`WILL, freedom of. There are, per haps, tew topics of inquiry which have more than this perplexed the understand ings and irritated the passions of man kind. From the continued conflict of opinion which has existed on the subject, in every age since the operations of the mind of man became a frequent subject of investigation, it might be almost pre sumed to belong to those questions which furnish abundant matter for dis cussion, but none for conviction ; which sharpen ingenuity, without resulting in certainty ; and serve to display the human intellect in all Its strength and weakness, in all its pride and humiliation.
Philosophical free-will, it must ever be remembered, is something totally differ ent from external liberty. The latter is possessed by every man who has the pow er of doing as he pleases ; that is, of car rying his volitions 'into execution. But whether volitions be free or necessitated ; whether, in forming these, the mind ex ert a self.determining power, or be uni. formly and irresistibly influenced by mo tives, is a question perfectly unconnected with the circumstances of freedom or control, relating to their execution. The will may be bound, though the couse quent act be unimpeded ; and, on the other band, the exercise of the self-tie. termining power, in volition, may be pre vented, by numberless restraints, from being followed up in act. The point in discussion between the advocates 01 phi losophical free-will and their opponents is, whether man be invariably and ne cessarily influenced by motives ; or, whether he possess a self-governing, sell-determining power, which he may exert by acting either according to . motives, in opposition to motives, or without any motives at all. And though .
some of the defenders of liberty differ from others in the extent of the exer cise of this power, many limiting it to acts of mere deliberation, and others connecting it with every actual and pos sible instance of volition, the controversy between them and the necessarians has no reference to these differences, hut is circumscribed by the single question, whether, in any case whatever, a volition can originate independently of motive ; or, in other words, whether the mind be capable of acting differently, previous _ circumstances continuing in every re spect the same. In support of philoso phical liberty, its supporters make their first appeal to consciousness. With re spect to various volitions, it is observed, we are not only insensible to an overpow ering and resistless influence of motives, but are positively conscious of choosing without any motive, and often even in opposition to the strongest. And were it not that the mind possessed this para mount and independent faculty—this li berty of determining differently in the same circumstances, whence could arise " those feelings of approbation or blame, which ever attach to volitions of high im portance and moral consequence ? Qould censure reasonably be applied to any act that was inevitable ? or is there any ade quate ground of applause for what could not possibly have been unperformed ? Are not the feelings of individuals, and the consent of nations, on this subject, perfectly decided and coincident ? The repentant sinner is overwhelmed with remorse for that delinquency which he feels it was no less within his power than his duty to have avoided : the abandoned criminal, who has lifted his murderous arm against his neighbour, falls an unpi tied victim to the laws of his country. Upon what principle is remorse felt in the one case, and execution inflicted in the other, but on that which naturally presses conviction on every human bo som, that the offender, instead of being hurried on to guilt by irresistible destiny, was merely the ready tool of appetites which he might have controuled ; the willing slave of passions which he might have corrected. The lunatic incendiary is regarded as no proper object of pu nishment, frenzy having usurped the throne of reason, and the exercise of ra tional free-will being precluded by the paroxism of disease. And, on similar grounds, the destroyer of life by mere accident, is exempt from the vengeance of .human laws, which point their thun der only against those who are both ca pable of distinguishing right from wrong, and of avoiding the crimes into which they voluntarily plunge themselves. If, there fore, any conclusion whatever can be justly inferred from the almost instinctive feelings of mankind, which even those uniformly act upon who systematically controvert and ridicule them, how pow erful must the argument, hence derived, be considered in favour of that liberty of will, without which the agonies of re morse appear only the gratuitous self-in flictions of folly ; and the most essential acts of legislation, seem the most execrable operations of tyranny ? The moral and re ligious consequences, considered as aris ing from the system of necessity, are re garded by the advocates for free-will as of a nature so repulsive to the interests of virtue, so incompatible with moral dis cipline, so full of palpable absurdity and extreme impiety, that these alone are deemed sufficient to justify the rejection of a doctrine, from which they appear es sentially and decidedly to flow. Can that system, it is asked, be true, which saps the foundations of virtue, by ascribing every act and thought, every feeling and wish, connected with moral character, to imperious