Chapter I: Preliminary (4)

Ladd, Philos. of Conduct, 70—“The feeling of the ought is primary,
essential, unique; the judgments as to what one ought are the
results of environment, education and reflection.” The sentiment
of justice is not an inheritance of civilized man alone. No Indian
was ever robbed of his lands or had his government allowance
stolen from him who was not as keenly conscious of the wrong as in
like circumstances we could conceive that a philosopher would be.
The _oughtness_ of the ought is certainly intuitive; the _whyness_
of the ought (conformity to God) is possibly intuitive also; the
_whatness_ of the ought is less certainly intuitive. Cutler,
Beginnings of Ethics, 163, 164—“Intuition tells us _that_ we are
obliged; _why_ we are obliged, and _what_ we are obliged to, we
must learn elsewhere.” _Obligation_—that which is binding on a
man; _ought_ is something owed; _duty_ is something due. The
intuitive notion of duty (intellect) is matched by the sense of
obligation (feeling).

Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 203, 270—“All men have a sense of
right,—of right to life, and contemporaneously perhaps, but
certainly afterwards, of right to personal property. And my right
implies duty in my neighbor to respect it. Then the sense of right
becomes objective and impersonal. My neighbor’s duty to me implies
my duty to him. I put myself in his place.” Bowne, Principles of
Ethics, 156, 188—“First, the feeling of obligation, the idea of a
right and a wrong with corresponding duties, is universal....
Secondly, there is a very general agreement in the formal
principles of action, and largely in the virtues also, such as
benevolence, justice, gratitude.... Whether we owe anything to our
neighbor has never been a real question. The practical trouble has
always lain in the other question: Who is my neighbor? Thirdly,
the specific contents of the moral ideal are not fixed, but the
direction in which the ideal lies is generally discernible.... We
have in ethics the same fact as in intellect—a potentially
infallible standard, with manifold errors in its apprehension and
application. Lucretius held that degradation and paralysis of the
moral nature result from religion. Many claim on the other hand
that without religion morals would disappear from the earth.”

Robinson, Princ. and Prac. of Morality, 173—“Fear of an omnipotent
will is very different from remorse in view of the nature of the
supreme Being whose law we have violated.” A duty is to be settled
in accordance with the standard of absolute right, not as public
sentiment would dictate. A man must be ready to do right in spite
of what everybody thinks. Just as the decisions of a judge are for
the time binding on all good citizens, so the decisions of
conscience, as relatively binding, must always be obeyed. They are
presumptively right and they are the only present guide of action.
Yet man’s present state of sin makes it quite possible that the
decisions which are relatively right may be absolutely wrong. It
is not enough to take one’s time from the watch; the watch may go
wrong; there is a prior duty of regulating the watch by
astronomical standards. Bishop Gore: “Man’s first duty is, not to
_follow_ his conscience, but to _enlighten_ his conscience.”
Lowell says that the Scythians used to eat their grandfathers out
of humanity. Paine, Ethnic Trinities, 300—“Nothing is so stubborn
or so fanatical as a wrongly instructed conscience, as Paul showed
in his own case by his own confession” (_Acts 26:9_—“_I verily
thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the
name of Jesus of Nazareth_”).

D. Conscience the moral judiciary of the soul.—From what has been previously said, it is evident that only 3. and 4. are properly included under the term conscience. Conscience is the moral judiciary of the soul—the power within of judgment and command. Conscience must judge according to the law given to it, and therefore, since the moral standard accepted by the reason may be imperfect, its decisions, while relatively just, may be absolutely unjust.—1. and 2. belong to the _moral reason_, but not to conscience proper. Hence the duty of enlightening and cultivating the moral reason, so that conscience may have a proper standard of judgment.—5. and 6. belong to the sphere of _moral sentiment_, and not to conscience proper. The office of conscience is to “bear witness” (Rom. 2:15).

In _Rom. 2:15_—“_they show the work of the law written in their
hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their
thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing them_”—we have
conscience clearly distinguished both from the law and the
perception of law on the one hand, and from the moral sentiments
of approbation and disapprobation on the other. Conscience does
not furnish the law, but it bears witness with the law which is
furnished by other sources. It is not “that power of mind by which
moral law is discovered to each individual” (Calderwood, Moral
Philosophy, 77), nor can we speak of “Conscience, the Law” (as
Whewell does in his Elements of Morality, 1:259-266). Conscience
is not the law-book, in the court room, but it is the judge,—whose
business is, not to make law, but to decide cases according to the
law given to him.

As conscience is not legislative, so it is not retributive; as it
is not the law-book, so it is not the sheriff. We say, indeed, in
popular language, that conscience scourges or chastises, but it is
only in the sense in which we say that the judge punishes,—_i.
e._, through the sheriff. The moral sentiments are the
sheriff,—they carry out the decisions of conscience, the judge;
but they are not themselves conscience, any more than the sheriff
is the judge.

Only this doctrine, that conscience does not discover law, can
explain on the one hand the fact that men are bound to follow
their consciences, and on the other hand the fact that their
consciences so greatly differ as to what is right or wrong in
particular cases. The truth is, that conscience is uniform and
infallible, in the sense that it always decides rightly according
to the law given it. Men’s decisions vary, only because the moral
reason has presented to the conscience different standards by
which to judge.

