--- type: article status: Published slug: "schopenhauer-freedom-of-will" title: "On the Freedom of the Will" author: "Arthur Schopenhauer" tradition: "european" language: "de" genre: "philosophical essay" period: "1839" source_url: "https://archive.org/details/arthurschopenha07schouoft" certainty: observed source: "https://archive.org/details/arthurschopenha07schouoft" --- # On the Freedom of the Will ## Original ### Chapter I, 1 **Preisschrift** über **die Freiheit des Willens**, gekrönt von der Königlich Norwegischen Societät der Wissenschaften, zu Drontheim, am 26. Januar 1839. **Motto:** *La liberté est un mystère.* Die von der Königl. Societät aufgestellte Frage lautet: *Num liberum hominum arbitrium e sui ipsius conscientia demonstrari potest?* **Verdeutscht: „Läßt die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens sich aus dem Selbstbewußtsein beweisen?“** **I. Begriffsbestimmungen.** Bei einer so wichtigen, ernsten und schwierigen Frage, die im wesentlichen mit einem Hauptproblem der gesamten Philosophie mittlerer und neuerer Zeit zusammenfällt, ist große Genauigkeit und daher eine Analyse der in der Frage vorkommenden Hauptbegriffe gewiß an ihrer Stelle. 1. **Was heißt Freiheit?** Dieser Begriff ist, genau betrachtet, ein **negativer**. Wir denken durch ihn nur die Abwesenheit alles Hindernden und Hemmenden: dieses hingegen muß, als Kraft äußernd, ein Positives sein. Der möglichen Beschaffenheit dieses Hemmenden entsprechend hat der Begriff drei sehr verschiedene Unterarten: physische, intellektuelle und moralische Freiheit. a) **Physische Freiheit** ist die Abwesenheit der **materiellen** Hindernisse jeder Art. Daher sagen wir: freier Himmel, freie Aussicht, freie Luft, freies Feld, ein freier Platz, freie Wärme (die nicht chemisch gebunden ist), freie Elektrizität, freier Lauf des Stroms, wo er nicht mehr durch Berge oder Schleusen gehemmt ist u. s. w. Selbst freie Wohnung, freie Kost, freie Presse, postfreier Brief, bezeichnet die Abwesenheit der lästigen Bedingungen, welche, als Hindernisse des Genusses, solchen Dingen anzuhängen pflegen. Am häufigsten aber ist in unserm Denken der Begriff der Freiheit das Prädikat animalischer Wesen, deren Eigentümliches ist, daß ihre Bewegungen von **ihrem Willen** ausgehen, willkürlich sind und demnach alsdann **frei** genannt werden, wann kein materielles Hindernis dies unmöglich macht. Da nun diese Hindernisse sehr verschiedener Art sein können, das durch sie Gehinderte aber stets der Wille ist; so faßt man, der Einfachheit halber, den Begriff lieber von der positiven Seite, und denkt dadurch alles, was sich allein durch seinen Willen bewegt, oder allein aus seinem Willen handelt: welche Umwendung des Begriffs im wesentlichen nichts ändert. Demnach werden, in dieser physischen Bedeutung des Begriffs der Freiheit, Tiere und Menschen dann **frei** genannt, wann weder Bande, noch Kerker, noch Lähmung, also überhaupt kein **physisches, materielles** Hindernis ihre Handlungen hemmt, sondern diese ihrem **Willen** gemäß vor sich gehen. Diese **physische Bedeutung** des Begriffs der Freiheit, und besonders als Prädikat animalischer Wesen, ist die ursprüngliche, unmittelbare und daher allerhäufigste, in welcher er ebendeshalb auch keinem Zweifel oder Kontrovers unterworfen ist, sondern seine Realität stets durch die Erfahrung beglaubigen kann. Denn sobald ein animalisches Wesen nur aus seinem Willen handelt, ist es, in dieser Bedeutung, **frei**: wobei keine Rücksicht darauf genommen wird, was etwan auf seinen Willen selbst Einfluß haben mag. Denn nur auf das **Können**, d. h. eben auf die Abwesenheit **physischer** Hindernisse seiner Aktionen, bezieht sich der Begriff der Freiheit, in dieser seiner ursprünglichen, unmittelbaren und daher populären Bedeutung. Daher sagt man: frei ist der Vogel in der Luft, das Wild im Walde; frei ist der Mensch von Natur; nur der Freie ist glücklich. Auch ein Volk nennt man frei, und versteht darunter, daß es allein nach Gesetzen regiert wird, diese Gesetze aber selbst gegeben hat: denn alsdann befolgt es überall nur seinen eigenen Willen. Die politische Freiheit ist demnach der physischen beizuzählen. Sobald wir aber von dieser **physischen** Freiheit abgehen und die zwei andern Arten derselben betrachten, haben wir es nicht mehr mit dem populären, sondern mit einem **philosophischen** Sinne des Begriffs zu thun, der bekanntlich vielen Schwierigkeiten den Weg öffnet. Er zerfällt in zwei gänzlich verschiedene Arten: die intellektuelle und die moralische Freiheit. b) Die **intellektuelle Freiheit**, *τὸ ἑκούσιον καὶ ἀκούσιον κατὰ διάνοιαν* bei Aristoteles, wird hier bloß zum Behuf der Vollständigkeit der Begriffseinteilung in Betracht gezogen: ich erlaube mir daher ihre Erörterung hinauszusetzen bis ganz ans Ende dieser Abhandlung, als wo die in ihr zu gebrauchenden Begriffe schon im Vorhergegangenen ihre Erklärung gefunden haben werden, so daß sie dann in der Kürze wird abgehandelt werden können. In der Einteilung aber mußte sie, als der physischen Freiheit zunächst verwandt, ihre Stelle neben dieser haben. c) Ich wende mich also gleich zur dritten Art, zur **moralischen Freiheit**, als welche eigentlich das *liberum arbitrium* ist, von dem die Frage der königl. Societät redet. ### Chapter I, 2 Dieser Begriff knüpft sich an den der physischen Freiheit von einer Seite, die auch seine, notwendig viel spätere, Entstehung begreiflich macht. Die physische Freiheit bezieht sich, wie gesagt, nur auf materielle Hindernisse, bei deren Abwesenheit sie sogleich da ist. Nun aber bemerkte man, in manchen Fällen, daß ein Mensch, ohne durch materielle Hindernisse gehemmt zu sein, durch bloße Motive, wie etwan Drohungen, Versprechungen, Gefahren u. dgl., abgehalten wurde zu handeln, wie es außerdem gewiß seinem Willen gemäß gewesen sein würde. Man warf daher die Frage auf, ob ein solcher Mensch noch frei gewesen wäre? oder ob wirklich ein starkes Gegenmotiv die dem eigentlichen Willen gemäße Handlung ebenso hemmen und unmöglich machen könne, wie ein physisches Hindernis? Die Antwort darauf konnte dem gesunden Verstande nicht schwer werden: daß nämlich niemals ein Motiv so wirken könne, wie ein physisches Hindernis; indem dieses leicht die menschlichen Körperkräfte überhaupt unbedingt übersteige, hingegen ein Motiv nie an sich selbst unwiderstehlich sein, nie eine unbedingte Gewalt haben, sondern immer noch möglicherweise durch ein **stärkeres Gegenmotiv** überwogen werden könne, wenn nur ein solches vorhanden und der im individuellen Fall gegebene Mensch durch dasselbe bestimmbar wäre; wie wir denn auch häufig sehen, daß sogar das gemeinhin stärkste aller Motive, die Erhaltung des Lebens, doch überwogen wird von andern Motiven: z. B. beim Selbstmord und bei Aufopferung des Lebens für andere, für Meinungen und für mancherlei Interessen; und umgekehrt, daß alle Grade der ausgesuchtesten Marter auf der Folterbank bisweilen überwunden worden sind von dem bloßen Gedanken, daß sonst das Leben verloren gehe. Wenn aber auch hieraus erhellte, daß die Motive keinen rein objektiven und absoluten Zwang mit sich führen, so konnte ihnen doch ein subjektiver und relativer, nämlich für die Person des Beteiligten, zustehen; welches im Resultat dasselbe war. Daher blieb die Frage: ist der Wille selbst frei? — Hier war nun also der Begriff der Freiheit, den man bis dahin nur in Bezug auf das **Können** gedacht hatte, in Beziehung auf das **Wollen** gesetzt worden, und das Problem entstanden, ob denn das Wollen selbst **frei** wäre. Aber diese Verbindung mit dem **Wollen** einzugehen, zeigt, bei näherer Betrachtung, der ursprüngliche, rein empirische und daher populäre Begriff von Freiheit sich unfähig. Denn nach diesem bedeutet „**frei**“ — „dem eigenen Willen gemäß“: frägt man nun, ob der Wille selbst frei sei; so frägt man, ob der Wille sich selber gemäß sei: was sich zwar von selbst versteht, womit aber auch nichts gesagt ist. Dem empirischen Begriff der Freiheit zufolge heißt es: „Frei bin ich, wenn ich **thun** kann, was ich **will**“: und durch das „was ich will“ ist da schon die Freiheit entschieden. Jetzt aber, da wir nach der Freiheit des **Wollens** selbst fragen, würde demgemäß diese Frage sich so stellen: „Kannst du auch **wollen**, was du willst?“ — welches herauskommt, als ob das Wollen noch von einem andern, hinter ihm liegenden Wollen abhinge. Und gesetzt, diese Frage würde bejaht; so entstände alsbald die zweite: „kannst du auch wollen, was du wollen willst?“ und so würde es ins Unendliche höher hinaufgeschoben werden, indem wir immer ein Wollen von einem früheren, oder tiefer liegenden, abhängig dächten, und vergeblich strebten, auf diesem Wege zuletzt eines zu erreichen, welches wir als von gar nichts abhängig denken und annehmen müßten. Wollten wir aber ein solches annehmen; so könnten wir ebensogut das erste, als das beliebig letzte dazu nehmen, wodurch denn aber die Frage auf die ganz einfache „kannst du wollen?“ zurückgeführt würde. Ob aber die bloße Bejahung dieser Frage die Freiheit des Wollens entscheidet, ist was man wissen wollte, und bleibt unerledigt. Der ursprüngliche, empirische, vom Thun hergenommene Begriff der Freiheit weigert sich also, eine direkte Verbindung mit dem des Willens einzugehen. Dieserhalb mußte man, um dennoch den Begriff der Freiheit auf den Willen anwenden zu können, ihn dadurch modifizieren, daß man ihn abstrakter faßte. Dies geschah, indem man durch den Begriff der **Freiheit** nur im allgemeinen die Abwesenheit aller **Notwendigkeit** dachte. Hiebei behält der Begriff den **negativen** Charakter, den ich ihm gleich anfangs zuerkannt hatte. Zunächst wäre demnach der Begriff der **Notwendigkeit**, als der jenem **negativen** Bedeutung gebende **positive** Begriff, zu erörtern. Wir fragen also: was heißt **notwendig**? Die gewöhnliche Erklärung, „notwendig ist, dessen Gegenteil unmöglich, oder was nicht anders sein kann“, — ist eine bloße Worterklärung, eine Umschreibung des Begriffs, die unsere Einsicht nicht vermehrt. Als die Realerklärung aber stelle ich diese auf: **notwendig ist, was aus einem gegebenen zureichenden Grunde folgt**: welcher Satz, wie jede richtige Definition, sich auch umkehren läßt. Je nachdem nun dieser zureichende Grund ein logischer, oder ein mathematischer, oder ein physischer, genannt Ursache, ist, wird die **Notwendigkeit** eine logische (wie die der Konklusion, wenn die Prämissen gegeben sind), eine mathematische (z. B. die Gleichheit der Seiten des Dreiecks, wenn die Winkel gleich sind), oder eine physische, reale (wie der Eintritt der Wirkung, sobald die Ursache da ist) sein: immer aber hängt sie, mit gleicher Strenge, der Folge an, wenn der Grund gegeben ist. Nur sofern wir etwas als Folge aus einem gegebenen Grunde begreifen, erkennen wir es als notwendig, und umgekehrt, sobald wir etwas als Folge eines zureichenden Grundes erkennen, sehen wir ein, daß es notwendig ist: denn alle Gründe sind zwingend. Diese Realerklärung ist so adäquat und erschöpfend, daß Notwendigkeit und Folge aus einem gegebenen zureichenden Grunde Wechselbegriffe sind, d. h. überall der eine an die Stelle des andern gesetzt werden kann∗). — Demnach wäre Abwesenheit der Notwendigkeit identisch mit Abwesenheit eines bestimmenden zureichenden Grundes. Als das Gegenteil des **Notwendigen** wird jedoch das **Zufällige** gedacht; was hiemit nicht streitet. Nämlich jedes Zufällige ist nur **relativ** ein solches. Denn in der realen Welt, wo allein das Zufällige anzutreffen, ist jede Begebenheit **notwendig**, in Bezug auf ihre Ursache: hingegen in Bezug auf alles übrige, womit sie etwan in Raum und Zeit zusammentrifft, ist sie **zufällig**. Nun müßte aber das Freie, da Abwesenheit der Notwendigkeit sein Merkmal ist, das schlechthin von gar keiner Ursache Abhängige sein, mithin definiert werden als das **absolut Zufällige**: ein höchst problematischer Begriff, dessen Denkbarkeit ich nicht verbürge, der jedoch sonderbarerweise mit dem der **Freiheit** zusammentrifft. Jedenfalls bleibt das **Freie** das in keiner Beziehung Notwendige, welches heißt von keinem Grunde Abhängige. Dieser Begriff nun, angewandt auf den Willen des Menschen, würde besagen, daß ein individueller Wille in seinen Aeußerungen (Willensakten) nicht durch Ursachen, oder zureichende Gründe überhaupt, bestimmt würde; da außerdem, weil die Folge aus einem gegebenen Grunde (welcher Art dieser auch sei) allemal **notwendig** ist, seine Akte nicht frei, sondern notwendig wären. Hierauf beruht **Kants** Definition, nach welcher Freiheit das Vermögen ist, eine Reihe von Veränderungen **von selbst** anzufangen. Denn dies „von selbst“ heißt, auf seine wahre Bedeutung zurückgeführt, „ohne vorhergegangene Ursache“: dies aber ist identisch mit „ohne Notwendigkeit“. So daß, wenngleich jene Definition dem Begriff der Freiheit den Anschein gibt, als wäre er ein positiver, bei näherer Betrachtung doch seine negative Natur wieder hervortritt. — Ein freier Wille also wäre ein solcher, der nicht durch Gründe, — und da jedes ein anderes Bestimmende ein Grund, bei realen Dingen ein Realgrund, d. i. Ursache, sein muß, — ein solcher, der durch gar nichts bestimmt würde; dessen einzelne Aeußerungen (Willensakte) also schlechthin und ganz ursprünglich aus ihm selbst hervorgingen, ohne durch vorhergängige Bedingungen notwendig herbeigeführt, also auch ohne durch irgend etwas, einer Regel gemäß, bestimmt zu sein. Bei diesem Begriff geht das deutliche Denken uns deshalb aus, weil der Satz vom Grunde, in allen seinen Bedeutungen, die wesentliche Form unsers gesamten Erkenntnisvermögens ist, hier aber aufgegeben werden soll. Inzwischen fehlt es auch für diesen Begriff nicht an einem *terminus technicus*: er heißt *liberum arbitrium indifferentiae*. Dieser Begriff ist übrigens der einzige deutlich bestimmte, feste und entschiedene von dem, was Willensfreiheit genannt wird; daher man sich von ihm nicht entfernen kann, ohne in schwankende, nebelichte Erklärungen, hinter denen sich zaudernde Halbheit verbirgt, zu geraten: wie wenn von Gründen geredet wird, die ihre Folgen nicht notwendig herbeiführen. Jede Folge aus einem Grunde ist notwendig, und jede Notwendigkeit ist Folge aus einem Grunde. Aus der Annahme eines solchen *liberi arbitrii indifferentiae* ist die nächste, diesen Begriff selbst charakterisierende Folge und daher als sein Merkmal festzustellen, daß einem damit begabten menschlichen Individuo, unter gegebenen, ganz individuell und durchgängig bestimmten äußern Umständen, zwei einander diametral entgegengesetzte Handlungen gleich möglich sind. ∗) Man findet die Erörterung des Begriffes der Notwendigkeit in meiner Abhandlung über den Satz vom Grunde § 49, S. 184 f. dieser Ausgabe. ### Chapter I, 3 2. **Was heißt Selbstbewußtsein?