War and Peace
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 war9 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 male factors 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.
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