Henry Philip Tappan

“ Truth is greater and more venerable than the names of great and venerable men, or of great and venerable sects: and I cannot believe that I seek truth with a proper love and veneration, unless I seek her, confiding in herself alone, neither asking the authority of men in her support, nor fearing a collision with them, however great their authority may be. It is my interest to think and believe aright, no less than to act aright; and as right action is meritorious not when compelled and accidental, but when free and made under the perception and conviction of right principles ”

“ We oppose contingency not to cause, but to necessity. Do you say it is contrary to the phenomena of physical causation,—we reply that you have no right to reason from physical causes to that cause which is yourself. For in general you have no right to reason from the laws and properties of matter to those of mind. Do you affirm that contingency is an absurd and pernicious doctrine—then turn and look at the doctrine of an absolute necessity in all its bearings and consequences, and where lies the balance of absurdity and pernicious consequences? ”

“ Fatalism is the absolute negation of liberty. This system is fatalism, because it is the absolute negation of liberty.
No liberty is contended for, in this system, in relation to man, but physical liberty: viz. that when he wills, the effect will follow,—that when he wills to walk, he walks, &c. “Liberty, as I have explained it, is the power, opportunity, or advantage, that any one has to do as he pleases, or conducting himself in any respect according to his pleasure, without considering how his pleasure comes to be as it is.” ”

“ What absurdity! God esteems this link at its proper value. He sees it in its cause, and he approves this cause, for it is good. God beholds moral monsters as he beholds physical monsters. Happy is the link of gold! Still more happy if he know that he is only fortunate. He has attained the highest degree of moral perfection, and is nevertheless without pride, knowing that what he is, is the necessary result, of the place which he must occupy in the chain. ”

“ If any should reply that slaves and animals are liable to be fettered, and this distinguishes them from the free, I rejoin that every being is liable to various restraints; none of us can do many things which in themselves appear desirable, and would be objects of volition if there were known to be an established connexion between them and our wills. We are limited in our actions by the powers of nature around us; we cannot overturn mountains, or command the winds. We are limited in the nature of our physical being. We are limited by our want of wealth, knowledge, and influence. ”

“ But if, at least for the sake of the argument, it be granted that there may be other grounds of knowledge than necessity, then I would ask whether the infinite excellence of the divine reason and sensitivity, in their perfect harmony, does afford to us a ground for the most certain and satisfactory belief that the divine will will create and mould all being and order all events according to infinite wisdom and rectitude. In order to have full confidence that God will forever do right, must we know that his will is absolutely necessitated by his reason and his affections? ”

“ The second consequence is atheism. In the denial of will as a cause per se,—in resolving all its volitions into the necessary phenomena of the eternal substance,—we destroy personality: we have nothing remaining but the universe. Now we may call the universe God; but with equal propriety we call God the universe. This destruction of personality,—this merging of God into necessary substance and attributes,—is all that we mean by Atheism. The conception is really the same, whether we name it fate, pantheism, or atheism. ”

“ That it alone is free—that it alone is opposed to necessity. Reason must perceive, must believe. Sensitivity must feel when its objects are presented; but will, when the reason has given its light and uttered its commands, and when the sensitivity has awakened all its passions and emotions, is not compelled to obey. It is as conscious of power not to do, as of power to do. It may be called a power arbitrary and contingent; but this means only that it is a power which absolutely puts forth its own nisus, and is free. ”

“ For that which is possessed of no will, cannot have any power or opportunity of doing according to its will, nor be necessitated to act contrary to its will, nor be restrained from acting agreeable to it. And therefore to talk of liberty, or the contrary, as belonging to the very will itself, is not to speak good sense; for the will itself, is not an agent that has a will. The power of choosing itself, has not a power of choosing. That which has the power of volition is the man, or the soul, and not the power of volition itself. ”