** Antwort: das Bewußtsein des **eigenen Selbst**, im Gegensatz des Bewußtseins **anderer Dinge**, welches letztere das Erkenntnisvermögen ist. Dieses nun enthält zwar, ehe noch jene anderen Dinge darin vorkommen, gewisse Formen der Art und Weise dieses Vorkommens, welche demnach Bedingungen der Möglichkeit ihres objektiven Daseins, d. h. ihres Daseins als Objekte für uns, sind: dergleichen sind bekanntlich Zeit, Raum, Kausalität. Obgleich nun diese Formen des Erkennens in uns selbst liegen; so ist dies doch nur zu dem Behuf, daß wir uns **anderer Dinge** als solcher bewußt werden können und in durchgängiger Beziehung auf diese: daher wir jene Formen, wenn sie gleich in uns liegen, nicht als zum **Selbstbewußtsein** gehörig anzusehen haben, vielmehr als das **Bewußtsein anderer Dinge**, d. i. die objektive Erkenntnis, möglich machend. Ferner werde ich nicht etwan durch den Doppelsinn des in der Aufgabe gebrauchten Wortes *conscientia* mich verleiten lassen, die unter dem Namen des Gewissens, auch wohl der praktischen Vernunft, mit ihren von **Kant** behaupteten kategorischen Imperativen, bekannten moralischen Regungen des Menschen zum Selbstbewußtsein zu ziehen; teils weil solche erst infolge der Erfahrung und Reflexion, also infolge des Bewußtseins anderer Dinge, eintreten, teils weil die Grenzlinie zwischen dem, was in ihnen der menschlichen Natur ursprünglich und eigen angehört, und dem, was moralische und religiöse Bildung hinzufügt, noch nicht scharf und unwidersprechlich gezogen ist. Zudem es auch wohl nicht die Absicht der königlichen Societät sein kann, durch Hineinziehung des Gewissens in das Selbstbewußtsein, die Frage auf den Boden der Moral hinübergespielt und nun **Kants** moralischen Beweis, oder vielmehr Postulat, der Freiheit aus dem *a priori* bewußten Moralgesetze, vermöge des Schlusses „du kannst, weil du sollst“, wiederholt zu sehn. Aus dem Gesagten erhellt, daß von unserm gesamten Bewußtsein überhaupt der bei weitem größte Teil nicht das **Selbstbewußtsein**, sondern das **Bewußtsein anderer Dinge**, oder das Erkenntnisvermögen, ist. Dieses ist, mit allen seinen Kräften, nach außen gerichtet und ist der Schauplatz (ja, von einem tiefern Forschungspunkte aus, die Bedingung) der realen Außenwelt, gegen die es sich zunächst anschaulich auffassend verhält und nachher das auf diesem Wege Gewonnene, gleichsam ruminierend, zu Begriffen verarbeitet, in deren endlosen, mit Hilfe der Worte vollzogenen Kombinationen das **Denken** besteht. — Also allererst was wir nach Abzug dieses bei weitem allergrößten Teiles unsers gesamten Bewußtseins übrig behalten, wäre das **Selbstbewußtsein**. Wir übersehen schon von hier, daß der Reichtum desselben nicht groß sein kann: daher, wenn die nachgesuchten Data zum Beweise der Willensfreiheit in demselben wirklich liegen sollten, wir hoffen dürfen, daß sie uns nicht entgehn werden. Als das Organ des Selbstbewußtseins hat man auch einen **innern Sinn**∗) aufgestellt, der jedoch mehr im bildlichen, als im eigentlichen Verstande zu nehmen ist: denn das Selbstbewußtsein ist unmittelbar. Wie dem auch sei, so ist unsere nächste Frage: was enthält nun das Selbstbewußtsein? oder: wie wird der Mensch sich seines eigenen Selbsts unmittelbar bewußt? Antwort: durchaus als eines **Wollenden**. Jeder wird, bei Beobachtung des eigenen Selbstbewußtseins bald gewahr werden, daß sein Gegenstand allezeit das eigene Wollen ist. Hierunter hat man aber freilich nicht bloß die entschiedenen, sofort zur That werdenden Willensakte und die förmlichen Entschlüsse, nebst den aus ihnen hervorgehenden Handlungen zu verstehen; sondern wer nur irgend das Wesentliche, auch unter verschiedenen Modifikationen des Grades und der Art, festzuhalten vermag, wird keinen Anstand nehmen, auch alles Begehren, Streben, Wünschen, Verlangen, Sehnen, Hoffen, Lieben, Freuen, Jubeln u. dgl., nicht weniger, als Nichtwollen oder Widerstreben, alles Verabscheuen, Fliehen, Fürchten, Zürnen, Hassen, Trauern, Schmerzleiden, kurz alle Affekte und Leidenschaften, den Aeußerungen des Wollens beizuzählen; da diese Affekte und Leidenschaften nur mehr oder minder schwache oder starke, bald heftige und stürmische, bald leise Bewegungen des entweder gehemmten, oder losgelassenen, befriedigten, oder unbefriedigten eigenen Willens sind, und sich alle auf Erreichen oder Verfehlen des Gewollten, und Erdulden oder Ueberwinden des Verabscheuten, in mannigfaltigen Wendungen, beziehen: sie sind also entschiedene Affektionen desselben Willens, der in den Entschlüssen und Handlungen thätig ist∗). Sogar aber gehört eben dahin das, was man Gefühle der Lust und Unlust nennt: diese sind zwar in großer Mannigfaltigkeit von Graden und Arten vorhanden, lassen sich aber doch allemal zurückführen auf begehrende, oder verabscheuende Affektionen, also auf den als befriedigt, oder unbefriedigt, gehemmt, oder losgelassen sich seiner bewußt werdenden Willen selbst: ja, dieses erstreckt sich bis auf die körperlichen, angenehmen, oder schmerzlichen, und alle zwischen diesen beiden liegenden zahllosen Empfindungen; da das Wesen aller dieser Affektionen darin besteht, daß sie als ein dem Willen Gemäßes, oder ihm Widerwärtiges, unmittelbar ins Selbstbewußtsein treten. Des eigenen Leibes ist man sogar, genau betrachtet, sich unmittelbar nur bewußt als des nach außen wirkenden Organs des Willens und des Sitzes der Empfänglichkeit für angenehme, oder schmerzliche Empfindungen, welche aber selbst, wie soeben gesagt, auf ganz unmittelbare Affektionen des Willens, die ihm entweder gemäß, oder widrig sind, zurücklaufen. Wir mögen übrigens diese bloßen Gefühle der Lust oder Unlust mit einrechnen oder nicht; jedenfalls finden wir, daß alle jene Bewegungen des Willens, jenes wechselnde Wollen und Nichtwollen, welches, in seinem beständigen Ebben und Fluten, den alleinigen Gegenstand des Selbstbewußtseins, oder, wenn man will, des innern Sinnes ausmacht, in durchgängiger und von allen Seiten anerkannter Beziehung steht zu dem in der Außenwelt Wahrgenommenen und Erkannten. Dieses hingegen liegt, wie gesagt, nicht mehr im Bereich des unmittelbaren **Selbstbewußtseins**, an dessen Grenze also, wo es an das Gebiet des **Bewußtseins anderer Dinge** stößt, wir angelangt sind, sobald wir die Außenwelt berühren. Die in dieser wahrgenommenen Gegenstände sind aber der Stoff und der Anlaß aller jener Bewegungen und Akte des Willens. Man wird dies nicht als eine *petitio principii* auslegen: denn daß unser Wollen stets äußere Objekte zum Gegenstande hat, auf die es gerichtet ist, um die es sich dreht und die als Motive es wenigstens veranlassen, kann keiner in Abrede stellen; da er sonst einen von der Außenwelt völlig abgeschlossenen und im finstern Innern des Selbstbewußtseins eingesperrten Willen übrig behielte. Bloß die Notwendigkeit, mit der jene in der Außenwelt gelegenen Dinge die Akte des Willens bestimmen, ist uns für jetzt noch problematisch. ∗) Er findet sich schon beim Cicero als *tactus interior*: *Acad. quaest., IV, 7.* Deutlicher beim Augustin, *De lib. arb., II, 3 sqq.* Dann bei Cartes: *Princ. phil., IV, 190*; und ganz ausgeführt bei Locke. ∗) Es ist sehr beachtenswert, daß schon der Kirchenvater **Augustinus** dies vollkommen erkannt hat, während so viele neuere, mit ihrem angeblichen „Gefühlsvermögen“, es nicht einsehen. Nämlich *De civit. Dei, Lib. XIV, c. 6*, redet er von den *affectionibus animi*, welche er, im vorhergehenden Buche, unter vier Kategorien: *cupiditas, timor, laetitia, tristitia*, gebracht hat und sagt: *voluntas est quippe in omnibus, imo omnes nihil aliud, quam voluntates sunt: nam quid est cupiditas et laetitia, nisi voluntas in eorum consensionem quae volumus? et quid est metus atque tristitia, nisi voluntas in dissensionem ab his, quae nolumus?* Mit dem **Willen** also finden wir das Selbstbewußtsein sehr stark, eigentlich sogar ausschließlich beschäftigt. Ob dasselbe nun aber in diesem seinem alleinigen Stoff Data antrifft, aus denen die **Freiheit** eben jenes Willens, im oben dargelegten, auch allein deutlichen und bestimmten Sinne des Worts, hervorginge, ist unser Augenmerk, darauf wir jetzt gerade zusteuern wollen, nachdem wir bis hieher uns ihm zwar nur lavierend, aber doch schon merklich genähert haben. ### Chapter II, 1 **II. Der Wille vor dem Selbstbewußtsein.** Wenn ein Mensch **will**; so will er auch Etwas: sein Willensakt ist allemal auf einen Gegenstand gerichtet und läßt sich nur in Beziehung auf einen solchen denken. Was heißt nun Etwas wollen? Es heißt: der Willensakt, welcher selbst zunächst nur Gegenstand des Selbstbewußtseins ist, entsteht auf Anlaß von etwas, das zum Bewußtsein **anderer Dinge** gehört, also ein Objekt des Erkenntnisvermögens ist, welches Objekt, in dieser Beziehung, **Motiv** genannt wird und zugleich der Stoff des Willensaktes ist, indem dieser darauf gerichtet ist, d. h. irgend eine Veränderung daran bezweckt, also darauf reagiert: in dieser **Reaktion** besteht sein ganzes Wesen. Hieraus ist schon klar, daß er ohne dasselbe nicht eintreten könnte; da es ihm sowohl an Anlaß, als an Stoff fehlen würde. Allein es frägt sich, ob, wenn dieses Objekt für das Erkenntnisvermögen dasteht, der Willensakt nun auch eintreten **muß**, oder vielmehr ausbleiben und entweder gar keiner, oder auch ein ganz anderer, wohl gar entgegengesetzter entstehen könnte, also ob jene Reaktion auch ausbleiben, oder, unter völlig gleichen Umständen, verschieden, ja entgegengesetzt ausfallen könne. Dies heißt in der Kürze: wird der Willensakt durch das Motiv mit Notwendigkeit hervorgerufen? oder behält vielmehr, beim Eintritt dieses ins Bewußtsein, der Wille gänzliche Freiheit zu wollen, oder nicht zu wollen? Hier also ist der Begriff der Freiheit in jenem oben erörterten und als hier allein anwendbar nachgewiesenen, abstrakten Sinn, als bloße Negation der Notwendigkeit genommen und somit unser Problem festgestellt. Im unmittelbaren **Selbstbewußtsein** aber haben wir die Data zur Lösung desselben zu suchen, und werden zu dem Ende dessen Aussage genau prüfen, nicht aber, durch eine summarische Entscheidung, den Knoten zerhauen, wie **Cartesius**, der ohne weiteres die Behauptung aufstellte: *Libertatis autem et indifferentiae, quae in nobis est, nos ita conscios esse, ut nihil sit, quod evidentius et perfectius comprehendamus. (Princ. phil., I, § 41.)* Das Unstatthafte dieser Behauptung hat schon **Leibniz** *(Theod., I, § 50, et III, § 292)*, der doch selbst, in diesem Punkt, nur ein schwankes Rohr im Winde war und, nach den widersprechendesten Aeußerungen, endlich zu dem Resultate gelangt, daß der Wille durch die Motive zwar inkliniert, aber nicht necessitiert würde. Er sagt nämlich: *Omnes actiones sunt determinatae, et nunquam indifferentes, quia semper datur ratio inclinans quidem, non tamen necessitans, ut sic potius, quam aliter fiat. (Leibniz, De libertate: Opera, ed. Erdmann, p. 669.)* Dies gibt mir Anlaß zu bemerken, daß ein solcher Mittelweg zwischen der oben gestellten Alternative nicht haltbar ist und man nicht, einer gewissen beliebten Halbheit gemäß, sagen kann, die Motive bestimmten den Willen nur gewissermaßen, er erleide ihre Einwirkung, aber nur bis zu einem gewissen Grade, und dann könne er sich ihr entziehen. Denn sobald wir einer gegebenen Kraft Kausalität zugestanden haben, also erkannt haben, daß sie wirkt; so bedarf es, bei etwanigem Widerstande, nur der Verstärkung der Kraft, nach Maßgabe des Widerstandes, und sie wird ihre Wirkung vollenden. Wer mit 10 Dukaten nicht zu bestehen ist, aber wankt, wird es mit 100 sein, u. s. f. Wir wenden uns also mit unserm Problem an das unmittelbare **Selbstbewußtsein**, in dem Sinn, den wir oben festgestellt haben. Welchen Aufschluß gibt uns nun wohl dieses Selbstbewußtsein über jene abstrakte Frage, nämlich über die Anwendbarkeit oder Nichtanwendbarkeit, des Begriffs der **Notwendigkeit** auf den Eintritt des Willensaktes, nach gegebenem, d. h. dem Intellekt vorgestellten, Motiv? oder über die Möglichkeit, oder Unmöglichkeit, seines Ausbleibens in solchem Fall? Wir würden uns sehr getäuscht finden, wenn wir gründliche und tiefgehende Aufschlüsse über Kausalität überhaupt und Motivation insbesondere, wie auch über die etwanige Notwendigkeit, welche beide mit sich führen, von diesem Selbstbewußtsein erwarteten; da dasselbe, wie es allen Menschen einwohnt, ein viel zu einfaches und beschränktes Ding ist, als daß es von dergleichen mitreden könnte: vielmehr sind diese Begriffe aus dem reinen Verstande, der nach außen gerichtet ist, geschöpft und können allererst vor dem Forum der reflektierenden Vernunft zur Sprache gebracht werden. Jenes natürliche, einfache, ja, einfältige Selbstbewußtsein hingegen kann nicht einmal die Frage verstehen, geschweige sie beantworten. Seine Aussage über die Willensakte, welche jeder in seinem eigenen Innern behorchen mag, wird, wenn von allem Fremdartigen und Unwesentlichen entblößt und auf ihren nackten Gehalt zurückgeführt, sich etwan so ausdrücken lassen: „Ich kann wollen, und wann ich eine Handlung wollen werde; so werden die beweglichen Glieder meines Leibes dieselbe sofort vollziehen, sobald ich nur will, ganz unausbleiblich.