Conscience can be educated only in the sense of acquiring greater
facility and quickness in making its decisions. Education has its
chief effect, not upon the conscience, but upon the moral reason,
in rectifying its erroneous, or imperfect standards of judgment.
Give conscience a right law by which to judge, and its decisions
will be uniform, and absolutely as well as relatively just. We are
bound, not only to “follow our conscience,” but to have a right
conscience to follow,—and to follow it, not as one follows the
beast he drives, but as the soldier follows his commander. Robert
J. Burdette: “Following conscience as a guide is like following
one’s nose. It is important to get the nose pointed right before
it is safe to follow it. A man can keep the approval of his own
conscience in very much the same way that he can keep directly
behind his nose, and go wrong all the time.”

Conscience is the con-knowing of a particular act or state, as
coming under the law accepted by the reason as to right and wrong;
and the judgment of conscience subsumes this act or state under
that general standard. Conscience cannot _include_ the law—cannot
itself _be_ the law,—because reason only knows, never _con_-knows.
Reason says _scio_; only judgment says _conscio_.

This view enables us to reconcile the intuitional and the
empirical theories of morals. Each has its element of truth. The
original sense of right and wrong is intuitive,—no education could
ever impart the idea of the difference between right and wrong to
one who had it not. But what classes of things _are_ right or
wrong, we learn by the exercise of our logical intelligence, in
connection with experiences of utility, influences of society and
tradition, and positive divine revelation. Thus our moral reason,
through a combination of intuition and education, of internal and
external information as to general principles of right and wrong,
furnishes the standard according to which conscience may judge the
particular cases which come before it.

This moral reason may become depraved by sin, so that the light
becomes darkness (_Mat. 6:22, 23_) and conscience has only a
perverse standard by which to judge. The “_weak_” conscience (_1
Cor. 8:12_) is one whose standard of judgment is yet imperfect;
the conscience “_branded_” (Rev. Vers.) or “_seared_” (A. V.) “_as
with a hot iron_” (_1 Tim. 4:2_) is one whose standard has been
wholly perverted by practical disobedience. The word and the
Spirit of God are the chief agencies in rectifying our standards
of judgment, and so of enabling conscience to make absolutely
right decisions. God can so unite the soul to Christ, that it
becomes partaker on the one hand of his satisfaction to justice
and is thus “_sprinkled from an evil conscience_” (_Heb. 10:22_),
and on the other hand of his sanctifying power and is thus enabled
in certain respects to obey God’s command and to speak of a “_good
conscience_” (_1 Pet. 3:16_—of single act; _3:21_—of state)
instead of an “_evil conscience_” (_Heb. 10:22_) or a conscience
“_defiled_” (_Tit. 1:15_) by sin. Here the “_good conscience_” is
the conscience which has been obeyed by the will, and the “_evil
conscience_” the conscience which has been disobeyed; with the
result, in the first case, of approval from the moral sentiments,
and, in the second case, of disapproval.

E. Conscience in its relation to God as law-giver.—Since conscience, in the proper sense, gives uniform and infallible judgment that the right is supremely obligatory, and that the wrong must be forborne at every cost, it can be called an echo of God’s voice, and an indication in man of that which his own true being requires.

Conscience has sometimes been described as the voice of God in the
soul, or as the personal presence and influence of God himself.
But we must not identify conscience with God. D. W. Faunce:
“Conscience is not God,—it is only a part of one’s self. To build
up a religion about one’s own conscience, as if it were God, is
only a refined selfishness—a worship of one part of one’s self by
another part of one’s self.” In The Excursion, Wordsworth speaks
of conscience as “God’s most intimate presence in the soul And his
most perfect image in the world.” But in his Ode to Duty he more
discreetly writes: “Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty! if
that name thou love, Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the
erring, and reprove, Thou who art victory and law When empty
terrors overawe, From vain temptations dost set free And calmst
the weary strife of frail humanity!” Here is an allusion to the
Hebrew Bath Kol. “The Jews say that the Holy Spirit spoke during
the Tabernacle by Urim and Thummim, under the first Temple by the
Prophets, and under the second Temple by the Bath Kol—a divine
intimation as inferior to the oracular voice proceeding from the
mercy seat as a daughter is supposed to be inferior to her mother.
It is also used in the sense of an approving conscience. In this
case it is the echo of the voice of God in those who by obeying
hear” (Hershon’s Talmudic Miscellany, 2, note). This phrase, “the
echo of God’s voice,” is a correct description of conscience, and
Wordsworth probably had it in mind when he spoke of duty as “the
daughter of the voice of God.” Robert Browning describes
conscience as “the great beacon-light God sets in all.... The
worst man upon earth ... knows in his conscience more Of what
right is, than arrives at birth In the best man’s acts that we bow
before.” Jackson, James Martineau, 154—The sense of obligation is
“a piercing ray of the great Orb of souls.” On Wordsworth’s
conception of conscience, see A. H. Strong, Great Poets, 365-368.

Since the activity of the immanent God reveals itself in the
normal operations of our own faculties, conscience might be also
regarded as man’s true self over against the false self which we
have set up against it. Theodore Parker defines conscience as “our
consciousness of the conscience of God.” In his fourth year, says
Chadwick, his biographer (pages 12, 13, 185), young Theodore saw a
little spotted tortoise and lifted his hand to strike. All at once
something checked his arm, and a voice within said clear and loud:
“It is wrong.” He asked his mother what it was that told him it
was wrong. She wiped a tear from her eye with her apron, and
taking him in her arms said: “Some men call it conscience, but I
prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you
listen and obey it, then it will speak clearer and clearer, and
will always guide you right; but if you turn a deaf ear and
disobey, then it will fade out little by little, and will leave
you all in the dark and without a guide. Your life depends on your
hearing this little voice.” R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man
and of God, 87, 171—“Man has conscience, as he has talents.
Conscience, no more than talent, makes him good. He is good, only
as he follows conscience and uses talent.... The relation between
the terms consciousness and conscience, which are in fact but
forms of the same word, testifies to the fact that it is in the
action of conscience that man’s consciousness of himself is
chiefly experienced.”

