access of zeal plaster over the windows, icons, woodwork,
and still unbuttressed walls, and should be delighted that
from their point of view as plasterers, everything is now so
smooth and regular.
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Chapter IX
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 inevitabil
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ity 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.
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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 manseem
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
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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 whateverwith 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 himwe 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.
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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 itgood, agreeable,
and even essentialwould 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
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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, psy2282
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chological, 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
