Freedom of the will

“ I thus disclaim openly on the threshold all pretension to prove to you that the freedom of the will is true. The most I hope is to induce some of you to follow my own example in assuming it true, and acting as if it were true. If it be true, it seems to me that this is involved in the strict logic of the case. Its truth ought not to be forced willy-nilly down our indifferent throats. It ought to be freely espoused by men who can equally well turn their backs upon it. In other words, our first act of freedom, if we are free, ought in all inward propriety to be to affirm that we are free. ”

“ The freedom of the will to refuse the evil and to choose the good is distinctly asserted. ‘Virtue is free, and as a man honours or dishonours her he will have more or less of her.’ The life of man is ‘rounded’ by necessity ”

“ He who must still exhort himself, and be exhorted, to will the good, has as yet no firm and ever-ready will, but wills a will anew every time he needs it. But he who has such a stable will, wills what he wills for ever, and cannot under any circumstances will otherwise than he always wills. For him freedom of the will is destroyed and swallowed up in necessity. ”

“ Until this be shown, we must contend that there is nothing in the universe so diametrically opposed to all free-agency—to all liberty of the will, as the scheme of moral necessity; which so clearly overthrows and, demolishes the very idea of a will and all its volitions.
Indeed, what is called natural necessity does not properly interfere with the liberty of the will at all; it merely restrains the freedom of motion. It is moral necessity that reaches the seat of the mind, and takes away all the freedom thereof; even denying to us the possession of a will itself. ”

“ If he has no will of his own, why give him a command? This freedom of man's will is a logical necessity. Reason demands it. Now, let us look at this a little. If man is not free to choose between good and evil; between right and wrong; between truth and falsity; wherein lies the reasonableness of instructing him? of exhorting him to do what is right, and to shun what is wrong? of commanding him to do good, with promises of reward for his obedience, and threatenings of judgment and fiery indignation as the sure penalties of his disobedience and sin? ”

“ We ask, How can the mind be free? and they tell us, When the body may be so! We inquire about an attribute of the spiritual principle within, and they turn us off with an answer respecting an accident of the material principle without! An ignoratio elenchi more flagrant—a mistaking of the question more palpable—it is surely not possible to conceive. Yet this definition of the freedom of the will, though so superficially false, is precisely that which has found the most general acceptance among necessitarians. ”

“ Unfortunately, few of those who champion the freedom of the will think it worth while to trouble their readers with a clear definition of what they mean by it. The orthodox definition of the will as "a faculty of the soul" tells us nothing. ”

“ That there must be some circumstances present, if there is to be any self-determination on the part of the will, we have already admitted; the freedom of the will implies the presence of more alternatives or motives than one—and we always have the alternative of acting or abstaining from action. ”

“ Freedom to think my own thoughts, preach my own creeds, do my own work, and make the sacrifices of my own choosing. I declare that I will have no master and no mistress, no slave and no neophyte, but that I will strive to preserve my own personality and to help all of my brothers and sisters, the world over, to preserve theirs. ”

“ Let those who think that there can be no morality and no religion, no foundation for human responsibility, and no basis for a moral code, without freedom of the will, read the great work of that grand old Puritan divine, Jonathan Edwards, entitled "A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of the Will which is supposed to be essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame." ”

“ Why, if the will is not distinguished from the affections, we shall have the will acting upon itself; a doctrine to which the necessitarian will not listen for a moment. And if they are distinguished from the will, we shall have two powers of action, two forces in the mind, each contending for the mastery. But what do we mean by a will, if it is not the faculty by which the mind acts, by which it exerts a real force? And if this be the idea and definition of a will, we cannot distinguish the will from the affections, and say that the latter exerts a real force, without making two wills. ”

“ I will try to assume,—though it is not my own position,—the doctrine of the freedom of the will in the widest sense that any reasonable person can devise. No such [Pg 6] person will deny that there is a close connection—the terms of which have not yet been defined—between the physical constitution and the moral or intellectual character. The man plainly grows out of the baby. ”

“ Throughout the controversy as to free will that has been carried on among English psychologists this is the way in which the question has been commonly dealt with. The freedom, claimed or denied for the will, has been claimed or denied for it irrespectively of those objects willed, on the nature of which the goodness or badness of the will depends. ”

“ How wonderful it is to do your will! For that is freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom's name. Unless you do your will you are not free. And would God leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never lose your will when He gave you His perfect Answer. Hear It now, that you may be reminded of His Love and learn your will. God would not have His Son made prisoner to what he does not want. He joins with you in willing you be free. And to oppose Him is to make a choice against yourself, and choose that you be bound. ”

“ If it were necessary, it might be shown, by hundreds of extracts from their writings, that the great advocates of free-agency have held, that the emotions, desires, and passions, do really act on the will, and tend to produce volitions. ”

“ As a refuge from the last of the three, men imagined what they called the freedom of the will; fancying that they could not justify punishing a man whose will is in a thoroughly hateful state, unless it be supposed to have come into that state through no influence of anterior circumstances. ”

“ On the contrary, I think we should contend for a perfect indifference, not in regard to feeling, but in regard to the will. Standing on this high ground, we need not retire from the broad and open field, in order to set up the empire of a perfect liberty in a dark corner, extending to a few insignificant things only: we may establish it over the whole range of human activity, bringing out into a clear and full light, the great fact of man’s perfect accountability, for all his actions, under all the circumstances of his life. ”

