Chapter Chapter 362 · 第362章

For the solution of the question of free will or inevitability, history

has this advantage over other branches of knowledge in which the

question is dealt with, that for history this question does not refer

to the essence of man’s free will but its manifestation in the past and

under certain conditions.

In regard to this question, history stands to the other sciences as

experimental science stands to abstract science.

The subject for history is not man’s will itself but our presentation of

it.

And so for history, the insoluble mystery presented by the

incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not exist as it does

for theology, ethics, and philosophy. History surveys a presentation of

man’s life in which the union of these two contradictions has already

taken place.

In actual life each historic event, each human action, is very clearly

and definitely understood without any sense of contradiction, although

each event presents itself as partly free and partly compulsory.

To solve the question of how freedom and necessity are combined and

what constitutes the essence of these two conceptions, the philosophy

of history can and should follow a path contrary to that taken by other

sciences. Instead of first defining the conceptions of freedom and

inevitability in themselves, and then ranging the phenomena of life

under those definitions, history should deduce a definition of the

conception of freedom and inevitability themselves from the immense

quantity of phenomena of which it is cognizant and that always appear

dependent on these two elements.

Whatever presentation of the activity of many men or of an individual

we may consider, we always regard it as the result partly of man’s free

will and partly of the law of inevitability.

Whether we speak of the migration of the peoples and the incursions

of the barbarians, or of the decrees of Napoleon III, or of someone’s

action an hour ago in choosing one direction out of several for his

walk, we are unconscious of any contradiction. The degree of freedom and

inevitability governing the actions of these people is clearly defined

for us.

Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies according to

differences in the point of view from which we regard the event, but

every human action appears to us as a certain combination of freedom and

inevitability. In every action we examine we see a certain measure of

freedom and a certain measure of inevitability. And always the more

freedom we see in any action the less inevitability do we perceive, and

the more inevitability the less freedom.

The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases

according to the point of view from which the action is regarded, but

their relation is always one of inverse proportion.

A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry mother

exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man trained

to discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a defenseless

man—seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject to the law of

necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which these people were

placed, and more free to one who does not know that the man was himself

drowning, that the mother was hungry, that the soldier was in the ranks,

and so on. Similarly a man who committed a murder twenty years ago and

has since lived peaceably and harmlessly in society seems less guilty

and his action more due to the law of inevitability, to someone who

considers his action after twenty years have elapsed than to one who

examined it the day after it was committed. And in the same way every

action of an insane, intoxicated, or highly excited man appears less

free and more inevitable to one who knows the mental condition of him

who committed the action, and seems more free and less inevitable to one

who does not know it. In all these cases the conception of freedom

is increased or diminished and the conception of compulsion is

correspondingly decreased or increased, according to the point of view

from which the action is regarded. So that the greater the conception of

necessity the smaller the conception of freedom and vice versa.

Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of jurisprudence,

and history itself understand alike this relation between necessity and

freedom.

All cases without exception in which our conception of freedom and

necessity is increased and diminished depend on three considerations:

(1) The relation to the external world of the man who commits the deeds.

(2) His relation to time.

(3) His relation to the causes leading to the action.

The first consideration is the clearness of our perception of the man’s

relation to the external world and the greater or lesser clearness

of our understanding of the definite position occupied by the man

in relation to everything coexisting with him. This is what makes it

evident that a drowning man is less free and more subject to necessity

than one standing on dry ground, and that makes the actions of a man

closely connected with others in a thickly populated district, or of one

bound by family, official, or business duties, seem certainly less free

and more subject to necessity than those of a man living in solitude and

seclusion.

If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to everything around

him, each action of his seems to us free. But if we see his relation

to anything around him, if we see his connection with anything

whatever—with a man who speaks to him, a book he reads, the work on

which he is engaged, even with the air he breathes or the light that

falls on the things about him—we see that each of these circumstances

has an influence on him and controls at least some side of his activity.

And the more we perceive of these influences the more our conception of

his freedom diminishes and the more our conception of the necessity that

weighs on him increases.

