FREE-WILL. The freedom or liberty of the will is the designation of a doctrine maintained in opposition to another doctrine, expressed by the term "necessity." The contest between those two views has been maintained in the fields both of theology and of metaphysics. The idea of a man being "free" in his actions appears first in the writings of the ancient Stoics. Afterwards in Philo Judieus, an Alexandrian Platonist, who flourished at the commencement of the Christian era, there occurs an inquiry pro pounded, "whether it be not the case that the upright man is free, and the vicious man a slave." This language was evidently meant to pay a compliment to virtue, and to affix a degrading stigma on vice, and ought not to have been too literally interpreted; for in strictness it might have been maintained, with even greater plausibility, that the vicious man, who defies all the. restraints of society, has the greater liberty of the two. The doctrine of freedom, as applied to the human will, was • first contended for by I'elagius against Augustine's doctrines regarding the operation of grace; and in a later age was the subject of controversy between Arminians and Calvinists, the Calvin ists (such as Jonathan Edwards) having usually been Necessitarians.
Although in this dispute there are certain points of real difference of opinion between the opposing parties, yet the problem has been unnecessarily encumbered with the unsuit able phraseology that has accidentally invested it. The notion of "freedom" is intelligible when we speak of a free man as opposed to a Russian serf, or of a free press as opposed to censorship; but with reference to human actions generally, it has no particular rele vancy. When a man, urged by hunger, eats the food that is before him, we recognize two separate facts, the one leading to the other: the first is a painful feeling or sensation, the other a series of movements by which food is conveyed to the system; the one fact we call the motive, the other the action, of the will following on the motive: but there is no propriety in describing this sequence as either free or not free. We may inquire into the greater or less certainty of the sequence—namely, whether a hungry man does always, as a matter of course, avail himself of the food presented to him, or whether one may be very hungry with the option of eating, and with no other motive operating to deter from the act, and yet not eat, thus showing an absence of uniform connection between pain and the movements for alleviating it; this would be a real question; and would throw light on the actual constitution of the human will: the question of liberty and necessity does not present us so much with an intelligible question as with an arti ficial difficulty made by inapplicable phraseology. It would have been much the same
to have disputed whether or not the will is rich, or noble, or royal, merely because the virtuous and right-minded man has sometimes been commended by those epithets being applied to him. The word "necessity," is ill chosen, in consequence of its great ambiguity; being applied sometimes to logical and mathematical implication, as when we say the whole is greater than its pant; sometimes to the rigorous uniformity of physi cal laws, such as gravitation; and at other times to what is merely a high probability,' as when we expect that a man of honorable and upright character will speak the truth on some given occasion. See NEctssiTV.
If we cast aside these confusing phrases, and inquire what is the real of dis pute, we shall rind that there are intelligible differences of opinion in reference to the sequences of hufnan volition. It may be maintained that our actions have the same uniformity as the successions of the physical world; and this view would be supported by a Very wide induction of experience. It will be found that the whole of the compli cated operations of society depend upon the certainty that men, in the same circumstances and under the same motives, will act in the same way. We allow for d,ifferences of individual character; but when once we have seen what any man is disposed to do in one instance, we take for granted that he will be similarly actuated when the identical circumstances are repeated. The whole of our trading operations are founded on the maxim that human beings prefer a greater to a smaller gain; and it has never been found that any portion of our race has taken a wayward fit, and contradicted itself on this point. We are prepared for exceptions to the rule, when other strong motives are present, but these are merely the intervention of a new force, not the suspension of the law that connects the other motive with its usual consequent. Nor is there anything degrading to human nature in this uniformity; while the opposite state of things would undermine all the securities of human life, and land us in a moral chaos. If human beings, who habitually dread pains and penalties, were suddenly, for no ulterior reason, to court hunger and cold, imprisonment and disgrace, it is obvious that there would he a speedy termination of man's career on the globe.