A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory. Albert Taylor Bledsoe

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СКАЧАТЬ theory, however warmly he may have embraced it. Mr. Mill himself has not been more fortunate in this respect than many of his distinguished predecessors. It is an exceedingly difficult thing, by the force of speculation, to silence the voice of nature within us. If it were necessary we might easily show, that if we abstract “the common prejudice,” in regard to causation, it will be as impossible to read Mr. Mill's work on logic, as to read Mr. Hume's writings themselves, without perceiving that many of its passages have been stripped of all logical coherency of thought. The defect which he so clearly sees in the writings of other advocates of necessity, not excepting those who embrace his own paradox in relation to cause and effect, we can easily perceive in his own.

      The doctrine of causation, under consideration, annihilates one of the clearest and most fundamental distinctions ever made in philosophy; the distinction between action and passion, between [pg 078] mind and matter. Matter is passive, mind is active. The very first law of motion laid down in the Principia, a work so much admired by M. Comte and Mr. Mill, is based on the idea that matter is wholly inert, and destitute of power either to move itself, or to check itself when moved by anything ab extra. This will not be denied. But is mind equally passive? Is there nothing in existence which rises above this passivity of the material world? If there is not, and such is the evident conclusion of the doctrine in question, then all things flow on in one boundless ocean of passivity, while there is no First Mover, no Self-active Agent in the universe. Indeed, Mr. Mill has expressly declared, that the distinction between agent and patient is illusory.51 If this be true, we are persuaded that M. Comte has been more successful in delivering the world from the being of a God, than Mr. Mill has been in relieving it from the difficulties attending the scheme of necessity.

Section VIII.

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The views of Kant and Sir William Hamilton in relation to the antagonism between liberty and necessity.

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      “To clear up this seeming antagonism between the mechanism of nature and freedom in one and the self-same given action, we must refer,” says Kant, “to what was advanced in the critique of pure reason, or what, at least, is a corollary from it, viz., that the necessity of nature which may not consort with the freedom of the subject, attaches simply to a thing standing under the relations of time, i.e., to the modifications of the acting subject as phenomena, and that, therefore, so far (i.e., as phenomena) the determinators of each act lie in the foregoing elapsed time, and are quite beyond his power, (part of which are the actions man has already performed, and the phenomenal character he has given himself in his own eyes,) yet, e contra, the self-same subject, being self-conscious of itself as a thing in itself, considers its existence as somewhat detached from the conditions of time, and itself, so far forth, as only determinable by laws given it by its own reason.”52

      Kant has said, that this “intricate problem, at whose solution centuries have laboured,” is not to be solved by “a jargon of [pg 079] words.” If so, may we not doubt whether he has taken the best method to solve it? His solution shows one thing at least, viz., that he was not satisfied with any of the solutions of his predecessors, for his is wholly unlike them. Kant saw that the question of liberty and necessity related to the will itself, and not to the consequences of the will's volitions. Hence he was compelled to reject those weak evasions of the difficulty of reconciling them, and to grapple directly with the difficulty itself. Let us see if this was not too much for him. Let us see if he has been able to maintain the doctrine of necessity, holding it as a “demonstrated truth,” and at the same time give the idea of liberty a tenable position in his system.

      If we would clear up the seeming antagonism between the mechanism of nature and freedom in regard to the same volition, says he, we must remember, that the volition itself, as standing under the conditions of time, is to be considered as subject to the law of mechanism: yet the mind which puts forth the volition, being conscious that it is a thing somewhat detached from the conditions of time, is free from the law of mechanism, and determinable by the laws of its own reason. That is to say, the volitions of mind falling under the law of cause and effect, like all other events which appear in time, are necessary; while the mind itself, which exists not exactly in time, is free. We shall state only two objections to this view. In the first place, it seems to distinguish the mind from its act, not modally, i.e., as a thing from its mode, but numerically, i.e., as one thing from another thing. But who can do this? Who regards an act of the mind, a volition, as anything but the mind itself as existing in a state of willing? In the second place, it requires us to conceive, that the act of the mind is necessitated, while the mind itself is free in the act thus necessitated. But who can do this? On the contrary, who can fail to see in this precisely the same seeming antagonism which Kant undertook to remove? To tell us, that volition is necessitated because it exists in time, but the mind is free because it does not exist in time, is, one would think, a very odd way to dispel the darkness which hangs over the grand problem of life. It is to solve one difficulty merely by adding other difficulties to it. Hence, the world will never be much wiser, we are inclined to suspect, with respect to the seeming antagonism [pg 080] between liberty and necessity, in consequence of the speculations of the philosopher of Königsberg, especially since his great admirer, Mr. Coleridge, forgot to fulfil his promise to write the history of a man who existed in “neither time nor space, but a-one side.”

      Though Kant made the attempt in his Metaphysics of Ethics to overcome the speculative difficulty in question, it is evident that he is not satisfied with his own solution of it, since he has repeatedly declared, that the practical reason furnishes the only ground on which it can be surmounted. “This view of Kant,” says Knapp, “implying that freedom, while it is a postulate of our practical reason, (i.e., necessary to be assumed in order to moral action,) is yet inconsistent with our theoretical reason, (i.e., incapable of demonstration, and contrary to the conclusions to which the reflecting mind arrives,) is now very generally rejected.”53

      In regard to this point, there seems to be a perfect coincidence between the philosophy of Kant and that of Sir William Hamilton. “In thought,” says the latter, “we never escape determination and necessity.”54 If the scheme of necessity never fails to force itself upon our thought, how are we then to get rid of it, so as to lay a foundation for morality and accountability? This question, the author declares, is too much for the speculative reason of man; and being utterly baffled in that direction, we can only appeal to the fact of consciousness, in order to establish the doctrine of liberty. “The philosophy which I profess,” says he, “annihilates the theoretical problem—How is the scheme of liberty, or the scheme of necessity, to be rendered comprehensible?—by showing that both schemes are equally inconceivable; but it establishes liberty practically as a fact, by showing that it is either itself an immediate datum, or is involved in an immediate datum of consciousness.”55 We shall hereafter see, why the scheme of necessity always riveted the chain of conviction on the thought of Sir William Hamilton, and compelled him to have recourse to an appeal to consciousness in order to escape its delusive power.

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Section IX.

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The notion of Lord Kames and Sir James Mackintosh on the same subject.

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      Lord Kames boldly cut the knot which philosophy had failed to СКАЧАТЬ