and resistless impulse ? which constitutes man a mere machine, guilt less even in the extreme of wickedness, and worthless in the maturity of benevo lence ; because in both cases, equally compelled by circumstances to good or evil, and equally destitute of moral qua lity with the quickening sun or the de vouring tempest ? If every sentiment and deed of every human individual be the result of preceding situations, which si tuations themselves are only links in an interminable series of processes, equally compelled and necessitating, how vain are all the popular and presumed means of operating upon the mind, to reclaim from vice, or to guide to virtue ? Can there be any stimulus to exertions decid edly fruitless ? cir can there be any pe nitence for inevitable crime ? or can there be any justice, human or divine, in the punishment of offences committed, in deed, by choice, yet committed through necessity ? With what disgust will be viewed , the imputation thrown by this system on the Supreme Being (who is considered by it to be not only reign, but the sole agent, in the uni verse), as the origin of all existing evil ! Under what character is the Divine Be ing represented by this doctrine, but un der that of a baffling tyrant, and a de riding fiend ; exhorting men to what they cannot accomplish, and torturing them for what they cannot avoid, and, under the designation of the God of truth, uttering a tissue of the most ma lignant falsehoods ? With what horror must we contemplate a Deity, who is ex hibited as the very author of what he pro fesses to hate, the performer of what he punishes, and the source of every pol luted thought, every tormenting passion, and every evil work ; whose chosen in struments and objects appear to be, ha tred and uncharitableness, guilt and ter ror, confusion, pain, and death ; who is displayed, in short, as the introducer of all moral evil, and the scourge of all mo ral nature ? It is by no means surprising that ob servations, or arguments, such as these, should have operated strongly on the ma jority even of persons in some degree habituated to reflection. The moral man has trembled for the interests of virtue ; the pious man has recoiled from the dreaded charge of blasphemy ; and so coincident is the misapprehended sys tem of liberty with the feelings of indis criminating and unreflecting minds, that it would be truly extraordinary if the op. posite doctrine had not to encounter from such, prejudices the most violent and hostile. General consent, however, and presumed consciousness, are no more sufficient to establish the doctrine of philosophical free-will, than the appear ance exhibited by the sun and stars of revolving round this terraqueous globe, and the universal conviction once enter tained of the reality of this appearance, can be considered to have been irrefra gable evidence of this popular philoso phy. And with regard to the interests
of virtue, and even the honour of the Deity, the man who refrains from the . discussion of important topics, from a trembling apprehension lest these should be injuriously involved in the result of his investigation, displays inexpressibly more of fastidious sensibility than of vi gorous intellect. If discussion can pos sibly evince that virtue is detrimental or worthless, instead of being extolled as the best source of hope, and the only guide to happiness, let it be instantly ex posed to the aversion and avoidance of mankind. And if the most acute and profound speculation can possibly dis connect from the Supreme Being those qualities of wisdom and goodness, of power and perfection, which have hi therto only appeared the more clearly to belong to him the more his attributes have been investigated, let the veil be, at once, rent from the imagined sanctuary, and let detestation or contempt be sub stituted for joyful devotion and humble imitation. These delicate scruples, and fearful doubts, and awful hesitations, have too long retarded the march of the hu man mind in its pursuit of the ends and means most, worthy of its researches. They have been in every age supports, as, indeed, they are results, of supersti tion : they have aided the views of civil tyranny, and inquisitorial bigotry ; and until the operations of thought be unim peded by these morbid tremours, any rapid advance to the maturity of social institutions can be expected only in vain. In opposition, then, to the doctrine of so tenaciously maintained, and so ardently advocated, it may be observ ed, that upon the only sound principles of philosophy, upon the very basis of all human speculation and conclusion, the imagined liberty of man will appear equally unsupportable, as any change in the arrangements of material nature with out a corresponding change of pre-ex isting circumstances. If volitions, in any case, start up in the mind uncaused, as well may,it be presumed, that the uni versal system of nature sprang into ex istence without any previous and opera tive energy. All inquiry into causes is vain • all reference to circumstances is absurd : conclusions, the most opposite, may, with equal propriety, be inferred from the same premises ; or, rather, the only conclusion to be formed is, that of one immense and universal Chaos, in which processes, both of mind and mat ter, are incipient without cause, and ope rative without effect. If, on the other hand, man be uniformly and imperiously influenced by motives, volitions