his own was but a generalization? Mr. Mill, another able and strenuous advocate of Mr. Hume's theory of causation, has likewise ranked the preëstablished harmony of Leibnitz, as well as the system of occasional causes peculiar to Malebranche, among the fallacies of the human mind. Thus they are at war with themselves, as well as with their great coadjutors in the cause of necessity.
M. Comte, preëminently distinguished in every branch of science, has taken the same one-sided view of nature as that which is exhibited in the theory under consideration; but he does not permit himself to be encumbered by the inconsistencies observable in his great predecessors. On the contrary, he boldly carries out his doctrine to its legitimate consequences, denying the existence of a God, the free-agency of man, and the reality of moral distinctions.
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Mr. Mill also refuses to avail himself of the notion of liberty entertained by Hobbes and Hume, in order to lay a foundation for human responsibility. He sees that it really cannot be made to answer such a purpose. He also sees, that the doctrine of necessity, as usually maintained, is liable to the objections urged against it, that “it tends to degrade the moral nature of man, and to paralyze our desire of excellence.”50 In making this concession to the advocates of liberty, he speaks from his own “personal experience.” The only way to escape these pernicious consequences, he says, is to keep constantly before the mind a clear and unclouded view of the true theory of causation, which will prevent us from supposing, as most necessitarians do, that there is a real connecting link or influence between motives and volitions, or any other events. So strong is the prejudice (as he calls it) in favour of such connection, that even those who adopt Mr. Hume's theory, are not habitually influenced by it, but frequently relapse into the old error which conflicts with the free-agency and accountability of man, and hence an advantage which their opponents have had over them.
These remarks are undoubtedly just. There is not a single writer, from Mr. Hume himself, down to the present day, who has been able either to speak or to reason in conformity with his theory, however warmly he may have embraced it. Mr. Mill himself has not been more fortunate in this respect than many of his distinguished predecessors. It is an exceedingly difficult thing, by the force of speculation, to silence the voice of nature within us. If it were necessary we might easily show, that if we abstract “the common prejudice,” in regard to causation, it will be as impossible to read Mr. Mill's work on logic, as to read Mr. Hume's writings themselves, without perceiving that many of its passages have been stripped of all logical coherency of thought. The defect which he so clearly sees in the writings of other advocates of necessity, not excepting those who embrace his own paradox in relation to cause and effect, we can easily perceive in his own.
The doctrine of causation, under consideration, annihilates one of the clearest and most fundamental distinctions ever made in philosophy; the distinction between action and passion, between [pg 078] mind and matter. Matter is passive, mind is active. The very first law of motion laid down in the Principia, a work so much admired by M. Comte and Mr. Mill, is based on the idea that matter is wholly inert, and destitute of power either to move itself, or to check itself when moved by anything ab extra. This will not be denied. But is mind equally passive? Is there nothing in existence which rises above this passivity of the material world? If there is not, and such is the evident conclusion of the doctrine in question, then all things flow on in one boundless ocean of passivity, while there is no First Mover, no Self-active Agent in the universe. Indeed, Mr. Mill has expressly declared, that the distinction between agent and patient is illusory.51 If this be true, we are persuaded that M. Comte has been more successful in delivering the world from the being of a God, than Mr. Mill has been in relieving it from the difficulties attending the scheme of necessity.
Section VIII.
The views of Kant and Sir William Hamilton in relation to the antagonism between liberty and necessity.
“To clear up this seeming antagonism between the mechanism of nature and freedom in one and the self-same given action, we must refer,” says Kant, “to what was advanced in the critique of pure reason, or what, at least, is a corollary from it, viz., that the necessity of nature which may not consort with the freedom of the subject, attaches simply to a thing standing under the relations of time, i.e., to the modifications of the acting subject as phenomena, and that, therefore, so far (i.e., as phenomena) the determinators of each act lie in the foregoing elapsed time, and are quite beyond his power, (part of which are the actions man has already performed, and the phenomenal character he has given himself in his own eyes,) yet, e contra, the self-same subject, being self-conscious of itself as a thing in itself, considers its existence as somewhat detached from the conditions of time, and itself, so far forth, as only determinable by laws given it by its own reason.”52
Kant has said, that this “intricate problem, at whose solution centuries have laboured,” is not to be solved by “a jargon of [pg 079] words.” If so, may we not doubt whether he has taken the best method to solve it? His solution shows one thing at least, viz., that he was not satisfied with any of the solutions of his predecessors, for his is wholly unlike them. Kant saw that the question of liberty and necessity related to the will itself, and not to the consequences of the will's volitions. Hence he was compelled to reject those weak evasions of the difficulty of reconciling them, and to grapple directly with the difficulty itself. Let us see if this was not too much for him. Let us see if he has been able to maintain the doctrine of necessity, holding it as a “demonstrated truth,” and at the same time give the idea of liberty a tenable position in his system.
If we would clear up the seeming antagonism between the mechanism of nature and freedom in regard to the same volition, says he, we must remember, that the volition itself, as standing under the conditions of time, is to be considered as subject to the law of mechanism: yet the mind which puts forth the volition, being conscious that it is a thing somewhat detached from the conditions of time, is free from the law of mechanism, and determinable by the laws of its own reason. That is to say, the volitions of mind falling under the law of cause and effect, like all other events which appear in time, are necessary; while the mind itself, which exists not exactly in time, is free. We shall state only two objections to this view. In the first place, it seems to distinguish the mind from its act, not modally, i.e., as a thing from its mode, but numerically, i.e., as one thing from another thing. But who can do this? Who regards an act of the mind, a volition, as anything but the mind itself as existing in a state of willing? In the second place, it requires us to conceive, that the act of the mind is necessitated, while the mind itself is free in the act thus necessitated. But who can do this? On the contrary, who can fail to see in this precisely the same seeming antagonism which Kant undertook to remove? To tell us, that volition is necessitated because it exists in time, but the mind is free because it does not exist in time, is, one would think, a very odd way to dispel the darkness which hangs over the grand problem of life. It is to solve one difficulty merely by adding other difficulties to it. Hence, the world will never be much wiser, we are inclined to suspect, with respect to the seeming antagonism [pg 080] between liberty and necessity, in consequence of the speculations of the philosopher of Königsberg, especially since his great admirer, Mr. Coleridge, forgot to fulfil his promise to write the history of a man who existed in “neither time nor space, but a-one side.”
Though Kant made the attempt in his Metaphysics of Ethics to overcome the speculative difficulty in question, it is evident that he is not satisfied with his own solution of it, since he has repeatedly declared, that the practical reason furnishes the only ground on which it can be surmounted. “This view of Kant,” says Knapp, “implying that freedom, while it is a postulate of our practical reason, (i.e., necessary to be assumed in order to moral action,) is yet inconsistent with our theoretical reason, (i.e., incapable of demonstration, and contrary to the conclusions to which the reflecting mind arrives,) is now very generally rejected.”53