“ Das heißt in der Kürze: „**Ich kann thun was ich will.**“ Weiter geht die Aussage des unmittelbaren Selbstbewußtseins nicht, wie man sie auch wenden und in welcher Form man auch die Frage stellen mag. Seine Aussage bezieht sich also immer auf das **Thun können dem Willen gemäß**: dies aber ist der gleich anfangs aufgestellte empirische, ursprüngliche und populäre Begriff der Freiheit, nach welchem **frei** bedeutet „**dem Willen gemäß**“. Diese Freiheit wird das Selbstbewußtsein unbedingt aussagen. Aber es ist nicht die, wonach wir fragen. Das Selbstbewußtsein sagt die Freiheit des **Thuns** aus, — unter Voraussetzung des **Wollens**: aber die Freiheit des **Wollens** ist es, danach gefragt worden. Wir forschen nämlich nach dem Verhältnis des Wollens selbst zum Motiv: hierüber aber enthält jene Aussage, „ich kann thun was ich will“, nichts. Die Abhängigkeit unsers Thuns, d. h. unserer körperlichen Aktionen, von unserm Willen, welche das Selbstbewußtsein allerdings aussagt, ist etwas ganz anderes, als die Unabhängigkeit unserer Willensakte von den äußern Umständen, welche die Willensfreiheit ausmachen würde, über welche aber das Selbstbewußtsein nichts aussagen kann, weil sie außerhalb seiner Sphäre liegt, indem sie das Kausalverhältnis der Außenwelt (die uns als Bewußtsein von andern Dingen gegeben ist) zu unsern Entschlüssen betrifft, das Selbstbewußtsein aber nicht die Beziehung dessen, was ganz außer seinem Bereiche liegt, zu dem, was innerhalb desselben ist, beurteilen kann. Denn keine Erkenntniskraft kann ein Verhältnis feststellen, von dessen Gliedern das eine ihr auf keine Weise gegeben werden kann. Offenbar aber liegen die **Objekte** des Wollens, welche eben den Willensakt bestimmen, außerhalb der Grenze des **Selbstbewußtseins**, im Bewußtsein **von andern Dingen**; der Willensakt selbst allein in demselben, und nach dem Kausalverhältnis jener zu diesem wird gefragt. Sache des Selbstbewußtseins ist allein der Willensakt, nebst seiner absoluten Herrschaft über die Glieder des Leibes, welche eigentlich mit dem „was ich will“ gemeint ist. Auch ist es erst der Gebrauch dieser Herrschaft, d. i. **die That**, die ihn, selbst für das Selbstbewußtsein, zum Willensakte stempelt. Denn so lange er im Werden begriffen ist, heißt er **Wunsch**, wenn fertig, **Entschluß**; daß er aber dies sei, beweist dem Selbstbewußtsein selbst erst die **That**: denn bis zu ihr ist er veränderlich. Und hier stehen wir schon gleich an der Hauptquelle jenes allerdings nicht zu leugnenden Scheines, vermöge dessen der Unbefangene (d. i. philosophisch Rohe) meint, daß ihm, in einem gegebenen Fall, entgegengesetzte Willensakte möglich wären, und dabei auf sein Selbstbewußtsein pocht, welches, meint er, dies aussagte. Er verwechselt nämlich Wünschen mit Wollen. **Wünschen** kann er Entgegengesetztes ∗); aber **Wollen** nur **eines** davon: und welches dieses sei, offenbart auch dem Selbstbewußtsein allererst die **That**. Ueber die gesetzmäßige Notwendigkeit aber, vermöge deren, von entgegengesetzten Wünschen, der eine und nicht der andere zum Willensakt und That wird, kann eben deshalb das Selbstbewußtsein nichts enthalten, da es das Resultat so ganz *a posteriori* erfährt, nicht aber *a priori* weiß. Entgegengesetzte Wünsche mit ihren Motiven steigen vor ihm auf und nieder, abwechselnd und wiederholt: über jeden derselben sagt es aus, daß er zur That werden wird, wenn er zum Willensakt wird. Denn diese letztere rein **subjektive** Möglichkeit ist zwar zu jedem vorhanden und ist eben das „ich kann thun was ich will“. Aber diese **subjektive** Möglichkeit ist ganz hypothetisch: sie besagt bloß: „wenn ich dies will, kann ich es thun“. Allein die zum Wollen erforderliche Bestimmung liegt nicht darin; da das Selbstbewußtsein bloß das Wollen, nicht aber die zum Wollen bestimmenden Gründe enthält, welche im Bewußtsein anderer Dinge, d. h. im Erkenntnisvermögen, liegen. Hingegen ist es die **objektive** Möglichkeit, die den Ausschlag gibt: diese aber liegt außerhalb des Selbstbewußtseins, in der Welt der Objekte, zu denen das Motiv und der Mensch als Objekt gehört, ist daher dem Selbstbewußtsein fremd und gehört dem Bewußtsein anderer Dinge an. Jene **subjektive** Möglichkeit ist gleicher Art mit der, welche im Steine liegt, Funken zu geben, jedoch bedingt ist durch den Stahl, an welchem die **objektive** Möglichkeit haftet. Ich werde hierauf von der andern Seite zurückkommen, im folgenden Abschnitt, wo wir den Willen nicht mehr, wie hier, von innen, sondern von außen betrachten und also die **objektive** Möglichkeit des Willensaktes untersuchen werden: alsdann wird die Sache, nachdem sie so von zwei verschiedenen Seiten beleuchtet worden, ihre volle Deutlichkeit erhalten und auch durch Beispiele erläutert werden. ∗) Siehe darüber „Parerga“, Teil 2, § 327. ### Chapter II, 2 Also das im Selbstbewußtsein liegende Gefühl „ich kann thun was ich will" begleitet uns beständig, besagt aber bloß, daß die Entschlüsse, oder entschiedenen Akte unsers Willens, obwohl in der dunkeln Tiefe unsers Innern entspringend, allemal gleich übergehen werden in die anschauliche Welt, da zu ihr unser Leib, wie alles andere, gehört. Dies Bewußtsein bildet die Brücke zwischen Innenwelt und Außenwelt, welche sonst durch eine bodenlose Kluft getrennt blieben; indem alsdann in der letztern bloße von uns in jedem Sinn unabhängige Anschauungen als Objekte, — in der erstern lauter erfolglose und bloß gefühlte Willensakte liegen würden. — Befragte man einen ganz unbefangenen Menschen; so würde er jenes unmittelbare Bewußtsein, welches so häufig für das einer vermeinten Willensfreiheit gehalten wird, etwan so ausdrücken: „Ich kann thun was ich will: will ich links gehen, so gehe ich links; will ich rechts gehen, so gehe ich rechts. Das hängt ganz allein von meinem Willen ab: ich bin also frei.“ Diese Aussage ist allerdings vollkommen wahr und richtig: nur liegt bei ihr der Wille schon in der Voraussetzung: sie nimmt nämlich an, daß er sich schon entschieden habe: also kann über sein eigenes Freisein dadurch nichts ausgemacht werden. Denn sie redet keineswegs von der Abhängigkeit oder Unabhängigkeit des Eintrittes des Willensaktes selbst, sondern nur von den **Folgen** dieses Akts, sobald er eintritt, oder, genauer zu reden, von seiner unausbleiblichen Erscheinung als Leibesaktion. Das jener Aussage zum Grunde liegende Bewußtsein ist es aber ganz allein, was den Unbefangenen, d. h. den philosophisch rohen Menschen, der dabei jedoch in andern Fächern ein großer Gelehrter sein kann, die Willensfreiheit für etwas so ganz unmittelbar Gewisses halten läßt, daß er sie als unzweifelhafte Wahrheit ausspricht und eigentlich gar nicht glauben kann, die Philosophen zweifelten im Ernste daran, sondern in seinem Herzen meint, all das Gerede darüber sei bloße Fechtübung der Schuldialektik und im Grunde Spaß. Eben aber weil ihm die durch jenes Bewußtsein gegebene und allerdings wichtige Gewißheit stets so sehr zur Hand ist, und zudem weil der Mensch, als ein zunächst und wesentlich praktisches, nicht theoretisches Wesen, sich der **aktiven** Seite seiner Willensakte, d. h. der ihrer Wirksamkeit, sehr viel deutlicher bewußt wird, als der **passiven**, d. h. der ihrer Abhängigkeit; so hält es schwer, dem philosophisch rohen Menschen den eigentlichen Sinn unseres Problems faßlich zu machen und ihn dahin zu bringen, daß er begreift, die Frage sei jetzt nicht nach den **Folgen**, sondern nach den **Gründen** seines jedesmaligen Wollens; sein **Thun** zwar hänge ganz allein von seinem **Wollen** ab, jetzt aber verlange man zu wissen, wovon denn **sein Wollen selbst** abhänge, ob von gar nichts, oder von etwas? er könne allerdings das eine thun, wenn er wolle, und ebenso gut das andere thun, wenn er wolle: aber er solle jetzt sich besinnen, ob er denn auch das eine wie das andere **zu wollen** fähig sei. Stellt man nun, in dieser Absicht, dem Menschen die Frage etwan so: „Kannst du wirklich, von in dir aufgestiegenen entgegengesetzten Wünschen, dem einen sowohl, als dem andern Folge leisten? z. B. bei einer Wahl zwischen zwei einander ausschließenden Gegenständen des Besitzes ebensogut den einen als den andern vorziehen?“ Da wird er sagen: „Vielleicht kann mir die Wahl schwer fallen: immer jedoch wird es ganz allein von mir abhängen, ob ich das eine oder das andere wählen will, und von keiner andern Gewalt: da habe ich volle Freiheit, welches ich will zu erwählen, und dabei werde ich immer ganz allein meinen Willen befolgen.“ — Sagt man nun: „Aber dein Wollen selbst, wovon hängt das ab?“ so antwortet der Mensch aus dem Selbstbewußtsein: „Von gar nichts als von mir! Ich kann wollen was ich will: was ich will das will ich.“ — Und letzteres sagt er, ohne dabei die Tautologie zu beabsichtigen, oder auch nur im Innersten seines Bewußtseins sich auf den Satz der Identität zu stützen, vermöge dessen allein das wahr ist. Sondern, hier aufs äußerste bedrängt, redet er von einem Wollen seines Wollens, welches ist, als ob er von einem Ich seines Ichs redete. Man hat ihn auf den Kern seines Selbstbewußtseins zurückgetrieben, wo er sein Ich und seinen Willen als ununterscheidbar antrifft, aber nichts übrig bleibt, um beide zu beurteilen. Ob, bei jener Wahl, **sein Wollen selbst** des einen und nicht des andern, da seine Person und die Gegenstände der Wahl hier als gegeben angenommen sind, irgend möglicherweise auch anders ausfallen könnte, als es zuletzt ausfällt; oder ob, durch die eben angegebenen Data, dasselbe so notwendig festgestellt ist, wie daß im Triangel dem größten Winkel die größte Seite gegenüber liegt; das ist eine Frage, die dem natürlichen Selbstbewußtsein so fern liegt, daß es nicht einmal zu ihrem Verständnis zu bringen ist, geschweige daß es die Antwort auf sie fertig, oder auch nur als unentwickelten Keim, in sich trüge und sie nur naiv von sich zu geben brauchte. — Angegebenermaßen wird also der unbefangene, aber philosophisch rohe Mensch immer noch vor der Perplexität, welche die Frage, wenn wirklich verstanden, herbeiführen muß, sich zu flüchten suchen hinter jene unmittelbare Gewißheit „was ich will kann ich thun, und ich will was ich will“, wie oben gesagt. Dies wird er immer von neuem versuchen, unzähligemal; so daß es schwer halten wird, ihn vor der eigentlichen Frage, der er immer zu entschlüpfen sucht, zum Stehen zu bringen. Und dies ist ihm nicht zu verargen: denn die Frage ist wirklich eine höchst bedenkliche. Sie greift mit forschender Hand in das allerinnerste Wesen des Menschen: sie will wissen, ob auch er, wie alles übrige in der Welt, ein durch seine Beschaffenheit selbst ein für allemal entschiedenes Wesen sei, welches, wie jedes andere in der Natur, seine bestimmten, beharrlichen Eigenschaften habe, aus denen seine Reaktionen auf entstehenden äußern Anlaß notwendig hervorgehen, die demnach ihren von dieser Seite unabänderlichen Charakter tragen und folglich in dem, was an ihnen etwan modifikabel sein mag, der Bestimmung durch die Anlässe von außen gänzlich preisgegeben sind; oder ob er allein eine Ausnahme von der ganzen Natur mache. Gelingt es dennoch endlich, ihn vor dieser so bedenklichen Frage zum Stehen zu bringen und ihm deutlich zu machen, daß hier nach dem Ursprung seiner Willensakte selbst, nach der etwanigen Regel, oder gänzlichen Regellosigkeit ihres Entstehens geforscht wird; so wird man entdecken, daß das unmittelbare Selbstbewußtsein hierüber keine Auskunft enthält, indem der unbefangene Mensch hier selbst davon abgeht und seine Ratlosigkeit durch Nachsinnen und allerlei Erklärungsversuche an den Tag legt, deren Gründe er bald aus der Erfahrung, wie er sie an sich und andern gemacht hat, bald aus allgemeinen Verstandesregeln zu nehmen versucht, dabei aber durch die Unsicherheit und das Schwanken seiner Erklärungen genugsam zeigt, daß sein unmittelbares Selbstbewußtsein über die richtig verstandene Frage keine Auskunft liefert, wie es vorhin über die irrig verstandene sie gleich bereit hatte. Dies liegt im letzten Grunde daran, daß des Menschen Wille sein eigentliches Selbst, der wahre Kern seines Wesens ist: daher macht derselbe den Grund seines Bewußtseins aus, als ein schlechthin Gegebenes und Vorhandenes, darüber er nicht hinaus kann. Denn er selbst ist wie er will, und will wie er ist. Daher ihn fragen, ob er auch anders wollen könnte, als er will, heißt ihn fragen, ob er auch wohl ein andrer sein könnte, als er selbst: und das weiß er nicht. Eben deshalb muß auch der Philosoph, der sich von jenem bloß durch die Uebung unterscheidet, wenn er in dieser schwierigen Angelegenheit zur Klarheit kommen will, an seinen Verstand, der Erkenntnisse *a priori* liefert, an die solche überdenkende Vernunft und an die Erfahrung, welche sein und Andrer Thun, zur Auslegung und Kontrolle solcher Verstandeserkenntnis