FREEDOM, PERSONAL AND MORAL

From all this, there results the conclusion that without free volition there can be no justice, no satisfying the moral sense, no retributive system, no moral government, of which the creature can be the rightful subject, or God the righteous Administrator. The existence of a system, and the existence in the soul of man of a demand for a system combining these elements, demonstrates the reality of Volitional freedom. Either there is no divine government or man is a non-necessitated moral agent.

-- Daniel D. Whedon, last words in his work on The Freedom of the Will.

Freedom, then, is a point upon which we can allow no shuffling or juggling in argument. It is unique, but it is self-evident; and every attempt to explain it away can be shown to involve a *petitio principii*, or begging of the question.

-- J. R. Illingworth, Personality, Human and Divine, Bampton Lectures, 1894, p. 107.

The truth, I think, is simply this: All determinism, strictly construed and logically carried to its issue, ends in materialism. Why should its advocate be afraid or ashamed of the issue he has himself forced? Surely, the last thing to go, in any system or practice of morals, should be that honest manliness which stands upright in the positions which have voluntarily and deliberately been assumed. And to fear being called a name which one merits is as cowardly as to call another an opprobrious name which is not appropriate or deserved.

-- George Trumbull Ladd, Philosophy of Conduct, p. 180.

Why, then, if law and order are only intelligible as the outcome of intelligence, may we not regard each individual subject, everything that is anything for itself and in itself, as a living law, or if you will as an active essence or character, interacting in its own peculiar manner with other subjects equally determinate? With experience in the concrete, we can deal satisfactorily in no other way, and no competent thinker dreams of interpreting the history of the world by means of a scheme of universal laws. . . . Such a view; you will say is incompatible with the scientific conception of law, for that postulates necessity, whereas this lets contingency into the very heart of things. It is true: I not only admit it, but contend that any other world would be meaningless. For the contingency is not that of chance, but that of freedom; so far as everything that is, is a law in itself, has an end for itself, and seeks the good. . . . No sane man resents as constraint normal laws of thought, normal laws of conduct, normal laws of taste; or demands that truth, goodness, or beauty should be other than they are. Real freedom consists in conformity to what ought to be. For God, whom we conceive as essentially perfect, this conformity is complete; for us it remains an ideal. But were we created of a blind mechanical necessity, there could be no talk of ideal standards, either of thought or of conduct; no meaning in reason at all.

-- James Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii, 280, 281.

Personal Freedom

Personal freedom is implicit in personality itself. By personality I always mean the power of self-conscious decision; and such decision is, in the very nature of the case, free decision. In other words, in full self-consciousness a man is thoroughly cut free, in thought, from the overriding of nature, and can now make an original decision from the standpoint of self-realization; and this being thus free from coercion, and so enabled to deal freely with all motives and to make a choice in the very center of selfhood, is precisely what I understand by personal freedom. But let us come closer to the process by which freedom is achieved.

The Achievement of Freedom in the Personal Process

Motive. A motive is anything which urges one toward volition. Usually many and fine distinctions are made at this point, but they are not necessary in our discussion, and are, moreover, likely to create confusion. The so-called "strength of a motive "is nothing but the charge of sensibility by which a motive gets its peculiar degree of urgency. It is the pushing power of the motive in feeling; or, to use Jonathan Edwards's exact words, "some sort and degree of tendency or advantage to move or excite the will." That is, the pressure of any given thing toward volition is simply the amount of interest one has in that thing. And so, what is a strong motive to one man may be a weak motive to another man, inasmuch as one man may have an intense interest where another man is not beyond indifference. Let us, then, hold this much fast: not a motive's origin, not its position in a rational classification, not its force in the soul of a saint, but just its urgency in this one particular man, is the really important matter. A man now loves what he loves, likes what he likes, feels what he feels; and out of this present interest he gets all the pressure he has toward volition. Neither rational quality nor moral quality adds an atom to the strength of a motive, if a man cares for neither. And so you never can tell what the strength of a motive is by abstract comparison and estimate under rational rule. You must see the motive quiver and lift and urge in the heart of the individual man.

