Front matter

LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION

BY

THOMAS HILL GREEN LATE FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE AND WHYTE'S PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

REPRINTED FROM GREEN'S PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS, VOL II. WITH PREFACE BY BERNARD BOSANQUET

NEW IMPRESSION

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO LTD 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

1911

All rights reserved

PREFACE.

The present volume consists of the late Professor Green's lectures on the 'Principles of Political Obligation,' together with a chapter on the different senses of the term 'Freedom,' taken from a course directly connected with the former. The work thus re-issued is a reprint of pp. 307-553 of Vol. II. of Professor Green's Philosophical Works, with the addition of a brief supplement (p. 248) furnished by the present writer, consisting of English renderings for some quotations which appear in the text (pp. 49-59).

The reason for this re-issue is as follows. The course of lectures in question has long been known to teachers as a most valuable text-book for students of political theory. But as a portion of a large and expensive volume, which is itself part of a set of collected works, it naturally was not accessible to members of popular audiences. In discussing the selection of a text-book for a projected course of instruction on political theory, to be given in London, it was suggested that a separate volume, containing the 'Principles of Political Obligation' would be the best conceivable book for the purpose. No other recent writer, it was felt, has the classical strength and sanity of Professor Green, who was never more thorough and more at home then when dealing with those questions affecting citizenship in and for which, it may be said, he lived. Many of the troubles of today reflect the distraction of minds to which a sane and balanced view of society has never been adequately presented; and the importance of the service which might be rendered to general education by the re-issue of these lectures in a convenient form appeared to justify an application to those who had the power of carrying out the suggestion which had been made.

The friends of genuine political philosophy will have good cause, it is hoped, to be grateful to Mrs T.H. Green for her cordial assent to the proposed republication, as also to Messrs. Longman for their promptitude in agreeing to undertake it. The elaborate table of contents, reprinted from the Philosophical Works, was compiled by their editor, the late Mr. Lewis Nettleship. It adds very greatly to the value of the book.

BERNARD BOSANQUET

Transcriber's Note: each of Green's footnotes has been placed after the paragraph to which it refers, and renumbered accordingly. The footnotes added by R.L. Nettleship are treated the same way, remain in the square brackets with which he distinguished them, and are marked 'RLN'. The transcriber has added a few footnotes, mainly explaining Greek words in the text. These are also in square brackets, marked 'Tr'.

CONTENTS

ON THE DIFFERENT SENSES OF 'FREEDOM' AS APPLIED TO WILL AND TO THE MORAL PROGRESS OF MAN.

1. In one sense (as being search for self-satisfaction) all will is free; in another (as the satisfaction sought is or is not real) it may or may not be free

2. As applied to the inner life 'freedom' always implies a metaphor. Senses of this metaphor in Plato, the Stoics, St. Paul

3. St. Paul and Kant. It would seem that with Kant 'freedom' means merely consciousness of the possibility of it, ('knowledge of sin')

4. Hegel's conception of freedom as objectively realised in the state

5. It is true in so far as society does supply to the individual concrete interests which tend to satisfy the desire for perfection

6. Though (like the corresponding conception in St. Paul) it is not and could not be realised in any actual human society

7. In all these uses 'freedom' means, not mere self-determination or acting on preference, but a particular kind of this

8. The extension of the term from the outer to the inner relations of life, though a natural result of reflection, is apt to be misleading

9. Thus the question, Is a man free? which may be properly asked in regard to his actions, cannot be asked in the same sense in regard to his will

10. The failure to see this has led to the errors (1) of regarding motive as something apart from and acting on will, (2) of regarding will as independent of motive

11. Thus the fact that a man, being what he is, must act in a certain way, is construed into the negation of freedom

12. And to escape this negation recourse is had to the notion of an unmotived will, which is really no will at all

13. The truth is that the will is the man, and that the will cannot be rightly spoken of as 'acting on' its objects or vice versa, because they are neither anything without the other

14. If however the question be persisted in, Has a man power over his will? the answer must be both 'yes' and 'no'

15. 'Freedom' has been taken above (as by English psychologists generally) as applying to will, whatever the character of the object willed

16. If taken (as by the Stoics, St. Paul, Kant (generally), and Hegel) as applying only to good will, it must still be recognised that this particular sense implies the generic

17. Whatever the propriety of the term in the particular sense, both 'juristic' and 'spiritual' freedom spring from the same self-asserting principle in man

18. And though the former is only the beginning of full freedom, this identity of source will always justify the use of the word in the latter sense

19. But does not the conception of 'freedom' as = the moral ideal imply an untenable distinction like that of Kant between the 'pure' and 'empirical' ego?

20. The 'pure' and 'empirical' ego are one ego, regarded (1) in its possibility, (2) as at any given time it actually is

21. In man the self-realising principle is never realised; i.e. the objects of reason and will only tend to coincide

22. So far as they do coincide, man may be said to be 'free' and his will to be 'autonomous'

23. The growing organisation of human life provides a medium for the embodiment, and disciplines the natural impulses for the reception, of the idea of perfection

24. The reconciliation of reason and will takes place as the individual more and more finds his own self-satisfaction in meeting the requirements of established morality

25. Until these come to be entirely superseded by the desire of perfection for its own sake, and his will becomes really free.

LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION

A. The grounds of political obligation.

1. Subject of the inquiry

2. Its connection with the general theory of morals. Ideal goodness is to do good for its own sake: but there must be acts considered good on other grounds before they can be done for the sake of their goodness

3. When, however, the ideal comes to be recognised as the ideal, the lower interests and rules must be criticised and revised by it

4. The criticism of interests will yield a 'theory of moral sentiments'; that of rules will relate (1) to positive law, (2) to the law of opinion

5. As moral interests greatly depend on recognised rules of conduct, and those again on positive law, it is best to begin by considering the moral value of existing civil institutions

6. The condition of morality is the possession of will and reason, and it is realised in a personal character in which they are harmonised

7. Civil institutions are valuable so far as they enable will and reason to be exercised, and so far they answer to 'jus naturae'

8. The essential questions as to the 'law of nature' are, (1) Are there rights and obligations other than those actually enforced? (2) If so, what is the criterion of them?

9. While rejecting the theory of a 'state of nature,' we may still use 'natural' of those rights which ought to be, though they actually are not

10. Such 'natural law' is (as admitting enforcement) distinct from, but (as implying a duty to obey it) relative to, the moral law

11. Hence two principles for the criticism of law, (1) only external acts can be matter of obligation proper, (2) the ideal of law must be determined by reference to the moral end which it serves

12. Observe (a) that in confining law to 'external actions,' we mean by 'actions' intentions, without which there is properly no 'action'

13. (b) That by 'external' we mean that law, though it does supply motives to action, looks merely to whether the action is done, not to whether it is done from a particular motive

14. Law then can only enjoin or forbid certain acts; it cannot enjoin or forbid motives

15. And the only acts which it ought to enjoin or forbid are those of which the doing or not doing, from whatever motive, is necessary to the moral end of society

16. The principle of 'natural law,' then, should be to enjoin all acts which further action from the highest motive, and no acts which interfere with such action

17. This principle would condemn much legislation which has tended, e.g., to weaken religion, self-respect, or family feeling

18. This, and not the principle of 'laissez-faire,' is the true ground of objection to 'paternal government'

19. The theory of political obligation (i.e. of what law ought to be, and why it ought to be obeyed) is not a theory (a) as to how existing law has come to be what it is

20. Nor (b) as to how far it expresses or is derived from certain original 'natural' rights

21. 'Natural' rights (like law itself) are relative to moral ends, i.e. they are those which are necessary to the fulfilment of man's moral vocation as man

22. This however is not the sense in which political obligation was based on 'natural rights' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, previously to utilitarianism

23. The utilitarian theory so far agrees with that here advocated that it grounds existing law, not on a 'natural' law prior to it, but on an end which it serves

24. The derivation of actual rights from natural (i.e. more primitive) rights does not touch the real question, viz. how there came to be rights at all

25. The conception of a moral ideal (however dim) is the condition of the existence of rights, and conversely anyone who is capable of such a conception is capable of rights

26. Thus the consciousness of having rights is co-ordinate with the recognition of others as having them, the ground of both being the conception of a common good which ought to be attained

27. Rights then can only subsist among 'persons,' in the moral sense of 'persons,' i.e. being possessed of rational will

28. Though the moral idea of personality is later in formulation than the legal, and this again than the actual existence of rights

29. Rights which are directly necessary to a man's acting as a moral person at all may be called in a special sense 'personal'

30. Nor is there any objection to calling them 'innate' or 'natural,' if this means 'necessary to the moral development of man' in which sense 'duties' are equally 'natural'

