Chương Chương 363 · 第363章

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.