Читать книгу A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory - Albert Taylor Bledsoe - Страница 15

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Leibnitz censures the language of Descartes, in which he ascribes all the thoughts and volitions of men to God, and complains that he thereby shuts out free-agency from the world. It becomes a very curious question, then, how Leibnitz himself, who was so deeply implicated in the scheme of necessity, has been able to save the great interests of morality. He does not, for a moment, call in question “the great demonstration from cause and effect” in favour of necessity. It is well known that he has more than once compared the human mind to a balance, in which reasons and inclinations take the place of weights; he supposes it to be just as impossible for the mind to depart from the direction given to it by “the determining cause,” as it is for a balance to turn in opposition to the influence of the greatest weight.

Nor is he pleased with Descartes's appeal to consciousness to prove the doctrine of liberty. In reply to this appeal, he says: “The chain of causes connected one with another reaches very far. Wherefore the reason alleged by Descartes, in order to prove the independence of our free actions, by a pretended vigorous internal feeling, has no force.20 We cannot, strictly speaking, feel our independence; and we do not always perceive the causes, frequently imperceptible, on which our resolution depends. It is as if a needle touched with the loadstone were sensible of and pleased with its turning toward the north. [pg 055] For it would believe that it turned itself, independently of any other cause, not perceiving the insensible motions of the magnetic matter.”21 Thus, he seems to represent the doctrine of liberty as a mere dream and delusion of the mind, and the iron scheme of necessity as a stern reality. Is it in the power of Leibnitz, then, any more than it was in that of Descartes, to reconcile such a scheme with the free-agency and accountability of man? Let us hear him and determine.

Leibnitz repudiates the notion of liberty given by Hobbes and Locke. In his “Nouveaux Essais sur L'Entendement Humain,” a work in which he combats many of the doctrines of Locke, the insignificance of his idea of the freedom of the will is most clearly and triumphantly exposed. Philalethe, or the representative of Locke, says: “Liberty is the power that a man has to do or not to do an action according to his will.” Theophile, or the representative of Leibnitz, replies: “If men understood only that by liberty, when they ask whether the will is free, their question would be truly absurd.” And again: “The question ought not to be asked,” says Philalethe, “if the will is free: that is to speak in a very improper manner: but if man is free. This granted, I say that, when any one can, by the direction or choice of his mind, prefer the existence of one action to the non-existence of that action and to the contrary, that is to say, when he can make it exist or not exist, according to his will, then he is free. And we can scarcely see how it could be possible to conceive a being more free than one who is capable of doing what he wills.” Theophile rejoins: “When we reason concerning the liberty of the will, we do not demand if the man can do what he wills, but if he has a sufficient independence in the will itself; we do not ask if he has free limbs or elbow-room, but if the mind is free, and in what that freedom consists.”22

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Having thus exploded the delusive notion of liberty which Locke had borrowed from Hobbes, Leibnitz proceeds to take what seems to be higher ground. He expressly declares, that in order to constitute man an accountable agent, he must be free, not only from constraint, but also from necessity. In the adoption of this language, Leibnitz seems to speak with the advocates of free-agency; but does he think with them? The sound is pleasant to the ear; but what sense is it intended to convey to the mind? Leibnitz shall be his own interpreter. “All events have their necessary causes,” says Hobbes. “Bad,” replies Leibnitz: “they have their determining causes, by which we can assign a reason for them; but they have not necessary causes.” Now does this signify that an event, that a volition, is not absolutely and indissolubly connected with its “determining cause?” Is this the grand idea from which the light of liberty is to beam on a darkened and enslaved world? By no means. We must indulge no fond hopes or idle dreams of the kind. Volition is free from necessity, adds Leibnitz; because “the contrary could happen without implying a contradiction.” This is the signification which he attaches to his own language; and it is the only meaning of which it is susceptible in accordance with his system. Thus, Leibnitz saw and clearly exposed the futility of speaking about a freedom from co-action or restraint, when the question is, not whether the body is untrammelled, but whether the mind itself is free in the act of willing. But he did not see, it seems, that it is equally irrelevant to speak of a freedom from a mathematical necessity in such a connexion; although this, as plainly as the other sense of the word, has no conceivable bearing on the point in dispute. If a volition were produced by the omnipotence of God, irresistibly acting on the human mind, still it would not be necessary, in the sense of Leibnitz, since it might and would have been different if God had so willed it; the contrary volition implying no contradiction. Is it not evident, that to suppose the mind may thus be bound to act, and yet be free because the contrary act implies no contradiction, is merely to dream of liberty, and to mistake a shadow for a substance?