ihm vorführt, als letzte und allein kompetente Instanz sich wenden, deren Entscheidung zwar nicht so leicht, so unmittelbar und einfach, wie die des Selbstbewußtseins, dafür aber doch zur Sache und ausreichend sein wird. Der Kopf ist es, der die Frage aufgeworfen hat, und er auch muß sie beantworten. ### Chapter II, 3 Uebrigens darf es uns nicht wundern, daß auf jene abstruse, spekulative, schwierige und bedenkliche Frage das unmittelbare Selbstbewußtsein keine Antwort aufzuweisen hat. Denn dieses ist ein sehr beschränkter Teil unsers gesamten Bewußtseins, welches in seinem Innern dunkel, mit allen seinen objektiven Erkenntniskräften ganz nach außen gerichtet ist. Alle seine vollkommen sicheren, d. h. *a priori* gewissen Erkenntnisse betreffen ja allein die Außenwelt, und da kann es denn nach gewissen allgemeinen Gesetzen, die in ihm selbst wurzeln, sicher entscheiden, was da draußen möglich, was unmöglich, was notwendig sei, und bringt auf diesem Wege reine Mathematik, reine Logik, ja, reine Fundamentalnaturwissenschaft *a priori* zu stande. Demnächst liefert die Anwendung seiner *a priori* bewußten Formen auf die in der Sinnesempfindung gegebenen Data ihm die anschauliche, reale Außenwelt und damit die Erfahrung: ferner wird die Anwendung der Logik und der dieser zum Grunde liegenden Denkfähigkeit auf jene Außenwelt die Begriffe, die Welt der Gedanken, liefern, dadurch wieder die Wissenschaften, deren Leistungen u. s. w. Da **draußen** also liegt vor seinen Blicken große Helle und Klarheit. Aber **innen** ist es finster, wie ein gut geschwärztes Fernrohr: kein Satz *a priori* erhellt die Nacht seines eigenen Innern; sondern diese Leuchttürme strahlen nur nach außen. Dem sogenannten innern Sinn liegt, wie oben erörtert, nichts vor, als der eigene Wille, auf dessen Bewegungen eigentlich auch alle sogenannten innern Gefühle zurückzuführen sind. Alles aber, was diese innere Wahrnehmung des Willens liefert, läuft, wie oben gezeigt, zurück auf Wollen und Nichtwollen, nebst der belobten Gewißheit „was ich will, das kann ich thun“, welches eigentlich besagt: „jeden Akt meines Willens sehe ich sofort (auf eine mir ganz unbegreifliche Weise) als eine Aktion meines Leibes sich darstellen“, — und genau genommen, für das erkennende Subjekt ein Erfahrungssatz ist. Darüber hinaus ist hier nichts zu finden. Für die aufgeworfene Frage ist also der angegangene Richterstuhl inkompetent: ja, sie kann, in ihrem wahren Sinn, gar nicht vor ihn gebracht werden, da er sie nicht versteht. Den auf unsere Anfrage beim Selbstbewußtsein erhaltenen Bescheid resumiere ich jetzt nochmals in kürzerer und leichterer Wendung. Das **Selbstbewußtsein** eines jeden sagt sehr deutlich aus, daß er **thun** kann was er will. Da nun auch ganz entgegengesetzte Handlungen als von ihm **gewollt** gedacht werden können; so folgt allerdings, daß er auch Entgegengesetztes **thun** kann, wenn er will. Dies verwechselt nur der rohe Verstand damit, daß er, in einem gegebenen Fall, auch Entgegengesetztes **wollen** könne, und nennt dies die **Freiheit des Willens**. Allein daß er, in einem gegebenen Fall, Entgegengesetztes **wollen** könne, ist schlechterdings nicht in obiger Aussage enthalten, sondern bloß dies, daß von zwei entgegengesetzten Handlungen, er, wenn er **diese will**, sie thun kann, und wenn er **jene will**, sie ebenfalls thun kann: ob er aber die eine so wohl als die andere, im gegebenen Fall, **wollen** könne, bleibt dadurch unausgemacht und ist Gegenstand einer tiefern Untersuchung, als durch das bloße Selbstbewußtsein entschieden werden kann. Die kürzeste, wenn gleich scholastische Formel für dieses Resultat würde lauten: die Aussage des Selbstbewußtseins betrifft den Willen bloß *a parte post*; die Frage nach der Freiheit hingegen *a parte ante*. — Also jene unleugbare Aussage des Selbstbewußtseins „ich kann thun was ich will“ enthält und entscheidet durchaus nichts über die Freiheit des Willens, als welche darin bestehen würde, daß der jedesmalige Willensakt selbst, im einzelnen individuellen Fall, also bei gegebenem individuellen Charakter, nicht durch die äußern Umstände, in denen hier dieser Mensch sich befindet, notwendig bestimmt würde, sondern jetzt so und auch anders ausfallen könnte. Hierüber aber bleibt das Selbstbewußtsein völlig stumm: denn die Sache liegt ganz außer seinem Bereich; da sie auf dem Kausalverhältnis zwischen der Außenwelt und dem Menschen beruht. Wenn man einen Menschen von gesundem Verstande, aber ohne philosophische Bildung, frägt, worin denn die auf Aussage seines Selbstbewußtseins so zuverlässig von ihm behauptete Willensfreiheit bestehe; so wird er antworten: „Darin, daß ich thun kann was ich will, sobald ich nicht physisch gehemmt bin.“ Also ist es immer das Verhältnis seines **Thuns** zu seinem **Wollen**, wovon er redet. Dies aber ist, wie im ersten Abschnitt gezeigt, noch bloß die **physische** Freiheit. Frägt man ihn weiter, ob er alsdann, im gegebenen Fall, sowohl eine Sache als ihr Gegenteil **wollen** könne; so wird er zwar im ersten Eifer es bejahen: sobald er aber den Sinn der Frage zu begreifen anfängt, wird er auch anfangen bedenklich zu werden, endlich in Unsicherheit und Verwirrung geraten und aus dieser sich am liebsten wieder hinter sein Thema „ich kann thun was ich will“ retten und daselbst gegen alle Gründe und alles Raisonnement verschanzen. Die berichtigte Antwort auf sein Thema aber würde, wie ich im folgenden Abschnitt außer Zweifel zu setzen hoffe, lauten: „Du kannst **thun** was du willst: aber du kannst, in jedem gegebenen Augenblick deines Lebens, nur ein Bestimmtes **wollen** und schlechterdings nicht anderes, als dieses eine.“ Durch die in diesem Abschnitte enthaltene Auseinandersetzung wäre nun eigentlich schon die Frage der königlichen Societät und zwar verneinend beantwortet; wiewohl nur in der Hauptsache, indem auch diese Darlegung des Thatbestandes im Selbstbewußtsein noch einige Vervollständigung im nachfolgenden erhalten wird. Nun aber auch für diese unsere verneinende Antwort gibt es, in einem Fall, noch eine Kontrolle. Wenn wir nämlich uns jetzt mit der Frage an diejenige Behörde, zu welcher, als der allein kompetenten, wir im vorhergehenden verwiesen wurden, nämlich an den reinen Verstand, die über die Data desselben reflektierende Vernunft und die im Gefolge beider gehende Erfahrung wenden, und deren Entscheidung fiele etwan dahin aus, daß ein *liberum arbitrium* überhaupt nicht existiere, sondern das Handeln des Menschen, wie alles andere in der Natur, in jedem gegebenen Fall, als eine notwendig eintretende Wirkung erfolge; so würde uns dieses noch die Gewißheit geben, daß im unmittelbaren Selbstbewußtsein Data, aus denen das nachgefragte *liberum arbitrium* sich beweisen ließe, auch nicht einmal **liegen können**; wodurch, mittelst des Schlusses *a non posse ad non esse*, welcher der einzige mögliche Weg ist, **negative** Wahrheiten *a priori* festzustellen, unsere Entscheidung, zu der bisher dargelegten empirischen, noch eine rationelle Begründung erhalten würde, mithin alsdann doppelt sicher gestellt wäre. Denn ein entschiedener Widerspruch zwischen den unmittelbaren Aussagen des Selbstbewußtseins und den Ergebnissen aus den Grundsätzen des reinen Verstandes, nebst ihrer Anwendung auf Erfahrung, darf nicht als möglich angenommen werden: ein solches lügenhaftes Selbstbewußtsein kann das unserige nicht sein. Wobei zu bemerken ist, daß selbst die von Kant über dieses Thema aufgestellte vorgebliche Antinomie, auch bei ihm selbst, nicht etwan dadurch entstehen soll, daß Thesis und Antithesis von verschiedenen Erkenntnisquellen, die eine etwan von Aussagen des Selbstbewußtseins, die andere von Vernunft und Erfahrung ausginge; sondern Thesis und Antithesis vernünfteln beide aus angeblich objektiven Gründen; wobei aber die Thesis auf gar nichts, als auf der faulen Vernunft, d. h. dem Bedürfnis im Regressus irgend einmal stille zu stehen, fußet, die Antithesis hingegen alle objektiven Gründe wirklich für sich hat. Diese demnach jetzt vorzunehmende **indirekte**, auf dem Felde des Erkenntnisvermögens und der ihm vorliegenden Außenwelt sich haltende Untersuchung wird aber zugleich viel Licht zurückwerfen auf die bis hieher vollzogene **direkte** und so zur Ergänzung derselben dienen, indem sie die natürlichen Täuschungen aufdecken wird, die aus der falschen Auslegung jener so höchst einfachen Aussage des Selbstbewußtseins entstehen, wann dieses in Konflikt gerät mit dem Bewußtsein von andern Dingen, welches das Erkenntnisvermögen ist und in einem und demselben Subjekt mit dem Selbstbewußtsein wurzelt. Ja, erst am Schluß dieser indirekten Untersuchung wird uns über den wahren Sinn und Inhalt jenes alle unsere Handlungen begleitenden „Ich will“, und über das Bewußtsein der Ursprünglichkeit und Eigenmächtigkeit, vermöge dessen sie **unsere** Handlungen sind, einiges Licht aufgehen; wodurch die bis hieher geführte direkte Untersuchung allererst ihre Vollendung erhalten wird. ### Chapter III, 1 **III. Der Wille vor dem Bewußtsein anderer Dinge.** Wenn wir uns nun an das Erkenntnisvermögen mit unserm Probleme wenden; so wissen wir zum voraus, daß, da dieses Vermögen wesentlich nach außen gerichtet ist, der Wille für dasselbe nicht ein Gegenstand unmittelbarer Wahrnehmung sein kann, wie er dies für das, dennoch in unserer Sache inkompetent befundene, Selbstbewußtsein war; sondern, daß hier nur die mit einem Willen begabten **Wesen** betrachtet werden können, welche vor dem Erkenntnisvermögen als objektive und äußere Erscheinungen, d. i. als Gegenstände der Erfahrung, dastehen und nunmehr als solche zu untersuchen und zu beurteilen sind, teils nach allgemeinen für die Erfahrung überhaupt, ihrer Möglichkeit nach, feststehenden, *a priori* gewissen Regeln, teils nach den Thatfachen, welche die fertige und wirklich vorhandene Erfahrung liefert. Also nicht mehr, wie vorhin, mit dem **Willen** selbst, wie er nur dem innern Sinne offen liegt; sondern mit den **wollenden, vom Willen bewegten Wesen**, welche Gegenstände der äußern Sinne, sind, haben wir es hier zu thun. Wenn wir nun auch dadurch in den Nachteil versetzt sind, den eigentlichen Gegenstand unsers Forschens nur mittelbar und aus größerer Entfernung betrachten zu müssen; so wird derselbe überwogen durch den Vorteil, daß wir uns jetzt eines viel vollkommeneren Organons bei unserer Untersuchung bedienen können, als das dunkle, dumpfe, einseitige, direkte Selbstbewußtsein, der sogenannte innere Sinn, war: nämlich des mit allen äußern Sinnen und allen Kräften zum objektiven Auffassen ausgerüsteten **Verstandes**. Als die allgemeinste und grundwesentliche Form dieses Verstandes finden wir das **Gesetz der Kausalität**, da sogar allein durch dessen Vermittelung die Anschauung der realen Außenwelt zu stande kommt, als bei welcher wir die in unsern Sinnesorganen empfundenen Affektionen und Veränderungen sogleich und ganz unmittelbar als „**Wirkungen**“ auffassen und (ohne Anleitung, Belehrung und Erfahrung) augenblicklich von ihnen den Uebergang machen zu ihren „**Ursachen**“, welche nunmehr, eben durch diesen Verstandesprozeß, als Objekte im Raum sich darstellen ∗). Hieraus erhellt unwidersprechlich, daß das **Gesetz der Kausalität** uns *a priori*, folglich als ein, hinsichtlich der Möglichkeit aller Erfahrung überhaupt, **notwendiges** bewußt ist; ohne daß wir des indirekten, schwierigen, ja, ungenügenden Beweises, den Kant für diese wichtige Wahrheit gegeben hat, bedürften. Das Gesetz der Kausalität steht *a priori* fest, als die allgemeine Regel, welcher alle reale Objekte der Außenwelt ohne Ausnahme unterworfen sind. Diese Ausnahmslosigkeit verdankt es eben seiner Apriorität. Dasselbe bezieht sich wesentlich und ausschließlich auf **Veränderungen**, und besagt, daß wo und wann, in der objektiven, realen, materiellen Welt, irgend etwas, groß oder klein, viel oder wenig, sich verändert, notwendig gleich **vorher** auch etwas anderes sich **verändert** haben muß, und damit dieses sich veränderte, vor ihm wieder ein anderes, und so ins Unendliche, ohne daß irgend ein Anfangspunkt dieser regressiven Reihe von Veränderungen, welche die Zeit erfüllt, wie die Materie den Raum, jemals abzusehen, oder auch nur als möglich zu denken, geschweige vorauszuseßen wäre. Denn die unermüdlich sich erneuernde Frage „was führte diese Veränderung herbei?