demand a future
life for their vindication—a future life both for the
good and the bad, so that God may reckon with all of
them—and teach most convincingly that the present life
is a probation. The experiences, changes, conflicts, trials of
a probationary economy, are all intended to prove men, to
test their principles and make manifest their real character.
The government of God is a moral discipline by which
men are trained in the practice and confirmed in the habits
of virtue, and thus brought, by the "schooling of their
own consent," into harmony with the Divine order.
It is a question which may be properly entertained,
whether a free self-determined being can be made perfect
in moral character in any other manner than by the discipline
of the will. There certainly can be no created
moral desert. Responsible character must be the product
of free choice. A man can no more become virtuous without
the discipline of the will than he can become intelligent
without the discipline of the understanding. For
wherein consists the virtue of a self-determined being?
Is it not in his free choice of what is right and good, his
resistance to temptation, his voluntary submission to the
Divine will? Is it not in his integrity, his patience, his
fortitude, and his resignation? But how can these virtues
exist, how can they be exercised, and how brought to maturity,
except in the midst of difficulties and hinderances?
Where can patience and resignation and fortitude and
sympathy have a place, if there are no sufferings to be endured?
How can firmness and diligence and courage be
developed, if there are no difficulties and hinderances to
the practice of virtue?
Therefore, in order that men may be trained and educated
and perfected, they are placed amid such scenes, experiences,
and trials as shall draw out the moral powers of
the soul, shall strengthen and confirm the will in goodness,
and establish them in the law of their being, so that
their moral future is secure. "Life, thus ordered, is a magnificent
scheme to bring out the value of law, and teach
the necessity of right as the only conserving principle of
order and happiness; teaching the more powerfully, if so
it must, by disorder and sorrow." Suffering is a chastisement
which is wholesome: it teaches the blessedness of
purity and the sinfulness of sin; and it may develop into
"a godly sorrow" which shall heal and purify the soul.
The moral government of God is an equitable administration,
in which responsibility is graduated on the scale
of available light and opportunity. "This is the condemnation
that light is come into the world." Light is the
symbol of knowledge, because it reveals the right and
clearly manifests what duty is. Light is consequently the
exact measure of responsibility. Our knowledge of what
we ought to do, or ought not to do, determines the degree
of our accountability. An absolute and involuntary ignorance
would be the most perfect plea of innocence. The
imputation of sin in such a case would be made void, but
thereby the completeness of human nature be destroyed.
That which would relegate man from the sphere of responsibility
would also banish him from the sphere of
rationality.
St. Paul distinctly recognizes an alleviation of responsibility
and guilt in the "ignorance" of heathen life, and
speaks of a Divine "overlooking of the times of that ignorance"—a
non-imputation of sins committed in ignorance.
But he does not by any means account the sinning heathen
as free from all guilt. He shows that they were not
in utter ignorance, and that much of their ignorance was
voluntary. He refers to the original consciousness of God,
and to the fact that this consciousness is kept alive by the
revelation of God in nature; and he shows that the disorder
of their religious and moral life resulted from the
voluntary suppression of this consciousness—"When they
knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were
thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their
foolish heart was darkened." He also appeals to the no
less definite power of conscience in the heart of the heathen,
"which shows the works required by the law to be
written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness
to this law, and their thoughts approving or condemning
each other," and their civil laws "adjudging their
crimes as worthy of death." So far as their ignorance was
involuntary it was an alleviation of guilt, though not an
excuse for all sin. Whatever light they had, be it little or
much, it was the standard and measure of their accountability.
The Founder of Christianity distinctly recognized this
principle of moral government. "If I had not come and
spoken unto them, they had not had sin, but now they
have no cloak for their sin"—clearly teaching that ignorance
would be a negation of guilt, and knowledge an
aggravation of guilt. Not that we are to suppose that the
Jews, without the light which Christ supplied, were absolutely
guiltless; their ignorance was a mitigation of their
guilt. Christ lays it down as a universal principle that
knowledge of the Divine law or ignorance of the Divine
law by the person who violates it is the ground of a distinction
in the different degrees of culpability. "That
servant which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself,
neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with
many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit
things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes."[558]
This is the uniform rule of the Divine government among
all nations.
Increase of light and knowledge necessarily enhances
human responsibility. "To whomsoever much is given, of
him shall be much required." More is expected of the
man than of the child. More is demanded at the hands
of the man who has been blessed with the advantages of a
Christian civilization than from the untutored savage.
The man who has been favored with a liberal education
is held to a more rigid account than the man who has been
cradled in ignorance and schooled in vice. And when the
kingdom of God comes nigh to men, human responsibility
must be enlarged in commensuration with its blessings.
There is a holier, richer trust, and consequently a deeper
obligation. There is a greater light and a greater condemnation.
"Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida!
for if the mighty works which were done in you had been
done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long
ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall
be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment
than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted
unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if
the mighty works which have been done in thee had been
done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the
land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee."[559]
This aspect of the Divine government, which Dr. Whedon
has felicitously styled "the equation of probational advantages,"
relieves our sadness in view of the moral condition
of the world. "The Judge of all the earth will do right"
in the case of every human soul that has passed through
this probationary scene. His omniscient eye can take in at
one view all the influences and circumstances, favorable or
unfavorable, which have surrounded each individual, and
fix the precise amount of responsibility. He will "overlook"
the "defect of doubt and taints of blood," the faults
of education and sins of ignorance, and He will make a
due allowance for the power of temptation, the trammels of
evil associations, and an enfeebled and perverted nature.
