Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/587

 NEW BOOKS. 573 recognises values, ideal demands, standards in Logic, ^Esthetics, Ethics ; he judges ' what is ' in the light of ' what ought to be '. (2) Nature is to man an object of knowledge, and knowledge is impossible without the principle of causality. But the subject which knows can never become an object to itself. All that we know of ourselves (e.g. in Psychology) belongs to the objective world. Man can never know himself as sub- ject. His subject-nature is unknowable and beyond the reach of science and causality. But it reveals itself in immediate experience, in our con- sciousness of values and ideal demands ; a consciousness which is not theoretical, but practical, not knowledge, but intuition. We are con- scious of being able to act otherwise than we do; we are conscious of values which the world and we ourselves do not necessarily realise ; in short, we are conscious of freedom, and therefore we are free. Scientific proof for or against freedom is impossible. It is not a matter of theory but of immediate experience. Hence the attempts of the indeterminist to construct a theoretically satisfactory concept of freedom were bound to fail. In argument the determinist has the best of it, but no argument can touch the fact of freedom, as established by immediate experience whenever we judge the object-world (including our own actions) by the ideal standards which are the direct manifestation of our subject-nature. And since freedom consists in obeying the laws of one's nature, men are free in so far as they live up to the demands of their subject-nature. In conduct : a moral life is a free life. The author's definitions of freedom are perplexingly numerous and divergent : ' freedom is self-determination and self-assertion, i.e. follow- ing the laws of one's own nature ' (p. 29) ; ' freedom is the conformity of man's thinking, feeling, willing to the demands of the " ought " of which he is conscious' (p. 30); ' Freiheit des Anderskonnens' (p. 117); 'the characteristic of human freedom is that it consists not in mere self- determination like that of nature, but at the same time in the possibility to act against one's own nature and ideal demands ' (p. 166) ; and since the ideal demand is for the good, we hear next : ' freedom is the pos- sibility of sinning' (p. 167). These quotations show that Mr. Mack is in difficulties over the same ambiguity of the word ' freedom ' which according to some critics has proved fatal to Kant. Freedom, they both say, consists in conformity to the moral law, but if this conformity is to have any merit, there must also be that other freedom which consists in ability not to conform. Mr. Mack slips glibly from the one sense to the other, from the moral freedom of which the opposite is slavery to the passions, to the ' Freiheit des Anderskonnens ' of which the opposite is causal necessity. I might also criticise Mr. Mack's opposition of knowledge and imme- diate experience. I might complain that the impossibility of proving the existence of freedom, to which his own position condemns him, forces him to wearisome repetition as the only other way of carrying conviction. I might point out that to appeal to the evidence of imme- diate experience is no satisfactory answer to the determinist who chal- lenges that very experience. And to deny the determinist's right and competence to such challenge is even bolder. However, as Mr. Mack has secured himself against all criticism by his assertion that no theoretical arguments can avail aught against the certainty of immediate experience, I will content myself with indicating those points of disagreement, and acknowledging that, in spite of them, I have found his book interesting and suggestive. R. F. ALFRED HOERNLE. 38