“ gestattet dem Verstande nimmermehr einen letzten Ruhepunkt; wie sehr er dabei auch ermüden mag: weshalb eine erste Ursache gerade so undenkbar ist, wie ein Anfang der Zeit oder eine Grenze des Raumes. — Nicht minder besagt das Gesetz der Kausalität, daß wenn die frühere Veränderung, — die **Ursache**, — eingetreten ist, die dadurch herbeigeführte spätere, — die **Wirkung**, — ganz unausbleiblich eintreten muß, mithin **notwendig** erfolgt. Durch diesen Charakter von **Notwendigkeit** bewährt sich das Gesetz der Kausalität als eine Gestaltung des **Satzes vom Grunde**, welcher die allgemeinste Form unsers gesamten Erkenntnisvermögens ist und wie in der realen Welt als Ursächlichkeit, so in der Gedankenwelt als logisches Gesetz vom Erkenntnisgrunde, und selbst im leeren, aber *a priori* angeschaueten Raume als Gesetz der streng notwendigen Abhängigkeit der Lage aller Teile desselben gegenseitig voneinander auftritt; — welche notwendige Abhängigkeit speziell und ausführlich nachzuweisen, das alleinige Thema der Geometrie ist. Daher eben, wie ich schon im Anfange erörtert habe, **notwendig sein** und **Folge eines gegebenen Grundes sein** Wechselbegriffe sind. ∗) Die gründliche Ausführung dieser Lehre findet man in der Abhandlung über den Satz vom Grunde, § 21. Alle an den objektiven, in der realen Außenwelt liegenden Gegenständen vorgehende **Veränderungen** sind also dem Gesetz der **Kausalität** unterworfen, und treten daher, wann und wo sie eintreten, allemal als **notwendig** und unausbleiblich ein. — Eine Ausnahme hievon kann es nicht geben, da die Regel *a priori* für alle Möglichkeit der Erfahrung feststeht. Hinsichtlich ihrer **Anwendung** aber auf einen gegebenen Fall, ist bloß zu fragen, ob es sich um eine **Veränderung** eines in der äußern Erfahrung gegebenen realen Objekts handelt: sobald dies ist, unterliegen seine Veränderungen der Anwendung des Gesetzes der Kausalität, d. h. müssen durch eine Ursache, eben darum aber **notwendig** herbeigeführt sein. ### Chapter III, 2 Gehen wir nun mit unserer allgemeinen, *a priori* gewissen und daher für alle mögliche Erfahrung ohne Ausnahme gültigen Regel an diese Erfahrung selbst näher heran und betrachten die in derselben gegebenen realen Objekte, auf deren etwan eintretende Veränderungen unsere Regel sich bezieht; so bemerken wir bald an diesen Objekten einige tief eingreifende Hauptunterschiede, nach denen sie auch längst klassifiziert sind: nämlich sie sind teils unorganische, d. h. leblose, teils organische, d. h. lebendige, und diese wieder teils Pflanzen, teils Tiere. Diese letzteren wieder finden wir, wenn auch im wesentlichen einander ähnlich und ihrem Begriff entsprechend, doch in einer überaus mannigfaltigen und fein nuancierten Stufenfolge der Vollkommenheit, von den der Pflanze noch nahe verwandten, schwer von ihr zu unterscheidenden an, bis hinauf zu den vollendetesten, dem Begriffe des Tiers am vollkommensten entsprechenden: auf dem Gipfel dieser Stufenfolge sehen wir den Menschen, — uns selbst. Betrachten wir nun, ohne uns durch jene Mannigfaltigkeit irre machen zu lassen, alle diese Wesen sämtlich nur als objektive, reale Gegenstände der Erfahrung, und schreiten demgemäß zur Anwendung unseres, für die Möglichkeit aller Erfahrung, *a priori* feststehenden Gesetzes der Kausalität auf die mit solchen Wesen etwan vorgehenden Veränderungen; so werden wir finden, daß zwar die Erfahrung überall dem *a priori* gewissen Gesetze gemäß ausfällt; jedoch der in Erinnerung gebrachten großen **Verschiedenheit** im Wesen aller jener Erfahrungsobjekte, auch eine ihr angemessene Modifikation in der Art, wie die Kausalität ihr Recht an ihnen geltend macht, entspricht. Näher: es zeigt sich, dem dreifachen Unterschied von unorganischen Körpern, Pflanzen und Tieren entsprechend, die alle ihre Veränderungen leitende Kausalität ebenfalls in drei Formen, nämlich als **Ursach** im engsten Sinne des Worts, oder als **Reiz**, oder als **Motivation**, — ohne daß durch diese Modifikation ihre Gültigkeit *a priori* und folglich die durch sie gesetzte Notwendigkeit des Erfolgs im mindesten beeinträchtigt würde. Die **Ursach** im engsten Sinne des Worts ist die, vermöge welcher alle mechanischen, physikalischen und chemischen Veränderungen der Erfahrungsgegenstände eintreten. Sie charakterisiert sich überall durch zwei Merkmale; erstlich dadurch, daß bei ihr das dritte Newtonische Grundgesetz „Wirkung und Gegenwirkung sind einander gleich“ seine Anwendung findet: d. h., der vorhergehende Zustand, welcher Ursach heißt, erfährt eine gleiche Veränderung, wie der nachfolgende, welcher Wirkung heißt. — Zweitens dadurch, daß, dem zweiten Newtonischen Gesetze gemäß, allemal der Grad der Wirkung dem Grade der Ursach genau angemessen ist, folglich eine Verstärkung dieser auch eine gleiche Verstärkung jener herbeiführt; so daß, wenn nur einmal die Wirkungsart bekannt ist, sofort aus dem Grade der Intensität der Ursach auch der Grad der Wirkung, und *vice versa*, sich wissen, messen und berechnen läßt. Bei empirischer Anwendung dieses zweiten Merkmals darf man jedoch nicht die eigentliche Wirkung verwechseln mit ihrer augenfälligen Erscheinung. Z. B. man darf nicht erwarten, daß, bei der Zusammendrückung eines Körpers, sein Umfang immerfort abnehme in dem Verhältnis wie die zusammendrückende Kraft zunimmt. Denn der Raum, in den man den Körper zwängt, nimmt immer ab, folglich der Widerstand zu: und wenn nun gleich auch hier die eigentliche Wirkung, welche die Verdichtung ist, wirklich nach Maßgabe der Ursache wächst, wie das Mariottesche Gesetz besagt; so ist dies doch nicht von jener ihrer augenfälligen Erscheinung zu verstehen. Ferner wird dem Wasser zugeleitete Wärme bis zu einem gewissen Grad Erhitzung bewirken, über diesen Grad hinaus aber nur schnelle Verflüchtigung: bei dieser tritt aber wieder dasselbe Verhältnis ein zwischen dem Grade der Ursach und dem der Wirkung: und so ist es in vielen Fällen. Solche **Ursachen im engsten Sinn** sind es nun, welche die Veränderungen aller **leblosen**, d. i. **unorganischen** Körper bewirken. Die Erkenntnis und Voraussetzung von Ursachen dieser Art leitet die Betrachtung aller der Veränderungen, welche der Gegenstand der Mechanik, Hydrodynamik, Physik und Chemie sind. Das ausschließliche Bestimmtwerden durch Ursachen dieser Art allein ist daher das eigentliche und wesentliche Merkmal eines unorganischen oder leblosen Körpers. Die zweite Art der Ursachen ist der **Reiz**, d.h. diejenige Ursach, welche erstlich selbst **keine** mit ihrer Einwirkung im Verhältnis stehende Gegenwirkung erleidet, und zweitens zwischen deren Intensität und der Intensität der Wirkung durchaus keine Gleichmäßigkeit stattfindet. Folglich kann hier nicht der Grad der Wirkung gemessen und vorher bestimmt werden nach dem Grade der Ursach: vielmehr kann eine kleine Vermehrung des Reizes eine sehr große der Wirkung verursachen, oder auch umgekehrt die vorige Wirkung ganz aufheben, ja, eine entgegengesetzte herbeiführen. Z. B. Pflanzen können bekanntlich durch Wärme, oder auch der Erde beigemischten Kalk, zu einem außerordentlich schnellen Wachstum getrieben werden, indem jene Ursachen als Reize ihrer Lebenskraft wirken: wird jedoch hiebei der angemessene Grad des Reizes um ein weniges überschritten; so wird der Erfolg, statt des erhöhten und beschleunigten Lebens, der Tod der Pflanze sein. So auch können wir durch Wein, oder Opium, unsere Geisteskräfte anspannen und beträchtlich erhöhen: wird aber das rechte Maß des Reizes überschritten; so wird der Erfolg gerade der entgegengesetzte sein. — Diese Art der Ursachen, also Reize, sind es, welche alle Veränderungen der Organismen **als solcher** bestimmen. Alle Veränderungen und Entwickelungen der Pflanzen, und alle bloß organische und vegetative Veränderungen, oder Funktionen, tierischer Leiber gehen auf **Reize** vor sich. In dieser Art wirkt auf sie das Licht, die Wärme, die Luft, die Nahrung, jedes Pharmakon, jede Berührung, die Befruchtung u. s. w. — Währrend dabei das Leben der Tiere noch eine ganz andere Sphäre hat, von der ich gleich reden werde, so geht hingegen das ganze Leben der **Pflanzen** ausschließlich nach **Reizen** vor sich. Alle ihre Assimilation, Wachstum, Hinstreben mit der Krone nach dem Lichte, mit den Wurzeln nach besserm Boden, ihre Befruchtung, Keimung u. s. w. ist Veränderung auf **Reize**. Bei einzelnen, wenigen Gattungen kommt hiezu noch eine eigentümliche schnelle Bewegung, die ebenfalls nur auf Reize erfolgt, wegen welcher sie jedoch sensitive Pflanzen genannt werden. Bekanntlich sind dies hauptsächlich *Mimosa pudica*, *Hedysarum gyrans* und *Dionaea muscipula*. Das Bestimmtwerden ausschließlich und ohne Ausnahme durch **Reize** ist der Charakter der Pflanze. Mithin ist **Pflanze** jeder Körper, dessen eigentümliche, seiner Natur angemessene Bewegungen und Veränderungen allemal und ausschließlich auf **Reize** erfolgen. ### Chapter III, 3 Die dritte Art der bewegenden Ursachen ist die, welche den Charakter der **Tiere** bezeichnet: es ist die **Motivation**, d.h. die durch das **Erkennen** hindurchgehende Kausalität. Sie tritt in der Stufenfolge der Naturwesen auf dem Punkt ein, wo das kompliziertere und daher mannigfaltige Bedürfnisse habende Wesen, diese nicht mehr bloß auf Anlaß des Reizes befriedigen konnte, als welcher abgewartet werden muß; sondern es im stande sein mußte, die Mittel der Befriedigung zu wählen, zu ergreifen, ja, aufzusuchen. Deshalb tritt bei Wesen dieser Art an die Stelle der bloßen Empfänglichkeit für **Reize** und der Bewegung auf solche, die Empfänglichkeit für **Motive**, d.h. ein Vorstellungsvermögen, ein Intellekt, in unzähligen Abstufungen der Vollkommenheit, materiell sich darstellend als Nervensystem und Gehirn, und eben damit das Bewußtsein. Daß dem tierischen Leben ein Pflanzenleben zur Basis dient, welches als solches eben nur auf **Reize** vor sich geht, ist bekannt. Aber alle die Bewegungen, welche das Tier als **Tier** vollzieht, und welche eben deshalb von dem abhängen, was die Physiologie **animalische Funktionen** nennt, geschehen infolge eines erkannten Objekts, also auf **Motive**. Demnach ist ein **Tier** jeder Körper, dessen eigentümliche, seiner Natur angemessene, äußere Bewegungen und Veränderungen allemal auf **Motive**, d. h. auf gewisse, seinem hiebei schon vorausgesetzten Bewußtsein gegenwärtige **Vorstellungen** erfolgen. So unendliche Abstufungen in der Reihe der Tiere die Fähigkeit zu Vorstellungen, und eben damit das Bewußtsein, auch haben mag; so ist doch in jedem so viel davon vorhanden, daß das Motiv sich ihm darstellt und seine Bewegung veranlaßt: wobei dem nunmehr vorhandenen Selbstbewußtsein die innere bewegende Kraft, deren einzelne Aeußerung durch das Motiv hervorgerufen wird, als dasjenige sich kundgibt, was wir mit dem Worte **Wille** bezeichnen. Ob nun aber ein gegebener Körper sich auf **Reize**, oder auf **Motive** bewege, kann, auch für die Beobachtung von außen, welche hier unser Standpunkt ist, nie zweifelhaft bleiben: so augenscheinlich verschieden ist die Wirkungsart eines Reizes von der eines Motivs. Denn der Reiz wirkt stets durch unmittelbare Berührung, oder sogar Intussusception, und wo auch diese nicht sichtbar ist, wie wo der Reiz die Luft, das Licht, die Wärme ist; so verrät sie sich doch dadurch, daß die Wirkung ein unverkennbares Verhältnis zur Dauer und Intensität des Reizes hat, wenn gleich dieses Verhältnis nicht bei allen Graden des Reizes dasselbe bleibt. Wo hingegen ein Motiv die Bewegung verursacht, fallen alle solche Unterschiede ganz weg. Denn hier ist das eigentliche und nächste Medium der Einwirkung nicht die Atmosphäre, sondern ganz allein die **Erkenntnis**. Das als Motiv wirkende Objekt braucht durchaus nichts weiter, als **wahrgenommen**, **erkannt** zu sein; wobei es ganz einerlei ist, wie lange, ob nahe, oder ferne, und wie deutlich es in die Apperception gekommen. Alle diese Unterschiede verändern hier den Grad der Wirkung ganz und gar nicht: sobald es nur wahrgenommen worden, wirkt es auf ganz gleiche Weise; vorausgesetzt, daß es überhaupt ein Bestimmungsgrund des hier zu erregenden Willens sei. Denn auch die physikalischen und chemischen Ursachen, desgleichen die Reize, wirken ebenfalls nur, sofern der zu affizierende Körper für sie empfänglich ist. Ich sagte eben „des hier zu erregenden Willens“: denn, wie schon erwähnt, als das, was das Wort Wille bezeichnet, gibt sich hier dem Wesen selbst, innerlich und unmittelbar, dasjenige kund, was eigentlich dem Motiv die Kraft zu wirken erteilt, die geheime Springfeder der durch dasselbe hervorgerufenen Bewegung. Bei ausschließlich auf Reize sich bewegenden Körpern (Pflanzen) nennen wir jene beharrende, innere Bedingung Lebenskraft; — bei den bloß auf Ursachen im engsten Sinne sich bewegenden Körpern nennen wir sie Naturkraft, oder Qualität: immer wird sie von den Erklärungen als das Unerklärliche vorausgesetzt; weil hier im Innern der Wesen kein Selbstbewußtsein ist, dem sie unmittelbar zugänglich wäre. Ob nun aber diese in solchen erkenntnislosen, sogar leblosen Wesen liegende innere Bedingung ihrer Reaktion auf äußere Ursachen, wenn man, von der Erscheinung überhaupt abgehend, nach demjenigen forschen wollte, was Kant das Ding an sich nennt, etwan ihrem Wesen nach identisch wäre mit dem, was wir in uns den **Willen** nennen, wie ein Philosoph neuerer Zeit uns wirklich hat andemonstrieren wollen, — dies lasse ich dahingestellt, ohne jedoch dem gerade widersprechen zu wollen ∗). ∗) Es versteht sich, daß ich hier mich selbst meine und nur des erforderten Inkognitos wegen nicht in der ersten Person reden durfte. ### Chapter III, 4 Hingegen darf ich nicht den Unterschied unerörtert lassen, welchen, bei der Motivation, das Auszeichnende des menschlichen Bewußtseins vor jedem tierischen herbeiführt. Dieses, welches eigentlich das Wort **Vernunft** bezeichnet, besteht darin, daß der Mensch nicht, wie das Tier, bloß der **anschauenden** Auffassung der Außenwelt fähig ist, sondern aus dieser Allgemeinbegriffe (*notiones universales*) zu abstrahieren vermag, welche er, um sie in seinem sinnlichen Bewußtsein fixieren und festhalten zu können, mit Worten bezeichnet und nun damit zahllose Kombinationen vornimmt, die zwar immer, wie auch die Begriffe, aus denen sie bestehen, auf die anschaulich erkannte Welt sich beziehen, jedoch eigentlich das ausmachen, was man **denken** nennt und wodurch die großen Vorzüge des Menschengeschlechts vor allen übrigen möglich werden, nämlich Sprache, Besonnenheit, Rückblick auf das Vergangene, Sorge für das Künftige, Absicht, Vorsatz, planmäßiges, gemeinsames Handeln vieler, Staat, Wissenschaften, Künste u. s. f. Alles dieses beruht auf der einzigen Fähigkeit, nichtanschauliche, abstrakte, allgemeine Vorstellungen zu