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James Martineau
(1805-1900)
James Martineau was a descendant of French Huguenot refugees. He left the ministry to become a religious philosopher, teaching at the Unitarian seminary Manchester New College. Besides his teaching, he published many short articles on religion and ethics.
Martineau studied briefly at the new Humboldt University in Berlin, under the great Aristotelian philosopher Friedrich A. Trendelenberg, who quarreled with Kuno Fischer. Fischer was the originator of the "back to Kant" movement and famous for dividing philosophers into British empiricists ( Locke, Berkeley, Hume) and continental rationalists ( Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz).
For Trendelenberg, philosophical systems were dividable into the materialistic and the organic, the physical sciences and the biological sciences. The former trace back to Democritus and have only efficient causes, the latter to Aristotle and recognize the existence of final causes, purposes, which are the basis of ethics.
Martineau became intrested in Transcendentalism, and considered the American William Ellery Channing a mentor.
In his eighties, Martineau produced three books that summarized his thoughts, which by that time were greatly influenced by new ideas of science, especially Darwinian evolution. At that time, he was widely know around the world. Harvard awarded him an LL.D. in 1872, at which time he no doubt met some of the New England Transcendentalists, and very likely William James. Other advanced degrees were granted him by Edinburgh in 1884, Oxford in 1888 and Dublin in 1891.
Martineau attended meetings of the Metaphysical Club of London, as did Henry Sidgwick and George Croom Robertson (the first editor of Mind). When James was in London in 1882, he, Shadsworth Hodgson, and Robertson were members of the "Tramps," led by Leslie Stephen. James, and very likely Martineau, attended meetings of the then new Aristotelian Society.
William James knew Martineau's work well. He wrote to Robertson, from Chocorua on October 7, 1888, "I am teaching ethics and the philosophy of religion for the first time,with that dear old duffer Martineau's works as a text."
James cited Martineau in support of his theory of reasoning in his 1878 essay "Brute and Human Intellect."
Determinism and Free Will
In the third of his books, "The Seat of Authority in Religion," (a/k/a "A Study in Religion") published in 1888, Martineau speculated on Determinism and Free Will.
(Thanks to J.L.Speranza for finding this citation)
Hitherto I have been content, in treating of the
grounds whether of Ethics or of Religion, to build upon
the assumptions universally made by the consciousness of
mankind; aiming only to interpret them accurately, and
not attempting to verify them by criteria foreign to them-
selves. Thus it was shown that the moral judgment which
we pass upon ourselves for past conduct takes for granted
that, in the moment of yielding to one of two competing
solicitations, we might have preferred the other; and that
the experience of contrition, the language of praise and
blame, the sentiment of justice, the pleas of forgiveness,
the reverence for higher virtue, all proceed upon the same
belief, that we are not manufactured into good or bad, but,
within a certain range of responsibility, are the authors of
our own characters. Whether this belief is true, I did not
then stop to enquire; but was satisfied to say, that either
it was true, or moral judgment was impossible. So too, in
the present work, both the lines of argument which have
been followed start from the same intuitive assumption:
the first in the form, that from the exercise of Will we
know what Causality is, and apprehend that of God along
with our own: the second in the form, that the authority of
Duty is known to us as a relation between our own will as
free, and that of a higher and supreme Being. Of that relation we are conscious as a trust, or command of alternative, better and worse, committed to us by a perfect
righteousness. Beyond the appeal to self-consciousness,
I have said nothing in support of these assumptions, on
which the whole of both Ethics and Religion is staked.
But this appeal is set aside on various ingenious pleas.
Our belief in our own independence arises merely, it is
said, from a partial ignorance of the complex influences
that mould our decisions, and when our inward history is
all unfolded and laid bare, each volition will be found to
have its place in a regular consecution of phenomena as
uniform as those of physical nature, and as little open to
the entrance of contingency. The antecedents which we
bring into each posture of affairs being what they are, we
can no more decide our problems except in one certain
way, than water in a frost can refuse to become ice, or an
acorn grow into an elm. The insecurity thus introduced
into our conclusions it is impossible to leave unnoticed;
and though I can add nothing to so old a controversy, it is
incumbent on me so to pass it under review, as to explain
why it does not disturb my faith in the principles of the
foregoing reasonings.
Though the fascination of this unsolved problem arises
chiefly from its profound connection with the very roots
of our moral and spiritual convictions, and though, in all
logical consistency, these convictions appear to me to stand
or fall according to the answer which we give to it, I desire,
as far as possible, to keep the weight of this issue at a distance from the discussion. The real life of men, even upon
its inner side, is not shaped by philosophical systems, or
moved forward on lines of consecutive logic; and, on either
brink of the wide chasm of doctrine which we are about
to survey, are seen not only individual champions, but
gathered hosts, alike eminent for high-toned character and
devoted piety; so that practical experience affords little
ostensible support to Professor Sidgwick's opinion, that
ethical interests are but slightly affected by our theory of
the Will.
The advocates indeed on either side arrange
themselves in most unexpected ranks. While the austere
and lofty Stoic1, who makes the highest demands on self-
command and self-sacrifice, asserts the reign of universal
necessity, the prudential Epicurean2 insists upon free will,
and makes his very atoms swerve in order to provide it.