The conscience of the regenerate man may have such right
standards, and its decisions may be followed by such uniformly
right action, that its voice, though it is not itself God’s voice,
is yet the very echo of God’s voice. The renewed conscience may
take up into itself, and may express, the witness of the Holy
Spirit (_Rom. 9:1_—“_I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my
conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit_”; _cf._
_8:16_—“_the Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that
we are children of God_”). But even when conscience judges
according to imperfect standards, and is imperfectly obeyed by the
will, there is a spontaneity in its utterances and a sovereignty
in its commands. It declares that whatever is right must be done.
The imperative of conscience is a “categorical imperative” (Kant).
It is independent of the human will. Even when disobeyed, it still
asserts its authority. Before conscience, every other impulse and
affection of man’s nature is called to bow.

F. Conscience in its relation to God as holy.—Conscience is not an original authority. It points to something higher than itself. The “authority of conscience” is simply the authority of the moral law, or rather, the authority of the personal God, of whose nature the law is but a transcript. Conscience, therefore, with its continual and supreme demand that the right should be done, furnishes the best witness to man of the existence of a personal God, and of the supremacy of holiness in him in whose image we are made.

In knowing self in connection with moral law, man not only gets
his best knowledge of self, but his best knowledge of that other
self opposite to him, namely, God. Gordon, Christ of To-day,
236—“The conscience is the true Jacob’s ladder, set in the heart
of the individual and reaching unto heaven; and upon it the angels
of self-reproach and self-approval ascend and descend.” This is of
course true if we confine our thoughts to the mandatory element in
revelation. There is a higher knowledge of God which is given only
in grace. Jacob’s ladder symbolizes the Christ who publishes not
only the gospel but the law, and not only the law but the gospel.
Dewey, Psychology, 344—“Conscience is intuitive, not in the sense
that it enunciates universal laws and principles, for it lays down
no laws. Conscience is a name for the experience of personality
that any given act is in harmony or in discord with a truly
realized personality.” Because obedience to the dictates of
conscience is always relatively right, Kant could say that “an
erring conscience is a chimæra.” But because the law accepted by
conscience may be absolutely wrong, conscience may in its
decisions greatly err from the truth. S. S. Times: “Saul before
his conversion was a conscientious wrong doer. His spirit and
character was commendable, while his conduct was reprehensible.”
We prefer to say that Saul’s zeal for the law was a zeal to make
the law subservient to his own pride and honor.

Horace Bushnell said that the first requirement of a great
ministry is a great conscience. He did not mean the punitive,
inhibitory conscience merely, but rather the discovering,
arousing, inspiring conscience, that sees at once the great things
to be done, and moves toward them with a shout and a song. This
unbiased and pure conscience is inseparable from the sense of its
relation to God and to God’s holiness. Shakespeare, Henry VI, 2d
Part, 3:2—“What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?
Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just; And he but naked,
though locked up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is
corrupted.” Huxley, in his lecture at Oxford in 1893, admits and
even insists that ethical practice must be and should be in
opposition to evolution; that the methods of evolution do not
account for ethical man and his ethical progress. Morality is not
a product of the same methods by which lower orders have advanced
in perfection of organization, namely, by the struggle for
existence and survival of the fittest. Human progress is moral, is
in freedom, is under the law of love, is different in kind from
physical evolution. James Russell Lowell: “In vain we call old
notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing: The ten
commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.”

R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God, 161—“Conscience
lives in human nature like a rightful king, whose claim can never
be forgotten by his people, even though they dethrone and misuse
him, and whose presence on the seat of judgment can alone make the
nation to be at peace with itself.” Seth, Ethical Principles,
424—“The Kantian theory of autonomy does not tell the whole story
of the moral life. Its unyielding Ought, its categorical
Imperative, issues not merely from the depths of our own nature,
but from the heart of the universe itself. We are
self-legislative; but we reënact the law already enacted by God;
we recognize, rather than constitute, the law of our own being.
The moral law is an echo, within our own souls, of the voice of
the Eternal, _‘__whose offspring we are__’__ (Acts 17:28)_.”

Schenkel, Christliche Dogmatik, 1:135-155—“The conscience is the
organ by which the human spirit finds God in itself and so becomes
aware of itself in him. Only in conscience is man conscious of
himself as eternal, as distinct from God, yet as normally bound to
be determined wholly by God. When we subject ourselves wholly to
God, conscience gives us peace. When we surrender to the world the
allegiance due only to God, conscience brings remorse. In this
latter case we become aware that while God is in us, we are no
longer in God. Religion is exchanged for ethics, the relation of
communion for the relation of separation. In conscience alone man
distinguishes himself absolutely from the brute. Man does not make
conscience, but conscience makes man. Conscience feels every
separation from God as an injury to self. Faith is the relating of
the self-consciousness to the God-consciousness, the becoming sure
of our own personality, in the absolute personality of God. Only
in faith does conscience come to itself. But by sin this
faith-consciousness may be turned into law-consciousness. Faith
affirms God _in_ us; Law affirms God _outside_ of us.” Schenkel
differs from Schleiermacher in holding that religion is not
feeling but conscience, and that it is not a sense of dependence
on the world, but a sense of dependence on God. Conscience
recognizes a God distinct from the universe, a moral God, and so
makes an unmoral religion impossible.

Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 283-285, Moral Science, 49, Law of
Love, 41—“Conscience is the moral consciousness of man in view of
his own actions as related to moral law. It is a double knowledge
of self and of the law. Conscience is not the whole of the moral
nature. It presupposes the moral reason, which recognizes the
moral law and affirms its universal obligation for all moral
beings. It is the office of conscience to bring man into personal
relation to this law. It sets up a tribunal within him by which
his own actions are judged. Not conscience, but the moral reason,
judges of the conduct of others. This last is _science_, but not
_conscience_.”

Peabody, Moral Philos., 41-60—“Conscience not a source, but a
means, of knowledge. Analogous to consciousness. A judicial
faculty. Judges according to the law before it. Verdict (verum
dictum) always relatively right, although, by the absolute
standard of right, it may be wrong. Like all perceptive faculties,
educated by use (not by increase of knowledge only, for man may
act worse, the more knowledge he has). For absolutely right
decisions, conscience is dependent upon knowledge. To recognize
conscience as _legislator_ (as well as judge), is to fail to
recognize any objective standard of right.” The Two Consciences,
46, 47—“Conscience the Law, and Conscience the Witness. The latter
is the true and proper Conscience.”

H. B. Smith, System of Christ. Theology, 178-191—“The unity of
conscience is not in its being one faculty or in its performing
one function, but in its having one _object_, its relation to one
idea, viz., _right_.... The term ‘conscience’ no more designates a
special faculty than the term ‘religion’ does (or than the
‘æsthetic sense’).... The existence of conscience proves a moral
law above us; it leads logically to a Moral Governor; ... it
implies an essential distinction between right and wrong, an
immutable morality; ... yet needs to be enlightened; ... men may
be conscientious in iniquity; ... conscience is not righteousness;
... this may only show the greatness of the depravity, having
conscience, and yet ever disobeying it.”

On the New Testament passages with regard to conscience, see
Hofmann, Lehre von dem Gewissen, 30-38; Kähler, Das Gewissen,
225-293. For the view that conscience is primarily the cognitive
or intuitional power of the soul, see Calderwood, Moral
Philosophy, 77; Alexander, Moral Science, 20; McCosh, Div. Govt.,
297-312; Talbot, Ethical Prolegomena, in Bap. Quar., July,
1877:257-274; Park, Discourses, 260-296; Whewell, Elements of
Morality, 1:259-266. On the whole subject of conscience, see
Mansel, Metaphysics, 158-170; Martineau, Religion and Materialism,
45—“The discovery of duty is as distinctly relative to an
objective Righteousness as the perception of form to an external
space”; also Types, 2:27-30—“We first judge ourselves; then
others”; 53, 54, 74, 103—“Subjective morals are as absurd as
subjective mathematics.” The best brief treatment of the whole
subject is that of E. G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of
Morality, 26-78. See also Wayland, Moral Science, 49; Harless,
Christian Ethics, 45, 60; H. N. Day, Science of Ethics, 17; Janet,
Theory of Morals, 264, 348; Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics, 62; _cf._
Schwegler, Hist. Philosophy, 233; Haven, Mor. Philos., 41;
Fairchild, Mor. Philos., 75; Gregory, Christian Ethics, 71;
Passavant, Das Gewissen; Wm. Schmid, Das Gewissen.

2. Will.

A. Will defined.—Will is the soul’s power to choose between motives and to direct its subsequent activity according to the motive thus chosen,—in other words, the soul’s power to choose both an end and the means to attain it. The choice of an ultimate end we call immanent preference; the choice of means we call executive volition.

In this definition we part company with Jonathan Edwards, Freedom
of the Will, in Works, vol. 2. He regards the will as the soul’s
power to act according to motive, _i. e._, to act out its nature,
but he denies the soul’s power to choose between motives, _i. e._,
to initiate a course of action contrary to the motive which has
been previously dominant. Hence he is unable to explain how a holy
being, like Satan or Adam, could ever fall. If man has no power to
change motives, to break with the past, to begin a new course of
action, he has no more freedom than the brute. The younger Edwards
(Works, 1:483) shows what his father’s doctrine of the will
implies, when he says: “Beasts therefore, according to the measure
of their intelligence, are as free as men. Intelligence, and not
liberty, is the only thing wanting to constitute them moral
agents.” Yet Jonathan Edwards, determinist as he was, in his
sermon on Pressing into the Kingdom of God (Works, 4:381), urges
the use of means, and appeals to the sinner as if he had the power
of choosing between the motives of self and of God. He was
unconsciously making a powerful appeal to the will, and the human
will responded in prolonged and mighty efforts; see Allen,
Jonathan Edwards, 109.

For references, and additional statements with regard to the will
and its freedom, see chapter on Decrees, pages 361, 362, and
article by A. H. Strong, in Baptist Review, 1883:219-242, and
reprinted in Philosophy and Religion, 114-128. In the remarks upon
the Decrees, we have intimated our rejection of the Arminian
liberty of indifference, or the doctrine that the will can act
without motive. See this doctrine advocated in Peabody, Moral
Philosophy, 1-9. But we also reject the theory of determinism
propounded by Jonathan Edwards (Freedom of the Will, in Works,
vol. 2), which, as we have before remarked, identifies sensibility
with the will, regards affections as the efficient causes of
volitions, and speaks of the connection between motive and action
as a necessary one. Hazard, Man a Creative First Cause, and The
Will, 407—“Edwards gives to the controlling cause of volition in
the past the name of motive. He treats the inclination as a
motive, but he also makes inclination synonymous with choice and
will, which would make will to be only the soul willing—and
therefore the cause of its own act.” For objections to the
Arminian theory, see H. B. Smith, Review of Whedon, in Faith and
Philosophy, 359-399; McCosh, Divine Government, 263-318, esp. 312;
E. G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 109-137;
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:115-147.

