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We find in the thought of our period a very striking development or change in regard to the problem of freedom. Beginning with a strictly positivist and naturalist belief in determinism, it concludes with a spiritualism or idealism which not only upholds freedom but goes further in its reaction against the determinist doctrines by maintaining contingency.
Taine and Renan both express the initial attitude, a firm belief in determinism, but it is most clear and rigid in the work of Taine. His whole philosophy is hostile to any belief in freedom. The strictly positivist, empiricist and naturalist tone of his thought combined with the powerful influence of Spinoza's system to produce in him a firm belief in necessity—a necessity which, as we have seen, was severely rational and of the type seen in mathematics and in logic. Although it must also be admitted that in this view of change and development Taine was partly influenced by the Hegelian philosophy, yet his formulations were far more precise and mathematical than those of the German thinker.
We have, in considering his attitude to science, seen the tenacious manner in which he clings to his dogma of causality or universal necessity. All living things, man included, are held in the firm grip of "the steel pincers of necessity." Every fact and every law in the universe has its raison explicative, as Taine styles it. He quotes with approval, in his treatment of this question at the close of his work De l'Intelligence, the words of the great scientist and positivist Claude Bernard: "Il y a un déterminisme absolu, dans les conditions d'existence des phénomènes naturels, aussi bien pour les corps vivants que pour les corps bruts."* In Taine and the school of scientists like Bernard, whose opinions on this matter he voices, no room is accorded to freedom.
[Footnote * : De l'Intelligence, vol. 2, p. 480, the quotation from Bernard is to be found in his Introduction à l'Etude de la Médecine expérimentale, p. 115.]
Taine's belief in universal necessity and his naturalistic outlook led him to regard man from the physical standpoint as a mechanism, from the mental point of view a theorem. Vice and virtue are, to quote his own words, "products just as vitriol or sugar." This remark having appeared to many thinkers a scandalous assertion, Taine explained in an article contributed to the Journal des Débats† that he did not mean to say that vice and virtue were, like vitriol or sugar, chemical but they are nevertheless products, moral products, which moral elements bring into being by their assemblage. And, he argues, just as it is necessary in order to make vitriol to know the chemical elements which go to its composition, so in order to create in man the hatred of a lie it is useful to search for the psychological elements which, by their union, produce truthfulness.
[Footnote † : On December 19th, 1872.]
Even this explanation of his position, however, did not prevent the assertion being made that such a view entirely does away with all question of moral responsibility. To this criticism Taine objected. "It does not involve moral indifference. We do not excuse a wicked man because we have explained to ourselves the causes of his wickedness. One can be determinist with Leibnitz and nevertheless admit with Leibnitz that man is responsible —that is to say, that the dishonest man is worthy of blame, of censure and punishment, while the honest man is worthy of praise, respect and reward."
In one of his Essais Taine further argued in defence of his doctrine of universal determination that since WE ourselves are determined—that is to say, since there is a psychological determinism as well as a physical determinism—we do not feel the restriction which this determinism implies, we have the illusion of freedom and act just as if we were free. To this Fouillée replied that the value of Taine's argument was equal to that of a man who might say, "Because I am asleep, all of me, all my powers and faculties, therefore I am in a state where I am perfectly free and responsible." Certainly Taine's remark that we are determined had nothing in common with the belief in that true determinism, which is equally true freedom, since it is self-determination. Taine professed no such doctrine, and rested in a purely naturalistic fatalism, built upon formulæ of geometry and logic, in abstraction from the actual living and acting of the soul, and this dogma of determinism, to which he clung so dearly, colours his view of ethics and of history. For Taine, "the World is a living geometry" and "man is a theorem that walks."
Like Taine, Renan set out from the belief in universal causation, but he employed the conception not so much in a warfare against man's freedom of action as against the theologians' belief in miracle and the supernatural. There is none of Taine's rigour and preciseness in Renan, and it is difficult to grasp his real attitude to the problem of freedom. If he ever had one, may be doubted. The blending of viewpoints, the paradox so characteristic of him, seems apparent even in this question.
His intense humanism prompted him to remarks in praise of freedom, and he seems to have recognised in man a certain power of freedom; but in view of his belief in universal cause he is careful to qualify this. Further, his intensely religious mind remained in love with the doctrine of divine guidance which is characteristic of Christian and most religious thought. Although Renan left the Church, this belief never left Renan. He sees God working out an eternal purpose in history, and this he never reconciled with the problem of man's free will. The humanist in him could remark that the one object of life is the development of the mind, and the first condition for this is freedom. Here he appears to have in view freedom from political and religious restrictions. He is thinking of the educational problem. His own attitude to the ultimate question of freedom in itself, as opposed to determinism, is best expressed in his Examen d'une Conscience philosophique. He there shows that the universe is the result of a lengthy development, the. beginnings of which we do not know. "In the innumerable links of that chain," says Renan, "we find not one free act before the appearance of man, or, if you like, living beings." With man, however, freedom comes into the scheme of things. A free cause is seen employing the forces of nature for willed ends. Yet this is but nature itself blossoming to self-consciousness; this free cause emanates from nature itself. There is no rude break between man with his free power and unconscious nature. Both are interconnected. Freedom is indeed the appearance of something "new," but it is not, insists Renan, something divorced from what has gone before.
We see in Renan a rejection of the severely deterministic doctrine of Taine, but it is by no means a complete rejection or refutation of it. Renan adheres largely to the scientific and positivist attitude which is such a feature of Taine's work. His humanism, however, recognises the inadequacy of such doctrines and compels him to speak of freedom as a human factor, and he thus brings us a step nearer to the development of the case for freedom put forward so strongly by Cournot and Renouvier and by the neo-spiritualists.