"He is full of compassion, and his tender mercies are over
all his works." "He knows our frame, and He remembers
that we are dust." We may safely conjecture that
a negro hamlet in Central Africa, however inferior in its
temporal moral aspects, may, in its prospect for an eternal
destiny, be superior to many an American village. And
in the dregs of our large cities there are numbers who are
excluded as effectually from the knowledge of the truth as
the heathen, and are scarcely developed to the level of
responsibility. These may be the least in the kingdom of
heaven, but by the law of moral equation they can not be
excluded.[560] In every nation under heaven, he that has
feared God and wrought righteousness, according to his
knowledge and ability, will be "accepted of God."
The moral government of God secures an infallible
and equitable retribution by binding character and consequence
in indissoluble bonds, and evolving a reward or a
punishment out of that permanent moral state of the soul
which has been induced by the free self-determination of
man.
"Character," says Novalis, "is a completely fashioned
will (vollkommen gebildeter Wille). It is that ultimate
stress and determination of the soul which results from the
coherence and complexure of habits, and habit is the result
of repeated acts of voluntary choice. From the persistence
of habit a fixed disposition and cast of the inner
man is evolved which constitutes his moral individuality."
Even in this formative process we can discern the workings
of the law of retribution. One good deed handsels a
second, and renders its performance more easy and pleasurable.
The man who obeys his conscience feels that he can
respect himself. He has a consciousness of growing power;
a sense of dignity and moral worth. The moral law is for
him "a law of liberty." On the other hand, one sinful
deed involves a second, and drags it after it. One lie demands
another to maintain its consistency. One act of
injustice emboldens to the next. Self-respect is broken
down by license, and the path is prepared and cleared for
further iniquity. Thus, by the repetition of sinful deeds,
restraints are overborne, depraved habits are engendered,
vice acquires a mastery over the man, and he becomes a
slave. There is a deep humiliation in this sense of degradation
and unworthiness. The sinner despises himself because
of his weakness, and blushes in secret places at the
remembrance of his own debasement.
The principal happiness or misery of man consists in the
settled state of his own heart, and not in the outward conditions
of his daily life. All human plaudits are as naught
compared with the approval of one's own conscience; and
no penal inflictions can compare with the anguish of remorse.
The inward peace of the righteous soul, the disquietude
and misery of the sinful soul, are the blossom
and the fruitage of the seed which has been sown, and the
stem and branches which have been nurtured by the voluntary
choices and acts of man. "He that soweth to his
flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth
to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting." The
connection between sin and punishment is no arbitrary or
accidental connection. It is just as much a relation between
cause and effect as the relation between sowing
and reaping in the physical world. "To cause the mind
to punish itself, to work a retribution out of ourselves, to
secure it by fixed nature, to inflict it by inflexible necessity,
to convert the capacity of sin into the instrument of suffering,
is the prerogative of Divine rule."[561]
IV. The end of moral government.—We have said that
the end of government, in general, is the maintenance of
order. The end of moral government is the maintenance
of moral order in the realm of free self-determined powers.
The moral order must consist in conformity to the
idea of the absolute good. The personality of God (the
essential momenta of which are reason and freedom, holiness
and love) is per se, in its totality, the absolute good.
Infinite Personality is but another name for Absolute Perfection.
The highest good for a created dependent personality is
"to resemble God" in all those attributes or perfections
which constitute personality. It is to be fully established
in harmony with God's moral character, unified with Him
in will, glorified with Him in holiness, and perfected with
Him in the blessedness of love. The highest perfection
of personal being is moral order, and therefore human
personality, conceived in its purity and perfection, is the
end of the Divine government.[562]
This we have called "the ideal order of moral life," because
it is not yet realized in the world. We must believe,
however, that the final triumph of goodness is a
part of the great world-plan. We must not only believe,
but know, that the great design of creation, the reason for
which the world exists at all, is that in it goodness may
come to its final realization. And this conviction is grounded
on the fact that the moral life of humanity has its source
in the same Being who called the world into existence, and
who is conducting this present dispensation to a glorious
consummation, in which He shall "reconcile all things
unto Himself,... whether they be things in earth or things
in heaven," and "gather together in one all things in
Christ," that "God may be all in all."
Christianity bases all the obligations and sanctions of
morality on the great truths that God is near to man, that
He sustains him every moment in life, that He is the Father
of the human spirit, and that He governs man in order to
perfect his nature and bring him into an everlasting fellowship
with Himself. Christianity knows nothing of "a
science of morals" which is not based upon the correlations
between man and God, nor of a morality which
forgets God and disregards the most sacred and fundamental
of all duties, namely, the duties we owe to God.
A morality based solely upon the relations in which we
stand to our fellow-men is at best but secular and utilitarian.
A morality which is grounded upon the relation of
volition to the state of the sensibility, and regards "happiness
as our being's end and aim," is egoistic and selfish.
A morality which rests upon our relation to God, the absolute
good, and which looks backward rather than forward
for its motive, is unselfish and Christian.