James, Psychology, 1:139—“Consciousness is primarily a selecting
agency.” 2:393—“Man possesses all the instincts of animals, and a
great many more besides. Reason, _per se_, can inhibit no
impulses; the only thing that can neutralize an impulse is an
impulse the other way. Reason may however make an inference which
will excite the imagination to let loose the impulse the other
way.” 549—“Ideal or moral action is action in the line of the
greatest resistance.” 562—“Effort of attention is the essential
phenomenon of will.” 567—“The terminus of the psychological
process is volition; the point to which the will is directly
applied is always an idea.” 568—“Though attention is the first
thing in volition, express consent to the reality of what is
attended to is an additional and distinct phenomenon. We say not
only: It is a reality; but we also say: ‘Let it be a reality.’ ”
571—“Are the duration and intensity of this effort fixed functions
of the object, or are they not? We answer, _No_, and so we
maintain freedom of the will.” 584—“The soul presents nothing,
creates nothing, is at the mercy of material forces for all
possibilities, and, by reinforcing one and checking others, it
figures not as an _epiphenomenon_, but as something from which the
play gets moral support.” Alexander, Theories of the Will,
201-214, finds in Reid’s Active Powers of the Human Mind the most
adequate empirical defense of indeterminism.

B. Will and other faculties.—(_a_) We accept the threefold division of human faculties into intellect, sensibility, and will. (_b_) Intellect is the soul knowing; sensibility is the soul feeling (desires, affections); will is the soul choosing (end or means). (_c_) In every act of the soul, all the faculties act. Knowing involves feeling and willing; feeling involves knowing and willing; willing involves knowing and feeling. (_d_) Logically, each latter faculty involves the preceding action of the former; the soul must know before feeling; must know and feel before willing. (_e_) Yet since knowing and feeling are activities, neither of these is possible without willing.

Socrates to Theætetus: “It would be a singular thing, my lad, if
each of us was, as it were, a wooden horse, and within us were
seated many separate senses. For manifestly these senses unite
into one nature, call it the soul or what you will. And it is with
this central form, through the organs of sense, that we perceive
sensible objects.” Dewey, Psychology, 21—“Knowledge and feeling
are partial aspects of the self, and hence more or less abstract,
while will is complete, comprehending both aspects.... While the
universal element is knowledge, the individual element is feeling,
and the relation which connects them into one concrete content is
will.” 364—“There is conflict of desires or motives. Deliberation
is the comparison of desires; choice is the decision in favor of
one. This desire is then the strongest because the whole force of
the self is thrown into it.” 411—“The man determines himself by
setting up either good or evil as a motive to himself, and he sets
up either, as he will have himself be. There is no thought without
will, for thought implies inhibition.” Ribot, Diseases of the
Will, 73, cites the case of Coleridge, and his lack of power to
inhibit scattering and useless ideas; 114—“Volition plunges its
roots into the profoundest depths of the individual, and beyond
the individual, into the species and into all species.”

As God is not mere nature but originating force, so man is chiefly
will. Every other act of the soul has will as an element. Wundt:
“Jedes Denken ist ein Wollen.” There is no perception, and there
is no thought, without attention, and attention is an act of the
will. Hegelians and absolute idealists like Bradley, (see Mind,
July, 1886), deny that attention is an active function of the
self. They regard it as a necessary consequence of the more
interesting character of preceding ideas. Thus all power to alter
character is denied to the agent. This is an exact reversal of the
facts of consciousness, and it would leave no will in God or man.
T. H. Green says that the self makes the motives by identifying
itself with one solicitation of desire rather than another, but
that the self has no power of alternative choice in thus
identifying itself with one solicitation of desire rather than
another; see Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 310. James Seth, Freedom of
Ethical Postulate: “The only hope of finding a place for real free
will is in another than the Humian, empirical or psychological
account of the moral person or self. Hegel and Green bring will
again under the law of necessity. But personality is ultimate.
Absolute uniformity is entirely unproved. We contend for a power
of free and incalculable initiation in the self, and this it is
necessary to maintain in the interests of morality.” Without will
to attend to pertinent material and to reject the impertinent, we
can have no _science_; without will to select and combine the
elements of imagination, we can have no _art_; without will to
choose between evil and good, we can have no _morality_. Ælfric,
A. D. 900: “The verb ‘to will’ has no imperative, for that the
will must be always free.”

C. Will and permanent states.—(_a_) Though every act of the soul involves the action of all the faculties, yet in any particular action one faculty may be more prominent than the others. So we speak of acts of intellect, of affection, of will. (_b_) This predominant action of any single faculty produces effects upon the other faculties associated with it. The action of will gives a direction to the intellect and to the affections, as well as a permanent bent to the will itself. (_c_) Each faculty, therefore, has its permanent states as well as its transient acts, and the will may originate these states. Hence we speak of voluntary affections, and may with equal propriety speak of voluntary opinions. These permanent voluntary states we denominate character.