31. Without a society conscious of a common interest there can be only 'powers,' no 'rights'.

B. Spinoza.

32. Spinoza, seeing that 'jus naturae' = 'potentia,' and not seeing that it is not really 'jus' at all, identifies all 'jus' with 'potentia,' both in the state and in the individual

33. From which it follows that the 'right' of the state against its individual members is only limited by its 'power'

34. And the same principle applies to the relations of one state to other states

35. But, according to Spinoza, though everything is 'lawful' for the state, everything is not 'best,' and the 'best' state is that which secures a life of 'peace,' i.e. rational virtue or perfection

36. This conclusion does not seem consistent with his starting-point, according to which men are 'naturally enemies'

37. From such a 'status naturalis' there is no possible transition to the 'status civilis,' and the phrase 'jus naturae' remains unmeaning

38. Spinoza's error of regarding 'rights' as possible apart from society was confirmed by his denial of final causes

39. It was just because Plato and Aristotle regarded man as finding his end in the end of the state, that they founded a true theory of rights

40. Spinoza, however, while insisting that man is 'part of nature,' yet places his 'good' in understanding nature and so acquiring a new character

41. In thus recognising the idea of perfection as a determinant of life, he really recognises an operative final cause, though without seeing its bearing on the theory of right.

C. Hobbes.

42. Hobbes differs from Spinoza in regarding the right of the sovereign, not as limited by his power, but as absolute

43. Statement of his doctrine

44. He uses 'person,' as in Roman law, for either (1) a complex of rights, or (2) the subject of those rights

45. Though by his theory the sovereign may be one or many, and sovereignty is transferable by the act of a majority, he tacitly vindicates the absolute right of a de facto monarchy

46. The radical fiction in his theory is that there can be any 'right' after the institution of sovereignty, if (as he holds) there is none before it

47. To justify his doctrine of absolute submission he has to assume a 'law of nature' which binds men to keep covenant, while yet he holds the 'law of nature' to be mere 'power' and covenants to be only valid under an imperium,

48. His 'contract' can confer none but natural right, and that is either not a right at all, or (if it is) it belongs to all men, subject and sovereign alike

49. The real flaw in the theory of contract is not that it is unhistorical, but that it implies the possibility of rights and obligations independently of society

50. Though it has not been popularly accepted as regards the rights of sovereigns over subjects, the behaviour of individuals to society is to a groat extent practically determined by it.

D. Locke.

51. The development of this latter side of it is peculiarly due to Rousseau, but Locke, Hooker, and Grotius have essentially the same conception: Spinoza alone differs

52. Ambiguity of their phrase 'state of nature.' They agree in treating it as the negation of the 'political state.' But if so, contract would be impossible in it

53. Nor could it be a state of 'freedom and equality,' as most of them assume it to be

54. And if this state of nature implies consciousness of obligation, it must imply recognition of social claims, and must therefore be virtually a political state

55. In fact the theory of a state of nature governed by a law of nature, as preceding civil society, must be untrue either to the conception of law or to that of nature

56. Locke differs from Hobbes (1) in distinguishing the 'state of nature' from the 'state of war'

57. He implies (more consistently than Hobbes) that the 'state of nature' is one in which the 'law of nature' is observed

58. (2) He limits the supreme power in the state by the legislature, which holds its functions in trust from the community

59. And this distinction between the supreme community and the supreme executive enables him to distinguish between dissolution of the political society and dissolution of the government, which Hobbes had confused

60. He invests the community with the right of resuming the powers which they have delegated, and thus justifies revolution when it is the act of the whole community

61. The difficulty is to determine when it is the act of the whole community, and on this Locke's theory gives no help

62. The difficulty indeed is not so great as that of conceiving the act of original devolution of power, and is inherent in the theory of contract

63. In the particular case of the reform of the English representative system, Locke does not contemplate the carrying out of his own theory.

E. Rousseau.

64. Rousseau conceives the community to be in continual exercise of the power which Locke conceives it to have exercised once and to hold in reserve

65. In his view of the motive for passing from the state of nature into the civil state he is more like Spinoza than Locke

66. His statement of the origin and nature of the 'social contract'

67. Its effects upon the individual

68. His idea of the sovereign is really that of a supreme disinterested reason, but he fuses this with the ordinary idea of a supreme coercive power

69. The practical result of his theory has been a vague exaltation of the will of the people, regardless of what 'the people' ought to mean

70. Further consequences of his ideal conception of sovereignty. It cannot be alienated, represented, or divided

71. Thus the 'government' is never the same as the 'sovereign,' and constitutions differ according to where the government, not the sovereignty, resides

72. The institution of government is not by contract, but by the act of the sovereign, and this act must be confirmed or repealed periodically

73. His distinction between the 'will of all' and the 'general will': the latter always wills the common good, though it may be mistaken as to means

74. He admits however that it may be overpowered by particular interests, and so find no expression even in the vote of a general assembly

75. What then is the test of the 'general' will? Absolute unanimity is what Rousseau requires of the parties to the original contract

76. But what is to decide whether their successors are parties to it? Not 'residence,' unless there is also freedom to migrate

77. The element of permanent value in Rousseau is his conception of the state as representing the 'general will'

78. Difficulties in this conception. It seems that either no actual state realises it, or that there may be a state without a true sovereign

79. We may distinguish between de facto and de jure sovereignty, and say that Rousseau meant the latter; but this is only an inference from what he says.

F. Sovereignty and the general will.

80. Hence it may be asked, (1) Is any actual sovereignty founded on the 'general will'? (2) Can sovereignty de jure be truly said to be founded on it? (3) If so, must it be expressed through the vote of a sovereign people?

81. (1) According to (e.g.) Austin's definition of sovereignty, we should answer this question in the negative

82. (Observe that from Austin's definition it would follow that, while every 'law' implies a 'sovereign,' a 'sovereign's' commands need not be 'laws')

83. That definition directly contradicts that of Rousseau, in (a) placing sovereignty in determinate persons, (b) making its essence lie in power to compel obedience

84. Actual sovereignty combines both definitions; the habitual obedience of subjects to the sovereign is due to the sense that by obeying they secure certain ends

85. So far as Austin means that a fully developed state implies a determinate supreme source of law, he is right as against Rousseau

86. But if sovereign power = the aggregate influences which really make the people obedient, it must be sought in the 'general will'

87. Such power need not be 'sovereign' in the narrower sense, and may coexist with a separate coercive power which is 'sovereign'

88. This has been the case in ancient despotisms, and in the modern empires of the East

89. So in states under foreign dominion, which retain a national life, the technical sovereign is not the law-making and law-maintaining power

90. Under the Roman Empire, in British India, in Russia, where the technical is also the real sovereign, its strength rests in different degrees on the general will

91. Thus the answer to question (1) depends on the sense of 'sovereign.' If it = a power which guarantees equal rights, it is implied in every 'political' society

92. But (a) it need not be the supreme coercive power, and (b) if it is so, it is not because it is so that it commands habitual obedience

93. Thus (retaining the technical use of 'sovereign') it is true that if the sovereign is to be so really, it must express and maintain a general will

94. Though this is compatible with the fact that some of the laws of the sovereign conflict with the general will

95. Thus as to question (2) (above, sec. 80), if sovereignty is said to rest on the general will 'de jure,' either 'sovereign' or 'jus' is not used in the strict sense

96. An antithesis between sovereign 'de jure' and 'de facto' can only arise from a confusion between 'sovereign' as = the source of law and 'sovereign' as = the 'general will'

97. Though there are cases in which (in a different sense) a sovereign may be conveniently described as 'de facto,' not 'de jure,' or vice versa

98. Similarly, to say that the people is 'sovereign de jure' is to confuse the general will with the coercive power of the majority

99. Rousseau's confusion is due to the theory of 'natural rights' (that the individual is not bound by anything which he has not individually approved)

100. The individual must indeed judge for himself whether a law is for the common good; but though he judge it not to be, he ought as a rule to obey it

101. Cases in which a doubt may arise

102. (a) Where the legal authority of the law is doubtful, owing to the doubt where the sovereignty in the state resides

103. In such cases the truth generally is that the 'right,' on the particular issue, has not yet formed itself

104. But it does not follow that because the 'right' is on both sides, one is not 'better' than the other; though this may be the case

105. In such cases of disputed sovereignty the distinction of 'de jure' and 'de facto' may be applied, though it is better to say that the sovereignty is in abeyance

106. The individual, having no 'right' to guide him, should take the side whose success seems likely to be best for mankind

107. (b) Another case is where there is no legal way of getting a bad law repealed. Here it is a question, not of right, but of duty, to resist the sovereign

108. Nor is it a question of the right of a majority, as a majority, to resist: it may be the duty of a helpless minority

109. Some general questions which the good citizen may put to himself in such dilemmas

110. They can, indeed, seldom be applied by the agents at the time as they can be after the event

111. In simple cases we may judge of the right or wrong of an act by the character which it expresses, but generally we can only judge them by its results

112. All that the historian can say is that on the whole the best character is likely to produce the best results, notwithstanding various appearances to the contrary.