The Blockade of Motive. This place is crucial. When we feel the urgency of our present motives -- when all our clashing interests are pushing the will -- why are we not, as the necessitarians claim, driven by the strongest motive irresistibly on to an immediate choice? Why is it not necessary for a person to will the thing in which at the moment he has the greatest interest? I answer: Because in the protective action of personality under pressure there is a complete blockade of all motive. Personality is inherently obstinate. It is made to resist all destructive influence. Whenever we are conscious of self and are urged to make volition we first of all tighten self-grasp, and this for an instant holds all inclination in check. Stated in another way, I hold that any pressure toward self-decision first so intensifies self-consciousness that the vision itself blocks the urgent motive: Dr. John Miley, in his discussion of the freedom of choice, calls this blockade of motive "the rational suspension of choice." He has a strong hold of the fact, but he so uses the word "rational" that it is misleading. The suspension does render rational action possible, but the pause itself is, I am convinced, as automatic as the instant, instinctive spring of a man to save himself in a physical emergency. Indeed, the worth of the pause to the cause of freedom lies altogether in its automatic necessity. It is like holding an excited child quiet by sheer force. The person is automatically held steady against the onrush of feeling until he can get his bearings, until he can be rational, until he can make a truly personal decision.

But, it is asked, can the power of habit be explained in harmony with this view? Easily enough. No person is ever swept away by a habit when he is conscious of self. In any self-conscious mood he gets an opportunity to will against habit, and he can will against it, however strongly fixed, provided that after the blockade any motive urge him toward such volition. The difficulty is in carrying out the man's free decision. And why is that so difficult? Because personality itself may have become so weak that the man cannot remain long enough in a self-conscious state. The practical efficiency of reform is very largely a matter of vitalizing personality itself. Right here we can begin to understand why philanthropic schemes are so often ineffectual; they lack the appeal to a supernatural power' that alone can energize the entire person.

The Uplift of Self-supremacy." This blockade of motive yields normally a potent result in consciousness. At a glance it can be seen that if we are to make any self-decision we need something more than the negative Possibility, something more than relief from coercion; we need courage. Motives might be blockaded forever, and yet if the person did not appreciate the fact he would not do anything; he would loiter in a hopeless mood. Indeed, this experience of loitering indecision is often found among weary, discouraged men. They resist and resist, but they do not value their resistance; they do not believe in themselves; they do not rejoice in their manhood; they get no uplift from realized self-supremacy; and then they become so tired of the triumphant stagnation that they welcome almost eagerly the old, wrong motives again. Is this not a true account of an experience which men sometimes have? Do they not return to sin, sometimes, not because they cannot resist the temptation, but because they are exhausted and hopeless? Never can we comprehend men, never can we help men profoundly, until we understand the dreadful impotence of this ennui of negative, half-personal victory. Could a man hold an avalanche in check, and just do that and no more; never once feel the joy of such resistance; never once feel that he could do other things and greater things because the avalanche could not sweep him away -- we would hardly expect him to stay there forever just holding an avalanche in check!

The worth, then, of self-consciousness lies not entirely in the way it creates resistance to motive and so protects a person from coercion, but in that protection together with the hopeful uplift which comes to the man in his new sense of self-supremacy. This uplift psychologically amounts, of course, to a new motive; but it is a motive which must follow the blockade when self-consciousness is full, a motive which is inherent in the personal process when that process is normal. And we need ever to bear in mind that the personal process is not always normal any more than the moral process in conscience is always normal.