“ But let us suppose, on the other hand, that with every advance of philosophy the facts of the Bible are borne aloft, and their divine authority and their truth made more manifest, have we not reason to bless the researches which have enabled us to perceive more clearly the light from Heaven? A system of truth does not fear, it courts philosophical scrutiny. Its excellency will be most resplendent when it has had the most fiery trial of thought. ”

“ If liberty be essential to responsibility, liberty, as we have clearly shown, can no more lie in the connexion between volition and its effects, than in the connexion between volition and its motives. One is just as necessary as the other. If it be granted to be absurd with the first class of theologians to urge men to do right when they are conceived to be totally unable to do right, it is equally so when they are conceived to have only a natural ability to do right, because this natural ability is of no avail without a corresponding moral ability. ”

“ Now the system we are considering goes one step further; it makes human volitions as much the objects of the eternal design, and as really the effects of the divine volition, as the rising of the stars, the flight of the lightning, the tumult of the waters, or the light which spreadeth itself like a garment over creation. Every volition of created mind is God’s act, as really as any effect in nature. ”

“ They say that the volition is caused by a motive antecedent to it, but that nevertheless, inasmuch as the man feels that he is free and is generally accounted so, he must be free; for liberty means nothing more than “power and opportunity to do and conduct as he will, or according to his choice, without taking into the meaning of the word any thing of the cause of that choice, or at all considering how the person came to have such a volition,”—that is, the man is free, and feels himself to be so, when he does as he pleases, because this is all that is meant by freedom. ”

“ It is improper, according to this, to say that a man cannot do a thing, when nothing is wanting but an act of volition; for that is within our power, as far as it can be within our power, which is within the reach of our volition.
It is still more improper to say that a man is unable to exert the acts of the will themselves, or unable to produce volitions. To say that a man has power to produce volitions, would imply that he has power to will volitions; but this would make one volition the cause of another, which is absurd. ”

“ Now what conception have we to oppose to this but that of a will not determining itself,—not the cause of its own volitions,—a power not self-moved and directed,—and not conscious of ability at the moment of a particular choice, to make a contrary choice? And this last conception is a will whose volitions are determined by some power antecedent to itself, not contingently, but necessarily. As the will is the only power for which contingent self-determination is claimed, if it be proved to be no such power, then no such power exists. ”

“ This, indeed, throws solemnity around our investigations, and warns us of caution; but, at the same time, so far from repressing investigation, it affords the highest reason why we should press it to the utmost limit of consciousness. Nothing surely can serve more to fix our impressions of moral obligation, or to open our eye to the imperishable truth and excellency of religion, than a clear and ripe knowledge of that which makes us the subjects of duty. As a believer in philosophy, I claim unbounded liberty of thought, and by thinking I hope to arrive at truth. ”

“ Cause is simply efficiency or power: law or rule defines the direction, aims, and modes of power: cause explains the mere existence of phenomena: law explains their relations and characteristics: law is the thought and design of the reason. Now a cause may be so conditioned as to be incapable of acting except in obedience to law, and this is the case of all physical causes which act according to the law or design of infinite wisdom, and thus the uniformity which we are accustomed to attribute to these causes is not their own, but belongs to the law under which they necessarily act. ”

“ When man has been represented, not as a cause, voluntary and free, but as necessary and uncontrollable desire, and as an imperfect and finite thought; God, or the supreme pattern of humanity, can be only a substance, and not a cause—a being, perfect, infinite, necessary—the immutable substance of the universe, and not its producing and creating cause. ”

“ We observe phenomena, and by the law of our intelligence we assign them to cause. But how do we conceive of cause as producing phenomena? By a nisus, an effort, or energy. Is this nisus itself a phenomenon? It is when it is observed. Is it always observed? It is not. The nisus of gravitation we do not observe; we observe merely the facts of gravitation. The nisus of heat to consume we do not observe; we observe merely the facts of combustion. Where then do we observe this nisus? Only in will. Really, volition is the nisus or effort of that cause which we call will. ”