G. Will, not force, is the basis of the state.

113. The doctrines which explain political obligation by contract agree in treating sovereign and subject apart, whereas they are correlative

114. For the desire for freedom in the individual is no real desire unless he is one of a society which recognises it. (Slaves are not a real exception to this)

115. And without an authority embodied in civil institutions he would not have the elementary idea of right which enables him to question the authority

116. But the theory of contract expresses, in a confused way, the truth that only through the common recognition of a common good, and its embodiment in institutions, is morality possible

117. Thus morality and political subjection have a common source.

118. And both imply the twofold conception, (a) 'I must though I do not like,' (b) 'I must because it is for the common good which is also my good'

119. It is a farther and difficult question, how far the sense of common interest can be kept alive either in the government or subjects, unless the people participates directly in legislation

120. And this suggests the objection, Is it not trifling with words to speak of political subjection in modern states as based on the will of the subjects?

121. We must admit (a) that the idea of the state as serving a common interest is only partially realised, even by the most enlightened subject, though so far as realised it is what makes him a loyal subject

122. (b) That if he is to be an intelligent patriot as well as a loyal subject, he must take a personal part in the work of the state

123. And (c) that even then his patriotism will not be a passion unless it includes a feeling for the state analogous to that which he has for his family and home

124. But are we not again assuming what was disputed, viz. that a sense of its serving a common interest is necessary to the existence of the state?

125. Observe that the idea of an end or function, realised by agencies unconscious of it and into which it cannot be resolved, is already implicit even if the state be treated as a 'natural organism'

126. Such a treatment, however, would ignore the distinction between the 'natural' and the 'human' or 'moral' agencies which have operated in the production of states

127. It may be objected that these 'human' agencies are not necessarily 'moral,' but on the contrary are often selfish

128. But though human motives are never unalloyed, they only produce good results so far as they are fused with and guided by some unselfish element

129. If e.g. we would form a complete estimate of Napoleon, we must consider not only his ambition but the particular form in which his ambition worked

130. And further reflect that the idiosyncrasy of such men plays but a small part in the result, which is mainly due to agencies of which they are only the most conspicuous instruments

131. Thus an ideal motive may co-operate with the motives of selfish men, and only through such co-operation are they instrumental for good

132. The fact that the state implies a supreme coercive power gives colour to the view that it is based on coercion; whereas the coercive power is only supreme because it is exercised in a state, i.e. according to some system of law, written or customary

133. In the absence of any other name, 'state' is the best for a society in which there is such a system of law and a power to enforce it

134. A state, then, is not an aggregate of individuals under a sovereign, but a society in which the rights of men already associated in families and tribes are defined and harmonised

135. It developes as the absorption of fresh societies or the extended intercourse between its members widens the range of common interests and rights

136. The point to be insisted on is that force has only formed states so far as it has operated in and through a pre-existing medium of political, tribal, or family 'rights'.

H. Has the citizen rights against the state?

137. As long as power of compulsion is made the essence of the state, political obligation cannot be explained either by the theory of 'consent,' or by that which derives all right from the sovereign

138. The state presupposes rights, rights which may be said to belong to the 'individual' if this mean 'one of a society of individuals'

139. A right may be analysed into a claim of the individual upon society and a power conceded to him by society, but really the claim and the concession are sides of one and the same common consciousness

140. Such common consciousness of interests is the ground of the 'natural right' of slaves and of the members of other states

141. But though in this way there may be rights outside the state, the members of a state derive the rights which they have as members of other associations from the state, and have no rights against it

142. i.e. as they derive their rights from their membership in the state, they have no right to disobey the law unless it be for the interest of the state

143. And even then only if the law violates some interest which is implicitly acknowledged by the conscience of the community

144. It is a farther question when the attempt to get a law repealed should be exchanged for active resistance to it

145. e.g. should a slave be befriended against the law? The slave has as a man certain rights which the state cannot extinguish, and by denying which it forfeits its claim upon him

146. And it may be held that the claim of the slave upon the citizen, as a man, overrides the claim of the state upon him, as a citizen

147. Even here, however, the law ought to be obeyed, supposing that its violation tended to bring about general anarchy.

I. Private rights. The right to life and liberty.

148. There are rights which men have as members of associations, which come to be comprised in the state, but which also exist independently of it

149. These are 'private' rights, divided by Stephen into (a) personal, (b) rights of property, (c) rights in private relations

150. All rights are 'personal'; but as a man's body is the condition of his exercising rights at all, the rights of it may be called 'personal' in a special sense

151. The right of 'life and liberty' (better, of 'free life'), being based on capacity for society, belongs in principle to man as man, though this is only gradually recognised

152. At first it belongs to man as against other members of his family or tribe, then as against other tribes, then as against other citizens, which in antiquity still implies great limitations

153. Influences which have helped to break down these limitations are (a) Roman equity, (b) Stoicism, (c) the Christian idea of a universal brotherhood

154. This last is the logical complement of the idea that man as such has a right to life; but the right is only negatively recognised in modern Christendom

155. It is ignored e.g. in war, nor is much done to enable men to fulfil their capacities as members of humanity

156. Four questions as to the relation of the state to the right of man as man to free life.

K. The right of the state over the individual in war.

157. (1) Has the state a right to override this right in war? It must be admitted that war is not 'murder,' either on the part of those who fight or of those who cause the war

158. Yet it may be a violation of the right of life. It does not prove it not to be so, that (a) those who kill do not intend to kill anyone in particular

159. Or that (b) those who are killed have incurred the risk voluntarily. Even if they have, it does not follow that they had a 'right' to do so

160. It may be said that the right to physical life may be overridden by a right arising from the exigencies of moral life

161. But this only shifts the blame of war to those who are responsible for those exigencies; it remains a wrong all the same

162. But in truth most wars of the last 400 years have not been wars for political liberty, but have arisen from dynastic ambition or national vanity

163. Admitting, then, that virtue may be called out by war and that it may be a factor in human progress, the destruction of life in it is always a wrong

164. 'But if it be admitted that war may do good, may not those who originate it have the credit of this?'

165. If they really acted from desire to do good, their share in the wrong is less; but in any case the fact that war was the only means to the good was due to human agency and was a wrong

166. (2) (See sec. 157). Hence it follows that the state, so far as it is true to its principle, cannot have to infringe the rights of men as men by conflicts with other states

167. It is not because states exist, but because they do not fulfil their functions as states in maintaining and harmonising general rights, that such conflicts are necessary

168. This is equally true of conflicts arising from what are called 'religious' grounds

169. Thus no state, as such, is absolutely justified in doing a wrong to mankind, though a particular state may be conditionally justified

170. It may be objected that such a 'cosmopolitan' view ignores the individuality of states, and could only be realised if they wore all absorbed in a universal empire

171. It is true that public spirit, to be real, must be national; but the more a nation becomes a true state, the more does it find outlets for its national spirit other than conflicts with other nations

172. In fact the identification of patriotism with military aggressiveness is a survival from a time when states in the full sense did not exist

173. And our great standing armies are due, not to the development of a system of states, but to circumstances which witness to the shortcomings of that system

174. The better the organisation of each state, the greater is the freedom of communication with others, especially in trade, which, beginning in self-interest, may lead to the consciousness of a higher bond

175. As compared with individuals, any bonds between nations must be weak; on the other hand, governments have less temptation than individuals to deal unfairly with one another.

L. The right of the state to punish.

176. (3) (See sec. 156). What right has the state to punish? The right to live in a community rests on the capacity to act for the common good, and implies the right to protect such action from interference

177. A detailed theory of punishment implies a detailed theory of rights. Here we can only deal with principles

178. Is punishment retributive? Not in the sense that it carries on a supposed 'right' of private vengeance, for no such 'right' can exist

179. The most rudimentary 'right' of vengeance implies social recognition and regulation, in early times by the family

180. And its development up to the stage at which the state alone punishes is the development of a principle implied from the first

181. But if punishment excludes private vengeance, how can it be retributory at all? And how can a wrong to society be requited?