The Self-selection of Motive. In the uplift of this experience of self-supremacy the personal selection of motive becomes possible. The person is now supreme, all his motives have been restrained, and his consciousness is astir with confidence, and he can look his motives over to choose and use any motive he has. He cannot create a motive, he cannot act without a motive; but in this state of self- conscious supremacy he can select any motive, high or low, weak or strong, which lies within his range of conscious interest. The motive does not seize the man, but the man seizes the motive) And let it be said repeatedly, he seizes it not because it is the stronger, or the strongest, motive. Such may be his practical reason for the selection in a given case, but the practical reason is not causal, is not coercive. It is not true that a person must always will to do that which he has the greatest immediate interest in doing. Again and again, especially at the beginning of a moral struggle, a man uses a weak motive when the antagonistic motive is so strong as to be actually violent.

But we have not touched bottom yet. There is a profounder sense in which it is true that a person always, even in free action, uses his strongest motive. When a man has that uplift of self-supremacy he begins to care most for just that supremacy, and this new interest now becomes his supreme motive. But this supreme motive does not urge him toward any one of his definite inclinations, but simply toward original action in selection. Thus the person's very freedom is under the very law the determinists constantly emphasize.

The Enlargement of the Circuit of Interest. We are now come to one of the most interesting and valuable features of the entire process. The self-selection of motive granted, still the range of motive would often be narrowly limited, and a man's personal life exceedingly barren, were there no way to enlarge immediately his circuit of interest. Some of the most painstaking students of the will have failed to discover how there is made perfect psychological provision for such enlargement; and yet the method is entirely patent in ordinary human experience, namely, we borrow motives. While it always holds true that we cannot actually create a motive, yet the motives we have we can use in new combinations, new applications, new adjustments to the will. To make personal volition in a certain direction, it is not necessary to have a direct interest; it will answer quite as well to have an indirect or transferred interest there. Thus, one large motive is often made to urge on many uninteresting items. Probably not one day of your life passes in which you do not do some things under the urgency of larger concern. You not only "hitch your wagon to a star," but all sorts of uncoveted drudgeries are drawn along, with some appreciable speed, by one motive, splendid up there in your little sky. That great Christian phrase, "For Christ's sake," what does it mean but that a Christian man can always get a personal motive for a difficult deed by transferring some of his love for his Lord?

Summary of the Entire Process. The achievement of personal freedom can be summarized as follows: When a person is self-conscious he meets all pressure upon his will by instant and automatic obstinacy which amounts to a perfect blockage of motive. Thus, there is secured a suspension of choice. Resulting from this suspension of choice there is normally in consciousness a personal uplift, an inspiring sense of self-supremacy. With this uplift into courage there comes into possibility the original choice or the self-selection of motive. Now, any motive in the conscious range can be selected, because it is not the quality or strength of the motive, but simply. the choice of it, which satisfies the person's paramount interest in self-supremacy. "It is not the motive, but the motive as it bulges with the originality of the man!" And even the range of motive itself can be forced out of fixture and enlarged, because the person is able to borrow and combine and readjust' motives to the will. Such is the process by which a man is cut away fully from the coercive tangle of nature and achieves what we term personal or volitional freedom. And is it not as evident as sunlight that every movement in the process is but an implication of the personal process itself? The automatic obstinacy is the precise thing which renders final self-decision possible. And the self-selection of motive, the borrowing of motive, the original adjustment of motive to the will, is the initiative and quick nerve of self-decision. Technically, in discussion, the terms personality and freedom are not exact equivalents, inasmuch as in emphasis is upon decision from the standpoint of self-consciousness, while in freedom the emphasis is upon decision from the standpoint of motive; but in either case there is both a practical and a psychological implication of the other. In its very nature personality is the power of volitional freedom, and this freedom is actually achieved in the personal process.

Definitions of Freedom

Analytical Definition of the Actual Process -- In the actual process of freedom there are four features, all implicit in the personal process itself, namely:

1. The blockade of motive, or the suspension of choice by such a grasp of self as amounts to a complete automatic resistance of all motive-pressure.
2. The uplift of self-supremacy, or the new realization in consciousness that the person cannot be overwhelmed.
3. The self-selection of motive, or the original choice, for direct or indirect use, of any motive in the person's circuit of conscious interest.
4. Self-conscious decision, or the preparatory self-selection of motive together with the full volitional use of the motive selected.