haben, die man **Begriffe** (d. i. Inbegriff der Dinge) nennt, weil jeder derselben vieles Einzelne unter sich begreift. Dieser Fähigkeit entbehren die Tiere, selbst die allerklügsten: sie haben daher keine andere als **anschauliche** Vorstellungen, und erkennen demnach nur das gerade Gegenwärtige, leben allein in der Gegenwart. Die Motive, durch die ihr Wille bewegt wird, müssen daher allemal anschaulich und gegenwärtig sein. Hievon aber ist die Folge, daß ihnen äußerst wenig **Wahl** gestattet ist, nämlich bloß zwischen dem ihrem beschränkten Gesichtskreise und Auffassungsvermögen anschaulich Vorliegenden und also in Zeit und Raum Gegenwärtigen, wovon nun das als Motiv stärkere ihren Willen sofort bestimmt; wodurch die Kausalität des Motivs hier sehr augenfällig wird. Eine scheinbare Ausnahme macht die **Dressur**, welche die durch das Medium der Gewohnheit wirkende Furcht ist; eine gewissermaßen **wirkliche** der Instinkt, sofern vermöge desselben das Tier im **ganzen** seiner Handlungsweise nicht eigentlich durch Motive, sondern durch innern Zug und Trieb in Bewegung gesetzt wird, welcher jedoch seine nähere Bestimmung, im Detail der **einzelnen** Handlungen und für jeden Augenblick, doch wieder durch Motive erhält, also in die Regel zurückkehrt. Die nähere Erörterung des Instinkts würde mich hier zu weit von meinem Thema abführen: ihr ist das 27. Kapitel der Ergänzungen zum 2. Buche der Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 5. Band dieser Ausgabe gewidmet. — Der Mensch hingegen hat, vermöge seiner Fähigkeit **nicht-anschaulicher** Vorstellungen, vermittelst deren er **denkt und reflektiert**, einen unendlich weitern Gesichtskreis, welcher das Abwesende, das Vergangene, das Zukünftige begreift: dadurch hat er eine sehr viel größere Sphäre der Einwirkung von Motiven und folglich auch der Wahl, als das auf die enge Gegenwart beschränkte Tier. Nicht das seiner sinnlichen Anschauung Vorliegende, in Raum und Zeit Gegenwärtige, ist es, in der Regel, was sein Thun bestimmt: vielmehr sind es bloße **Gedanken**, die er in seinem Kopfe überall mit sich herumträgt und die ihn vom Eindruck der Gegenwart unabhängig machen. Wenn sie aber dies zu thun verfehlen, nennt man sein Handeln unvernünftig: dasselbe wird hingegen als **vernünftig** gelobt, wenn es ausschließlich nach wohl überlegten Gedanken und daher völlig unabhängig vom Eindruck der anschaulichen Gegenwart vollzogen wird. Eben dieses, daß der Mensch durch eine eigene Klasse von Vorstellungen (abstrakte Begriffe, Gedanken), welche das Tier nicht hat, aktuiert wird, ist selbst äußerlich sichtbar, indem es allem seinen Thun, sogar dem unbedeutendesten, ja, allen seinen Bewegungen und Schritten, den Charakter des **Vorsätzlichen und Absichtlichen** aufdrückt; wodurch sein Treiben von dem der Tiere so augenfällig verschieden ist, daß man geradezu sieht, wie gleichsam feine, unsichtbare Fäden (die aus bloßen Gedanken bestehenden Motive) seine Bewegungen lenken, während die der Tiere von den groben, sichtbaren Stricken des anschaulich Gegenwärtigen gezogen werden. Weiter aber geht der Unterschied nicht. **Motiv** wird der Gedanke, wie die Anschauung **Motiv** wird, sobald sie auf den vorliegenden Willen zu wirken vermag. Alle Motive aber sind Ursachen, und alle Kausalität führt Notwendigkeit mit sich. Der Mensch kann nun, mittelst seines Denkvermögens, die Motive, deren Einfluß auf seinen Willen er spürt, in beliebiger Ordnung, abwechselnd und wiederholt sich vergegenwärtigen, um sie seinem Willen vorzuhalten, welches **überlegen** heißt: er ist deliberationsfähig und hat, vermöge dieser Fähigkeit, eine weit größere **Wahl**, als dem Tiere möglich ist. Hiedurch ist er allerdings **relativ frei**, nämlich frei vom unmittelbaren Zwange der **anschaulich gegenwärtigen**, auf seinen Willen als Motive wirkenden Objekte, welchem das Tier schlechthin unterworfen ist: er hingegen bestimmt sich unabhängig von den gegenwärtigen Objekten, nach Gedanken, welche **seine** Motive sind. Diese **relative** Freiheit ist es wohl auch im Grunde, was gebildete, aber nicht tief denkende Leute unter der Willensfreiheit, die der Mensch offenbar vor dem Tiere voraus habe, verstehen. Dieselbe ist jedoch eine bloß **relative**, nämlich in Beziehung auf das anschaulich Gegenwärtige, und eine bloß **komparative**, nämlich im Vergleich mit dem **Tiere**. Durch sie ist ganz allein die **Art** der Motivation geändert, hingegen die **Notwendigkeit** der Wirkung der Motive im mindesten nicht aufgehoben, oder auch nur verringert. Das **abstrakte**, in einem bloßen **Gedanken** bestehende Motiv ist eine **äußere**, den Willen bestimmende Ursache, so gut wie das anschauliche, in einem realen, gegenwärtigen Objekt bestehende: folglich ist es eine Ursache wie jede andere, ist sogar auch, wie die andern, stets ein Reales, Materielles, sofern es allemal zuletzt doch auf einem irgend wann und irgend wo erhaltenen Eindruck **von außen** beruht. Es hat bloß die Länge des Leitungsdrahtes voraus; wodurch ich bezeichnen will, daß es nicht, wie die bloß **anschaulichen** Motive, an eine gewisse Nähe im Raum und in der Zeit gebunden ist; sondern durch die größte Entfernung, durch die längste Zeit und durch eine Vermittelung von Begriffen und Gedanken in langer Verkettung hindurch wirken kann: welches eine Folge der Beschaffenheit und eminenten Empfänglichkeit des Organs ist, das zunächst seine Einwirkung erfährt und aufnimmt, nämlich des menschlichen Gehirns, oder der **Vernunft**. Dies hebt jedoch seine **Ursächlichkeit** und die mit ihr gesetzte **Notwendigkeit** im mindesten nicht auf. Daher kann nur eine sehr oberflächliche Ansicht jene relative und komparative Freiheit für eine absolute, ein *liberum arbitrium indifferentiae*, halten. Die durch sie entstehende Deliberationsfähigkeit gibt in der That nichts anderes, als den sehr oft peinlichen **Konflikt der Motive**, dem die Unentschlossenheit vorsitzt, und dessen Kampfplatz nun das ganze Gemüt und Bewußtsein des Menschen ist. Er läßt nämlich die Motive wiederholt ihre Kraft gegeneinander an seinem Willen versuchen, wodurch dieser in dieselbe Lage gerät, in der ein Körper ist, auf welchen verschiedene Kräfte in entgegengesetzten Richtungen wirken, — bis zuletzt das entschieden stärkste Motiv die andern aus dem Felde schlägt und den Willen bestimmt; welcher Ausgang Entschluß heißt und als Resultat des Kampfes mit völliger **Notwendigkeit** eintritt. ### Chapter III, 5 Ueberblicken wir jetzt nochmals die ganze Reihe der Formen der Kausalität, in der sich **Ursachen** im engsten Sinne des Worts, sodann **Reize** und endlich **Motive**, welche wieder in anschauliche und abstrakte zerfallen, deutlich voneinander sondern; so werden wir bemerken, daß, indem wir die Reihe der Wesen in dieser Hinsicht von unten nach oben durchgehen, die Ursache und ihre Wirkung mehr und mehr auseinander treten, sich deutlicher sondern und heterogener werden, wobei die Ursache immer weniger materiell und palpabel wird, daher denn immer weniger in der Ursache und immer mehr in der Wirkung zu liegen scheint; durch welches alles zusammengenommen der Zusammenhang zwischen Ursach und Wirkung an unmittelbarer Faßlichkeit und Verständlichkeit verliert. Nämlich alles eben Angeführte ist am wenigsten der Fall bei der **mechanischen** Kausalität, welche deshalb die faßlichste von allen ist: hieraus entsprang im vorigen Jahrhundert das falsche, in Frankreich sich noch erhaltende, neuerlich aber auch in Deutschland aufgekommene Bestreben, jede andere auf diese zurückzuführen und alle physikalischen und chemischen Vorgänge aus mechanischen Ursachen zu erklären, aus jenen aber wieder den Lebensprozeß. Der stoßende Körper bewegt den ruhenden, und so viel Bewegung er mitteilt, so viel verliert er: hier sehen wir gleichsam die Ursache in die Wirkung hinüberwandern: beide sind ganz homogen, genau kommensurabel und dabei palpabel. Und so ist es eigentlich bei allen rein mechanischen Wirkungen. Aber man wird finden, daß dies alles weniger und weniger der Fall ist, hingegen das oben Gesagte eintritt, je höher wir hinaufsteigen, wenn wir auf jeder Stufe das Verhältnis zwischen Ursach und Wirkung betrachten, z. B. zwischen der Wärme als Ursach und ihren verschiedenen Wirkungen, wie Ausdehnung, Glühen, Schmelzen, Verflüchtigung, Verbrennung, Thermo-Elektrizität u. s. w., oder zwischen Verdunstung als Ursach und Erkältung, oder Krystallisation, als Wirkungen; oder zwischen Reibung des Glases als Ursache und freier Elektrizität, mit ihren seltsamen Phänomenen, als Wirkung; oder zwischen langsamer Oxydation der Platten als Ursach und Galvanismus, mit allen seinen elektrischen, chemischen, magnetischen Phänomenen als Wirkung. Also Ursach und Wirkung **sondern** sich mehr und mehr, werden **heterogener**, ihr Zusammenhang **unverständlicher**, die Wirkung scheint mehr zu enthalten, als die Ursach ihr liefern konnte; da diese sich immer weniger materiell und palpabel zeigt. Dies alles tritt noch deutlicher ein, wenn wir zu den **organischen** Körpern übergehen, wo nun bloße **Reize**, teils äußere, wie die des Lichts, der Wärme, der Luft, des Erdbodens, der Nahrung, teils innere, der Säfte und Teile aufeinander, die Ursachen sind, und als ihre Wirkung das Leben, in seiner unendlichen Komplikation und in zahllosen Verschiedenheiten der Art, in den mannigfaltigen Gestalten der Pflanzen- und Tierwelt sich darstellt ∗). ∗) Die ausführlichere Darlegung dieses Auseinandertretens der Ursach und Wirkung findet man im „Willen in der Natur“ Rubrik „Astronomie“, S. 307 des 6. Bandes dieser Ausgabe. Hat nun aber bei dieser mehr und mehr eintretenden Heterogeneität, Inkommensurabilität und Unverständlichkeit des Verhältnisses zwischen Ursach und Wirkung etwan auch die durch dasselbe gesetzte **Notwendigkeit** abgenommen? Keineswegs, nicht im mindesten. So notwendig, wie die rollende Kugel die ruhende in Bewegung setzt, muß auch die Leidener Flasche, bei Berührung mit der andern Hand, sich entladen, — muß auch Arsenik jedes Lebende töten, — muß auch das Samenkorn, welches, trocken aufbewahrt, Jahrtausende hindurch keine Veränderung zeigte, sobald es in den gehörigen Boden gebracht, dem Einflusse der Luft, des Lichtes, der Wärme, der Feuchtigkeit ausgesetzt ist, keimen, wachsen und sich zur Pflanze entwickeln. Die Ursach ist komplizierter, die Wirkung heterogener, aber die Notwendigkeit, mit der sie eintritt, nicht um ein Haarbreit geringer. Bei dem Leben der Pflanze und dem vegetativen Leben des Tieres ist der Reiz von der durch ihn hervorgerufenen organischen Funktion zwar in jeder Hinsicht höchst verschieden, und beide sind deutlich gesondert: jedoch sind sie noch nicht eigentlich **getrennt**; sondern zwischen ihnen muß ein Kontakt, sei er auch noch so fein und unsichtbar, vorhanden sein. Die gänzliche Trennung tritt erst ein beim animalen Leben, dessen Aktionen durch Motive hervorgerufen werden, wodurch nun die Ursache, welche bisher mit der Wirkung noch immer materiell zusammenhing, ganz von ihr losgerissen dasteht, ganz anderer Natur, ein zunächst Immaterielles, eine bloße Vorstellung ist. Im **Motiv** also, welches die Bewegung des Tieres hervorruft, hat jene Heterogeneität zwischen Ursach und Wirkung, die Sonderung beider voneinander, die Inkommensurabilität derselben, die Immaterialität der Ursache und daher ihr scheinbares Zuwenigenthalten gegen die Wirkung, den höchsten Grad erreicht, und die Unbegreiflichkeit des Verhältnisses zwischen beiden würde sich zu einer absoluten steigern, wenn wir, wie die übrigen Kausalverhältnisse, auch dieses bloß **von außen** kennten: so aber ergänzt hier eine Erkenntnis ganz anderer Art, eine **innere**, die äußere, und der Vorgang, welcher als Wirkung nach eingetretener Ursache hier statt hat, ist uns intim bekannt: wir bezeichnen ihn durch einen *terminus ad hoc*: Willen. Daß jedoch auch hier nicht, so wenig wie oben beim Reiz, das Kausalverhältnis an **Notwendigkeit** eingebüßt habe, sprechen wir aus, sobald wir es als **Kausalverhältnis** erkennen und durch diese unserm Verstande wesentliche Form denken. Zudem finden wir die Motivation den zwei andern oben erörterten Gestaltungen des Kausalverhältnisses völlig analog und nur als die höchste Stufe, zu der diese sich in ganz allmählichem Uebergange erheben. Auf den niedrigsten Stufen des tierischen Lebens ist das **Motiv** noch dem **Reize** nahe verwandt: Zoophyten, Radiarien überhaupt, Akephalen unter den Mollusken, haben nur eine schwache Dämmerung von Bewußtsein, gerade so viel, als nötig ist, ihre Nahrung oder Beute wahrzunehmen und sie an sich zu reißen, wenn sie sich darbietet, und allenfalls ihren Ort gegen einen günstigern zu vertauschen: daher liegt, auf diesen niedrigen Stufen, die Wirkung des Motivs uns noch ganz so deutlich, unmittelbar, entschieden und unzweideutig vor, wie die des Reizes. Kleine Insekten werden vom Scheine des Lichtes bis in die Flamme gezogen: Fliegen setzen sich der Eidechse, die eben, vor ihren Augen, ihresgleichen verschlang, zutraulich auf den Kopf. Wer wird hier von Freiheit träumen? Bei den oberen, intelligenteren Tieren wird die Wirkung der Motive immer mittelbarer: nämlich das Motiv trennt sich deutlicher von der Handlung, die es hervorruft; so daß man sogar diese Verschiedenheit der Entfernung zwischen Motiv und Handlung zum Maßstabe der Intelligenz der Tiere gebrauchen könnte. Beim Menschen wird sie unermeßlich. Hingegen auch bei den klügsten Tieren muß die Vorstellung, die zum Motiv ihres Thuns wird, noch immer eine **anschauliche** sein: selbst wo schon eine Wahl möglich