182. When a wrong is said to be 'done to society,' it does not mean that a feeling of vindictiveness is excited in the society

183. The popular indignation against a great criminal is an expression, not of individual desire for vengeance, but of the demand that the criminal should have his due

184. And this does not mean an equivalent amount of suffering; nor such suffering as has been found by experience to deter men from the crime

185. Punishment, to be just, implies (a) that the person punished can understand what right means, and (b) that it is some understood right that he has violated

186. He will then recognise that the punishment is his own act returning on himself; (it is in a different sense that the physical consequences of immorality are spoken of as a 'punishment')

187. Punishment may be said to be_ preventive_, if it be remembered (a) that what it 'prevents' must be the violation of a real right, and (b) that the means by which it 'prevents' must be really necessary

188. Does our criterion of the justice of punishment give any practical help in apportioning it?

189. The justice of punishment depends on the justice of the system of rights which it is to maintain

190. The idea that 'just' punishment is that which = the crime in amount confuses retribution for the wrong to society with compensation for damages to the individual

191. 'But why not hold that the pain of the punishment ought to = the moral guilt of the crime?'

192. Because the state cannot gauge either the one or the other; and if it could, it would have to punish every case differently

193. In truth the state has regard in punishing, not primarily to the individuals concerned, but to the future prevention of the crime by associating terror with it in the general imagination

194. The account taken of 'extenuating circumstances' may be similarly explained; i.e. the act done under them requires little terror to prevent it from becoming general

195 'But why avoid the simpler explanation, that extenuating circumstances are held to diminish the moral guilt of the act?'

196. Because (a) the state cannot ascertain the degree of moral guilt involved in a crime; (b) if it tries to punish immorality (proper), it will check disinterested moral effort

197. Punishment, however, may be truly held to express the 'moral disapprobation' of society, but it is to the external side of action that the disapprobation is directed

198. The principle that punishment should be regulated by the importance of the right violated explains the severity with which 'culpable negligence is punished

199. And the punishment of crimes done in drunkenness illustrates the same principle

200. It also justifies the distinction between 'criminal' and 'civil' injuries, (which is not a distinction between injuries to individuals and to the community, for no 'right' is violated by injury done to an individual as such)

201. There would be no reason in associating terror with breaches of a right which the offender either did not know that he was breaking or which he could not help breaking

202. When such ignorance and inability are culpable, it depends on the seriousness of the wrong or the degree to which the civil suit involves deterrent effects, whether they should be treated as crimes

203. Historically, the state has interfered first through the civil process; gradually, as public alarm gets excited, more and more offences come to be treated as crimes

204. Punishment must also be reformatory (this being one way of being preventive), i.e. it must regard the rights of the criminal

205. Capital punishment is justifiable only (a) if it can be shown to be necessary to the maintenance of society, (b) if there is reason to suppose the criminal to be permanently incapable of rights

206. Punishment, though directly it aims at the maintenance of rights, has indirectly a moral end, because rights are conditions of moral well-being.

M. The right of the state to promote morality.

207. (4) (See sec. 156). The right of free life is coming to be more and more recognised amongst us negatively; is it reasonable to do so little positively to make its exercise possible?

208. First observe that the capacity for free life is a moral capacity, i.e. a capacity for being influenced by a sense of common interest

209. This influence will only be weakened by substituting for it that of law, but the state can do more than it usually does without deadening spontaneous action; e.g. 'compulsory education' need not be 'compulsory' except to those who have no spontaneity to be deadened

210. So too with interference with 'freedom of contract'; we must consider not only those who are interfered with, but those whose freedom is increased by the interference.

N. The right of the state in regard to property.

211. As to property two questions have to be kept distinct, (a) how there has come to be property, (b) how there has come to be a right of property. Each of those again may be treated either historically or metaphysically

212. The confusion of those questions and methods has given rise either to truisms or to irrelevant researches as to the nature of property

213. Property implies (a) appropriation, i.e. an act of will, of a permanent self demanding satisfaction and expression

214. (b) Recognition of the appropriation by others. This recognition cannot be derived from contract (Grotius), or from a supreme force (Hobbes)

215. Locke rightly bases the right of property on the same ground as the right to one's own person; but he does not ask what that ground is

216. The ground is the same as that of the right of life, of which property is the instrument, viz. the consciousness of a common interest to which each man recognises every other man as contributing

217. Thus the act of appropriation and the recognition of it constitute one act of will, as that in which man seeks a good at once common and personal

218. The condition of the family or clan, in which e.g. land is held in common, is not the negation, but on the contrary the earliest expression of the right of property

219. Its defect lies (a) in the limited scope for free moral development which it allows the associates, (b) in the limited range of moral relations into which it brings them

220. But the expansion of the clan into the state has not brought with it a corresponding emancipation of the individual. Is then the existence of a practically propertyless class in modern states a necessity, or an abuse?

221. In theory, everyone who is capable of living for a common good (whether he actually does so or not) ought to have the means for so doing: these means are property

222. But does not this theory of property imply freedom of appropriation and disposition, and yet is it not just this freedom which leads to the existence of a propertyless proletariate?

223. Property, whether regarded as the appropriation of nature by men of different powers, or as the means required for the fulfilment of different social functions, must be unequal

224. Freedom of trade, another source of inequality, follows necessarily from the same view of property: freedom of bequest is more open to doubt

225. It seems to follow from the general right of a man to provide for his future, and (with certain exceptions) to be likely to secure the best distribution; but it does not imply the right of entail

226. Returning to the question raised in sec. 220, observe (a) that accumulation by one man does not itself naturally imply deprivation of other men, but rather the contrary

227. Nor is the prevalence of great capitals and hired labour in itself the cause of the bad condition of so many of the working classes

228. The cause is to be found, not in the right of property and accumulation, but (partly at least) in the fact that the land has been originally appropriated by conquest

229. Hence (a) the present proletariate inherit the traditions of serfdom, and (b) under landowning governments land has been appropriated unjustifiably, i.e. in various ways prejudicial to the common interest

230. And further the masses crowded through these causes into large towns have till lately had little done to improve their condition

231. Whether, if the state did its duty, it would still be advisable to limit bequest of land, is a question which must be differently answered according to circumstances

232. The objection to the appropriation by the state of 'unearned increment' is that it is so hard to distinguish between 'earned' and 'unearned'.

O. The right of the state in regard to the family.

233. The rights of husband over wife and father over children are (a) like that of property in being rights against all the world, (b) unlike it in being rights over persons, and therefore reciprocal

234. The latter characteristic would be expressed by German writers by saying that both the 'subject' and the 'object' of these rights are persons

235. Three questions about them: (1) What makes man capable of family life? (2) How does it come to have rights? (3) What ought the form of those rights to be?

236. (1) The family implies the same effort after permanent self-satisfaction as property, together with a permanent interest in a particular woman and her children

237. The capacity for this interest is essential to anything which can be rightly called family life, whatever lower forms of life may historically have preceded it

238. (2) The rights of family life arise from the mutual recognition of this interest by members of the same clan (in which the historical family always appears as an element)

239. Its development has been in the direction (a) of giving all men and women the right to marry, (b) of recognising the claims of husband and wife to be reciprocal. Both these imply monogamy

240. Polygamy excludes many men from marriage and makes the wife practically not a wife, while it also prevents real reciprocity of rights both between husband and wife and between parents and children

241. The abolition of slavery is another essential to the development of the true family life, in both the above respects

242. (3) Thus the right (as distinct from the morality) of family life requires (a) monogamy, (b) duration through life, (c) terminability on the infidelity of husband or wife

243. Why then should not adultery be treated as a crime? Because (unlike other violations of right) it is generally in the public interest that it should be condoned if the injured person is willing to condone it

244. Nor would the higher purposes of marriage be served by making infidelity penal, for they depend on disposition, not on outward acts or forbearances

245. All that the state can do, therefore, is to make divorce for adultery easy, and to make marriage as serious a matter as possible

246. (b) Should divorce be allowed except for adultery? Sometimes for lunacy or cruelty, but not for incompatibility, the object of the state being to make marriage a 'consortium omnis vitae'.

P. Rights and virtues.

247. Outline of remaining lectures, on (1) rights connected with the functions of government, (2) social virtues. (The antithesis of 'social' and 'self-regarding' is false)

248. Virtues, being dispositions to exercise rights, are best co-ordinated with rights. Thus to the right of life correspond those virtues which maintain life against nature, force, and animal passion

249. Similarly there are active virtues, corresponding to the negative obligations imposed by property and marriage

250. 'Moral sentiments' should be classified with the virtues, of which they are weaker forms

251. Although for clearness obligations must be treated apart from moral duties, they are really the outer and inner side of one spiritual development, in the joint result of which the idea of perfection is fulfilled.