1. Seneca, Nat. Qusest. ii. 45 ; Stob. Eel. i. 178.
2 Cicero, De Fato, ii. 10 ; De Nat Deorum, i. 25.
In western Christendom, it is the Catholic Church alone,
especially in its Dominican and Jesuit schools, that has
saved any ability in man to obey the will of God ; while
the Augustinian theology, whether sheltered in the Port
Royal, or breaking forth into branches of the Reformation,
has merged all human power in divine grace and fore-ordination. And, while the history of both is rich in examples
of heroic and saintly goodness, an impartial observer, if
asked to select and bring together a gallery of portraits
marked with the lineaments of moral greatness, would probably search with the most hopeful eye through the camps
of the Prince of Orange, of Coligny, of Gustavus Adolphus,
and of Cromwell; for, whatever be the disproportion and
aesthetic defects of the evangelical or Puritan type of character, in ethical vigour and religious elevation it certainly
has no superior. If in Spinoza and Hobbes, in Diderot
and Lamettrie, the doctrine of Determinism has formed
part of an anti-theological mode of thought, it is presented,
in the masterly vindications of Edwards and Priestley, as
the essential life of true religion and implied principle of
Christian society. Yet it has never long claimed a church-
ascendency without encountering resistance from minds
not less penetrating and devout than these: and in Cudworth, Butler, Clarke, Price, and Channing, the standard of
revolt is once more raised against an almighty Absolutism,
and the protest is renewed, that something of his own must
be granted to man, if he is to be worth governing, and
capable of any similitude to God. There is scarcely any
variety of relation to theology which the doctrines described
in this controversy are not found to assume ; and the remarkable feature recurs in each combination, that our problem plays in it no accidental part ; but, in spite of the
contradictory religious conclusions, the opinion favoured,
be it of Liberty or be it of Necessity, is regarded by its
advocate as the essential premiss, and defended as the
turning-point, of the whole scheme. As we are all liable,
on entering this discussion, to become thus bewitched, it
will not be charged upon me, I trust, as an exceptional
sin, if I also am led to affirm the dependence on the doctrine which I vindicate of any clear authority attaching to
either Conscience or Faith. I cannot avoid this, unless I
keep back the very grounds of my own conversion from
the philosophical creed in which I was early established by
the writings of Hartley, Collins, and Priestley; and it will
be no recantation of a reverence for them, if I point out
some inconsistencies of which I have myself had occasion
to repent.
(Study of Religion, Chapter II, Determinism and Free Will, p.195-98)
What is the Question?
It is hardly possible to state the problem with which
this controversy is concerned without employing terms on
the meaning of which there exists a prior divergence. It
might seem therefore an essential precaution to begin with
a series of definitions, settling the exact contents of each
conception involved in the question. It would be easy
enough to do this. But no sooner should we have declared
what we understand by Will, by Cause, by Motive, by
Self, by Choice, by Freedom, by Necessity, than com-
plaint would be made that we had begged the whole
question in each definition; and we should have to discuss
it over and over again upon every word. The two
doctrines are the expression of entire schemes of thought
which put a different interpretation upon everything in
nature and life of which we have occasion to speak ; so
that language, pushed by them to its ultimate analysis,
ceases to be common to the two; and they cannot with
advantage converse together.
Without further preface
then I remark, that our enquiry concerns the originating
cause of voluntary action; and is mainly this: whether in
the exercise of Will (i.e., 'cases of choice' the mind is
wholly determined by phenomenal antecedents and external
conditions; or, itself also as active subject of these objective
experiences, plays the part of determining Cause. Those
who maintain the first branch of this alternative were
called and called themselves 'Necessarians' because, under
the assigned conditions, the sequence of one particular
volition is, in their view, an inevitable event, not less so
than the explosion of gunpowder on the application of a
lighted match, or the fall of a slate blown off into free air
from the roof of a house. Those, on the other hand, who
maintain the second branch of the alternative were called
and called themselves 'Libertarians' because they deemed
it possible, in spite of the assigned conditions, for the mind
not to will, or to will otherwise: it is not obliged to deliver
itself over to a bespoken decision. It is obvious that these
terms are the offspring of the dynamic conception of
causation, in which effect is supposed to be linked with
cause by some constraining objective tie, and not merely
in the subjective certitude of our expectations: 'Necessity'
denoting subjection to power; 'Liberty' immunity from
it, with ability to use one's own.
The words have evidently
come down to us from a date anterior to Hume's essay on
'necessary connection' or at least to the general acceptance
of its doctrine by the English empirical philosophers. They
are wholly out of place in a system which discharges all
idea of Force, which abolishes the distinction between
active and passive, and resolves Causality into constancy
of time-relation between successive phenomena: where
nothing has power to produce or to control another, and
each change must be content to play the part of sign to
what comes next, there is no room for measurements of
resistance or claims of freedom.
It is not therefore surprising that J. S. Mill should complain of this language,
as leaving a false impression of at least his own position
against the pretensions of free will. He does not mean to
tell you anything so disagreeable as that you are coerced
or constrained to this or that particular volition; not the
slightest force is put upon you; it is only that, as an
observer of the antecedents, he is sure that nothing else
will follow: 'whether it must do so,' he says, 'I acknowledge
myself to be entirely ignorant;' ... 'all I know is, that it
always does.' 1
This is Mill's "incubus" of determinism that Ted Honderich calls a "black thing"
1 Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, chap. xxvi. p. 501, 1865.
2 Mill's System of Logic, Bk. VI. ch. ii. § 2, 3rd ed., 1851.
3 Ibid., § 3,
(Study of Religion, Chapter II, Determinism and Free Will, p.198-201)
Martineau asks about the beginnings of voluntary actions, and like William James, ascribes them to accidents. Those accidents become experiences that are alternative possibilities for later actions, according to James. Alexander Bain explains the child's imitative tendency in terms of the Hartley notion of association. But Martineau (as does James) says random accidents are the origin and "initiatives from within" the agent, and Martineau develops a two-stage model, with spontaneity in the first stage and volition in the second, much like the James model and our Cogito model.
When once beyond these questionable beginnings of
voluntary action, Bain's analysis of its ulterior growth is in
a high degree acute and instructive; and needs only one
or two slight additions or modifications to account satisfactorily for the gradual extension of our control over
action and thought. One of these additions seems to be
required in his explanation of the imitative tendency, which
plays so important a part in all our training, and especially
in the acquisition of language. The theory is that the vocal
muscles, in spontaneous exercise, accidentally produce
a particular syllable, — as ba: the audible impression which
follows is thus associated with the muscular feeling involved
in the act, — an association which is strengthened perhaps
by the by-standers taking up the sound. The first time,
the connection may be as yet too feeble to be of much
avail; but after it has occurred a few times, it will become
firm; and then, if the sound falls upon the ear, it will excite the voice to reproduce it.' 1 This however is more than
will follow from the Hartleyan law; for that law provides
only for sequences of sensation, movement, and idea, in the
same order in which they originally occurred, and here the
order is inverted; and how little 'association' helps us to
this we may learn by simply trying to say the alphabet
backwards. Bain is not unconscious of this difficulty; but
seems to think that associations have only to be strong
enough, and they will read both ways.