are as definitive, in definite circumstances, as the movements of palpable mechanism ; and the determinations of the mind are equal ly decided and inevitable, as the inclina tions of the balance. The most animated display of evils, imagined to result from the system of necessity, will scarcely in duce any vigorous and unprejudiced mind to surrender the only basis on which inference can be formed and inquiry in stituted. But the principles of religion are equally adverse to free-will with the axioms of philosophy ; and it is curious to observe, that the doctrine of liberty, under consideration, meets with its de struction in what may be regarded, possi bly, as the very source of its existence. ' Sentiments of religion, unquestionably, suggested the expediency of human freedom, to screen the character of Deity from imputation on the ground of natural and moral evil ; and man was thus invested with a paramount and mysterious faculty, by which, in circum stances precisely the same, he is capable of performing any action, or its opposite. By a fallacy, more reverential than inge nious ; by a sophism, such as in ordinary, life would expose its employers to instant detection and ridicule, this pre-eminent power, though admitted to be communi cated, is considered as the efficient cause of all that evil which it was regarded in decorous and blasphemous to ascribe to Deity. The respbnsibility on this subject, which was conceived to reflect severely on the character of God, by this accom modating invention, was imagined to be easily and happily removed. But if piety has, upon this curious ground, con tributed to establish the belief in human free-will, it has no less decidedly main tained the doctrine of divine omniscience: yet to unite these articles in the same creed, must be regarded by the unbiassed inquirer as absolutely and eternally im possible. How can it be within the power of man to avoid doing what God foresees he will perform ? or how can that remain undone which is foreknown, and unquestionably, therefore, certainly will be accomplished ? What becomes of that boasted liberty, which is incapable of being exerted, and the exercise of which, though strangely denied to be precluded by necessity, it must be at least admitted, has to encounter the most indubitable and decided certainty ? And how is the diffi culty which, on every other system, pres ses from the consideration of existing • evil, at all mitigated by an hypothesis, which merely transfers the charge from , the principal to the agent : from the Creator to the creature ; from the be stower of the faculty of freedom, who must be aware of all its possible applica tions and consequences, and who there fore, in the eye of reason, intends all the effect, of the principle he thus communi cates, to the frail possessor and foreseen abuser of it ? With respect, moreover, to moral discipline, how can any system, which has this object in view, be at all applicable to beings, whose merit and perfection are supposed to consist in a total superiority to motive ; who can re sist the strongest applications of menace or conciliation, of remuneration or pen alty ; with whom caprice alone is princi ple, and chance direction ; and an inde finable, unintelligible power of self-deter mination, without the aid of motive, or even in diametrical opposition to the strongest, is the substitute for all steady object and rational inducement ? With re gard to virtue, in this system, its maturity consists not in useful tendencies and affec tions, so confirmed by habit as to have acquired almost an incapability of effec tual counteraction, a definition founded on the only correct theory of the human mind, and which presents the most ad mirable and impressive lessons of morali ty, but in an imagined principle or facul ty which has no perceivable connection with character, habit, or affection ; and in proportion to the degree in which any intelligent agent can be supposed to act from this unmotived faculty, in that pro portion must he be presumed less capable of forming those fixed and almost inde structible associations which are the sole security of moral excellence. Free-will, then, thus appears to be in irreconcileable hostility with the fundamental principle of human discussion and investigation, on every subject moral or material, that every thing which begins to be must have a cause : its complete operation ex cludes man from the possibility of virtu ous habits, as these can result solely from his definite impressibility by definite cir cumstances : it prevents any consistent application of threats or exhortation, of reward or punishment ; because, to a mind unguided and ungovernable by mo tive, these are equally useless as expos tulation with a storm, or advice to a con flagration. Finally, from the character of God it snatches that attribute, without which Providence must be supposed to be any thing rather than what the term naturally implies. Instead of a superin tending Deity, foreseeing every event, affected by no surpriie, and subject to no disappointment, we are presented with a governor at the helm of Nature, who, in the impressive language of scripture, " knows not what a day may bring forth:" his arrangements may be frustrated by human folly ; his happiness may be im paired by human hostility : man, that is a worm, may baffle the views of Divine in telligence, and counteract the energies of Almighty power !