Concise Definition of Inherent Freedom. -- Personal freedom, inherently considered, is the power to use uncoerced any motive given in self-consciousness.

Popular Definition -- Personal freedom is the power to will to do anything in which one has interest.

Moral Freedom

As personal freedom is the volitional freedom of a person, so moral freedom is the freedom of that person regarded as moral. That is, the question of freedom is now to be related to the standard of right and wrong. First let us be sure that we all understand the practical contention. Dr. James M'Cosh says: "It is implied farther that the choice lies within the voluntary power of the mind, and that we could have willed otherwise, if we had pleased." The expression "if we had pleased" is pliable and can be made to lend itself to sheer necessitarianism. We could say of a fishhawk swooping at a trout, "He could have willed otherwise, if he had pleased." The trouble is that with the trout in sight the hawk could not be pleased with anything else. So in the case of a man, the first question is not, Could he have willed otherwise, if he had pleased? but, Could he have pleased to will otherwise? Could he, with crossing pleasures, have made a choice uncoerced? And, then, what we insist upon is precisely this: A self-conscious person, under moral demand, can decide to do right, or decide to do wrong, when in the same personal situation, with the same range, and condition of motives, he could will to the contrary. Or this way: Given here and now any self-conscious person under any appreciated moral demand, he can, lust as he is, will either way, for the demand or against it. To keep Dr. Whedon's terse expression, the man has "either-causal power."

Moral Responsibility. Moral freedom and moral responsibility are so inextricably connected that neither is possible without the other. It is axiomatic in morals that no man can be held responsible for that which he could not help. In one case there is a seeming exception, namely, where the volition automatically springs out of habit; but we must remember that habit itself is fixed by a long series of volitions. A man may be responsible for even an automatic manifestation of habit, if the habit itself is a rut of inability superinduced by self-conscious, intentional action. As Dr. Whedon says, "A servant may not cut off his hands and then hold himself innocent for not laboring."

Responsibility for Personal Character. This reference to habit opens up the way for the discussion of the larger responsibility for personal character. The principle here is that a person is responsible not only for what he freely does, but also for all he himself is as a consequence of what he has freely done. Our personal deeds not only tend to fix those physical and mental habits which play such a large part in external conduct -- these deeds also tend to fix the great inner habit of personal bearing in indorsement. A man, as we usually find him, has two kinds of character: First, he has his character as a bare individual. This individual character comprises all hi individual traits, the entirety of his native characteristics. For this individual character as such no man is responsible any more than a walrus is responsible for having tusks. All argument to the contrary is a contribution to chaos in ethics. Second, a man has his characteristics. This is his personal character; or, if we are regarding it from a moral standpoint, it is his moral character, Personal character does not necessarily comprise all of a man's individual traits, but comprises those traits merely to the extent of their actual personalization; or only in as far as they have been indorsed by the person when self-conscious. Soon we shall see how all self-conscious action tends to fix the state of motivity; here I wish only to make the point that a man gets at last an habitual responsible personal bearing toward his individual characteristics.

This difference between a man's individual character and his personal character I wish more earnestly to urge upon you. Do you not see that a man may inherit characteristics which he himself condemns in every self-conscious mood of his life? For example, take the generous temperament. Oftentimes it is an inherited thing purely and has no organic relation whatever to personal character. Here are two men. One of them is a saint, and that by the testimony of every man, woman, and child living about him; and yet he says "I never give away money joyously, seldom easily, and at times it costs me positive torment." The other man is, by his own confession, a scoundrel, and yet he is so generous that it was said of him, "Only look at him, and he will get his check book." The niggard, in spite of his natural disposition, has, I say, moral worth in personal character, while the scoundrel's easy generosity is no more moral than the dropping of a ripe pippin into the grass. Matthew Arnold was never weary of reiterating that "conduct is three fourths of life." I object to the phrase. It is ethically shallow. Conduct is of large moment when, and only when, it truly expresses personal intention. Most seriously I say it, conduct full of flaw, with a man behind the conduct hating the flaw, means more morally, and so means more ultimately, than the finest combination of native traits instinctively used without any personal adoption. Browning somewhere says it is "not what man does which exalts him, but what man would do!" It is not the deed as mere performance; but the deed as an exponent of a man's purpose, the deed as related to a man's longing, the deed as an indication of a man's ideal. Nothing could be more densely unfair than to sum up a man's inherited items, and then to regard that irresponsible bundle of characteristics as the precise quantum of his personal character, when there may not be one item in the whole bundle which the person really wants or which he will finally possess.

