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lly satisfy the legitimate demands of the moral conss? The objection that is naturally provoked by the may be put thus: "We are told that we find freedom

obedience to law or only in voluntarily imposing elves the true law of our being: that if we prefer irtue, then we necessarily become the slaves of caprice on, our wills are heteronomous and not free, we are t is, that we can originally choose between either 3. (A representing obedience, B disobedience to the law.) But if we follow B, our will is enslaved. Thereif we wish to be free, there is only one way, A, by which r end can be attained. But if freedom is an end that can only be attained by following one course, A, how can the will be free, before it follows that course, while it is still deliberating between A and B?"

This may be a misunderstanding of the ordinary theory. I do not pretend that it applies to Hegel's explanation of freedom, if that be properly understood. But it certainly does apply to the way in which Freewill Determinism is often stated. Spontaneity and obedience to law are in some way combined in moral causation, but law is an ambiguous and dangerous word, and the ordinary statement of the theory gives an interpretation to it which makes spontaneity impossible. Freewill Determinism is bound to explain of what nature that law must be, which is to be consistent with spontaneity. So long as it simply says emphatically that freedom is obedience to law and uses the phrase "moral law" in its current meaning, so long will this objection apply to it. The explanation of moral causation will be felt to conflict with the claims of the moral consciousness to freedom.

Why does the moral consciousness object to any one-sided emphasis on the presence of law in moral causation? It objects, I think, to any contention that actions can be foretold. The theory that actions can be explained by mechanical categories involved the claim that, granted a knowledge of all the physical circumstances preceding an act, that act could be foretold. To that the moral consciousness offered strenuous objections. That claim has been on the whole, withdrawn.

the will is not an unmotived, unintelligible agent, but that it is determined and conditioned by law, and with Indeterminism that the will is not determined by mechanical causation: that although it is ruled by law, it is self-legislative.

We no longer feel then that the existence of Ethics depends on the answer we give to the question of freedom. For whatever view of moral causation we adopt, we recognize that our theory must account, or at least leave room for, the facts of moral judgment and responsibility. The facts upon which Ethics depends rest on a firm basis of experience. They may be explained in very different ways, but they cannot be explained away. Freedom as applied to the will is not, we now recognize, a negative conception, implying that the will is independent of and apart from the rest of experience. It is the word by which we characterize all moral action. There is no doubt that moral actions do involve feelings of responsibility, the attribution of praise or blame to the agent, etc. That is all that the moral consciousness demands, and that is just what freedom means. "Will without freedom," as Hegel says, "is an empty word." The question is not whether the will is free or not, but what freedom of the will, which we recognize as a fact, implies as to the relation of moral causation to the rest of experience.

The reconciliation of Determinism and Indeterminism is satisfactory, as an answer to the question whether the will is free. But is it, as ordinarily stated, a satisfactory explanation of what the freedom of the will means or implies? The ordinary explanation of moral causation, which is usually based more or less upon Hegel, takes the freedom of the will for granted and assumes that in some way moral causation involves both law and spontaneity. But in the form in which it is ordinarily stated, this Freewill Determinism, as it has been called, seems to insist so much upon law that it leaves little room for spontaneity. "Freedom is obedience to a selfimposed law." "Man is free to obey the law of his being." These and similar statements represent the reconciliation between Determinism and Indeterminism. They profess to do justice to both sides of the controversy. But do they? Do

they really satisfy the legitimate demands of the moral consciousness? The objection that is naturally provoked by the theory may be put thus: "We are told that we find freedom only in obedience to law or only in voluntarily imposing on ourselves the true law of our being: that if we prefer vice to virtue, then we necessarily become the slaves of caprice and passion, our wills are heteronomous and not free, we are told, that is, that we can originally choose between either A or B. (A representing obedience, B disobedience to the moral law.) But if we follow B, our will is enslaved. Therefore, if we wish to be free, there is only one way, A, by which our end can be attained. But if freedom is an end that can only be attained by following one course, A, how can the will be free, before it follows that course, while it is still deliberating between A and B?"

This may be a misunderstanding of the ordinary theory. I do not pretend that it applies to Hegel's explanation of freedom, if that be properly understood. But it certainly does apply to the way in which Freewill Determinism is often stated. Spontaneity and obedience to law are in some way combined in moral causation, but law is an ambiguous and dangerous word, and the ordinary statement of the theory gives an interpretation to it which makes spontaneity impossible. Freewill Determinism is bound to explain of what nature that law must be, which is to be consistent with spontaneity. So long as it simply says emphatically that freedom is obedience to law and uses the phrase “moral law” in its current meaning, so long will this objection apply to it. The explanation of moral causation will be felt to conflict with the claims of the moral consciousness to freedom.

Why does the moral consciousness object to any one-sided emphasis on the presence of law in moral causation? It objects, I think, to any contention that actions can be foretold. The theory that actions can be explained by mechanical categories involved the claim that, granted a knowledge of all the physical circumstances preceding an act, that act could be foretold. To that the moral consciousness offered strenuous objections. That claim has been on the whole, withdrawn.

But Freewill Determinism seems to put forward the same claim in a more subtle way. In place of prediction by mechanical, it offers prediction by psychological categories. The theory that freedom is obedience to a self-imposed law seems to imply this. Such sayings as "Character is destiny" assert it. But the claim to prediction from knowledge of the psychical facts is as repellant to the ordinary consciousness as the claim of the physical sciences. The difficulty is seen in a curious paradox. The better a man is, the more surely will his action be regulated by the moral law, and the more certain we can be that he will in any action choose the good and avoid the evil. As, therefore, man attains to freedom, the more will we be able to predict his actions, the less will they correspond to what the ordinary consciousness means by "freedom."

There is surely something wrong in this result. The moral consciousness revolts against it. This revolt in its more simple form is represented by Professor James, who, when confronted with Freewill Determinism, boldly stands up for chance. In his essay on "The Will to Believe" he accepts the assumption that the question of freedom concerns the choice between two alternative causes of action, and simply denies in the name of the moral consciousness the claim of Determinism that it is decided beforehand, whether by physical or psychical causes, what course will be followed. His contention is that the moral point of view is as important as the scientific and as true, and that is apparently an end of the matter.

With the spirit that inspires this protest we must have great sympathy, but it does not seem to offer what can be regarded as a satisfactory solution of the difficulty. This paper is an attempt to throw some light on the question from consideration of another aspect of human action-artistic production.

It may be well, first, to offer some considerations on the relevancy of this reference to artistic production when we are dealing with moral causation. There are several reasons which justify our drawing analogies between these two kinds of action.

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