1 Mental and Moral Science, 1868, book iv. ch, ii. § 6.
Any one who will
endeavour to reverse his most familiar actions, for instance,
to write or spell backwards, or conjugate a foreign verb
in the inverse order of tenses, numbers and persons, may
satisfy himself that this is an error. On supplying an
omitted link, we escape the difficulty. The infant, in common with many young animals, has a tendency to repeat,
immediately and over and over again, a movement once
performed. Whether we regard the tendency as original,
or say that the active energy having taken a particular
channel works in it more easily than in a changed one, the
fact is indisputable, and cannot be regarded as a case of
self-imitation, anticipating as it does all signs of any
mimetic propensity: one stroke of the little arm, one
spring of the legs, is followed by another; and so, a syllable, once flung out, is sure to come again with more or
less of iteration. Every natural cry indeed is in itself continuous, i.e. a prolonged vowel; and when it is intersected
by the appulses or pressure of parts muscularly agitated, —
lips, tongue, larynx, — the continuity is broken into repetition by consonantal arrest of its regular flow ; and thus are
the first syllables produced. But, in every repeated act
consisting of two terms, each type of term precedes the
other; so that in the series A, B, A, B, etc., A no more
takes the lead of B than B of A; if the muscular feeling
of the vocal organs becomes in association the prior of the
sound, so does the sound become prior to the muscular
feeling; and either may excite the other. The sound however may be made by others; and when the child, hearing
it thus, reproduces it, his lessons in imitation have begun.
Rewarded by pleasant signs of encouragement, and helped
by growing discoveries of what he can do with his machinery
of noise, they soon supply him with new acquisitions; in
gaining which, however, he could never reject his failures,
or even be conscious of them, without attention to his experiments, and a frequent renewal of his tentative efforts;
and these are already acts of intelligent will. There is a
comparison between the sound which he misses and that
which he makes, — a comparison which the phenomena cannot perform upon one another, but which he performs upon
the two as related; and there is a direction of effort, more
or less awkward, to avoid the one and make the other; a
direction, other than that of the spontaneity which it aims
to deflect.
There is an initiative from within which deals
with both the 'impression' from without and the memory
of the past, and uses them as materials for fresh attainments. In the case of speech, where the mechanism is too
remote or delicate for parent or nurse to reach, the training
of voluntary control must be mainly self-originated, though
invited. In other cases, as in learning to clap the hands,
the process may be aided for the child by guiding his arms,
provided you leave the active operation, as much as possible, to him, and only prevent its going astray; so as to
let the succession of muscular feelings fall into the right
track. I have said that, throughout these processes, the
initiative is from within; but, though this is essential, it is
not enough, to make them voluntary.
Mere spontaneity,
be it ever so 'random,' is also from within; and so are
routine movements of instinct on its one line; and Will
does not come into play till the attempt to control the spontaneity and make it do this and not that i.e. till there is
some selection^ and among possible strokes only one is a
hit: whoever can exclude the wrong and direct himself
upon the right exercises voluntary power.
I am the more anxious to emphasize this selective or
preferential function of will, because it is partly slurred,
partly denied by many modem psychologists, and the
means are thus lost of distinguishing instinct and habit
from volition.
In Bain's illustrations of our growth in
voluntary power, it is indeed indirectly implied: we learn,
he says, to 'single out' the proper movements, to 'determine specific actions,' to bring about a 'successful coincidence,' and from among 'ideal representations of all possible movements' to perform some desired one.1 But the
significance of this unavoidable language is so far from
fixing his attention, that he totident verbis excludes its
meaning from his definition of voluntary action; the
specialty of which, he tells us, is 'that the antecedent and
the consequent are conscious or mental states (coupled of
course with bodily states); when a sentient creature is
conscious of a pleasure or pain, real or ideal, and follows
that up with a conscious exercise of its muscles, we have
the fact of volition' :
'the two phenomena are successive
in time, the feeling first, the movement second.' 'Not unfrequently two, three, or four feelings occur together, conspiring or conflicting with one another ; and then the
action is not what was wont to follow one feeling by itself ^^
According to this account, an animal urged upon action
by any single feeling is exercising will, though there be no
'singling out,' no comparison, no exclusion, but only a
rush forward upon a straight line: in this limitation of it
Bain sees nothing to distinguish the case essentially from
those in which conflict and deliberation may be present
on the accident of there being more ends or means than
one, or only one; and if it be present, it is a mere intellectual judgment upon compared prior conditions, and
precedes the act of willing, which is confined to the effort
at execution.2
1 Mental and Moral Science, book iv. ch. xi. § 2.
2 Methods of Ethics, book i. ch. vi. p. 60, 3rd ed. 1884.
His opinion is sustained by the authority of Mr. Sidgwick,
who thinks that 'no clear line can be drawn' between
actions 'originated unconsciously,' i. e. from instinctive
impulse, and those which are 'conscious and voluntary."
And it is carried to its utmost extent by Mr. Hazard in
his treatise on 'Freedom of Mind in Willing'; which
abolishes all distinction, except in degree, between the
human and the brute faculties, and treats the instinct of
the beaver or the ant as a case of Will realizing a single
end through intelligence knowing a single means, while
our larger wants supply us with a plurality of ends, and
wider intelligence reveals to us a variety of means.3
In
conformity with this identification of all action with Will
and all skill with intellect, he dispenses with choice as an
element of volition: whether it is present or not depends
on the accident of there being more ends or means than
one, or only one; and if it be present, it is a mere intellectual judgment upon compared prior conditions, and
precedes the act of willing, which is confined to the effort
at execution.