As the opposite of a volition implies no contradiction, says Leibnitz, so it is free from an absolute necessity; that is to say, it might have been different, nay, it must have been different, [pg 057] from what it is, provided its determining cause had been different. The same thing may be said of the motions of matter. We may say that they are also free, because the opposite motions imply no contradiction; and we only have to vary the force in order to vary the motion. Hence, freedom in this sense of the word is perfectly consistent with the absolute and uncontrolled dominion of causes over the will; for what can be more completely necessitated than the motions of the body?

The demand of his own nature, which so strongly impelled Leibnitz to seek and cling to the freedom of the mind, as the basis of moral and accountable agency, could not rest satisfied with so unsubstantial a shadow. After all, he has felt constrained to have recourse to the hypothesis of a preëstablished harmony in order to restore, if possible, the liberty which his scheme of necessity had banished from the universe. It is no part of our intention to examine this obsolete fiction; we merely wish to show how essential Leibnitz regarded it to a solution of the difficulty under consideration. “I come now,” says he, “to show how the action of the will depends on causes; that there is nothing so agreeable to human nature as this dependence of our actions, and that otherwise we should fall into an absurd and insupportable fatality; that is to say, into the Mohammedan fate, which is the worst of all, because it does away with foresight and good counsel. However, it is well to explain how this dependency of our voluntary actions does not prevent that there may be at the bottom of things a marvellous spontaneity in us, which in a certain sense renders the mind, in its resolutions, independent of the physical influence of all other creatures. This spontaneity, but little known hitherto, which raises our empire over our actions as much as it is possible, is a consequence of the system of preëstablished harmony.” Thus, in order to satisfy himself that our actions are really free and independent of the physical influence of other creatures, he has recourse to a fiction in which few persons ever concurred with him, and which is now universally regarded as one of the vagaries and dreams of philosophy. If we are to be saved from an insupportable fate only by such means, our condition must indeed be one of forlorn hopelessness.

Before we take leave of Leibnitz, there is one view of the difficulty in question which we wish to notice, not because it is [pg 058] peculiar to him, but because it is very clearly stated and confidently relied on by him. It is common to most of the advocates of necessity, and it is exceedingly imposing in its appearance and effect. “Men of all times,” says he, “have been troubled by a sophism, which the ancients called the ‘raison paresseuse,’ because it induces them to do nothing, or at least to concern themselves about nothing, and to follow only the present inclination to pleasure. For, say they, if the future is necessary, that which is to happen will happen whatever I may do. But the future, say they, is necessary, either because the Divinity foresees all things, and even preëstablishes them in governing the universe; or because all things necessarily come to pass by a concatenation of causes.”23 Leibnitz illustrated the fallacy of this reasoning in the following manner: “By the same reason (if it is valid) I could say—If it is written in the archives of fate, that poison will kill me at present, or do me harm, this will happen, though I should not take it; and if that is not written, it will not happen, though I should take it; and, consequently, I can follow my inclination to take whatever is agreeable with impunity, however pernicious it may be; which involves a manifest absurdity. … This objection staggers them a little, but they always come back to their reasoning, turned in different points of view, until we cause them to comprehend in what the defect of their sophism consists. It is this, that it is false that the event will happen whatever we may do; it will happen, because we do that which leads to it; and if the event is written, the cause which will make it happen is also written. Thus the connexion (liaison) of effects and their causes, so far from establishing the doctrine of a necessity prejudicial to practice, serves to destroy it.”24 The same reply is found more than once in the course of the same great work; and it is employed by all necessitarians in defence of their system. But it is not a satisfactory answer. It overlooks the real difficulty in the case, and seeks to remove an imaginary one. The question is, not whether a necessary connexion between our volitions and their effects is a discouragement to practice, but whether a necessary connexion between our volitions and their causes is so. It is very true, that no man would be accountable for his external actions or their consequences, if there were no fixed relation [pg 059] between these and his volitions. If, when a man willed one thing, another should happen to follow which he did not will, of course he would not be responsible for it. And if there were no certain or fixed connexion between his external actions and their consequences, either as they affected himself or others, he certainly would not be responsible for those consequences. This connexion between causes and effects, this connexion between volitions and their consequences, is indispensable to our accountability for such consequences. But for such a connexion, nothing could be more idle and ridiculous than to endeavour to do anything; for we might will one thing, and another would take place.

