reality of nature. Or, on the other hand, the ultimate measure of human conduct and character may be found in a spiritual order which transcends the natural; the moral ideal may be found to express a divine Reality to which the real world of nature would, in itself, give no clue. But, be our metaphysic of ethics what it may, metaphysics we cannot in the end escape.

2. The three problems of the metaphysic of ethics. The central or metaphysical principle of morality—the ultimate presupposition of ethical theoryassumes different aspects when we examine it from different standpoints or in different moral lights. The single problem presents itself for solution in three different forms, as, according to Kant, the metaphysical problem necessarily does. When we try to discover the ultimate warrant for our ethical interpretation of human life, we find (1) that it must be a certain interpretation of man's essential being, as either a product of nature, sharing nature's life, and without an end essentially different from that of the animal and the thing; or a being apart from nature, with a being and a life in which nature cannot share, standing in a different relation to the course of things, and possessed of a unique power to order his own life and to attain his own end, a unique capacity of failure or success in the attainment of his life's possibility. In other words, the world-old problem of human freedom, and the comparative merits of the two rival solutions-libertarianism and determinism -inevitably present themselves and claim our consideration. (2) We cannot help asking the question whether nature, the physical cosmos, is a sufficient sphere and environment for man as a moral being, or whether it is necessary to postulate a higher and supernatural sphere, a moral order other than the physical order, a moral Being or God other than nature. This is only another aspect of the first question. For if, on the one hand, we

can naturalise the moral man, or resolve man (and with him his morality) into nature, then there will be no call for an order higher than the order of nature, or for a God other than nature itself. If, on the other hand, such a naturalistic theory of man is impossible, we shall be forced to postulate a universal ethical Principle or Being, answering to the ethical being of man. Even then the relation of man to this universal Principle or Being will have to be determined, a problem which will be found to be only the problem of freedom in another aspect. (3) Last of all, there is the problem of the destiny of man as a moral being, the problem of the issues of the moral life. Here, once more, if man is a merely natural being, his destiny must be that of nature; only a unique being, with a unique life, can claim a unique destiny. If, on the other hand, it is found impossible to resolve man into nature, and necessary to postulate for him a being and a life different in kind from nature's, and an ethical universe as the sphere of that life, it would seem to be necessary to the fulfilment of his being and the completion (instead of the negation) of his task, that he should have an immortal destiny. Here again, however, the solution of the problem would depend upon our interpretation not only of man's relation to nature, but also of his relation to God; and both these interpretations throw us back once more upon the question of the essential and ultimate nature of man himself.

360

CHAPTER I.

THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM.

1. Statement of the problem.-After what has been said in general about the necessity of raising the metaphysical question in an ethical reference, we need not further attempt to vindicate the propriety of discussing the problem of freedom. That problem is, like the other metaphysical problems, very old, but not therefore, as some would say, antiquated. It is not "a problem which arose under certain conditions, and has disappeared with the disappearance of these conditions, a problem which exists only for a theological or scholastic philosophy." The conditions of the problem are always with us, and the problem, therefore, can never become obsolete. It is one of the central questions of metaphysics, or rather, it is one aspect of the central metaphysical question; and though its form may change, the question itself remains, to be dealt with by each succeeding age in its own way.

1

For us, as for Kant, the problem of freedom takes the form of a deep-seated antithesis between the interests of the scientific or intellectual consciousness on the one hand, and the moral and religious convictions of mankind on the other.

From the scientific or theoretical point of view, man must regard himself as part of a totality of things, animals, and persons. In the eyes of science, human

1 Paulsen, Ethik, vol. i. p. 351.

nature is a part of the universal nature of things, man's life is a part of the wider life of the universe itself. The universal order can admit of no real exceptions; what seems exceptional must cease to be so in the light of advancing knowledge. This, its fundamental postulate, science is constantly verifying. Accordingly, when

science

psychological and physiological, as well as physical-attacks the problem of human life, it immediately proceeds to break down man's imagined independence of nature, and seeks to demonstrate his entire dependence. The scientific doctrine now prefers, indeed, to call itself by the 'fairer name' of determinism; but if it has the courage of its convictions, it will acknowledge the older and truer name of necessity. For though the forces which bind man are primarily the inner forces of motive and disposition and established character, yet between these inner forces and the outer forces of nature there can be no real break. The forces, outer and inner, are ultimately one; human nature is part of the nature of things. The original source of man's activity lies, therefore, without rather than within himself; for the outer force is the larger and the stronger, and includes the inner. I get my nature by heredity from nature itself; and, once got, it is further formed by force of circumstances and education. All that I do is to react as any animal or plant or even stone does also in its measure- -on the influences which act upon me. Such action and reaction together yield the whole series of occurrences which constitute my life. I, therefore, am not free-as determinists are apt to insist that I am, though my will is determined; motives are, after all, external forces operating upon my nature, which responds to them, and over neither motive nor nature have I any control. I am constrained by the necessity of nature its law is mine; and thus determinism really means constraint. The necessity that entwines my life is conceived, it is true, rather as an inner than as an outer necessity; but the outer and the inner necessity are seen,

in their ultimate analysis, to be one and the same. The necessity that governs our life is "a magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network subtler than our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world." 1

The distinction between the new 'determinism' and the old necessitarianism' has been finally invalidated, so far as science is concerned, by the scientific conception of evolution. Science now insists upon regarding man, like all else, as an evolved product; and the evolution must ultimately be regarded as, in its very nature, one and continuous. The scientific or modern fashion of speaking of a man's life as the result of certain 'forces,' into which it is the business of the biographer and historian to resolve him, is no mere fashion of speech. In literal truth, the individual is, in the view of science, the child of his age and circumstances, and impotent as a child in their hands. The scientific explanation of human life and character is the exhibition of them as taking their place among the other products of cosmical evolution. In our day, accordingly, it is no longer scientific to recognise such a break as Mill, following Edwards's hint, insisted upon, between outward constraint and inward determination. All the interests of the scientific ambition are bound up with the denial of freedom in any and every sense of the word; its admission means embarrassment to the scientific consciousness, and the surrender of the claim of science to finality in its view of human life.

With the assertion of freedom, on the other hand, are as undeniably bound up all the interests of the moral and religious consciousness; Kant's saying still holds, that freedom is the postulate of morality. The moral consciousness dissolves at the touch of such scientific explanation as I have just referred to. The determinist may try to prop it up, and to construct a pseudo-morality

1 W. Pater, The Renaissance.