Supplement.

Some Quotations rendered into English.

ON THE DIFFERENT SENSES OF 'FREEDOM' AS APPLIED TO WILL AND TO THE MORAL PROGRESS OF MAN.

Note of the Editor,

The lectures from which the following extract is taken were delivered in the beginning of 1879, in continuation of the course in which the discussion of Kant's moral theory occurred. The portions here printed are those which were not embodied, at any rate in the same form, in the Prolegomena to Ethics. See Prolegomena to Ethics, Book ii. ch. i. sec. 100, Editor's note.

ON THE DIFFERENT SENSES OF 'FREEDOM' AS APPLIED TO WILL AND TO THE MORAL PROGRESS OF MAN.

1. Since in all willing a man is his own object, the will is always free. Or, more properly, a man in willing is necessarily free, since willing constitutes freedom, [1] and 'free will' is the pleonasm 'free freedom.' But while it is important to insist upon this, it is also to be remembered that the nature of the freedom really differs—the freedom means quite different things—according to the nature of the object which the man makes his own, or with which he identifies himself. It is one thing when the object in which self-satisfaction is sought is such as to prevent that self-satisfaction being found, because interfering with the realisation of the seeker's possibilities or his progress towards perfection: it is another thing when it contributes to this end. In the former case the man is a free agent in the act, because through his identification of himself with a certain desired object—through his adoption of it as his good—he makes the motive which determines the act, and is accordingly conscious of himself as its author. But in another sense he is not free, because the objects to which his actions are directed are objects in which, according to the law of his being, satisfaction of himself is not to be found. His will to arrive at self-satisfaction not being adjusted to the law which determines where this self-satisfaction is to be found, he may be considered in the condition of a bondsman who is carrying out the will of another, not his own. From this bondage he emerges into real freedom, not by overcoming the law of his being, not by getting the better of its necessity,—every fancied effort to do so is but a new exhibition of its necessity,—but by making its fulfilment the object of his will; by seeking the satisfaction of himself in objects in which he believes it should be found, and seeking it in them because he believes it should be found in them. For the objects so sought, however various otherwise, have the common characteristic that, because they are sought in such a spirit, in them self-satisfaction is to be found; not the satisfaction of this or that desire, or of each particular desire, but that satisfaction, otherwise called peace or blessedness, which consists in the whole man having found his object; which indeed we never experience in its fulness, which we only approach to fall away from it again, but of which we know enough to be sure that we only fail to attain it because we fail to seek it in the fulfilment of the law of our being, because we have not brought ourselves to 'gladly do and suffer what we must.'

To the above statement several objections may be made. They will chiefly turn on two points; (a) the use made of the term 'freedom'; (b) the view that a man is subject to a law of his being, in virtue of which he at once seeks self-satisfaction, and is prevented from finding it in the objects which he actually desires, and in which he ordinarily seeks it.

[1] In that sense in which 'freedom' expresses a state of the soul, as distinct from a civil relation.

2. As to the sense given to 'freedom,' it must of course be admitted that every usage of the term to express anything but a social and political relation of one man to others involves a metaphor. Even in the original application its sense is by no means fixed. It always implies indeed some exemption from compulsion by others, but the extent and conditions of this exemption, as enjoyed by the 'freeman' in different states of society, are very various. As soon as the term 'freedom' comes to be applied to anything else than an established relation between a man and other men, its sense fluctuates much more. Reflecting on their consciousness, on their 'inner life' (i.e. their life as viewed from within), men apply to it the terms with which they are familiar as expressing their relations to each other. In virtue of that power of self-distinction and self-objectification, which he expresses whenever he says 'I,' a man can set over against himself his whole nature or any of its elements, and apply to the relation thus established in thought a term borrowed from relations of outward life. Hence, as in Plato, the terms 'freedom' and 'bondage' may be used to express a relation between the man on the one side, as distinguishing himself from all impulses that do not tend to his true good, and those impulses on the other. He is a 'slave' when they are masters of him, 'free' when master of them. The metaphor in this form was made further use of by the Stoics, and carried on into the doctrines of the Christian Church. Since there is no kind of impulse or interest which a man cannot so distinguish from himself as to present it as an alien power, of which the influence on him is bondage, the particular application of the metaphor is quite arbitrary. It may come to be thought that the only freedom is to be found in a life of absolute detachment from all interests; a life in which the pure ego converses solely with itself or with a God, who is the same abstraction under another name. This is a view into which both saints and philosophers have been apt to fall. It means practically, so far as it means anything, absorption in some one interest with which the man identifies himself in exclusion of all other interests, which he sets over against himself as an influence to be kept aloof.

With St. Paul the application of the metaphor has a special character of its own. With him 'freedom' is specially freedom from the law, from ordinances, from the fear which these inspire,—a freedom which is attained through the communication of what he calls the 'spirit of adoption' or 'son-ship.' The law, merely as law or as an external command, is a source of bondage in a double sense. Presenting to man a command which yet it does not give him power to obey, it destroys the freedom of the life in which he does what he likes without recognising any reason why he should not (the state of which St. Paul says 'I was alive without the law once'); it thus puts him in bondage to fear, and at the same time, exciting a wish for obedience to itself which other desires (φρόνημα σαρκός) [1] prevent from being accomplished, it makes the man feel the bondage of the flesh. 'What I will, that I do not'; there is a power, the flesh, of which I am the slave, and which prevents me from performing my will to obey the law. Freedom (also called 'peace,' and 'reconciliation') comes when the spirit expressed in the law (for the law is itself 'spiritual' according to St. Paul; the 'flesh' through which it is weak is mine, not the law's) becomes the principle of action in the man. To the man thus delivered, as St. Paul conceives him, we might almost apply phraseology like Kant's. 'He is free because conscious of himself as the author of the law which he obeys.' He is no longer a servant, but a son. He is conscious of union with God, whose will as an external law he before sought in vain to obey, but whose 'righteousness is fulfilled' in him now that he 'walks after the spirit.' What was before 'a law of sin and death' is now a 'law of the spirit of life.' (See Epistle to the Romans, viii.)

[1] [Greek φρόνημα σαρκός (phronima sarkos) = carnal mind (KJV) Tr]

3. But though there is a point of connection between St. Paul's conception of freedom and bondage and that of Kant, which renders the above phrase applicable in a certain sense to the 'spiritual man' of St. Paul, yet the two conceptions are very different. Moral bondage with Kant, as with Plato and the Stoics, is bondage to the flesh. The heteronomy of the will is its submission to the impulse of pleasure-seeking, as that of which man is not in respect of his reason the author, but which belongs to him as a merely natural being. A state of bondage to law, as such, he does not contemplate. It might even be urged that Kant's 'freedom' or 'autonomy' of the will, in the only sense in which he supposed it attainable by man, is very much like the state described by St. Paul as that from which the communication of the spirit brings deliverance,—the state in which 'I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but find another law in my members warring with the law of my reason and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin in my members.' For Kant seems to hold that the will is actually 'autonomous,' i.e. determined by pure consciousness of what should be, only in rare acts of the best man. He argues rather for our being conscious of the possibility of such determination, as evidence of an ideal of what the good will is, than for the fact that anyone is actually so determined. And every determination of the will that does not proceed from pure consciousness of what should be he ascribes to the pleasure-seeking which belongs to man merely as a 'Natur-wesen,' or as St. Paul might say 'to the law of sin in his members.' What, it may be asked, is such 'freedom,' or rather such consciousness of the possibility of freedom, worth? May we not apply to it St. Paul's words, 'By the law is the knowledge of sin'? The practical result to the individual of that consciousness of the possibility of freedom which is all that the autonomy of will, as really attainable by man, according to Kant's view, amounts to, is to make him aware of the heteronomy of his will, of its bondage to motives of which reason is not the author.

4. This is an objection which many of Kant's statements of his doctrine, at any rate, fairly challenge. It was chiefly because he seemed to make freedom [1] an unrealised and unrealisable state, that his moral doctrine was found unsatisfactory by Hegel. Hegel holds that freedom, as the condition in which the will is determined by an object adequate to itself, or by an object which itself as reason constitutes, is realised in the state. He thinks of the state in a way not familiar to Englishmen, a way not unlike that in which Greek philosophers thought of the πόλις, [2] as a society governed by laws and institutions and established customs which secure the common good of the members of the society—enable them to make the best of themselves—and are recognised as doing so. Such a state is 'objective freedom'; freedom is realised in it because in it the reason, the self-determining principle operating in man as his will, has found a perfect expression for itself (as an artist may be considered to express himself in a perfect work of art); and the man who is determined by the objects which the well-ordered state presents to him is determined by that which is the perfect expression of his reason, and is thus free.