3 Freedom of Mind in Willing, 1864, book i. ch. xi. pp. 101-103.
(Study of Religion, Chapter II, Determinism and Free Will, p.220-24)
I cannot reconcile myself to a use of language which
identifies phenomena so unlike as the blind instinct of the
caterpillar and the foreseeing and discriminating intellect
of man: and which separates processes so allied, nay
blended, as the moral choice of the higher principle of
action and the moral effort to give it effect. Though we
cannot plant the line exactly between animal skill and
human intelligence, and can mark the former only by
negative suggestion, it is impossible to doubt that the
exclusions thus made are in the main well founded ; and
that you cannot attribute to the insect, to the salmon, and
to the migratory bird, a knowledge of what they are about,
of the future, even posthumous, offspring they are providing
for, of the distant latitudes they seek, and the relation
between the ends they pursue and the methods adopted
for their attainment This absence of knowledge from
operations which we could perform only by means of it,
needs to be marked by some distinctive term ; and in
calling them instinctive as opposed to voluntary^ we mean
to claim for the latter precisely the elective and foreseeing
element which characterizes self-conscious agency. If a
preconceived end and a selection of means are not necessary to volition, then, within the scope of conscious nature,
there is no such thing as involuntary action; and, to find
it, we shall have to pass into the mechanism of the material
world. If we assume and take into consideration the
Divine Will, all movement is voluntary. If we omit this
consideration as transcendental, the question arises, how
are the movements taken up which it relinquishes? Is it
by one category, — like mechanicaly — covering all that is not
claimed by finite wills? — or by two categories, — the mechanicaly for insentient things, and the automatic, for simply
sentient; — leaving the voluntary for the more than sentient,
the self-conscious and reflectively intelligent? Surely this
triad is the only natural expression of differences which
insist on taking the lead in our view of the world under
its active and passive aspects. The last head alone gives
us a complete causality, carrying its own directing power.
The first gives us only imparted or transmitted changes
through passive media that only hand them on (as the
first law of motion itself asserts). The second gives us an
intermediate order of facts, viz. the latter half of causal
action without the first, — the conscious execution of an
absent directing Idea ; the idea being at once undeniable,
and yet not predicable of the creature itself, but left out
in the transcendental sphere, to be claimed by Nature or
by God. This classification, adopted by the common sense
of mankind and incorporated in current language, there
is nothing in our later knowledge to disturb ; and we may
rest content with the definitions of Locke and Edwards,
who both of them regard Choice as the characteristic of
Will.1
1 Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, B. II. ch. xxii,
§§ 5, 15 ; Edwards's Enquiry, Part I. § i.
(Study of Religion, Chapter II, Determinism and Free Will, p.225)
The central question is how the second-stage will determines which of the first-stage alternatives
By thus limiting the range of Will to the function of
determining an alternative we dispense with those earlier
stages of the Hartleyan psychology in which single lines
of associated feelings, ideas, and movements are formed
by closing up their links; and we take up the problem
at the point where first two co-present tendencies conflict.
There it is that the hinge of our whole question is found.
Prior to this, we may allow the law of association its claim
to connect sensation, conception, and movement, and to
make action dependent on suggested ideas: we are perfectly familiar with this process in the training of skill and
the formation of habit; — a process exactly the same as
that of learning by heart, and exemplified also in the
breaking-in of an animal. Here, in this passage from the
'automatic' to the 'secondarily automatic' or habitual,
there is one definitely given path to be traced and
smoothed, and no alternative presents itself except in the
form, at once universal and negative, of the aU else that
is to be excluded; so that the only entrance which Will
can make is in the shape of attention, warding off the
intrusion of lateral disturbance, and securing for each step
the determination of the next. In this function, the Will
only stands sentinel at the outposts to let the files be
rightly formed within, and does not mix with them and
direct them, so as to render them properly voluntary.
Even habitual actions can be regarded as voluntary because the Will can always veto them
And when once the connections have been strongly riveted,
we regard an habitual action as no less involuntary than
one that is instinctive; and though, in both cases, we may
hold the agent responsible for it, it is because, while not
issued by his will, it was preventible by it. If it conflicts
with some higher principle of action which ought to have
been present, the cohesive force of habit will not excuse
it; choice holding a perpetual veto against mechanism.
(Study of Religion, Chapter II, Determinism and Free Will, p.226)
Leaving these cases of transition from automatism to
habit, let us fix our attention on the point where the line
of usual association bifurcates into alternative possibilities.
Suppose that you suffer under some calumny, admitting
disproof; your natural course would be, to give the exculpating statement But if in doing so you must cast a
shadow on some fair name, or embitter some precious
friendship, your impulse will be arrested by a resistance
equally natural. Consider what takes place in deciding
this conflict; for a true analysis of the process gives the
solution of our problem. The elements which are present
are (i) two incompatible springs of action, the desire to
save your own credit, and the desire to save that of others;
and (2) what I will call your own Past i.e. a certain formed
system of habits and dispositions brought from your previous use of life. The former head comprises the motives
that are offered; the latter, the character that has come to
be. Do these settle the matter between them? Is the
character the arena on which the play, or rather the war, of
the motives fights itself out, and is the volition the flash of
the stronger sword? Or, inverting the parts of active and
passive, shall we say that the past character, instead of
lying still and being influenced by the triumphant motive,
comes in as umpire between them, giving the ascendency to
that which is the more consonant with itself? Or, is our
account of what is there still incomplete ; and must we
admit that, besides the motives felt, and besides our formed
habits or past self, there is also a present self that has a part
to perform in reference to both? Is there not a Causal
self, over and above the caused self, or rather the caused
state and contexts of the self left as a deposit from previous
behaviour? Is there not a judging self, that knows and
weighs the competing motives, over and above the agitated
self that feels them? The impulses are but phenomena of
your experience ; the formed habits are but a condition and
attitude of your consciousness, in virtue of which you feel
this more and that less: both are predicates of yourself as
subject, but are not yourself, and cannot be identified with
your personal agency. On the contrary, they are objects
of your contemplation; they lie before you to be known,
compared, estimated; they are your data; and you have
not to let them alone to work together as they may, but to
deal with them, as arbiter among their tendencies. In all
cases of self-consciousness and self-action there is necessarily this duplication of the Ego into the objective^ that contains the felt and predicated phenomena at which we look or
may look, and the subjective, that apprehends and uses them.
