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Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually
diminishes or increases according to the greater or lesser connection
with the external world, the greater or lesser remoteness of time,
and the greater or lesser dependence on the causes in relation
to which we contemplate a man's life.
So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with
the external world is well known, where the time between the action
and its examination is great, and where the causes of the action
are most accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability
and a minimum of free will. If we examine a man little dependent
on external conditions, whose action was performed very recently,
and the causes of whose action are beyond our ken, we get the
conception of a minimum of inevitability and a maximum of freedom.
In neither case- however we may change our point of view,
however plain we may make to ourselves the connection between
the man and the external world, however inaccessible it may be
to us, however long or short the period of time, however intelligible
or incomprehensible the causes of the action may be- can we ever
conceive either complete freedom or complete necessity.
(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from
the influence of the external world, we never get a conception
of freedom in space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned
by what surrounds him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let
it fall. My action seems to me free; but asking myself whether
I could raise my arm in every direction, I see that I raised it
in the direction in which there was least obstruction to that
action either from things around me or from the construction of
my own body. I chose one out of all the possible directions because
in it there were fewest obstacles. For my action to be free it
was necessary that it should encounter no obstacles. To conceive
of a man being free we must imagine him outside space, which is
evidently impossible.
(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the
time of the deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time.
For if I examine an action committed a second ago I must still
recognize it as not being free, for it is irrevocably linked to
the moment at which it was committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift
it, but ask myself: could I have abstained from lifting my arm
at the moment that has already passed? To convince myself of this
I do not lift it the next moment. But I am not now abstaining
from doing so at the first moment when I asked the question. Time
has gone by which I could not detain, the arm I then lifted is
no longer the same as the arm I now refrain from lifting, nor
is the air in which I lifted it the same that now surrounds me.
The moment in which the first movement was made is irrevocable,
and at that moment I could make only one movement, and whatever
movement I made would be the only one. That I did not lift my
arm a moment later does not prove that I could have abstained
from lifting it then. And since I could make only one movement
at that single moment of time, it could not have been any other.
To imagine it as free, it is necessary to imagine it in the present,
on the boundary between the past and the future- that is, outside
time, which is impossible.
(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes
may be increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom,
that is, an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be
the cause of the expression of will in any action, our own or
another's, the first demand of reason is the assumption of and
search for a cause, for without a cause no phenomenon is conceivable.
I raise my arm to perform an action independently of any cause,
but my wish to perform an action without a cause is the cause
of my action.
But even if- imagining a man quite exempt from all influences,
examining only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by
any cause- we were to admit so infinitely small a remainder of
inevitability as equaled zero, we should even then not have arrived
at the conception of complete freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced
by the external world, standing outside of time and independent
of cause, is no longer a man.
In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite
devoid of freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability.
(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions
of space in which man is situated, that knowledge can never be
complete, for the number of those conditions is as infinite as
the infinity of space. And therefore so long as not all the conditions
influencing men are defined, there is no complete inevitability
but a certain measure of freedom remains.
(2) However we may prolong the period of time between the
action we are examining and the judgment upon it, that period
will be finite, while time is infinite, and so in this respect
too there can never be absolute inevitability.
(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any
action, we shall never know the whole chain since it is endless,
and so again we never reach absolute inevitability.
But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum
of freedom to equal zero, we assumed in some given case- as for
instance in that of a dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot-
complete absence of freedom, by so doing we should destroy the
very conception of man in the case we are examining, for as soon
as there is no freedom there is also no man. And so the conception
of the action of a man subject solely to the law of inevitability
without any element of freedom is just as impossible as the conception
of a man's completely free action.
And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to
the law of inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the
knowledge of an infinite number of space relations, an infinitely
long period of time, and an infinite series of causes.
To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law
of inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space,
beyond time, and free from dependence on cause.
In the first case, if inevitability were possible without
freedom we should have reached a definition of inevitability by
the laws of inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without
content.
In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability
we should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space,
time, and cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned
and unlimited would be nothing, or mere content without form.
We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which
man's whole outlook on the universe is constructed- the incomprehensible
essence of life, and the laws defining that essence.
Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give
it visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2)
Time is infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable
otherwise. (3) The connection between cause and effect has no
beginning and can have no end.
Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is
but me, consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing time
by the fixed moment of the present in which alone I am conscious
of myself as living, consequently I am outside time. (3) I am
beyond cause, for I feel myself to be the cause of every manifestation
of my life.
Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability. Consciousness
gives expression to the essence of freedom.
Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in
man's consciousness. Inevitability without content is man's reason
in its three forms.
Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines.
Freedom is the content. Inevitability is the form.
Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to
one another as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive
and separately incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability.
Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man's
life.
Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually
define one another as form and content, no conception of life
is possible.
All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation
of free will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the
laws of reason.
All that we know of the external world of nature is only a
certain relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or
of the essence of life to the laws of reason.
The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious
of them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity,
animal force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of
life in man and we call that freedom.
But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in
itself but felt by every man, is understood by us only to the
extent to which we know the laws of inevitability to which it
is subject (from the first knowledge that all bodies have weight,
up to Newton's law), so too the force of free will, incomprehensible
in itself but of which everyone is conscious, is intelligible
to us only in as far as we know the laws of inevitability to which
it is subject (from the fact that every man dies, up to the knowledge
of the most complex economic and historic laws).
All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life
under the laws of reason.
Man's free will differs from every other force in that man
is directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no
way differs from any other force. The forces of gravitation, electricity,
or chemical affinity are only distinguished from one another in
that they are differently defined by reason. Just so the force
of man's free will is distinguished by reason from the other forces
of nature only by the definition reason gives it. Freedom, apart
from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason that define
it, differs in no way from gravitation, or heat, or the force
that makes things grow; for reason, it is only a momentary undefinable
sensation of life.
And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly
bodies, the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity,
or of chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content
of astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on,
just in the same way does the force of free will form the content
of history. But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation
of this unknown essence of life while that essence itself can
only be the subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of
the force of free will in human beings in space, in time, and
in dependence on cause forms the subject of history, while free
will itself is the subject of metaphysics.
In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws
of inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital
force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and
above what we know of the essence of life.
So also in history what is known to us we call laws of inevitability,
what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for history only
an expression for the unknown remainder of what we know about
the laws of human life.
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