wird, kann sie nur zwischen dem anschaulich Gegenwärtigen statthaben. Der Hund steht zaudernd zwischen dem Ruf seines Herrn und dem Anblick einer Hündin: das stärkere Motiv wird seine Bewegung bestimmen: dann aber erfolgt sie so notwendig, wie eine mechanische Wirkung. Sehen wir doch auch bei dieser einen aus dem Gleichgewicht gebrachten Körper eine Zeit lang abwechselnd nach der einen und der andern Seite wanken, bis sich entscheidet, auf welcher sein Schwerpunkt liegt, und er nach dieser hinstürzt. Solange nun die Motivation auf **anschauliche** Vorstellungen beschränkt ist, wird ihre Verwandtschaft mit dem Reiz und der Ursach überhaupt, noch dadurch augenfällig, daß das Motiv, als wirkende Ursache, ein Reales, ein Gegenwärtiges sein, ja durch Licht, Schall, Geruch, wenn auch sehr mittelbar, doch noch physisch auf die Sinne wirken muß. Zudem liegt hier dem Beobachter die Ursache so offen vor, wie die Wirkung: er sieht das Motiv eintreten und das Thun des Tieres unausbleiblich erfolgen, solange kein anderes ebenso augenfälliges Motiv, oder Dressur entgegenwirkt. Den Zusammenhang zwischen beiden zu bezweifeln ist unmöglich. Daher wird es auch niemanden einfallen, den Tieren ein *liberum arbitrium indifferentiae*, d. h. ein durch keine Ursache bestimmtes Thun beizulegen. ### Chapter III, 6 Wo nun aber das Bewußtsein ein vernünftiges, also ein der nichtanschauenden Erkenntnis, d. h. der Begriffe und Gedanken fähiges ist, da werden die Motive von der Gegenwart und realen Umgebung ganz unabhängig und bleiben dadurch dem Zuschauer verborgen. Denn sie sind jetzt bloße Gedanken, die der Mensch in seinem Kopfe herumträgt, deren Entstehung jedoch außerhalb desselben, oft gar weit entfernt liegt, nämlich bald in der eigenen Erfahrung vergangener Jahre, bald in fremder Ueberlieferung durch Worte und Schrift, selbst aus den fernsten Zeiten, jedoch so, daß ihr **Ursprung immer real und objektiv** ist, wiewohl, durch die oft schwierige Kombination komplizierter äußerer Umstände, viele Irrtümer und mittelst der Ueberlieferung viele Täuschungen, folglich auch viele Thorheiten unter den Motiven sind. Hiezu kommt noch, daß der Mensch die Motive seines Thuns oft vor allen andern verbirgt, bisweilen sogar vor sich selbst, nämlich da, wo er sich scheut zu erkennen, was eigentlich es ist, das ihn bewegt, dieses oder jenes zu thun. Inzwischen sieht man sein Thun erfolgen und sucht durch Konjekturen die Motive zu ergründen, welche man dabei so fest und zuversichtlich voraussetzt, wie die Ursache jeder Bewegung lebloser Körper, die man hätte erfolgen sehen; in der Ueberzeugung, daß das eine wie das andere ohne Ursache unmöglich ist. Dem entsprechend bringt man auch umgekehrt, bei seinen eigenen Plänen und Unternehmungen, die Wirkung der Motive auf die Menschen mit einer Sicherheit in Anschlag, welche der, womit man die mechanischen Wirkungen mechanischer Vorrichtungen berechnet, völlig gleich kommen würde, wenn man die individuellen Charaktere der hier zu behandelnden Menschen so genau kennte, wie dort die Länge und Dicke der Balken, die Durchmesser der Räder, das Gewicht der Lasten u. s. w. Diese Voraussetzung befolgt jeder, solange er nach außen blickt, es mit andern zu thun hat und praktische Zwecke verfolgt: denn zu diesen ist der menschliche Verstand bestimmt. Aber versucht er, die Sache theoretisch und philosophisch zu beurteilen, als wozu die menschliche Intelligenz eigentlich nicht bestimmt ist, und macht nun sich selbst zum Gegenstande der Beurteilung; so läßt er sich durch die eben geschilderte immaterielle Beschaffenheit abstrakter, aus bloßen Gedanken bestehender Motive, weil sie an keine Gegenwart und Umgebung gebunden sind und ihre Hindernisse selbst wieder nur in bloßen Gedanken, als Gegenmotiven, finden, so weit irre leiten, daß er ihr Dasein, oder doch die Notwendigkeit ihres Wirkens bezweifelt und meint, was gethan wird, könne ebensogut auch unterbleiben, der Wille entscheide sich von selbst, ohne Ursache, und jeder seiner Akte wäre ein erster Anfang einer unabsehbaren Reihe dadurch herbeigeführter Veränderungen. Diesen Irrtum unterstützt nun ganz besonders die falsche Auslegung jener im ersten Abschnitt hinlänglich geprüften Aussage des Selbstbewußtseins „ich kann thun was ich will“; zumal wenn diese, wie zu jeder Zeit, auch bei Einwirkung mehrerer, vor der Hand bloß sollicitierender und einander ausschließender Motive anklingt. Dieses zusammengenommen also ist die Quelle der natürlichen Täuschung, aus welcher der Irrtum erwächst, in unserm Selbstbewußtsein liege die Gewißheit einer Freiheit unsers Willens, in dem Sinne, daß er, allen Gesetzen des reinen Verstandes und der Natur zuwider, ein ohne zureichende Gründe sich Entscheidendes sei, dessen Entschlüsse, unter gegebenen Umständen, bei einem und demselben Menschen, so oder auch entgegengesetzt ausfallen könnten. Um die Entstehung dieses für unser Thema so wichtigen Irrtums speziell und aufs deutlichste zu erläutern und dadurch die im vorigen Abschnitt angestellte Untersuchung des Selbstbewußtseins zu ergänzen, wollen wir uns einen Menschen denken, der, etwan auf der Gasse stehend, zu sich sagte: „Es ist 6 Uhr abends, die Tagesarbeit ist beendigt. Ich kann jetzt einen Spaziergang machen; oder ich kann in den Klub gehn; ich kann auch auf den Turm steigen, die Sonne untergehn zu sehn; ich kann auch ins Theater gehn; ich kann auch diesen, oder aber jenen Freund besuchen; ja, ich kann auch zum Thor hinauslaufen, in die weite Welt, und nie wiederkommen. Das alles steht allein bei mir, ich habe völlige Freiheit dazu; thue jedoch davon jetzt nichts, sondern gehe ebenso freiwillig nach Hause, zu meiner Frau.“ Das ist gerade so, als wenn das Wasser spräche: „Ich kann hohe Wellen schlagen (ja! nämlich im Meer und Sturm), ich kann reißend hinabeilen (ja! nämlich im Bette des Stroms), ich kann schäumend und sprudelnd hinunterstürzen (ja! nämlich im Wasserfall), ich kann frei als Strahl in die Luft steigen (ja! nämlich im Springbrunnen), ich kann endlich gar verkochen und verschwinden (ja! bei 80° Wärme); thue jedoch von dem allen jetzt nichts, sondern bleibe freiwillig, ruhig und klar im spiegelnden Teiche.“ Wie das Wasser jenes alles nur dann kann, wann die bestimmenden Ursachen zum einen oder zum andern eintreten; ebenso kann jener Mensch was er zu können wähnt, nicht anders, als unter derselben Bedingung. Bis die Ursachen eintreten, ist es ihm unmöglich: dann aber muß er es, so gut wie das Wasser, sobald es in die entsprechenden Umstände versetzt ist. Sein Irrtum und überhaupt die Täuschung, welche aus dem falsch ausgelegten Selbstbewußtsein hier entsteht, daß er jenes alles jetzt gleich könne, beruht, genau betrachtet, darauf, daß seiner Phantasie nur ein Bild zur Zeit gegenwärtig sein kann und für den Augenblick alles andere ausschließt. Stellt er nun das Motiv zu einer jener als möglich proponierten Handlungen sich vor; so fühlt er sogleich dessen Wirkung auf seinen Willen, der dadurch sollicitiert wird: dies heißt, in der Kunstsprache, eine *Velleitas*. Nun meint er aber, er könne diese auch zu einer *Voluntas* erheben, d. h. die proponierte Handlung ausführen: allein dies ist Täuschung. Denn alsbald würde die Besonnenheit eintreten und die nach andern Seiten ziehenden, oder die entgegenstehenden Motive ihm in Erinnerung bringen: worauf er sehen würde, daß es nicht zur That kommt. Bei einem solchen successiven Vorstellen verschiedener einander ausschließender Motive, unter steter Begleitung des innern „ich kann thun was ich will“, dreht sich gleichsam der Wille, wie eine Wetterfahne auf wohlgeschmierter Angel und bei unstetem Winde, sofort nach jedem Motiv hin, welches die Einbildungskraft ihm vorhält, successiv nach allen als möglich vorliegenden Motiven, und bei jedem denkt der Mensch, er könne es **wollen** und also die Fahne auf diesem Punkte fixieren; welches bloße Täuschung ist. Denn sein „ich kann dies wollen“ ist in Wahrheit hypothetisch und führt den Beisatz mit sich „wenn ich nicht lieber jenes andere wollte“: der hebt aber jenes Wollenkönnen auf. — Kehren wir zu jenem aufgestellten, um 6 Uhr deliberierenden Menschen zurück und denken uns, er bemerke jetzt, daß ich hinter ihm stehe, über ihn philosophiere und seine Freiheit zu allen jenen ihm möglichen Handlungen abstreite; so könnte es leicht geschehen, daß er, um mich zu widerlegen, eine davon ausführte: dann wäre aber gerade mein Leugnen und dessen Wirkung auf seinen Widerspruchsgeist das ihn dazu nötigende Motiv gewesen. Jedoch würde dasselbe ihn nur zu einer oder der andern von den **leichteren** unter den oben angeführten Handlungen bewegen können, z. B. ins Theater zu gehen; aber keineswegs zur zuletzt genannten, nämlich in die weite Welt zu laufen: dazu wäre dies Motiv viel zu schwach. — Ebenso irrig meint mancher, indem er ein geladenes Pistol in der Hand hält, er könne sich damit erschießen. Dazu ist das wenigste jenes mechanische Ausführungsmittel, die Hauptsache aber ein überaus starkes und daher seltenes Motiv, welches die ungeheuere Kraft hat, die nötig ist, um die Lust zum Leben, oder richtiger die Furcht vor dem Tode, zu überwiegen: erst nachdem ein solches eingetreten, kann er sich wirklich erschießen, und muß es; es sei denn, daß ein noch stärkeres Gegenmotiv, wenn überhaupt ein solches möglich ist, die That verhindere. ### Chapter III, 7 Ich kann thun was ich will: ich kann, **wenn ich will**, alles was ich habe den Armen geben und dadurch selbst einer werden, — wenn ich will! — Aber ich vermag nicht, es zu **wollen**; weil die entgegenstehenden Motive viel zu viel Gewalt über mich haben, als daß ich es könnte. Hingegen wenn ich einen andern Charakter hätte, und zwar in dem Maße, daß ich ein Heiliger wäre, dann würde ich es wollen können; dann aber würde ich auch nicht umhin können, es zu wollen, würde es also thun müssen. — Dies alles besteht vollkommen wohl mit dem „ich kann thun was ich will“ des Selbstbewußtseins, worin noch heutzutage einige gedankenlose Philosophaster die Freiheit des Willens zu sehen vermeinen, und sie demnach als eine gegebene Thatsache des Bewußtseins geltend machen. Unter diesen zeichnet sich aus Hr. **Cousin** und verdient deshalb hier eine *mention honorable*, da er in seinem *Cours d'histoire de la philosophie, professé en 1819, 20, et publié par Vacherot, 1841*, lehrt, daß die Freiheit des Willens die zuverlässigste Thatsache des Bewußtseins sei (*Vol. 1, p. 19, 20*), und **Kanten** tadelt, daß er dieselbe bloß aus dem Moralgesetz bewiesen und als ein Postulat aufgestellt habe, da sie doch eine Thatsache sei: „*pourquoi démontrer ce qu'il suffit de constater?*“ (*p. 50*) „*la liberté est un fait, et non une croyance*“ (*ibid.*). — Inzwischen fehlt es auch in Deutschland nicht an Ignoranten, die alles, was seit zwei Jahrhunderten große Denker darüber gesagt haben, in den Wind schlagen und auf die im vorigen Abschnitt analysierte, von ihnen, wie vom großen Haufen, falsch aufgefaßte Thatsache des Selbstbewußtseins pochend, die Freiheit des Willens als thatsächlich gegeben präkonisieren. Doch thue ich ihnen vielleicht unrecht; indem es sein kann, daß sie nicht so unwissend sind, wie sie scheinen, sondern bloß hungrig, und daher, für ein sehr trockenes Stück Brot, alles lehren, was einem hohen Ministerio wohlgefällig sein könnte. Es ist durchaus weder Metapher noch Hyperbel, sondern ganz trockene und buchstäbliche Wahrheit, daß, so wenig eine Kugel aus dem Billard in Bewegung geraten kann, ehe sie einen Stoß erhält, ebensowenig ein Mensch von seinem Stuhle aufstehen kann, ehe ein Motiv ihn wegzieht oder treibt: dann aber ist sein Aufstehen so notwendig und unausbleiblich, wie das Rollen der Kugel nach dem Stoß. Und zu erwarten, daß einer etwas thue, wozu ihn durchaus kein Interesse auffordert, ist wie erwarten, daß ein Stück Holz sich zu mir bewege, ohne einen Strick, der es zöge. Wer etwan dergleichen behauptend, in einer Gesellschaft hartnäckigen Widerspruch erführe, würde am kürzesten aus der Sache kommen, wenn er, durch einen dritten, plötzlich mit lauter und ernster Stimme rufen ließe: „Das Gebälk stürzt ein!