It is with the latter that the preferential power and personal
causality reside; it is this that we mean when we say that
'it rests with us to decide, that' our impulses are not to be
our masters, that 'guilty habit cannot be pleaded in excuse
for guilty act.' If this distinction be lost sight of, and the
word Self be used exclusively of the objective and phenomenal, the essence of the personality is erased, and nothing
remains, in the absence of any cause which can settle an
alternative, but to deny the alternative, contrive that one of
its terms shall slink away, and leave the field to a linear
series of jointed phenomena. No one denies that, with
alterations in their data, i.e. in the intensity of our impulses
and in the acquired cast of our habit and temper, the problems of right action become more or less difficult and
weighted by temptation and, in formerly treating of the
principles of Ethics, I have endeavoured to reduce these
variations to definite rules. But, short of mania, they do
not go so far as to usurp the whole causality for the mere
conditions and the deciding Ego of a rational self-consciousness will never allow that it is obliged to follow the
importunities of its feeling; will insist, on the contrary,
that it can command them.
I have mentioned that, while Bain rests the determinist
case on the necessary connection between motive and
volition, Mr. Shadworth Hodgson prefers to emphasize the
necessary connection between the formed character and the
volition : and I must not neglect the argfument of so acute
a metaphysician. He presents it as a comment on the
following words of a Libertarian writer : * I feel, when I
have done wrong, that I have done something / could have
avoided, — the accusation of conscience directed against that
which I mean when I speak of myself/ * Admirably stated/
says Mr. Hodgson, * first expressing our sense of freedom in
choosing, and then giving the interpretation of that sense,
viz. (in the case of wrong-doing), the moral reproach against
the Self as agent. Now I say that all the Determinist
theory is therein contained. The reproach is ultimately
against the agent [he means, as distingfuished from the act].
The agent gives rise to the act of choice, not the act to the
agent ; the act flows from, presupposes, and is evidence of,
the character of the agent We reproach ourselves for
being such agents as to choose the good so feebly, or the
bad so readily. We accept the responsibility of what we
are^ as evidenced by what we choose : and in this our moral
responsibility consists.* He then proceeds to argfue that if
you make the responsibility depend on a supposed power,
irrespective of character, to choose differently, you dissolve
the connection between act and character, and practically
treat the agent as characterless at the moment of action :
and then his choice expresses nothing, and is destitute of
moral quality. *The whole validity,' he concludes, *of
moral responsibility depends on the necessary connection
between the character of the agent and the character of his
act 1 '.
(Study of Religion, Chapter II, Determinism and Free Will, p.)
Martineau opposed the "Necessarians" who thought all "voluntary" action was necessarily and mechanically determined by the agent's character and motives.
If my past alone predetermines
my future, having settled both the motives that shall be
suggested and the reception which I shall give to them, I
in the present have no part or lot in the matter, except to
play the stepping-stone of transition from the one to the
other; and the doctrine which involves such an utter
collapse of the sense of personality appears to me self-condemned. Here it is that we touch the hinge of the
whole question : whether we are, or whether we have and
partly produce, the phenomena of our own life. If we are
nothing but the growing sum-total of them thus far, then
the next term in the series is given by the preceding. But
if, instead of our equivalents, they are only our predicates,
they express, without exhausting, an essence and power
behind them, which may betake itself to other modes of
manifestation. I submit that the consciousness of self, as
an identical personality, is the consciousness of such power ;
and that no one can sincerely deem himself incapable by
nature of controlling his impulses and modifying his
acquired character. That he is able to make them the
objects of examination, comparison, and estimate, places
him in a judicial and authoritative attitude towards them,
and would have no meaning if he were not to decide what
influence they should have. The casting vote and verdict
upon the offered motives is with him, and not with themselves; he is 'free' to say 'Yes' or 'No' to any of their
suggestions: they are the conditions of the act; he is its
Agent. In the typical case of inward conflict which I have
supposed, between your sensitiveness to unjust reproach
and your tenderness for others' reputation, you do not let
yourself sway to and fro with the varying fling of the
motives upon your character, like a floating log on an
advancing and retreating wave; but address yourself to an
active handling of their pretensions; and deciding that the
care for repute, however vehement, is lower than the sympathy, however calm, you force yourself to obey the better
claim. You yourself, as a personal centre of intelligence
and causality, are at the head of the transaction, and determine how it shall go; though doubtless what you have been
about in the past, and what you feel in the present, enter
subordinately into the problem as its avowed data or its
tacit aspects.
To the force of this inward assurance Professor Sidgwick,
though almost borne down by the arguments on the other
side, has put on record the following emphatic testimony : —
'This almost overwhelming cumulative proof seems,
however, more than balanced by a single argument on the
other side; the immediate affirmation of consciousness in
the moment of deliberate volition.'
'It is impossible for me
to think, at each moment, that my volition is completely
determined by my formed character and motives acting
upon it. The opposite conviction is so strong as to be
absolutely unshaken by the evidence brought against it.
I cannot believe it to be illusory. So far it is unlike the
erroneous intuitions which occur in the exercise of the
senses ; as, for instance, the mis-perceptions of sight or
hearing. For experience soon teaches me to regard these
as appearances whose suggestions are misleading ; but no
amount of experience of the sway of motives even tends to
make me distrust my intuitive consciousness that in resolving after deliberation I exercise free choice as to which of
the motives acting upon me shall prevail. Nothing short
of absolute proof that this consciousness is erroneous could
overcome the force with which it announces itself as certain^*.
Methods of Ethics, ch. v. § 3, p. 51, ist ed. 1874.