But must the same necessary connexion exist between the causes of our volitions and the volitions themselves, before we can be accountable for these volitions, for these effects? This is the question. Leibnitz has lost sight of it, and deceived himself by a false application of his doctrine. The doctrine of necessity, when applied to volitions and their effects, is indispensable to build up man's accountability for his external conduct and its consequences. But the same doctrine, when applied to establish a fixed and unalterable relation between the causes of volition and volition itself, really demolishes all responsibility for volition, and consequently for its external results. Leibnitz undertook to show that a necessary connexion between volition and its causes does not destroy man's accountability for his volitions; and he has shown, what no one ever doubted, that a necessary connexion between volition and its effects does not destroy accountability for those effects! Strange as this confusion of things is, it is made by the most celebrated advocates of the doctrine of necessity; which shows, we think, that the doctrine hardly admits of a solid defence. Thus Edwards, for example, insists that the doctrine of necessity is so far from rendering our endeavours vain and useless, that it is an indispensable condition or prerequisite to their success. In illustration of this point, he says: “Let us suppose a real and sure connexion between a man having his eyes open in the clear daylight, with good organs of sight, and seeing; so that seeing is connected with opening his eyes, and not seeing with his not opening his eyes; and also the like connexion between such a man attempting to open his eyes and his actually doing it: the supposed established connexion between these antecedents and [pg 060] consequents, let the connexion be never so sure and necessary, certainly does not prove that it is in vain for a man in such circumstances to attempt to open his eyes, in order to seeing; his aiming at that event, and the use of the means, being the effect of his will, does not break the connexion, or hinder the success.”

“So that the objection we are upon does not lie against the doctrine of the necessity of events by a certainty of connexion and consequence: on the contrary, it is truly forcible against the Arminian doctrine of contingence and self-determination, which is inconsistent with such a connexion. If there be no connexion between those events wherein virtue and vice consist, and anything antecedent; then there is no connexion between these events and any means or endeavours used in order to them: and if so, then those means must be in vain. The less there is of connexion between foregoing things and following ones, so much the less there is between means and end, endeavours and success; and in the same proportion are means and endeavours ineffectual and in vain.”

In like manner, Dr. Chalmers, in his defence of the doctrine of necessity, has in all his illustrations confounded the connexion between a volition and its antecedent, with the relation between a volition and its consequent. To select one such illustration from many, it would be idle, says he, for a man to labour and toil after wealth, if there were no fixed connexion between such exertion and the accumulation of riches.

We reply to all such illustrations—It is true, there must be a fixed connexion between our endeavours or voluntary exertions and their consequences, in order to render such endeavours or exertions of any avail, or to render us accountable for such consequences. But it should be forever borne in mind, that the question is not whether a fixed connexion obtains between our volitions and their sequents, but whether a necessary connexion exists between our volitions and their antecedents. The question is, not whether the will be a power which is often followed by necessitated effects; but whether there be a power behind the will by which its volitions are necessitated. And this being the question, what does it signify to tell us, that the will is a producing power? We deny that volitions and their antecedents are necessarily connected; and our opponents refute [pg 061] us by showing that volitions and their sequents are thus connected! We deny that A and B are necessarily connected; and this position is overthrown and demolished by showing that B and C are thus connected! Is it not truly wonderful that such men as a Leibnitz, an Edwards, and a Chalmers, should, in their zeal to maintain a favourite dogma, commit so great an oversight, and so grievously deceive themselves?