“ Now we ask the same independence of research in the philosophy of the human mind, and no less with respect to the Will than with respect to any other faculty. We wish to make this purely a psychological question. Let us not ask what philosophy is demanded by Calvinism in opposition to Pelagianism and Arminianism, or by the latter in opposition to the former; let us ask simply for the laws of our being. In the end we may present another instance of truth honestly and fearlessly sought in the legitimate exercise of our natural reason, harmonizing with truths revealed. ”

“ The whole system of things had its origin in infinite and necessary wisdom. All volitions and events have their last and efficient cause in infinite and necessary wisdom. All that has been, all that is, all that can be, are connected by an absolute necessity with the same great source. It would be the height of absurdity to suppose it possible for any thing to be different from what it is, or to suppose that any change could make any thing better than it is; for all that is, is by absolute necessity,—and all that is, is just what and where infinite wisdom has made it, and disposed of it. ”

“ The will is wanting,—and while it is wanting, the required effect cannot appear. And how is that new volition or antecedent to be obtained? The man cannot change one volition for another. By supposition, he has not the moral or metaphysical ability,—and yet this is the only ability that can produce the new volition. It is passing strange that the power upon which volition is absolutely dependent, should be set aside by calling it metaphysical,—and the man blamed for an act because the consequent of his volition, when the volition itself is the necessary consequent of this power! ”

“ Whatever may have been the doctrines of some of the ancient atheists about man’s free agency, it will not be denied that, in the history of modern philosophy, the schemes of atheism and of necessity have been hitherto always connected together. Not that I would by any means be understood to say, that every necessitarian must ipso facto be an atheist, or even that any presumption is afforded, by a man’s attachment to the former sect, of his having the slightest bias in favour of the latter; but only that every modern atheist I have heard of has been a necessitarian. ”

“ To obey reason because it is reasonable, is nothing more than the statement of the fact that the will does obey reason. To obey desire because it is desirable, is nothing more than the statement of the fact that the will does obey desire. The will goes in one direction rather than in another by an act of self-determination, which neither admits of, nor indeed requires any other explanation than this, that the will has power to do one or the other, and in the exercise of this power, it does one rather than the other. ”

“ The volition of the man is as strictly attributable to God, as, according to our common apprehensions, the blow which I give with an axe is attributable to me. What is true of the first man, must be equally true of the man removed by a thousand generations, for the intermediary links are all ordained by God under an inevitable necessity. God is really, therefore, the sole doer—the only efficient, the only cause. All beings and things, all motion and all volition, are absolutely resolved into divine volition. ”

“ Every volition being the sense of the most agreeable, and arising from the correlation of the object and the sensitivity; it follows that every motive and every action comes under, and cannot but come under, the one idea of gratification or enjoyment. According to this system, there can be no collision between principle and passion, because principle can have no power to determine the will, except as it becomes the most agreeable. Universally, justice, truth, and benevolence, obtain sway only by uniting with desire, and thus coming under conditions of yielding the highest enjoyment. ”

“ Set aside self-determining will, and there is no stopping-place between a human volition and the divine volition. The human volition is but the divine, manifested through a lengthened it may be, but a connected and necessary chain of antecedents and sequents. I see no way of escaping from this, as a necessary and legitimate consequence of the necessary determination of will. And what is this consequence but pantheism? God is the universal and all-pervading intelligence—the universal and only power. Every movement of nature is necessary; every movement of mind is necessary ”

“ Hence to restrain a present passion would be to will against will—would be to desire opposite ways at the same moment. Desires may be relatively stronger and weaker, and the stronger will overcome the weaker; but the strongest desire must prevail and govern the man; it is utterly impossible for him to oppose any resistance, for his whole power, activity, and volition, are in the desire itself.
He can do nothing but will; and the nature and direction of his volitions are, at least in reference to any effort of his own, immutable as necessity itself. ”