An Old Allegory Revamped. In an Eastern country a young man was sitting by the sea, when there fell out of the sky into his hands a basket full of various threads. "Some were silk and some were cotton, some were stout and some were rotten." Soon he heard a voice, low but distinct, saying, "Spend the day weaving, my son." And all day long the young man wove, taking one thread and rejecting another. At sunset a storm came up from over the sea and blew wildly through the night. At dawn the young man was still there by the sea, and with a woven mantle; but all the loose threads the wind had blown away.

How Moral Character is Fixed. To complete our discussion of moral character, we need to see how such. character can be absolutely fixed by the free use of motives. I will state the case as concisely as possible.

1. In the motivity of every moral person there are, at the beginning of test, two antagonistic groups of motives, the good and the bad. That is, any personal interest which can be related to conscience at all is necessarily either good or bad.
2. By using any motive in either group, the motive so used is made stronger, and also the opposite motive, if there is one, is made weaker. Or, by rejecting a motive, it is made weaker, and also the opposite one is made stronger. That is, if you have an interest, and express it in specific volition, you will increase that interest and diminish any opposing interest; or vice versa.
3. In this way, under the law of use, a motive can be emptied of all urgency. Thus unurgent, it is what some writers term "an objective motive"; but I prefer to call it an exhausted motive.
4. The exhaustion of any one motive tends to exhaust all the motives in the same group. The moral life is so related that if you touch it anywhere you must influence the whole. For example, no man can lose all interest in honesty and not begin to lose his regard for truth.
5. When the group entire of good motives, or of bad motives, is exhausted, then the person's moral character is fixed beyond any possibility of change. In other words, when a self-conscious person has no interest in any good thing he is unalterably bad. The other side should be stated in a slightly different manner, thus: When a self-conscious person has no interest in anything which does or can antagonize the good he is unalterably good.

This rationale of the ultimate stability of moral character need not be modified in the least to fit the fact that motive can be borrowed; for no motive can be so borrowed as to create a moral interest where the entire group is exhausted. Some hold, I know, that these exhausted or "objective" motives can again become personally operative as long as they are conceptions remaining in the mind. For example, a man has lost all concern for chastity, but he still has a clear idea of virtue, and even remembers what the feeling was like when he himself was chaste: can this man, merely because he retains this clear conception and this vivid remembrance, will himself back into personal virtue? I answer: He cannot, unless he have remaining in him some moral feeling, some sense of moral obligation, a spark at least of kindred concern.

The Proofs of Freedom

Volitional freedom is, as we have seen, bound up with the personal process itself, but beyond all this there are convincing proofs that man is free. Let us notice the most important of these proofs.

1. The Intuitive Sense of Freedom. Whenever a man is self-conscious, he has an immediate, an intuitive sense that he is free. Certainty as to this fact does not depend. entirely upon one 5 own experience, although that personal experience alone must end, does end, all practical question. There is objective confirmation in the universality of deliberation over opposite courses of action, for to explain such deliberation is impossible unless we grant to men an inner consciousness of freedom. "An intuition of freedom is the very nerve of deliberation." Think of a citizen, for instance, trying to decide which way wisely to vote and yet never once feeling that he is able to make a free choice. Even such a fatalist as Spinoza says, "They think themselves free."