The second consideration is the more or less evident time relation of

the man to the world and the clearness of our perception of the place

the man’s action occupies in time. That is the ground which makes the

fall of the first man, resulting in the production of the human race,

appear evidently less free than a man’s entry into marriage today. It is

the reason why the life and activity of people who lived centuries ago

and are connected with me in time cannot seem to me as free as the life

of a contemporary, the consequences of which are still unknown to me.

The degree of our conception of freedom or inevitability depends in this

respect on the greater or lesser lapse of time between the performance

of the action and our judgment of it.

If I examine an act I performed a moment ago in approximately the same

circumstances as those I am in now, my action appears to me undoubtedly

free. But if I examine an act performed a month ago, then being in

different circumstances, I cannot help recognizing that if that act had

not been committed much that resulted from it—good, agreeable, and even

essential—would not have taken place. If I reflect on an action still

more remote, ten years ago or more, then the consequences of my action

are still plainer to me and I find it hard to imagine what would have

happened had that action not been performed. The farther I go back

in memory, or what is the same thing the farther I go forward in my

judgment, the more doubtful becomes my belief in the freedom of my

action.

In history we find a very similar progress of conviction concerning

the part played by free will in the general affairs of humanity. A

contemporary event seems to us to be indubitably the doing of all the

known participants, but with a more remote event we already see its

inevitable results which prevent our considering anything else possible.

And the farther we go back in examining events the less arbitrary do

they appear.

The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the result of the

crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Napoleonic wars still seem

to us, though already questionably, to be the outcome of their heroes’

will. But in the Crusades we already see an event occupying its definite

place in history and without which we cannot imagine the modern history

of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the Crusades that event appeared

as merely due to the will of certain people. In regard to the migration

of the peoples it does not enter anyone’s head today to suppose that

the renovation of the European world depended on Attila’s caprice. The

farther back in history the object of our observation lies, the more

doubtful does the free will of those concerned in the event become and

the more manifest the law of inevitability.

The third consideration is the degree to which we apprehend that

endless chain of causation inevitably demanded by reason, in which each

phenomenon comprehended, and therefore man’s every action, must have

its definite place as a result of what has gone before and as a cause of

what will follow.

The better we are acquainted with the physiological, psychological, and

historical laws deduced by observation and by which man is controlled,

and the more correctly we perceive the physiological, psychological,

and historical causes of the action, and the simpler the action we are

observing and the less complex the character and mind of the man in

question, the more subject to inevitability and the less free do our

actions and those of others appear.

When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a

crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we ascribe a

greater amount of freedom to it. In the case of a crime we most urgently

demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of a virtuous act we

rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case we recognize in it

more individuality, originality, and independence. But if even one of

the innumerable causes of the act is known to us we recognize a certain

element of necessity and are less insistent on punishment for the crime,

or the acknowledgment of the merit of the virtuous act, or the freedom

of the apparently original action. That a criminal was reared among

malefactors mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father

or mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more

comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems less

deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The founder of a

sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when we know how or by

what the way was prepared for his activity. If we have a large range

of examples, if our observation is constantly directed to seeking the

correlation of cause and effect in people’s actions, their actions

appear to us more under compulsion and less free the more correctly we

connect the effects with the causes. If we examined simple actions and

had a vast number of such actions under observation, our conception of

their inevitability would be still greater. The dishonest conduct of the

son of a dishonest father, the misconduct of a woman who had fallen

into bad company, a drunkard’s relapse into drunkenness, and so on are

actions that seem to us less free the better we understand their cause.

If the man whose actions we are considering is on a very low stage of

mental development, like a child, a madman, or a simpleton—then,

knowing the causes of the act and the simplicity of the character and

intelligence in question, we see so large an element of necessity and so

little free will that as soon as we know the cause prompting the action

we can foretell the result.

On these three considerations alone is based the conception of

irresponsibility for crimes and the extenuating circumstances admitted

by all legislative codes. The responsibility appears greater or less

according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances in

which the man was placed whose action is being judged, and according

to the greater or lesser interval of time between the commission of the

action and its investigation, and according to the greater or lesser

understanding of the causes that led to the action.