Page:Ethical Studies (reprint 1911).djvu/18

 ‘Making is not the word, and very much more is implied than the latter. You are the uncaused cause of your particular volitions.’ But does not what I am come from my disposition, my education, my habits? ‘In this case certainly not. The ego in volition is not a result, and is not an effect, but a cause simply; and of this fact we have a certain and intuitive knowledge.’ Or, if we express the answer in a different metaphysical language, it amounts to this: ‘The I is an universal, which has the power to abstract from all its particulars, and to suspend itself over them, before in choice it takes any one of them into itself, so as to realize that one, and itself thereby. This I, in the act of “I will,” is the self, as pure I, which is superior to all its contents, desires, &c., and descends into them only by its own libertas arbitrii.’

We have stated the doctrine in its clearest form, without troubling ourselves to keep too closely to our English expositors. That to a large extent it rightly expresses indubitable facts, the thoughtful reader will perceive. But we are not to ask, Is it true, and if so, how far true? but to find, if we can, how far it agrees with responsibility as commonly accepted. And so, reflecting on the theory, we see that, in the main, it is only the denial of the opposite theory. It is positive, so far as it asserts the self to be more than a collection of particulars, desires, &c., and to be necessarily concerned in the actions which are imputed to it. And so far the doctrine agrees well enough with common ideas. But the chief bearing of its conclusion is merely negative; and here, as we shall see, it comes into sharp collision with vulgar notions of responsibility.

In this bearing, Free-will means Non-determinism. The will is not determined to act by anything else; and, further, it is not determined to act by anything at all. Self-determination means that the self, the universal, may realize itself by and in this, that, and the other particular; but it also implies that there is no reason why it should identify itself with this one, rather than with that one; there is no rational connection between the two sides; there is nothing in the self which brings this, and not that, act out of it. Turn it as we will, the libertas arbitrii is no more at last than contingentia arbitrii. Freedom means chance; you are free, because there is no reason which will account for your particular