It is right to add that subsequent reflection seems to
have reduced this firm and sharp-cut judgment to a
more yielding condition; on its re-appearance in more
recent editions of the Methods of Ethics, it shows evident
symptoms of incipient melting away. But still, in the
third edition, it makes again a modest assertion of its
rights : * Certainly, in the case of actions in which I have
distinct consciousness of choosing between alternatives of
conduct, one of which I conceive as right or reasonable, I
find it impossible not to think that I can now choose to do
what I so conceive, however strong may be my inclination
to act unreasonably, and however uniformly I may have
yielded to such inclinations in the past ^ *.
Ibid. p. 64, 3rd ed. 1884.
It is not, however, to be supposed that the empirical
psychologists have not an account to give of this consciousness of elective power : and their exposition must
be compared with the foregoing. They all agree in dispensing with any contribution to the result from the present
selfy over and above what is furnished by the two other
factors ; and undertake to account for each volition from
the play of the motives upon the habits and dispositions
formed in the past. Of these conjoint conditions, either
may be announced as determining the volition : Mr. Shadworth Hodgson1 prefers to treat it as consequent upon the
character^ \ Bain, more in conformity with usage, regards
it as the resultant of the combinations of motives. Neither
has the least intention to ignore the unnamed condition;
and the different language merely indicates the element
ascendent, and tacitly endowed with activity, in the mind
of each.
See his letter in the Spectator newspaper, Jan. 25, 1879.
(Study of Religion, Chapter II, Psychology of Voluntary Action, p.231)
Martineau reviewed the positions of many of his contemporaries (e.g., Henry Sidgwick, Shadsworth Hodgson, Alexander Bain) on "voluntary" action. Following his description of his own position above, he quotes Henry Sidgwick, in his Method in Ethics, as supporting his view
"This almost overwhelming cumulative proof seems,
however, more than balanced by a single argument on the
other side; the immediate affirmation of consciousness in
the moment of deliberate volition. It is impossible for me
to think, at each moment, that my volition is completely
determined by my formed character and motives acting
upon it. The opposite conviction is so strong as to be
absolutely unshaken by the evidence brought against it.
I cannot believe it to be illusory. So far it is unlike the
erroneous intuitions which occur in the exercise of the
senses; as, for instance, the mis-perceptions of sight or
hearing. For experience soon teaches me to regard these
as appearances whose suggestions are misleading; but no
amount of experience of the sway of motives even tends to
make me distrust my intuitive consciousness that in resolving after deliberation I exercise free choice as to which of
the motives acting upon me shall prevail. Nothing short
of absolute proof that this consciousness is erroneous could
overcome the force with which it announces itself as certain."
(Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, ch. v. § 3, p. 51, 1st ed. 1874.)
By comparison, Shadsworth Hodgson thinks character determines the actions and Alexander Bain thinks the action is simply the resultant of the play of motives upon the habits and dispositions of the past.
Mr. Shadworth Hodgson prefers to treat it as consequent upon the
character. Bain, more in conformity with usage, regards
it as the resultant of the combinations of motives. Neither
has the least intention to ignore the unnamed condition;
and the different language merely indicates the element
ascendent, and tacitly endowed with activity, in the mind
of each. In bringing the case of Choice under the rule
that the strongest motive always prevails. Bain represents
the so-called chooser as passively at the mercy of the
objects that offer themselves; each has a certain attraction;
and that which has the greatest carries the day and gives
him his volition. When this happens at once it shows that
there is no approach to equality in the strength of the
attractions, but that one has a decisive preponderance.
When, on the other hand, there is an interval of suspense,
it is because the motives are nearly balanced and are
trying their strength till the weaker are driven from the
field; or else that, in view of the evils of precipitate action,
a 'deliberative veto is in exercise,' till the opposing solicitations have been sufficiently compared; when this arrest
is withdrawn, the volition rides in on the back of the
victorious motive. You may call this Self-determination
if you mean by Self 'only' what is resolvable into motive,
and consent to define it as the 'sum of the feelings' that
'impel the conduct, together with the various activities
impelled'; for thus you do but vary the phraseology, still
claiming the causality for the motives, though referring to
the particular motives of the present case only under cover
of the sum-total of motives called 'Self.'
But if, under
this word, you think of any entity that meddles with the
phenomena, or turns them into anything more than antecedents and sequents of the regular sort, and mingles with
them that 'mystical' fiction named 'Power,' you confuse
the phenomenon of volition by thrusting into it an illusory
element^ In this exposition, let us consider (i) the fundamental maxim that, among conflicting motives (defined as
'pleasures and pains in prospect'), the strongest must
prevail. If this proposition is to have any meaning, and
be susceptible of verification, there must be some common
measure of motives, enabling us to set them on a graduated
scale of strength, and say 'this is weaker than that, and
here is the weakest of all' Yet it is confessed that we
have no such measure; Bain himself saying that 'the only
test of strength of motive* is that the volition follows. That
it is so, you may readily convince yourself by trying to
arrange the motives which you have rejected in the order of
their relative strength; you will find it utterly impossible
to do so. Even kindred inducements that may come into
rivalry, a visit to a picture-gallery, and a skating-excursion,
and a ride on the downs, may prove incommensurable;
and when the range takes in quite dissimilar ends, addressing themselves to different parts of our nature, some
prudential, some sympathetic, some moral, the common
application to them of terms of quantity becomes simply
ridiculous. How am I to balance the 'attractions' of a
festive evening among friends in health against those of
the same hours given to a friend in dejection and sorrow?
or of attendance upon him in infectious fever against those
of security to my own life? or of a new carpet against
those of helping a church or an hospital into existence? I
might as well compare my sensibilities in eating a lobster-
salad and in reading an epic poem. The Will has to live
and move among objects which, in their pleasurable or
painful aspects, are perfectly heterogeneous, and no more
measure themselves by one common standard than light,
weight, and electricity by the thermometer. If it is said
that all these, in spite of their differences, have in this
respect the same feature, that they are susceptible of more
or less intensity; and that, through whatever channel they
may enter our consciousness, they will report themselves
there with corresponding degrees of excitement,it may
still be doubted whether we can tell, in the case of
different senses and affections, all susceptible of degrees
of stimulation, what excitements are equivalent or to what
extent they miss equivalence. But, waiving this doubt,
we may surely affirm that, in our inward conflicts, it is by
no means the motive most intensely felt and most exciting,
that wins our volition. Often a vehement passion may be
controlled by the mere tranquil memory of a resolve quite
distasteful to us at the moment. What else indeed do we
mean when we speak of the frequent opposition of inclination and duty? If therefore by 'strength of motive'
be meant its felt intensity, and, if it denotes a quality at
all, this is the only possible sense), the proposition that the
volition follows the strongest motive is false. If, as Bain
admits, the only test of greatest strength is in the victory,
we are simply landed on the tautology, that the prevailing
motive prevails.