In his work The Methods of Ethics, Professor Sidgwick says: "I hold, therefore, that against the formidable array of cumulative evidence offered for determinism there is but one argument of real force, the immediate affirmation of consciousness in the moment of deliberate action." Commenting upon this statement, the writer of a recent book says: "Now, if it were really true that we have a consciousness of being free, in the sense in which this term has been used, this feeling would have as little weight, as a scientific proof, as the feeling that the sun moves around the earth has for astronomy." Passing by the false assumption concealed in that expression, "scientific proof" -- an expression which lives an opulent life on extremely slender means -anyone looking closely can see that the analogy made by the writer is altogether misleading. The two things, the crude belief about the sun and the feeling about freedom, are not fundamentally alike. In one case there is an inference from appearance; in the other case there is a personal intuition. No man ever had an intuitive "feeling that the sun moves around the earth." Observing certain phenomena, he drew a quick inference from the look of the thing. Surely the inference was naive, almost as naive as a baby's finding a playmate in a looking-glass; but the principle used was the same as that constantly employed, not only in ordinary affairs, but also in scientific investigation. Now and then, indeed, we find even among scientists an exceedingly hasty inference which needs to be corrected. Mr. Darwin himself once drew precisely such a precipitate inference as to the sternum in poultry, and it was corrected by George John Romanes. But man's intuitions are never corrected by a larger experience or by a later search. A savage immediately feels that a half is less than the whole, and the most civilized man today has the same instant, inner throb of certainty. Even our higher, our moral intuitions, while they may be lived out of vitality, are never corrected as our inferences are corrected. We correct our opinions, our theories, our fine schemes of harmony, our systems of theology, of philosophy, and of science, but no man ever has or ever can correct a personal intuition. Were it worth the work, it would not be extremely difficult to search the writings of that great agnostic and heroic man who has now passed out into the silence beyond us, and show that either by intention or by accident he has expressed every intuitional feeling which can be found in an Omaha Indian.

Our contention is that man as a person has an intuition of freedom; that whenever he is conscious of self, and by just the strength, just the vividness that he is conscious of self, he is conscious of freedom; that only by destroying or mutilating personality itself can he escape from this intuition of freedom; and, further, that the very men who deny this fact for which we contend do, in spite of all their finesse in argument, evince, in all the practical matters of their life, the most unbounded confidence in their own personal freedom.

If, now, man as a person has such an intuitive sense of freedom, we should regard it as founded in integrity. To say with Spinoza that men have such a sense, but they are deceived, is not truly philosophical; for philosophy must fairly explain life, and such a fatalistic impeachment of the basal integrity of man's experience leads to no just explanation of anything. In fact, if such unfaith were carried out to the utmost consistency, it would wreck not only all philosophy and all science, but also every practical department of human affairs. If we are to sail at all, we must trust the bottom of the ship!

2. The Intuitive Sense of Responsibility. I cannot agree with Professor Sidgwick that against determinism we have "but one argument of real force, the immediate affirmation of consciousness in the moment of deliberate action." After the action is all over, and oftentimes long after the action is over, there is a sense of personal responsibility for the action. Now, the bare testimony of self-consciousness is in adjustment with conscience, and the man regards himself as a free person tinder moral obligation. We are told by Professor Wundt and other psychologists of his school that the extent of the inner testimony is "that we act without restraint." But such is not the testimony at all; self-consciousness testifies to "either-causal power," or that, in the given situation, we can will in either direction. Allowing, though, this dubious inexactness to pass, these mediating psychologists should be criticized because they fail to realize that the full testimony of self- consciousness is seen most clearly when related to moral concern. Here, in this moral situation, a person feels that he is free unto -- all the way unto -- personal responsibility. Most tersely said, it is this: A man feels responsibly free.