[1] In the sense of 'autonomy of rational will,' or determination by an object which reason constitutes, as distinct from determination by an object which the man makes his own; this latter determination Kant would have recognised as characteristic of every human act, properly so called.

[2] [Greek πόλις (polis) = city-state Tr.]

5. There is, no doubt, truth in this view. I have already tried to show [1] how the self-distinguishing and self-seeking consciousness of man, acting in and upon those human wants and ties and affections which in their proper human character have as little reality apart from it as it apart from them, gives rise to a system of social relations, with laws, customs, and institutions corresponding; and how in this system the individual's consciousness of the absolutely desirable, of something that should be, of an ideal to be realised in his life, finds a content or object which has been constituted or brought into being by that consciousness itself as working through generations of men; how interests are thus supplied to the man of a more concrete kind than the interest in fulfilment of a universally binding law because universally binding, but which yet are the product of reason, and in satisfying which he is conscious of attaining a true good, a good contributory to the perfection of himself and his kind. There is thus something in all forms of society that tends to the freedom [2] at least of some favoured individuals, because it tends to actualise in them the possibility of that determination by objects conceived as desirable in distinction from objects momentarily desired, which is determination by reason. [3] To put it otherwise, the effect of his social relations on a man thus favoured is that, whereas in all willing the individual seeks to satisfy himself, this man seeks to satisfy himself, not as one who feels this or that desire, but as one who conceives, whose nature demands, a permanent good. So far as it is thus in respect of his rational nature that he makes himself an object to himself, his will is autonomous. This was the good which the ideal πόλις, as conceived by the Greek philosophers, secured for the true πολίτης, the man who, entering into the idea of the πόλις, was equally qualified ἄρχειν καὶ ἄρχεσθαι. [4] No doubt in the actual Greek πόλις there was some tendency in this direction, some tendency to rationalise and moralise the citizen. Without the real tendency the ideal possibility would not have suggested itself. And in more primitive forms of society, so far as they were based on family or tribal relations, we can see that the same tendency must have been at work, just as in modern life the consciousness of his position as member or head of a family, wherever it exists, necessarily does something to moralise a man. In modern Christendom, with the extension of citizenship, the security of family life to all men (so far as law and police can secure it), the establishment in various forms of Christian fellowship of which the moralising functions grow as those of the magistrate diminish, the number of individuals whom society awakens to interests in objects contributory to human perfection tends to increase. So far the modern state, in that full sense in which Hegel uses the term (as including all the agencies for common good of a law-abiding people), does contribute to the realisation of freedom, if by freedom we understand the autonomy of the will or its determination by rational objects, objects which help to satisfy the demand of reason, the effort after self-perfection.

[1] [In a previous course of lectures. See Prolegomena to Ethics, III. iii. RLN]

[2] In the sense of 'autonomy of will.'

[3] [This last clause is queried in the MS. RLN]

[4] [Greek πόλις (polis) = city-state, πολίτης (polites) = citizen, ἄρχειν καὶ ἄρχεσθαι (archein kai archesthai) = to rule and to be ruled Tr]

6. On the other hand, it would seem that we cannot significantly speak of freedom except with reference to individual persons; that only in them can freedom be realised; that therefore the realisation of freedom in the state can only mean the attainment of freedom by individuals through influences which the state (in the wide sense spoken of) supplies,—'freedom' here, as before, meaning not the mere self-determination which renders us responsible, but determination by reason, 'autonomy of the will'; and that under the best conditions of any society that has ever been such realisation of freedom is most imperfect. To an Athenian slave, who might be used to gratify a master's lust, it would have been a mockery to speak of the state as a realisation of freedom; and perhaps it would not be much less so to speak of it as such to an untaught and under-fed denizen of a London yard with gin-shops on the right hand and on the left. What Hegel says of the state in this respect seems as hard to square with facts as what St. Paul says of the Christian whom the manifestation of Christ has transferred from bondage into 'the glorious liberty of the sons of God.' In both cases the difference between the ideal and the actual seems to be ignored, and tendencies seem to be spoken of as if they were accomplished facts. It is noticeable that by uncritical readers of St. Paul the account of himself as under the law (in Romans vii.), with the 'law of sin in his members warring against the law of his reason,' is taken as applicable to the regenerate Christian, though evidently St. Paul meant it as a description of the state from which the Gospel, the 'manifestation of the Son of God in the likeness of sinful flesh,' set him free. They are driven to this interpretation because, though they can understand St. Paul's account of his deliverance as an account of a deliverance achieved for them but not in them, or as an assurance of what is to be, they cannot adjust it to the actual experience of the Christian life. In the same way Hegel's account of freedom as realised in the state does not seem to correspond to the facts of society as it is, or even as, under the unalterable conditions of human nature, it ever could be; though undoubtedly there is a work of moral liberation, which society, through its various agencies, is constantly carrying on for the individual.

7. Meanwhile it must be borne in mind that in all these different views as to the manner and degree in which freedom is to be attained, 'freedom' does not mean that the man or will is undetermined, nor yet does it mean mere self-determination, which (unless denied altogether, as by those who take the strictly naturalistic view of human action) must be ascribed equally to the man whose will is heteronomous or vicious, and to him whose will is autonomous; equally to the man who recognises the authority of law in what St. Paul would count the condition of a bondman, and to him who fulfils the righteousness of the law in the spirit of adoption. It means a particular kind of self-determination; the state of the man who lives indeed for himself, but for the fulfilment of himself as a 'giver of law universal' (Kant); who lives for himself, but only according to the true idea of himself, according to the law of his being, 'according to nature' (the Stoics); who is so taken up into God, to whom God so gives the spirit, that there is no constraint in his obedience to the divine will (St. Paul); whose interests, as a loyal citizen, are those of a well-ordered state in which practical reason expresses itself (Hegel). Now none of these modes of self-determination is at all implied in 'freedom' according to the primary meaning of the term, as expressing that relation between one man and others in which he is secured from compulsion. All that is so implied is that a man should have power to do what he wills or prefers. No reference is made to the nature of the will or preference, of the object willed or preferred; whereas according to the usage of 'freedom' in the doctrines we have just been considering, it is not constituted by the mere fact of acting upon preference, but depends wholly on the nature of the preference, upon the kind of object willed or preferred.

8. If it were ever reasonable to wish that the usage of words had been other than it has been (any more than that the processes of nature were other than they are), one might be inclined to wish that the term 'freedom' had been confined to the juristic sense of the power to 'do what one wills': for the extension of its meaning seems to have caused much controversy and confusion. But, after all, this extension does but represent various stages of reflection upon the self-distinguishing, self-seeking, self-asserting principle, of which the establishment of freedom, as a relation between man and man, is the expression. The reflecting man is not content with the first announcement which analysis makes as to the inward condition of the free man, viz. that he can do what he likes, that he has the power of acting according to his will or preference. In virtue of the same principle which has led him to assert himself against others, and thus to cause there to be such a thing as (outward) freedom, he distinguishes himself from his preference, and asks how he is related to it, whether he determines it or how it is determined. Is he free to will, as he is free to act; or, as the act is determined by the preference, is the preference determined by something else? Thus Locke (Essay, II. 21) begins with deciding that freedom means power to do or forbear from doing any particular act upon preference, and that, since the will is merely the power of preference, the question whether the will is free is an unmeaning one (equivalent to the question whether one power has another power); that thus the only proper question is whether a man (not his will) is free, which must be answered affirmatively so far as he has the power to do or forbear, as above. But he recognises the propriety of the question whether a man is free to will as well as to act. He cannot refuse to carry back the analysis of what is involved in a man's action beyond the preference of one possible action to another, and to inquire what is implied in the preference. It is when this latter question is raised, that language which is appropriate enough in a definition of outward or juristic freedom becomes misleading. It having been decided that the man civilly free has power over his actions, to do or forbear according to preference, it is asked whether he has also power to prefer.