(Study of Religion, Chapter II, Psychology of Voluntary Action, p.233)
Martineau attacks Bain's idea that a 'Self' is something mystical above and beyond a collection of motives
The account given of delayed choice I find unintelligible
on Bain's theory.
The suspense, he tells us, is evidence
that the opposite motives are nearly balanced ; and time is
occupied in trying their relative strength. How do they
manage this experiment?
What is going on during this pause ?
He does not reveal the secret.
It is a battle in the dark; or behind the scenes, as in the classic drama,
that
lets no horrors come upon the stage: all we know is that,
at last, the door is opened, and
the volition, stepping into
the daylight, reports which is the victor and which is the
slain.
I have often been conscious of incompatible motives,
but never of their behaving themselves in this way, and
presuming to settle their quarrels on my field and without
my intervention, and even to make me the prize for whose
captivity they fought. If there be several of them, have
they to try it all round, in a succession of single combats,
till the last survivor can go off with me unmolested ? That
the period of suspense should work itself out in this way
without betraying the transaction is inconceivable. But
Bain offers us an alternative explanation : it may be that
the time is spent in using judgment, instead of experimenting on strength: the 'deliberative veto' may be
applied to stay decision, until the several motives have
been surveyed, compared, and estimated at their value;
and then withdrawn, to let the winner have its way.
But
Who exercises and withdraws this veto?
Who compares
and appraises the clamorous impulses ? As there is no
^Self^ irresolvable into motive^ there is nothing but the
motives themselves to do the 'deliberation,' the 'veto,' the
'comparison,' and then put an end to it all. If it be said
that the 'Self' which deliberates is indeed a sum-total of
feelings, impulses, and acts, but those of the whole previous
life, and not the mere group of the immediate crisis, so that
it is the 'formed character' up to date which examines and
appreciates the solicitations of the moment; I reply with
two remarks:
(a) A sum-total of feelings, impulses, &c.
cannot deliberate, any more than each feeling and impulse
separately, but only a Mind that has them: nor is that
mind superseded by any particular condition or 'formed
character ' to which it may have been brought, so as to surrender to it the work of comparison and estimation. The
habits contracted in the past may improve or deteriorate
the mind's capacity for right judgment, but cannot take its
place.
(b) Deliberation as to an impending act assumes
that no one of the motives on the field is predetermined victor in virtue of its superior 'strength': for, if it
were so, the suspense on which we are insisting would
be illusory : in the state of character as defined by the past,
and the relative force of the motive, the conditions of the
volition are already complete. The very fact therefore that
we pause and compare implies that consciousness repudiates
the determinist assumption, and recognises a tribunal with
jurisdiction over the pleas of motive and habit, and em-
powered to open new lines, and set new precedents, of
Right.
In order to avoid recognising this personal causality,
Bain supplies yet another meaning of the word 'Self,'
besides that of the collection of *'motives,' and that of the
hitherto formed character. It sometimes is used to mark
my 'permanent interests' as distinguished from 'temporary
solicitations' : and 'self-determination' means no more than
that my idea of the former moves me more than my feeling
of the latter: but this in no wise disturbs the law of the
strongest or the necessary sequence of volition on motive,
by introducing any agency beyond these phenomena: it
simply classifies my motives using the word 'Self' as a
name for the 'ideal' ones. He adds that 'to neutralize, by
internal resources, the fleeting actualities of pleasure and
pain, is a great display of moral power.' Two brief comments comprise what I have to say on this phase of the
doctrine, {a) That 'Self' means something 'permanent'
as opposed to what is transient, there can be no doubt; and
therefore self-determination is certainly the ascendency of
the permanent. But permanent what? Is it merely the
more durable, that is, frequently recurrent, among the
phenomena, as contrasted with the fleeting and occasional?
Am I myself in my digestion, and not in my toothache?
By no means : the 'Self' is not some of our phenomena but
the Subject of them all: and it is the continuity and
identity of this subject that make 'permanence' predicable
of it, and not predicable of anything that happens in it: a
self constitutes a permanent: but a permanent order
repeated does not constitute a self. Self-determination
therefore is not determination of some phenomena by
others, but of phenomena by a subject, (b) So irresistibly
do we feel this that Bain himself cannot state his case
without confessing it. While reducing the whole inward
life, voluntary no less than involuntary, to a mere time-
order of sequence, and denouncing the words 'Will' and
'Power' as mischievous 'expletives,' serving as nests of
dynamic illusion, and fostering the idea of some 'mystical
or fictitious agency, other than the occurrence of the
antecedent phenomenon, he yet tells us that 'to neutralize,
by internal resources, the fleeting actualities of pleasure and
pain, is a great display of moral power.' What is 'moral
power,' if there be no such thing as power at all and the
word is a misleading 'pleonasm'? Who displays it? is
it the sequences? Who neutralizes the fleeting solicitations,
by command of 'internal resources'? Is it the ideas of
something less fleeting? or are these just the 'internal
resources' by means of which the thing is done? Who
then uses these means, finding them among his 'internal
resources'? The author has evidently slipped into
phraseology more sensible than his doctrine, and having
no intelligible meaning except on the assumption of that
'mystical agency' which he denies. And so does he again
when he says * The collective "I" or self can be nothing
different from the feelings, actions, intelligence, of the
individual,' If I am only a collection, I am a divided
aggregate : if I am an 'individual, I am a unit not divisible;
and the collection of feelings, &c. is not myself, but belongs
to myself, the many in the one.
