The Problem of the Freedom of the Will in its Relation to Ethics.

The word freedom has many meanings. When who say that a stream is not free to flow because it is frozen, we do not speak of the same freedom as when we say that a Negro is not free to vote because he is intimidated. For the Negro may still vote if he has cour-age enough to run the risk; but the frozen stream cannot possibly flow. Besides, a stream is not free to flow except when it is actually flowing, but a man may be free to vote and yet never cast his ballot. Thus by liberty we mean sometimes action and sometimes only permission; in the first case, action becoming possible becomes at the same time necessary, so that freedom means that a given force works unimpeded; in the second case, action remains merely possible, and freedom means that a given obstacle does not exist.

We talk of freedom in still another sense when we say that we do something freely, gladly, or willingly. Here it is not a question of obstacles at all; our attention is not directed to the facility or possibility of the action, but to the pleasure we take in doing it. Not unlike this use is that by which we call what is voluntary or intentional free. Thus if a man has done something unawares, or under the influence of another, we say his action was not free; yet we do not necessarily imply that he was reluctant to do it, but only that he was not conscious of what he did. Suppose, for example, that when the collection-box is passed around, I have only a ten-dollar bill, which I put in sorrowfully rather than appear to give nothing. The gift is not free. But if by some mistake, I think that what I am giving is only one dollar, the gift of the ten is still not free, even if I do not grudge it on discovering my error.

When we speak of freedom of the will, we usually understand a kind of freedom different from all these. We mean by freedom, that a man, solicited by given motives in a given emergency, may act in various ways. For instance: the fact that I am enjoying a walk does not prove that I went out, or am walking now, of my own free-will; on the contrary, my enjoyment, in so far as it has any bearing at all on my freedom, tends to discredit it; since it would be harder to assign a reason for my action, if I had gone out when to do so caused me trouble and annoyance. We might, in this case, look for such opposed motives as could have influenced me; but we should then be merely evading and postponing the real question. We may assume that men are swayed by motives, and that they are apt to go where the strongest one drives them. What we want to know is this: could I with these same fixed motives have acted differently? Is my choice essentially independent not only of present circumstances, but also of my past circumstances and settled character; so that each act of my will is not a result from their union, but a new force, springing uncaused into existence,-an agent or factor in their union?

It is hard to understand the nature of such a force; and perhaps on this account people are apt, in discussing the freedom of the will, to confuse this special kind of freedom with those others which I have tried to explain. Another source of confusion is the prevailing feeling that the very existence of right and wrong is involved in this question; and therefore men approach the subject with their minds already made up, and in doot take the trouble to analyze the problem and see in what sense right and wrong really depend on the answer we give to it.