9. But while it is proper to ask whether in any particular case a man has power over his actions, because his nerves and limbs and muscles may be acted upon by another person or a force which is not he or his, there is no appropriateness in asking the question in regard to a preference or will, because this cannot be so acted on. If so acted on, it would not be a will or preference. There is no such thing as a will which a man is not conscious of as belonging to himself, no such thing as an act of will which he is not conscious of as issuing from himself. To ask whether he has power over it, or whether some other power than he determines it, is like asking whether he is other than himself. Thus the question whether a man, having power to act according to his will, or being free to act, has also power over his will, or is free to will, has just the same impropriety that Locke points out in the question whether the will is free. The latter question, on the supposition that there is power to enact the will,—a supposition which is necessarily made by those who raise the ulterior question whether there is power over the will,—is equivalent, as Locke sees, to a question whether freedom is free. For a will which there is power of enacting constitutes freedom, and therefore to ask whether it is free is like asking (to use Locke's instance) whether riches are rich ('rich' being a denomination from the possession of riches, just as 'free' is a denomination from the possession of freedom, in the sense of a will which there is power to enact). But if there is this impropriety in the question whether the will is free, there is an equal one in the question which Locke entertains, viz. whether man is free to will, or has power over his will. It amounts to asking whether a certain power is also a power over itself: or, more precisely, whether a man possessing a certain power—that which we call freedom—has also the same power over that power.

10. It may be said perhaps that we are here pressing words too closely; that it is of course understood, when it is asked whether a man has power over his will, that 'power' is used in a different sense from that which it bears when it is asked whether he has power to enact his will: that 'freedom,' in like manner, is understood to express a different kind of power or relation when we ask whether a man is free to will, and when we ask whether he is free to act. But granting that all this has been understood, the misleading effects of the question in the form under consideration ('Is a man free to will as well as to act?' 'Has he power over his will?') remain written in the history of the 'free-will controversy.' It has mainly to answer for two wrong ways of thinking on the subject; (a) for the way of thinking of the determining motive of an act of will, the object willed, as something apart from the will or the man willing, so that in being determined by it the man is supposed not to be self-determined, but to be determined as one natural event by another, or at best as a natural organism by the forces acting on it: (b), for the view that the only way of escaping this conclusion is to regard the will as independent of motives, as a power of deciding between motives without any motive to determine the decision, which must mean without reference to any object willed. A man, having (in virtue of his power of self-distinction and self-objectification) presented his will to himself as something to be thought about, and being asked whether he has power over it, whether he is free in regard to it as he is free against other persons and free to use his limbs and, through them, material things, this way or that, must very soon decide that he is not. His will is himself. His character necessarily shows itself in his will. We have already, in a previous lecture, [1] noticed the practical fallacy involved in a man's saying that he cannot help being what he is, as if he were controlled by external power; but he being what he is, and the circumstances being what they are at any particular conjuncture, the determination of the will is already given, just as an effect is given in the sum of its conditions. The determination of the will might be different, but only through the man's being different, But to ask whether a man has power over determinations of his will, or is free to will as he is to act, as the question is commonly understood and as Locke understood it, is to ask whether, the man being what at any time he is, it is still uncertain (1) whether he will choose or forbear choosing between certain possible courses of action, and (2) supposing him to choose one or other of them, which he will choose.

[1] [Prolegomena to Ethics, Sections 107, ff.—RLN]

11. Now we must admit that there is really no such uncertainty. The appearance of it is due to our ignorance of the man and the circumstances. If, however, because this is so, we answer the question whether a man has power over his will, or is free to will, in the negative, [1] we at once suggest the conclusion that something else has power over it, viz. the strongest motive. We ignore the truth that in being determined by a strongest motive, in the only sense in which he is really so determined, the man (as previously explained) [2] is determined by himself, by an object of his own making, and we come to think of the will as determined like any natural phenomenon by causes external to it. All this is the consequence of asking questions about the relation between a man and his will in terms only appropriate to the relation between the man and other men, or to that between the man and his bodily members or the materials on which he acts through them.

[1] Instead of saying (as we should) that it is one of those inappropriate questions to which there is no answer; since a man's will is himself, and 'freedom' and 'power' express relations between a man and something other than himself.

[2] [See Prolegomena to Ethics, Section 105.—RLN]

12. On the other side the consciousness of self-determination resists this conclusion; but so long as we start from the question whether a man has power over his will, or is free to will as well as to act, it seems as if the objectionable conclusion could only be avoided by answering this question in the affirmative. But to say that a man has power over determinations of his will is naturally taken to mean that he can change his will while he himself remains the same; that given his character, motives, and circumstances as these at any time are, there is still something else required for the determination of his will; that behind and beyond the will as determined by some motive there is a will, itself undetermined by any motive, that determines what the determining motive shall be,—that 'has power over' his preference or choice, as this has over the motion of his bodily members. But an unmotived will is a will without an object, which is nothing. The power or possibility, beyond any actual determination of the will, of determining what that determination shall be is a mere negation of the actual determination. It is that determination as it becomes after an abstraction of the motive or object willed, which in fact leaves nothing at all. If those moral interests, which are undoubtedly involved in the recognition of the distinction between man and any natural phenomenon, are to be made dependent on belief in such a power or abstract possibility, the case is hopeless.

13. The right way out of the difficulty lies in the discernment that the question whether a man is free to will, or has power over the determinations of his will, is a question to which there is no answer, because it is asked in inappropriate terms; in terms that imply some agency beyond the will which determines what the will shall be (as the will itself is an agency beyond the motions of the muscles which determines what those motions shall be), and that as to this agency it may be asked whether it does or does not lie in the man himself. In truth there is no such agency beyond the will and determining how the will shall be determined; not in the man, for the will is the self-conscious man; not elsewhere than in the man, not outside him, for the self-conscious man has no outside. He is not a body in space with other bodies elsewhere in space acting upon it and determining its motions. The self-conscious man is determined by objects, which in order to be objects must already be in consciousness, and in order to be his objects, the objects which determine him, must already have been made his own. To say that they have power over him or his will, and that he or his will has power over them, is equally misleading. Such language is only applicable to the relation between an agent and patient, when the agent and the patient (or at any rate the agent) can exist separately. But self-consciousness and its object, will and its object, form a single individual unity. Without the constitutive action of man or his will the objects do not exist; apart from determination by some object neither he nor his will would be more than an unreal abstraction.

14. If, however, the question is persisted in, 'Has a man power over the determinations of his will?' we must answer both 'yes' and 'no.' 'No,' in the sense that he is not other than his will, with ability to direct it as the will directs the muscles. 'Yes,' in the sense that nothing external to him or his will or self-consciousness has power over them. 'No,' again, in the sense that, given the man and his object as he and it at any time are, there is no possibility of the will being determined except in one way, for the will is already determined, being nothing else than the man as directed to some object. 'Yes,' in the sense that the determining object is determined by the man or will just as much as the man or will by the object. The fact that the state of the man, on which the nature of his object at any time depends, is a result of previous states, does not affect the validity of this last assertion, since (as we have seen [1]) all these states are states of a self-consciousness from which all alien determination, all determination except through the medium of self-consciousness, is excluded.

[1] [Prolegomena to Ethics, Section 102. RLN]

15. In the above we have not supposed any account to be taken of the character of the objects willed in the application to the will itself of the question 'free or not free,' which is properly applied only to an action (motion of the bodily members) or to a relation between one man and other men. Those who unwisely consent to entertain the question whether a man is free to will or has power over determinations of his will, and answer it affirmatively or negatively, consider their answer, whether 'yes' or 'no,' to be equally applicable whatever the nature of the objects willed. If they decide that a man is 'free to will,' they mean that he is so in all cases of willing, whether the object willed be a satisfaction of animal appetite or an act of heroic self-sacrifice; and conversely, if they decide that he is not free to will, they mean that he is not so even in cases when the action is done upon cool calculation or upon a principle of duty, as much as when it is done on impulse or in passion. Throughout the controversy as to free will that has been carried on among English psychologists this is the way in which the question has been commonly dealt with. The freedom, claimed or denied for the will, has been claimed or denied for it irrespectively of those objects willed, on the nature of which the goodness or badness of the will depends.

16. On the other hand, with the Stoics, St. Paul, Kant, and Hegel, as we have seen, the attainment of freedom (at any rate of the reality of freedom, as distinct from some mere possibility of it which constitutes the distinctive human nature) depends on the character of the objects willed. In all these ways of thinking, however variously the proper object of will is conceived, it is only as directed to this object, and thus (in Hegelian language) corresponding to its idea, that the will is supposed to be free. The good will is free, not the bad will. Such a view of course implies some element of identity between good will and bad will, between will as not yet corresponding to its idea and will as so corresponding. St. Paul indeed, not being a systematic thinker and being absorbed in the idea of divine grace, is apt to speak as if there were nothing in common between the carnal or natural man (the will as in bondage to the flesh) and the spiritual man (the will as set free); just as Plato commonly ignores the unity of principle in all a man's actions, and represents virtuous actions as coming from the God in man, vicious actions from the beast. Kant and Hegel, however,— though they do not consider the will as it is in every man, good and bad, to be free; though Kant in his later ethical writings, and Hegel (I think) always, confine the term 'Wille' to the will as having attained freedom or come to correspond to its idea, and apply the term 'Willkür' to that self-determining principle of action which belongs to every man and is in their view the mere possibility, not actuality, of freedom,—yet quite recognise what has been above insisted on as the common characteristic of all willing, the fact that it is not a determination from without, like the determination of any natural event or agent, but the realisation of an object which the agent presents to himself or makes his own, the determination by an object of a subject which itself consciously determines that object; and they see that it is only for a subject free in this sense ('an sich' but not 'fur sich,' δυνάμει but not ενεργείᾳ) [1] that the reality of freedom can exist.