(Study of Religion, Chapter II, Psychology of Voluntary Action, p.233-37)
Martineau finds Bain analyzing the "spontaneous" (Greek ἀυτόματον) element in "self-determination."
One more attempt to take its meaning out of the
phrase 'self-determination' is made by Bain. He tells us
that 'Spontaneity' is synonymous with it : that is, in com-
parison with action propelled or induced from without, any
that springs up of itself from within may be regarded as
'self-determined,' that is, functional to the nature of the
being and provided for out of its resources. When restricted
to the voluntary acts of human beings, the word would
denote the absence from them of any external pressure or
prompting by others: as when a person unsuspected comes
forward and confesses a past crime. Undoubtedly, both
words, 'spontaneity' and 'self-determination,' denote action
from within: but there is a difference between them which
Bain overlooks: spontaneity denotes action from within in
the absence of any counter forces or irrespective of them: self-determination, in their known presence and in spite of them.
The latter word is never used except to claim for the Ego a
jurisdiction over the solicitations to action whencesoever
presented; and we do not employ it to mark merely that
the agent has no accomplices in his inducements. In no
way can this term be appropriated by the Necessarian: it
expresses precisely the relation between the motives and the
personality which he desires to disprove.
I have mentioned that, while Bain rests the determinist
case on the necessary connection between motive and
volition, Mr. Shadworth Hodgson prefers to emphasize the
necessary connection between the formed character and the
volition : and I must not neglect the argument of so acute
a metaphysician.
He presents it as a comment on the
following words of a Libertarian writer: 'I feel, when I
have done wrong, that I have done something I could have
avoided, — the accusation of conscience directed against that
which I mean when I speak of myself.' Admirably stated,
says Mr. Hodgson, first expressing our sense of freedom in
choosing, and then giving the interpretation of that sense,
viz. (in the case of wrong-doing), the moral reproach against
the Self as agent. Now I say that all the Determinist [Martineau means acts as self-determined, not radical libertarian free, ed.]
theory is therein contained. The reproach is ultimately
against the agent [he means, as distinguished from the act].
The agent gives rise to the act of choice, not the act to the
agent; the act flows from, presupposes, and is evidence of,
the character of the agent. We reproach ourselves for
being such agents as to choose the good so feebly, or the
bad so readily. We accept the responsibility of what we
are as evidenced by what we choose: and in this our moral
responsibility consists. He then proceeds to argue that if
you make the responsibility depend on a supposed power,
irrespective of character, to choose differently, you dissolve
the connection between act and character, and practically
treat the agent as characterless at the moment of action :
and then his choice expresses nothing, and is destitute of
moral quality. 'The whole validity,' he concludes, 'of
moral responsibility depends on the necessary connection
between the character of the agent and the character of his
act
(Study of Religion, Chapter II, Psychology of Voluntary Action, p.237)
I understand this to mean that if the act were free and
wrong the reproach would be directed against it: but,
since it is the necessary result of the agents character, the
reproach is directed against himself It would draw
reproach, if free : it escapes it, through being necessary.
Reproach therefore goes only with freedom ; and could
not be transferred to the self but in the consciousness that
the self was free. How could we * reproach ourselves for
being such agents,' how * accept the responsibility of what
we arel if our * being such,* were not our own doing, but
were, like the immediate act, the inevitable fruit of the
retreating antecedents back to our nativity? Granting
that from the character as it is nothing but this act could
come, still, in upbraiding that character, I certainly exempt
it from a like necessity, and assume that I could have
determined it into a better form : else, I should as soon
feel compunction for a hump-back or a squint The
Determinist, if he cares for it, may have the act : for,
so much the more, in order to interpret the self-reproach,
must he leave free the character. It is the abuse of
a prior liberty that has brought us under the present
necessity.
And here it is well to observe the ambiguity that lurks
in the word * character.' In order to work the determinist
theory, that is, to refer the volition wholly to its antecedent
phenomenal conditions, it ought to mean my collection of
inward and outward habits gathered in the past : these it is
which are affirmed to be, under the offered motives, the
necessary determinants of my act. But these are not all
that we usually intend to cover by the word * Self I or the
word ^ character^ when employed as its equivalent: we
think, not merely of a manufactured Ego, the resultant of
its own experiences and therefore changing through their
course, but of a permanent self-identical Ego living through
all, responsible now for what it is because responsible all
through for what it does. And when we say that an act
gives evidence of the character, we mean, not that it is
retrospective and reveals the past and established habits,
but that it shows us the kind of use which the living Ego
makes of its freedom. If the act were perfectly fresh,
unencumbered by any antecedent acquired tendencies, it
would express one of the mind's preferences, and so far
tell us what it is and what it is not. The 'character' thus
reported to us includes the Will; and so, while determining
the act, leaves room for self-determination.
On the whole then, I submit, the empirical psychology
does not dispose of our consciousness of personal causation,
or succeed in reducing us to a theatre of felt antecedents
and sequents. There remains the indelible conviction that
we are not bound hand and foot by either our present
incentives or our own past : but that, drag as they may,
a power remains with us to make a new beginning along
another path than theirs. It is matter only that moves
out of the past: all mind acts for the future : and though
that future operates through the preconception of it which
is earlier than the act, and so might seem to conform to
the material order, yet, where two or more rival preconceptions enter the field together, they cannot compare
themselves inter se: they need and meet a superior: it
rests with the mind itself to decide. The decision will not
be unmotived for it will have its reasons. It will not be
unconformable to the characteristics of the mind, for it
will express its preferences. But none the less is it issued
by a free Cause that elects among the conditions, and is
not elected by them. For what can be more absurd than
to say, because an intelligent and moral agent is careful to
bring his actions into correspondence with the conditions
available for bettering the future, that they and not he must
be credited with the causation? If the conditions were
different, the decision would no longer be the same, precisely because the mind is free to appreciate its problem
and conform to its terms, by making the best of the possibilities it supplies.
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