And now again our own isolated experience is reenforced when we look out upon societary life and try rationally to explain that life. Study the entire matter of blaming men or praising men for their conduct; seek a rationale of public opinion; try to discover an adequate foundation for criminal law; and very soon it will become evident that in judging men for their deeds society but expresses, however imperfectly, an innate sense of man's responsible freedom. It may be true, as the utilitarians claim, that the purpose of a criminal law is the protection of society. It matters not, though, what the purpose may be, the possibility of such law lies in the fact that a criminal may be justly punished because he is responsible, and he is responsible because he, this very man under these very circumstances, might have done otherwise. Once prove that he could not have done otherwise, that he was not personally free, that he was insane or in any manner completely overwhelmed, and whatever the technical outcome might be in the court, the higher court of public moral sentiment would hold the man as blameless. And every necessitarian on the face of the earth would also hold the man as blameless! And so we are come to this point: Not merely is volitional freedom essential to the integrity of man's personal experience; it is essential to the integrity of that experience as it is related to his higher moral experience.

3. Freedom and Personal Loyalty. In a passage frequently quoted as one of Professor Huxley's brightest and most characteristic utterances he says: "I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer." There chances to be chiming at this very moment a clock which makes quite an approach toward Professor Huxley's ideal. In perfect conformity to a number of physical laws, it does exactly certain very intricate things. And it is altogether conceivable that some great Power" could exalt this mechanism into something higher and more marvelous, so that the clock would be forced to think and to will; and forced so to think and so to will as everlastingly to keep in adjustment with reality; yes, and forced so to think and so to will as actually to cooperate with the moral plans and movements of the "great Power," and thus "like a planet take sides with God." And yet this perfected clock, in its precise, automatic expression of its Maker's purpose, would lack one thing, and this the very thing which Professor Huxley himself had in large measure, namely, personal loyalty. Who would not rather have Huxley as he was, loyal to the last fiber of manhood, writing to Charles Kingsley, "Still I will not lie!" than to have this Huxleyan clock, wound up every morning, mechanically indicating truth and necessarily chiming moral maxims? With the perfected machine there would be no costly staying by the truth in self- conscious sacrifice; no taking sides with righteousness when one could take sides against it; no indorsement of an ideal in a free personal bearing -- in short, no loyalty, and so no true moral heroism. Volitional freedom is not merely bound up with the integrity of self-consciousness and man's sense of personal responsibility; it is absolutely necessary for the achievement of any heroic moral character.

4. The Fact of Error. Hardly can it be necessary to provide any elaborate evidence that there is error in the world somewhere. Probably even our necessitarian theologians would be willing to admit that their opponents are mistaken! Look where you will, in society, in politics, in philosophy, in religion, and you will find almost countless opinions and convictions which cluster into contradiction. As to the fact of error, then, there can be no question; but how can we explain the fact? If determinism have the truth, then all error is automatic. Men are coerced into fallacy, yes, and into falsehood, too. Our search for truth thus becomes "a mock drama on a mimic stage," where every puppet acts as the wires move. In such case there could be no standard of truth. "All we could do would be to take a vote now and then over the question, What is truth? and even the ballot would be automatic." Indeed, volitional freedom is just as necessary for the explanation of man's rational life as it is for his personal life and his moral life. As Professor Bowne has said in his convincing chapter on "Some Structural Fallacies": "The only escape from the overthrow of reason involved in the fact of error lies in the assumption of freedom."

A Final Question. Inasmuch as personal freedom is intuitively affirmed in self-consciousness considered alone, and is again affirmed by self-consciousness when the person is under moral demand; inasmuch as freedom is essential to loyalty and moral character, and is just as essential in the explanation of our relations to truth and error -- in a gathering word, inasmuch as personal freedom is vitally conjoined with every fundamental feature of man's being and is the only commensurate explanation of his experience, our final question amounts to this: Is our whole life as men a phantasmagoria with cunning deceptions everywhere, with cosmic equity nowhere? Determinism is really a scheme of unfaith, unfaith in man and unfaith in God.