I “make up” my mind. Ladd, Philosophy of Conduct, 152—“I will the
influential ideas, feelings and desires, rather than allow these
ideas, feelings and desires to influence—not to say, determine
me.” All men can say with Robert Browning’s Paracelsus: “I have
subdued my life to the one purpose Whereto I ordained it.” “Sow an
act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character;
sow a character, and you reap a destiny.” Tito, in George Eliot’s
Romola, and Markheim in R. L. Stevenson’s story of that name, are
instances of the gradual and almost imperceptible fixation in evil
ways which results from seemingly slight original decisions of the
will; see art. on Tito Melema, by Julia H. Gulliver, in New World,
Dec. 1895:688—“Sin lies in the choice of the ideas that shall
frequent the moral life, rather than of the actions that shall
form the outward life.... The pivotal point of the moral life is
the intent involved in attention.... Sin consists, not only in the
motive, but in the making of the motive.” By every decision of the
will in which we turn our thought either toward or away from an
object of desire, we set nerve-tracts in operation, upon which
thought may hereafter more or less easily travel. “Nothing makes
an inroad, without making a road.” By slight efforts of attention
to truth which we know ought to influence us, we may “_make level
in the desert a highway for our God_” (_Is. 40:3_), or render the
soul a hard trodden ground impervious to “_the word of the
kingdom_” (_Mat. 13:19_).

The word “character” meant originally the mark of the engraver’s
tool upon the metal or the stone. It came then to signify the
collective result of the engraver’s work. The use of the word in
morals implies that every thought and act is chiseling itself into
the imperishable substance of the soul. J. S. Mill: “A character
is a completely fashioned will.” We may talk therefore of a
“generic volition” (Dewey). There is a permanent bent of the will
toward good or toward evil. Reputation is man’s shadow, sometimes
longer, sometimes shorter, than himself. Character, on the other
hand, is the man’s true self—“what a man is in the dark” (Dwight
L. Moody). In this sense, “purpose is the autograph of mind.” Duke
of Wellington: “Habit a second nature? Habit is ten times nature!”
When Macbeth says: “If ’twere done when ’tis done, Then ’twere
well ’twere done quickly,” the trouble is that when ’tis done, it
is only begun. Robert Dale Owen gives us the fundamental principle
of socialism in the maxim: “A man’s character is made for him, not
by him.” Hence he would change man’s diet or his environment, as a
means of forming man’s character. But Jesus teaches that what
defiles comes not from without but from within (_Mat. 15:18_).
Because character is the result of will, the maxim of Heraclitus
is true: ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων—man’s character is his destiny. On
habit, see James, Psychology, 1:122-127.

D. Will and motives.—(_a_) The permanent states just mentioned, when they have been once determined, also influence the will. Internal views and dispositions, and not simply external presentations, constitute the strength of motives. (_b_) These motives often conflict, and though the soul never acts without motive, it does notwithstanding choose between motives, and so determines the end toward which it will direct its activities. (_c_) Motives are not _causes_, which compel the will, but _influences_, which persuade it. The power of these motives, however, is proportioned to the strength of will which has entered into them and has made them what they are.

“Incentives come from the soul’s self: the rest avail not.” The
same wind may drive two ships in opposite directions, according as
they set their sails. The same external presentation may result in
George Washington’s refusing, and Benedict Arnold’s accepting, the
bribe to betray his country. Richard Lovelace of Canterbury:
“Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds
innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage.” Jonathan Edwards
made motives to be _efficient_ causes, when they are only _final_
causes. We must not interpret motive as if it were locomotive. It
is always a man’s fault when he becomes a drunkard: drink never
takes to a man; the man takes to drink. Men who deny demerit are
ready enough to claim merit. They hold others responsible, if not
themselves. Bowne: “Pure arbitrariness and pure necessity are
alike incompatible with reason. There must be a law of reason in
the mind with which volition cannot tamper, and there must also be
the power to determine ourselves accordingly.” Bowne, Principles
of Ethics, 135—“If necessity is a universal thing, then the belief
in freedom is also necessary. All grant freedom of thought, so
that it is only executive freedom that is denied.” Bowne, Theory
of Thought and Knowledge, 239-244—“Every system of philosophy must
invoke freedom for the solution of the problem of error, or make
shipwreck of reason itself.... Our faculties are made for truth,
but they may be carelessly used, or wilfully misused, and thus
error is born.... We need not only laws of thought, but
self-control in accordance with them.”

The will, in choosing _between_ motives, chooses _with_ a motive,
namely, the motive chosen. Fairbairn, Philos. Christian Religion,
76—“While motives may be necessary, they need not necessitate. The
will selects motives; motives do not select the will. Heredity and
environment do not cancel freedom, they only condition it. Thought
is transcendence as regards the phenomena of space; will is
transcendence as regards the phenomena of time; this double
transcendence involves the complete supernatural character of
man.” New World, 1892:152—“It is not the character, but the self
that has the character, to which the ultimate moral decision is
due.” William Ernest Henly, Poems, 119—“It matters not how strait
the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master
of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:54—“A being is free, in so far
as the inner centre of its life, from which it acts, is
conditioned by self-determination. It is not enough that the
deciding agent in an act be the man himself, his own nature, his
distinctive character. In order to have accountability, we must
have more than this; we must prove that this, his distinctive
nature and character, springs from his own volition, and that it
is itself the product of freedom in moral development. _Matt.
12:33_—‘_make the tree good, and its fruit good_’—combines both.
Acts depend upon nature; but nature again depends upon the primary
decisions of the will (‘_make the tree good_’). Some determinism
is not denied; but it is partly limited [by the will’s remaining
power of choice] and partly traced back to a former
self-determining.” _Ibid._, 67—“If freedom be the self-determining
of the will from that which is undetermined, Determinism is found
wanting,—because in its most spiritual form, though it grants a
self-determination of the will, it is only such a one as springs
from a determinateness already present; and Indifferentism is
found wanting too, because while it maintains indeterminateness as
presupposed in every act of will, it does not recognize an actual
self-determining on the part of the will, which, though it be a
self-determining, yet begets determinateness of character.... We
must, therefore, hold the doctrine of a _conditional_ and
_limited_ freedom.”

