War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy
CHAPTER X
1996 words | Chapter 382
Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually diminishes
or increases according to the greater or lesser connection with the
external world, the greater or lesser remoteness of time, and the
greater or lesser dependence on the causes in relation to which we
contemplate a man’s life.
So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the
external world is well known, where the time between the action and
its examination is great, and where the causes of the action are most
accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability and a
minimum of free will. If we examine a man little dependent on external
conditions, whose action was performed very recently, and the causes of
whose action are beyond our ken, we get the conception of a minimum of
inevitability and a maximum of freedom.
In neither case—however we may change our point of view, however plain
we may make to ourselves the connection between the man and the external
world, however inaccessible it may be to us, however long or short the
period of time, however intelligible or incomprehensible the causes
of the action may be—can we ever conceive either complete freedom or
complete necessity.
(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from the
influence of the external world, we never get a conception of freedom
in space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds
him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My action seems
to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my arm in every
direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in which there was
least obstruction to that action either from things around me or from
the construction of my own body. I chose one out of all the possible
directions because in it there were fewest obstacles. For my action
to be free it was necessary that it should encounter no obstacles. To
conceive of a man being free we must imagine him outside space, which is
evidently impossible.
(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the time of the
deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I examine
an action committed a second ago I must still recognize it as not
being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which it was
committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself: could I have
abstained from lifting my arm at the moment that has already passed? To
convince myself of this I do not lift it the next moment. But I am
not now abstaining from doing so at the first moment when I asked the
question. Time has gone by which I could not detain, the arm I then
lifted is no longer the same as the arm I now refrain from lifting,
nor is the air in which I lifted it the same that now surrounds me. The
moment in which the first movement was made is irrevocable, and at that
moment I could make only one movement, and whatever movement I made
would be the only one. That I did not lift my arm a moment later does
not prove that I could have abstained from lifting it then. And since I
could make only one movement at that single moment of time, it could not
have been any other. To imagine it as free, it is necessary to imagine
it in the present, on the boundary between the past and the future—that
is, outside time, which is impossible.
(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes may be
increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom, that is,
an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of the
expression of will in any action, our own or another’s, the first demand
of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause, for without a
cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to perform an action
independently of any cause, but my wish to perform an action without a
cause is the cause of my action.
But even if—imagining a man quite exempt from all influences, examining
only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by any cause—we were
to admit so infinitely small a remainder of inevitability as equaled
zero, we should even then not have arrived at the conception of complete
freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by the external world, standing
outside of time and independent of cause, is no longer a man.
In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite devoid of
freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability.
(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space
in which man is situated, that knowledge can never be complete, for the
number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of space. And
therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men are defined,
there is no complete inevitability but a certain measure of freedom
remains.
(2) However we may prolong the period of time between the action we are
examining and the judgment upon it, that period will be finite, while
time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never be absolute
inevitability.
(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any action, we
shall never know the whole chain since it is endless, and so again we
never reach absolute inevitability.
But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of freedom to
equal zero, we assumed in some given case—as for instance in that of a
dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot—complete absence of freedom, by
so doing we should destroy the very conception of man in the case we are
examining, for as soon as there is no freedom there is also no man. And
so the conception of the action of a man subject solely to the law of
inevitability without any element of freedom is just as impossible as
the conception of a man’s completely free action.
And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to the law of
inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the knowledge of an
infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of time,
and an infinite series of causes.
To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law of
inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space, beyond time,
and free from dependence on cause.
In the first case, if inevitability were possible without freedom
we should have reached a definition of inevitability by the laws of
inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content.
In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability we
should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time, and
cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and unlimited would
be nothing, or mere content without form.
We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man’s
whole outlook on the universe is constructed—the incomprehensible
essence of life, and the laws defining that essence.
Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give it
visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2) Time is
infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable otherwise.
(3) The connection between cause and effect has no beginning and can
have no end.
Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is but me,
consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing time by the fixed
moment of the present in which alone I am conscious of myself as living,
consequently I am outside time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I feel myself
to be the cause of every manifestation of my life.
Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability. Consciousness
gives expression to the essence of freedom.
Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man’s
consciousness. Inevitability without content is man’s reason in its
three forms.
Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines. Freedom
is the content. Inevitability is the form.
Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one another
as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and separately
incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability.
Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man’s life.
Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define one
another as form and content, no conception of life is possible.
All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation of free
will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws of reason.
All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain
relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of the essence of
life to the laws of reason.
The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious of
them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity, animal
force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life in man and
we call that freedom.
But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in itself but
felt by every man, is understood by us only to the extent to which we
know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the first
knowledge that all bodies have weight, up to Newton’s law), so too the
force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which everyone is
conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as we know the laws of
inevitability to which it is subject (from the fact that every man dies,
up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and historic laws).
All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life under the
laws of reason.
Man’s free will differs from every other force in that man is directly
conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way differs from
any other force. The forces of gravitation, electricity, or chemical
affinity are only distinguished from one another in that they are
differently defined by reason. Just so the force of man’s free will
is distinguished by reason from the other forces of nature only by the
definition reason gives it. Freedom, apart from necessity, that is,
apart from the laws of reason that define it, differs in no way from
gravitation, or heat, or the force that makes things grow; for reason,
it is only a momentary undefinable sensation of life.
And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly bodies,
the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity, or
of chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content of
astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, just in the
same way does the force of free will form the content of history.
But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of this
unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the
subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free will
in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause forms
the subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of
metaphysics.
In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of
inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital force is
only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above what we know
of the essence of life.
So also in history what is known to us we call laws of inevitability,
what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for history only an
expression for the unknown remainder of what we know about the laws of
human life.
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