“ Now when the will obeys the laws of the reason, shall it be asked, what is the cause of the act of obedience? The will is the cause of its own act; a cause per se, a cause self-conscious and self-moving; it obeys the reason by its own nisus. When the will obeys the strongest desire, shall we ask, what is the cause of the act of obedience? Here again, the will is the cause of its own act. Are we called upon to ascend higher? We shall at last come to such a self-moving and contingent power, or we must resign all to an absolute necessity. ”

“ Under this heading the metaphysical doctrine of freedom of the will is combated as a contradiction of the laws of Cause and Effect. Praise and blame, reward and punishment, are desirable because of their effect on action. ”

“ But, by one escape or another, the will, the soul, goes free. Sooner or later, every human being comes to know and prove in his own estate that freedom of will is the only freedom for which there are no chains possible, and that in Nature's whole reign of law nothing is so largely provided for as liberty. Sooner or later, all this must come. But, if it comes later, it comes through clouds of antagonism, and after days of fight, and is hard-bought. ”

“ The idea of liberty, as it stands connected with the controversy in question, has reference to the manner in which our volitions come to pass, to the relation which subsists between motives and their corresponding actions. When we say that the will is free, we mean “that it is not necessarily determined by the influence of motives;” we mean to deny the doctrine of moral necessity, or that the relation which subsists between a motive and its corresponding act, is not that which subsists between an efficient cause and its effect. ”

“ We see that certain means must be used, in order to gratify the passion, desire, affection, or feeling, which we intend to gratify; and we act accordingly. In all this, we form our designs or intentions free from all influence whatever: nothing acts upon the will: we fix upon the end, and we choose the means to accomplish it. ”

“ Naught shall be but the necessities she creates and impossibilities; freedom shall mean freedom to obey her will, ideal and actual shall be one: she, and I as her champion, will be satisfied on no lower terms. ”

“ Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. ”

“ The essential freedom of will is, and must always be, a thought: hence the way by which will can make itself objective mind is to rise to be a thinking will,—to give itself the content which it can only have as it thinks itself.
True liberty, in the shape of moral life, consists in the will finding its purpose in a universal content, not in subjective or selfish interests. ”

“ It is a duty for every will to act thus, directly it is a free will; but the fact that there is a free will that makes this act possible is a favor of nature in regard to this faculty, to which freedom is a necessity. Thus an act of virtue judged by the moral sense—by reason—will give us as its only satisfaction the feeling of approbation, because reason can never find more, and seldom finds as much as it requires. ”

“ But if you choose the liberty and pride and strength of the single soul, and the free fraternization of men, as the purpose which your life is to make manifest then do not sell it for tinsel. Think that your soul is strong and will hold its way; and slowly, through bitter struggle perhaps the strength will grow. And the foregoing of possessions for which others barter the last possibility of freedom will become easy. ”

“ But, as I have just shown, it is this same doctrine of the necessary character of all acts of will which makes it needful to regard a man's existence and being as itself the work of his freedom, and consequently of his will. ”

“ If the choice be first, before the existence of a good disposition of heart, what is the character of that choice? There can, according to our natural notions, be no virtue in a choice which proceeds from no virtuous principle, but from mere self-love, ambition, or some animal appetite: therefore, a virtuous temper of mind may be before a good act of choice, as a tree may be before the fruit, and the fountain before the stream which proceeds from it,” p. ”

“ When we proceed to inquire after the characteristics of human volition, we bring in the idea of right and wrong; we look at the relations of the reason and the sensitivity. But when we inquire why the will now obeys reason, and now passion ”

“ The simple freedom of man’s will, so that, whatever he chooses, he chooses not against his inclination, but through a direct and conscious internal preference of the thing chosen to the thing rejected: this simple freedom of man’s will they deny not. ”

“ How many persons have laboured in vain, to reconcile the free-agency of man with the reality of a divine influence; just because they have laboured under the superficial notion, the grand illusion, that the Spirit of God cannot act upon the mind at all, unless it acts to produce a volition! ”

“ To this new life in the affections, duty becomes a pleasure. The conscience, no longer perplexed and overborne by evil desires, becomes able to assert its rightful authority. The will attains its rightful freedom and power to control efficiently in the domain of righteousness, and to hold the life in the harmonies of right and duty. ”

“ This action of the will is recognised at the very moment of its exercise; we have the same knowledge of our freedom as of our existence; we feel and know that we are free. But at the same time that we know ourselves to be free, and recognise in ourselves the faculty of originating by our own will a certain series of actions, at that very time we discover that our will is placed under the control of a certain law which constrains but does not coerce us ”

“ Let the person come by his choice any how, yet if he is able, and there is nothing in the way to hinder his pursuing and executing his will, the man is perfectly free, according to the primary and common notion of freedom. ”

“ The free will, as having a being in space (Daseyn) , is the objective mind, right, and the state. In right, morals and the state, the freedom and rationality, which are chosen by the will, take on an objective form. Every natural determination and impulse now becomes moralized, and comes up to view again as ethical institute, as right and duty (the sexual impulse now appears as marriage, and the impulse of revenge as civil punishment, &c.) ”