E. Will and contrary choice.—(_a_) Though no act of pure will is possible, the soul may put forth single volitions in a direction opposed to its previous ruling purpose, and thus far man has the power of a contrary choice (Rom. 7:18—“to will is present with me”). (_b_) But in so far as will has entered into and revealed itself in permanent states of intellect and sensibility and in a settled bent of the will itself, man cannot by a single act reverse his moral state, and in this respect has not the power of a contrary choice. (_c_) In this latter case he can change his character only indirectly, by turning his attention to considerations fitted to awaken opposite dispositions, and by thus summoning up motives to an opposite course.

There is no such thing as an act of pure will. Peters,
Willenswelt, 126—“Jedes Wollen ist ein Etwas wollen”—“all willing
is a willing of some thing”; it has an object which the mind
conceives, which awakens the sensibility, and which the will
strives to realize. Cause without alternative is not true cause.
J. F. Watts: “We know causality only as we know will, _i. e._,
where of two possibles it makes one actual. A cause may therefore
have more than one certain effect. In the external material world
we cannot find _cause_, but only _antecedent_. To construct a
theory of the will from a study of the material universe is to
seek the living among the dead. Will is power to _make_ a
decision, not to _be made_ by decisions, to decide between
motives, and not to be determined by motives. Who conducts the
trial between motives? Only the self.” While we agree with the
above in its assertion of the certainty of nature’s sequences, we
object to its attribution even to nature of anything like
necessity. Since nature’s laws are merely the habits of God, God’s
causality in nature is the regularity, not of necessity, but of
freedom. We too are free at the strategic points. Automatic as
most of our action is, there are times when we know ourselves to
have power of initiative; when we put under our feet the motives
which have dominated us in the past; when we mark out new courses
of action. In these critical times we assert our manhood; but for
them we would be no better than the beasts that perish. “Unless
above himself he can erect himself, How mean a thing is man!”

Will, with no remaining power of contrary choice, may be brute
will, but it is not free will. We therefore deny the relevancy of
Herbert Spencer’s argument, in his Data of Ethics, and in his
Psychology, 2:503—“Psychical changes either conform to law, or
they do not. If they do not conform to law, no science of
Psychology is possible. If they do conform to law, there cannot be
any such thing as free will.” Spinoza also, in his Ethics, holds
that the stone, as it falls, would if it were conscious think
itself free, and with as much justice as man; for it is doing that
to which its constitution leads it; but no more can be said for
him. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, xiii—“To try to
collect the ‘data of ethics’ when there is no recognition of man
as a personal agent, capable of freely originating the conduct and
the states of will for which he is morally responsible, is labor
lost.” Fisher, chapter on the Personality of God, in Grounds of
Theistic and Christian Belief—“Self-determination, as the very
term signifies, is attended with an irresistible conviction that
the direction of the will is self-imparted.... That the will is
free, that is, not constrained by causes exterior, which is
_fatalism_—and not a mere spontaneity, confined to one path by a
force acting from within, which is _determinism_—is immediately
evident to every unsophisticated mind. We can initiate action by
an efficiency which is neither irresistibly controlled by motives,
nor determined, without any capacity of alternative action, by a
proneness inherent in its nature.... Motives have an _influence_,
but influence is not to be confounded with _causal_ efficiency.”

Talbot, on Will and Free Will, Bap. Rev., July, 1882—“Will is
neither a power of unconditioned self-determination—which is not
freedom, but an aimless, irrational, fatalistic power; nor pure
spontaneity—which excludes from will all law but its own; but it
is rather a power of originating action—a power which is limited
however by inborn dispositions, by acquired habits and
convictions, by feelings and social relations.” Ernest Naville, in
Rev. Chrétienne, Jan. 1878:7—“Our liberty does not consist in
producing an action of which it is the only source. It consists in
choosing between two preëxistent impulses. It is _choice_, not
_creation_, that is our destiny—a drop of water that can choose
whether it will go into the Rhine or the Rhone. Gravity carries it
down,—it chooses only its direction. Impulses do not come from the
will, but from the sensibility; but free will chooses between
these impulses.” Bowne, Metaphysics, 169—“Freedom is not a power
of acting without, or apart from, motives, but simply a power of
choosing an end or law, and of governing one’s self accordingly.”
Porter, Moral Science, 77-111—Will is “not a power to choose
without motive.” It “does not exclude motives to the contrary.”
Volition “supposes two or more objects between which election is
made. It is an act of preference, and to prefer implies that one
motive is chosen to the exclusion of another.... To the conception
and the act two motives at least are required.” Lyall, Intellect,
Emotions, and Moral Nature, 581, 592—“The will follows reasons,
inducements—but it is not _caused_. It obeys or acts under
inducement, but it does so sovereignly. It exhibits the phenomena
of activity, in relation to the very motive it obeys. It obeys it,
rather than another. It determines, in reference to it, that this
is the very motive it will obey. There is undoubtedly this
phenomenon exhibited: the will obeying—but elective, active, in
its obedience. If it be asked how this is possible—how the will
can be under the influence of motive, and yet possess an
intellectual activity—we reply that this is one of those ultimate
phenomena which must be admitted, while they cannot be explained.”