[1] [Greek δυνάμει (dynamei) = potential, ενεργείᾳ (energiea) = actuality Tr]

17. Now the propriety or impropriety of the use of 'freedom' to express the state of the will, not as directed to any and every object, but only to those to which, according to the law of nature or the will of God or its 'idea,' it should be directed, is a matter of secondary importance. This usage of the term is, at any rate, no more a departure from the primary or juristic sense than is its application to the will as distinct from action in any sense whatever. And certainly the unsophisticated man, as soon as the usage of 'freedom' to express exemption from control by other men and ability to do as he likes is departed from, can much more readily assimilate the notion of states of the inner man described as bondage to evil passions, to terrors of the law, or on the other hand as freedom from sin and law, freedom in the consciousness of union with God, or of harmony with the true law of one's being, freedom of true loyalty, freedom in devotion to self-imposed duties, than he can assimilate the notion of freedom as freedom to will anything and everything, or as exemption from determination by motives, or the constitution by himself of the motives which determine his will. And there is so far less to justify the extension of the usage of the term in these latter ways than in the former. It would seem indeed that there is a real community of meaning between 'freedom' as expressing the condition of a citizen of a civilised state, and 'freedom' as expressing the condition of a man who is inwardly 'master of himself.' That is to say, the practical conception by a man ('practical' in the sense of having a tendency to realise itself) of a self-satisfaction to be attained in his becoming what he should be, what he has it in him to be, in fulfilment of the law of his being,—or, to vary the words but not the meaning, in attainment of the righteousness of God, or in perfect obedience to self-imposed law,—this practical conception is the outcome of the same self-seeking principle which appears in a man's assertion of himself against other men and against nature ('against other men,' as claiming their recognition of him as being what they are; 'against nature,' as able to use it). This assertion of himself is the demand for freedom, freedom in the primary or juristic sense of power to act according to choice or preference. So far as such freedom is established for any man, this assertion of himself is made good; and such freedom is precious to him because it is an achievement of the self-seeking principle. It is a first satisfaction of its claims, which is the condition of all other satisfaction of them. The consciousness of it is the first form of self-enjoyment, of the joy of the self-conscious spirit in itself as in the one object of absolute value.

18. This form of self-enjoyment, however, is one which consists essentially in the feeling by the subject of a possibility rather than a reality, of what it has it in itself to become, not of what it actually is. To a captive on first winning his liberty, as to a child in the early experience of power over his limbs and through them over material things, this feeling of a boundless possibility of becoming may give real joy; but gradually the sense of what it is not, of the very little that it amounts to, must predominate over the sense of actual good as attained in it. Thus to the grown man, bred to civil liberty in a society which has learnt to make nature its instrument, there is no self-enjoyment in the mere consciousness of freedom as exemption from external control, no sense of an object in which he can satisfy himself having been obtained.

Still, just as the demand for and attainment of freedom from external control is the expression of that same self-seeking principle from which the quest for such an object proceeds, so 'freedom' is the natural term by which the man describes such an object to himself,—describes to himself the state in which he shall have realised his ideal of himself, shall be at one with the law which he recognises as that which he ought to obey, shall have become all that he has it in him to be, and so fulfil the law of his being or 'live according to nature.' Just as the consciousness of an unattainable ideal, of a law recognised as having authority but with which one's will conflicts, of wants and impulses which interfere with the fulfilment of one's possibilities, is a consciousness of impeded energy, a consciousness of oneself as for ever thwarted and held back, so the forecast of deliverance from these conditions is as naturally said to be a forecast of 'freedom' as of peace' or 'blessedness.' Nor is it merely to a select few, and as an expression for a deliverance really (as it would seem) unattainable under the conditions of any life that we know, but regarded by saints as secured for them in another world, and by philosophers as the completion of a process which is eternally complete in God, that 'freedom' commends itself. To any popular audience interested in any work of self-improvement (e.g. to a temperance-meeting seeking to break the bondage to liquor), it is as an effort to attain freedom that such work can be most effectively presented. It is easy to tell such people that the term is being misapplied; that they are quite 'free' as it is, because every one can do as he likes so long as he does not prevent another from doing so; that in any sense in which there is such a thing as 'free will,' to get drunk is as much an act of free will as anything else. Still the feeling of oppression, which always goes along with the consciousness of unfulfilled possibilities, will always give meaning to the representation of the effort after any kind of self-improvement as a demand for 'freedom.'

19. The variation in the meaning of 'freedom' having been thus recognised and accounted for, we come back to the more essential question as to the truth of the view which underlies all theories implying that freedom is in some sense the goal of moral endeavour; the view, namely, that there is some will in a man with which many or most of his voluntary actions do not accord, a higher self that is not satisfied by the objects which yet he deliberately pursues. Some such notion is common to those different theories about freedom which in the rough we have ascribed severally to the Stoics, St. Paul, Kant, and Hegel. It is the same notion which was previously [1] put in the form, 'that a man is subject to a law of his being, in virtue of which he at once seeks self-satisfaction, and is prevented from finding it in the objects which he actually desires, and in which he ordinarily seeks it.' 'What can this mean?' it maybe asked. 'Of course we know that there are weak people who never succeed in getting what they want, either in the sense that they have not ability answering to their will, or that they are always wishing for something which yet they do not will. But it would not be very appropriate to apply the above formula to such people, for the man's will to attain certain objects cannot be ascribed to the same law of his being as the lack of ability to attain them, nor his wish for certain objects to the same law of his being as those stronger desires which determine his will in a contrary direction. At any rate, if the proposition is remotely applicable to the man who is at once selfish and unsuccessful, how can it be true in any sense either of the man who is at once selfish and succeeds, who gets what he wants (as is unquestionably the case with many people who live for what a priori moralists count unworthy objects), or of the man who 'never thinks about himself at all'? So far as the proposition means anything, it would seem to represent Kant's notion, long ago found unthinkable and impossible, the notion of there being two wills or selves in a man, the 'pure' will or ego and the 'empirical' will or ego, the pure will being independent of a man's actual desires and directed to the fulfilment of a universal law of which it is itself the giver, the empirical will being determined by the strongest desire and directed to this or that pleasure. In this proposition the 'objects which the man actually desires and in which he ordinarily seeks satisfaction' are presumably objects of what Kant called the 'empirical will,' while the 'law of his being' corresponds to Kant's 'pure ego.' But just as Kant must be supposed to have believed in some identity between the pure and empirical will, as implied in the one term 'will,' though he does not explain in what this identity consists, so the proposition before us apparently ascribes man's quest for self-satisfaction as directed to certain objects, to the same law of his being which prevents it from finding it there. Is not this nonsense?'

[1] [Above, section 1 RLN]

20. To such questions we answer as follows. The proposition before us, like all the theories of moral freedom which we have noticed, undoubtedly implies that the will of every man is a form of one consciously self-realising principle, which at the same time is not truly or fully expressed in any man's will. As a form of this self-realising principle it may be called, if we like, a 'pure ego' or 'the pure ego' of the particular person; as directed to this or that object in such a way that it does not truly express the self-realising principle of which it is a form, it may be called the 'empirical ego' of that person. But if we use such language, it must be borne in mind that the pure and empirical egos are still not two egos but one ego; the pure ego being the self-realising principle considered with reference either to its idea, its possibility, what it has in itself to become, the law of its being, or to some ultimate actualisation of this possibility; the empirical ego being the same principle as it appears in this or that state of character, which results from its action, but does not represent that which it has in itself to become, does not correspond to its idea or the law of its being. By a consciously self-realising principle is meant a principle that is determined to action by the conception of its own perfection, or by the idea of giving reality to possibilities which are involved in it and of which it is conscious as so involved; or, more precisely, a principle which at each stage of its existence is conscious of a more perfect form of existence as possible for itself, and is moved to action by that consciousness. We must now explain a little more fully how we understand the relation of the principle in question to what we call our wills and our reason,—the will and reason of this man and that,—and how we suppose its action to constitute the progress of morality.