F. Will and responsibility.—(_a_) By repeated acts of will put forth in a given moral direction, the affections may become so confirmed in evil or in good as to make previously certain, though not necessary, the future good or evil action of the man. Thus, while the will is free, the man may be the “bondservant of sin” (John 8:31-36) or the “servant of righteousness” (Rom. 6:15-23; _cf._ Heb. 12-23—“spirits of just men made perfect”). (_b_) Man is responsible for all effects of will, as well as for will itself; for voluntary affections, as well as for voluntary acts; for the intellectual views into which will has entered, as well as for the acts of will by which these views have been formed in the past or are maintained in the present (2 Pet. 3:5—“wilfully forget”).

Ladd, Philosophy of Knowledge, 415—“The self stands between the
two laws of Nature and of Conscience, and, under perpetual
limitations from both, exercises its choice. Thus it becomes more
and more enslaved by the one, or more and more free by habitually
choosing to follow the other. Our conception of causality
according to the laws of nature, and our conception of the other
causality of freedom, are both derived from one and the same
experience of the self. There arises a seeming antinomy only when
we hypostatize each severally and apart from the other.” R. T.
Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God, 69—“Making a _will_ is
significant. Here the action of will is limited by conditions: the
amount of the testator’s property, the number of his relatives,
the nature of the objects of bounty within his knowledge.”

Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 349-407—“Action without motives,
or contrary to all motives, would be irrational action. Instead of
being free, it would be like the convulsions of epilepsy. Motives
= sensibilities. Motive is not _cause_; does not determine; is
only influence. Yet determination is always made under the
influence of motives. Uniformity of action is not to be explained
by any law of uniform influence of motives, but by _character_ in
the will. By its choice, will forms in itself a character; by
action in accordance with this choice, it confirms and develops
the character. Choice modifies sensibilities, and so modifies
motives. Volitional action expresses character, but also forms and
modifies it. Man may change his choice; yet intellect,
sensibility, motive, habit, remain. Evil choice, having formed
intellect and sensibility into accord with itself, must be a
powerful hindrance to fundamental change by new and contrary
choice; and gives small ground to expect that man left to himself
ever will make the change. After will has acquired character by
choices, its determinations are not transitions from complete
indeterminateness or indifference, but are more or less
expressions of character already formed. The theory that
indifference is essential to freedom implies that will never
acquires character; that voluntary action is atomistic; that every
act is disintegrated from every other; that character, if
acquired, would be incompatible with freedom. Character is a
choice, yet a choice which persists, which modifies sensibility
and intellect, and which influences subsequent determinations.”

My freedom then is freedom within limitations. Heredity and
environment, and above all the settled dispositions which are the
product of past acts of will, render a large part of human action
practically automatic. The deterministic theory is valid for
perhaps nine-tenths of human activity. Mason, Faith of the Gospel,
118, 119—“We naturally will with a bias toward evil. To act
according to the perfection of nature would be true freedom. And
this man has lost. He recognizes that he is not his true self. It
is only with difficulty that he works toward his true self again.
By the fall of Adam, the will, which before was conditioned but
free, is now not only conditioned but enslaved. Nothing but the
action of grace can free it.” Tennyson, In Memoriam, Introduction:
“Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make
them thine.” Studying the action of the sinful will alone, one
might conclude that there is no such thing as freedom. Christian
ethics, in distinction from naturalistic ethics, reveals most
clearly the degradation of our nature, at the same time that it
discloses the remedy in Christ: “_If therefore the Son shall make
you free, ye shall be free indeed_” (_John 8:36_).

Mind, Oct. 1882:567—“Kant seems to be in quest of the phantasmal
freedom which is supposed to consist in the absence of
determination by motives. The error of the determinists from which
this idea is the recoil, involves an equal abstraction of the man
from his thoughts, and interprets the relation between the two as
an instance of the mechanical causality which exists between two
things in nature. The point to be grasped in the controversy is
that a man and his motives are one, and that consequently he is in
every instance self-determined.... Indeterminism is tenable only
if an ego can be found which is not an ego already determinate;
but such an ego, though it may be logically distinguished and
verbally expressed, is not a factor in psychology.” Morell, Mental
Philosophy, 390—“Motives determine the will, and so _far_ the will
is not free; but the man governs the motives, allowing them a less
or a greater power of influencing his life, and so _far_ the man
is a free agent.” Santayana: “A free man, because he is free, may
make himself a slave; but once a slave, because he is a slave, he
cannot make himself free.” Sidgwick, Method of Ethics, 51,
65—“This almost overwhelming cumulative proof [of necessity]
seems, however, more than balanced by a single argument on the
other side: the immediate affirmation of consciousness in the
moment of deliberate volition. It is impossible for me to think,
at each moment, that my volition is completely determined by my
formed character and the motives acting upon it. The opposite
conviction is so strong as to be absolutely unshaken by the
evidence brought against it. I cannot believe it to be illusory.”

G. Inferences from this view of the will.—(_a_) We can be responsible for the voluntary evil affections with which we are born, and for the will’s inherited preference of selfishness, only upon the hypothesis that we originated these states of the affections and will, or had a part in originating them. Scripture furnishes this explanation, in its doctrine of Original Sin, or the doctrine of a common apostasy of the race in its first father, and our derivation of a corrupted nature by natural generation from him. (_b_) While there remains to man, even in his present condition, a natural power of will by which he may put forth transient volitions externally conformed to the divine law and so may to a limited extent modify his character, it still remains true that the sinful bent of his affections is not directly under his control; and this bent constitutes a motive to evil so constant, inveterate, and powerful, that it actually influences every member of the race to reäffirm his evil choice, and renders necessary a special working of God’s Spirit upon his heart to ensure his salvation. Hence the Scripture doctrine of Regeneration.