“ wodurch die Widersprecher zu der Einsicht gelangen würden, daß ein Motiv ebenso mächtig ist, die Leute zum Hause hinaus zu werfen, wie die handfesteste mechanische Ursache. Denn der Mensch ist, wie alle Gegenstände der Erfahrung, eine Erscheinung in Zeit und Raum, und da das Gesetz der Kausalität für alle diese *a priori* und folglich ausnahmslos gilt, muß auch er ihm unterworfen sein. So sagt es der reine Verstand *a priori*, so bestätigt es die durch die ganze Natur geführte Analogie, und so bezeugt es die Erfahrung jeden Augenblick, wenn man sich nicht täuschen läßt durch den Schein, der dadurch herbeigeführt wird, daß, indem die Naturwesen, sich höher und höher steigernd, komplizierter werden, und ihre Empfänglichkeit, von der bloß mechanischen, zur chemischen, elektrischen, reizbaren, sensibeln, intellektuellen und endlich rationellen sich erhebt und verfeinert, auch die Natur der **einwirkenden Ursachen** hiemit gleichen Schritt halten und auf jeder Stufe den Wesen, auf welche gewirkt werden soll, entsprechend ausfallen muß: daher dann auch die Ursachen immer weniger palpabel und materiell sich darstellen; so daß sie zuletzt nicht mehr dem Auge sichtbar, wohl aber dem Verstande erreichbar sind, der sie, im einzelnen Fall, mit unerschütterlicher Zuversicht voraussetzt und bei gehörigem Forschen auch entdeckt. Denn hier sind die wirkenden Ursachen gesteigert zu bloßen Gedanken, die mit andern Gedanken kämpfen, bis der mächtigste von ihnen den Ausschlag gibt und den Menschen in Bewegung setzt; welches alles in eben solcher Strenge des Kausalzusammenhanges vor sich geht, wie wenn rein mechanische Ursachen, in komplizierter Verbindung, einander entgegen wirken und der berechnete Erfolg unfehlbar eintritt. Den Augenschein der Ursachlosigkeit, wegen Unsichtbarkeit der Ursache, haben die im Glase nach allen Richtungen umherhüpfenden, elektrisierten Korkkügelchen ebensosehr wie die Bewegungen des Menschen: das Urteil aber kommt nicht dem Auge zu, sondern dem Verstande. Unter Voraussetzung der Willensfreiheit wäre jede menschliche Handlung ein unerklärliches Wunder, — eine Wirkung ohne Ursache. Und wenn man den Versuch wagt, ein solches *liberum arbitrium indifferentiae* sich vorstellig zu machen; so wird man bald inne werden, daß dabei recht eigentlich der Verstand stille steht: er hat keine Form so etwas zu denken. Denn der Satz vom Grunde, das Prinzip durchgängiger Bestimmung und Abhängigkeit der Erscheinungen voneinander, ist die allgemeinste Form unsers Erkenntnisvermögens, die, nach Verschiedenheit der Objekte desselben, auch selbst verschiedene Gestalten annimmt. Hier aber sollen wir etwas denken, das bestimmt, ohne bestimmt zu werden, das von nichts abhängt, aber von ihm das andere, das ohne Nötigung, folglich ohne Grund, jetzt *A* wirkt, während es ebensowohl *B*, oder *C*, oder *D* wirken könnte, und zwar ganz und gar könnte, unter denselben Umständen könnte, d. h. ohne daß jetzt in *A* etwas läge, was ihm einen Vorzug (denn der wäre Motivation, also Kausalität) vor *B*, *C*, *D* erteilte. Wir werden hier auf den gleich anfangs aufgestellten Begriff des **absolut Zufälligen** zurückgeführt. Ich wiederhole es: dabei steht ganz eigentlich der Verstand stille, wenn man nur vermag ihn daran zu bringen. Jetzt aber wollen wir uns auch daran erinnern, was überhaupt eine **Ursache** ist: die vorhergehende Veränderung, welche die nachfolgende notwendig macht. Keineswegs bringt irgend eine Ursache in der Welt ihre Wirkung ganz und gar hervor, oder macht sie aus nichts. Vielmehr ist allemal etwas da, worauf sie wirkt, und sie veranlaßt bloß zu dieser Zeit, an diesem Ort und an diesem bestimmten Wesen eine Veränderung, welche stets der Natur des Wesens gemäß ist, zu der also die **Kraft** bereits in diesem Wesen liegen mußte. Mithin entspringt jede Wirkung aus zwei Faktoren, einem innern und einem äußern: nämlich aus der ursprünglichen Kraft dessen, worauf gewirkt wird, und der bestimmenden Ursache, welche jene nötigt sich jetzt hier zu äußern. Ursprüngliche Kraft setzt jede Kausalität und jede Erklärung aus ihr voraus: daher eben letztere nie alles erklärt, sondern stets ein Unerklärliches übrig läßt. Dies sehen wir in der gesamten Physik und Chemie: überall werden bei ihren Erklärungen die Naturkräfte vorausgesetzt, die sich in den Phänomenen äußern, und in der Zurückführung auf welche die ganze Erklärung besteht. Eine Naturkraft selbst ist keiner Erklärung unterworfen, sondern ist das Prinzip aller Erklärung. Ebenso ist sie selbst auch keiner Kausalität unterworfen; sondern sie ist gerade das, was jeder Ursache die Kausalität, d. h. die Fähigkeit zu wirken, verleiht. Sie selbst ist die gemeinsame Unterlage aller Wirkungen dieser Art und in jeder derselben gegenwärtig. So werden die Phänomene des Magnetismus auf eine ursprüngliche Kraft, genannt Elektrizität, zurückgeführt. Hierbei steht die Erklärung stille: sie gibt bloß die Bedingungen an, unter denen eine solche Kraft sich äußert, d. h. die Ursachen, welche ihre Wirksamkeit hervorrufen. Die Erklärungen der himmlischen Mechanik setzen die Gravitation als Kraft voraus, vermöge welcher hier die einzelnen Ursachen, die den Gang der Weltkörper bestimmen, wirken. Die Erklärungen der Chemie setzen die geheimen Kräfte voraus, welche sich als Wahlverwandtschaften, nach gewissen stöchiometrischen Verhältnissen, äußern, und auf denen alle die Wirkungen zuletzt beruhen, welche durch Ursachen, die man angibt, hervorgerufen, pünktlich eintreten. Ebenso setzen alle Erklärungen der Physiologie die Lebenskraft voraus, als welche auf spezifische innere und äußere Reize bestimmt reagiert. Und so ist es durchgängig überall. Selbst die Ursachen, mit denen die so faßliche Mechanik sich beschäftigt, wie Stoß und Druck, haben die Undurchdringlichkeit, Kohäsion, Starrheit, Härte, Trägheit, Schwere, Elastizität zur Voraussetzung, welche nicht weniger, als die eben erwähnten, unergründliche Naturkräfte sind. Also überall bestimmen die Ursachen nichts weiter, als das Wann und Wo der **Aeußerungen** ursprünglicher, unerklärlicher Kräfte, unter deren Voraussetzung allein sie Ursachen sind, d. h. gewisse Wirkungen notwendig herbeiführen. Wie nun dies bei den Ursachen im engsten Sinne und bei den Reizen der Fall ist, so nicht minder bei den **Motiven**; da ja die Motivation nicht im wesentlichen von der Kausalität verschieden, sondern nur eine Art derselben, nämlich die durch das Medium der Erkenntnis hindurchgehende Kausalität ist. Auch hier also ruft die Ursache nur die Aeußerung einer nicht weiter auf Ursachen zurückzuführenden, folglich nicht weiter zu erklärenden Kraft hervor, welche Kraft, die hier Wille heißt, uns aber nicht bloß von außen, wie die andern Naturkräfte, sondern, vermöge des Selbstbewußtseins, auch von innen und unmittelbar bekannt ist. Nur unter der Voraussetzung, daß ein solcher Wille vorhanden und, im einzelnen Fall, daß er von bestimmter Beschaffenheit sei, wirken die auf ihn gerichteten Ursachen, hier Motive genannt. Diese speziell und individuell bestimmte Beschaffenheit des Willens, vermöge deren seine Reaktion auf dieselben Motive in jedem Menschen eine andere ist, macht das aus, was man dessen **Charakter** nennt und zwar, weil er nicht *a priori*, sondern nur durch Erfahrung bekannt wird, **empirischen Charakter**. Durch ihn ist zunächst die Wirkungsart der verschiedenartigen Motive auf den gegebenen Menschen bestimmt. Denn er liegt allen Wirkungen, welche die Motive hervorrufen, so zum Grunde, wie die allgemeinen Naturkräfte den durch Ursachen im engsten Sinn hervorgerufenen Wirkungen, und die Lebenskraft den Wirkungen der Reize. Und, wie die Naturkräfte, so ist auch er ursprünglich, unveränderlich, unerklärlich. Bei den Tieren ist er in jeder Spezies, beim Menschen in jedem Individuo ein anderer. Nur in den allerobersten, klügsten Tieren zeigt sich schon ein merklicher Individualcharakter, wiewohl mit durchaus überwiegendem Charakter der Spezies. ### Chapter III, 8 Der **Charakter des Menschen** ist: 1. **individuell**: er ist in jedem ein anderer. Zwar liegt der Charakter der Spezies allen zum Grunde, daher die Haupteigenschaften sich in jedem wiederfinden. Allein hier ist ein so bedeutendes Mehr und Minder des Grades, eine solche Verschiedenheit der Kombination und Modifikation der Eigenschaften durcheinander, daß man annehmen kann, der moralische Unterschied der Charaktere komme dem der intellektuellen Fähigkeiten gleich, was viel sagen will, und beide seien ohne Vergleich größer als die körperliche Verschiedenheit zwischen Riese und Zwerg, Apollo und Thersites. Daher ist die Wirkung desselben Motivs auf verschiedene Menschen eine ganz verschiedene; wie das Sonnenlicht Wachs weiß, aber Chlorsilber schwarz färbt, die Wärme Wachs erweicht, aber Thon verhärtet. Deshalb kann man aus der Kenntnis des Motivs allein nicht die That vorhersagen, sondern muß hiezu auch den Charakter genau kennen. 2. Der Charakter des Menschen ist **empirisch**. Durch Erfahrung allein lernt man ihn kennen, nicht bloß an andern, sondern auch an sich selbst. Daher wird man oft, wie über andere, so auch über sich selbst enttäuscht, wenn man entdeckt, daß man diese oder jene Eigenschaft, z. B. Gerechtigkeit, Uneigennützigkeit, Mut, nicht in dem Grade besitzt, als man gütigst voraussetzte. Daher auch bleibt, bei einer vorliegenden schweren Wahl, unser eigener Entschluß, gleich einem fremden, uns selber so lange ein Geheimnis, bis jene entschieden ist: bald glauben wir, daß sie auf diese, bald daß sie auf jene Seite fallen werde, je nachdem dieses oder jenes Motiv dem Willen von der Erkenntnis näher vorgehalten wird und seine Kraft an ihm versucht, wobei denn jenes „ich kann thun was ich will“ den Schein der Willensfreiheit hervorbringt. Endlich macht das stärkere Motiv seine Gewalt über den Willen geltend, und die Wahl fällt oft anders aus, als wir anfangs vermuteten. Daher endlich kann keiner wissen, wie ein anderer und auch nicht, wie er selbst in irgend einer bestimmten Lage handeln wird, ehe er darin gewesen: nur nach bestandener Probe ist er des andern und erst dann auch seiner selbst gewiß. Dann aber ist er es: erprobte Freunde, geprüfte Diener sind sicher. Ueberhaupt behandeln wir einen uns genau bekannten Menschen, wie jede andere Sache, deren Eigenschaften wir bereits kennen gelernt haben, und sehen mit Zuversicht vorher, was von ihm zu erwarten steht und was nicht. Wer einmal etwas gethan, wird es, vorkommenden Falls, wieder thun, im Guten wie im Bösen. Darum wird, wer großer, außerordentlicher Hilfe bedarf, sich an den wenden, der Proben des Edelmutes abgelegt hat: und wer einen Mörder dingen will, wird sich unter den Leuten umsehen, die schon die Hände im Blute gehabt haben. Nach Herodots Erzählung (VII, 164) war Gelo von Syrakus in die Notwendigkeit versetzt, eine sehr große Geldsumme einem Manne gänzlich anzuvertrauen, indem er sie ihm, unter freier Disposition darüber, ins Ausland mitgeben mußte: er erwählte dazu den Kadmos, als welcher einen Beweis seltener, ja unerhörter Redlichkeit und Gewissenhaftigkeit abgelegt hatte. Sein Zutrauen bewährte sich vollkommen. — Gleichermaßen erwächst erst aus der Erfahrung und wenn die Gelegenheit kommt die Bekanntschaft mit uns selbst, auf welche das Selbstvertrauen, oder Mißtrauen, sich gründet. Je nachdem wir in einem Fall Besonnenheit, Mut, Redlichkeit, Verschwiegenheit, Feinheit, oder was sonst er heischen mochte, gezeigt haben, oder aber der Mangel an solchen Tugenden zu Tage gekommen ist, — sind wir, infolge der mit uns gemachten Bekanntschaft, hinterher zufrieden mit uns selbst, oder das Gegenteil. Erst die genaue Kenntnis seines eigenen empirischen Charakters gibt dem Menschen das, was man **erworbenen Charakter** nennt: derjenige besitzt ihn, der seine eigenen Eigenschaften, gute wie schlechte, genau kennt und dadurch sicher weiß, was er sich zutrauen und zumuten darf, was aber nicht. Er spielt seine eigene Rolle, die er zuvor, vermöge seines empirischen Charakters, nur naturalisierte, jetzt kunstmäßig und methodisch, mit Festigkeit und Anstand, ohne jemals, wie man sagt, aus dem Charakter zu fallen, was stets beweist, daß einer, im einzelnen Fall, sich über sich selbst im Irrtum befand. ### Chapter III, 9 3. Der Charakter des Menschen ist **konstant**: er bleibt derselbe, das ganze Leben hindurch. Unter der veränderlichen Hülle seiner Jahre, seiner Verhältnisse, selbst seiner Kenntnisse und Ansichten, steckt, wie ein Krebs in seiner Schale, der identische und eigentliche Mensch, ganz unveränderlich und immer derselbe. Bloß in der Richtung und dem Stoff erfährt sein Charakter die scheinbaren Modifikationen, welche Folge der Verschiedenheit der Lebensalter und ihrer Bedürfnisse sind. **Der Mensch ändert sich nie**: wie er in einem Falle gehandelt hat, so wird er, unter völlig gleichen Umständen (zu denen jedoch auch die richtige Kenntnis dieser Umstände gehört) stets wieder handeln. Die Bestätigung dieser Wahrheit kann man aus der täglichen Erfahrung entnehmen: am frappantesten aber erhält man sie, wenn man einen Bekannten nach 20 bis 30 Jahren wiederfindet und ihn nun bald genau auf denselben Streichen betrifft, wie ehemals. — Zwar wird mancher diese Wahrheit mit Worten leugnen: er selbst setzt sie jedoch bei seinem Handeln voraus, indem er dem, den er einmal unredlich befunden, nie wieder traut, wohl aber sich auf den verläßt, der sich früher redlich bewiesen. Denn auf jener Wahrheit beruht die Möglichkeit aller Menschenkenntnis und des festen Vertrauens auf die Geprüften, Erprobten, Bewährten. Sogar wenn ein solches Zutrauen uns einmal getäuscht hat, sagen wir nie: „sein Charakter hat sich geändert“, sondern: „ich habe mich in ihm geirrt“. — Auf ihr beruht es, daß, wenn wir den moralischen Wert einer Handlung beurteilen wollen, wir vor allem über ihr Motiv Gewißheit zu erlangen suchen, dann aber unser Lob oder Tadel nicht das Motiv trifft, sondern den Charakter, der sich durch ein solches Motiv bestimmen ließ, als den zweiten und allein dem Menschen inhärierenden Faktor dieser That. — Auf derselben Wahrheit beruht es, daß die wahre Ehre (nicht die ritterliche, oder Narrenehre), einmal verloren, nie wieder herzustellen ist, sondern der Makel einer einzigen nichtswürdigen Handlung dem Menschen auf immer anklebt, ihn, wie man sagt, brandmarkt. Daher das Sprichwort: „Wer einmal stiehlt, ist sein Lebtag ein Dieb.“ — Auf ihr beruht es, daß, wenn bei wichtigen Staatshändeln, es einmal kommen kann, daß der Verrat gewollt, daher der Verräter gesucht, gebraucht und belohnt wird; dann, nach erreichtem Zweck, die Klugheit gebietet, ihn zu entfernen, weil die Umstände veränderlich sind, sein Charakter aber unveränderlich. — Auf ihr beruht es, daß der größte Fehler eines dramatischen Dichters dieser ist, daß seine Charaktere nicht gehalten sind, d. h. nicht, gleich den von großen Dichtern dargestellten, mit der Konstanz und strengen Konsequenz einer Naturkraft durchgeführt sind; wie ich dieses letztere in einem ausführlichen Beispiele am Shakespeare nachgewiesen habe, in Parerga, T. 2, § 118. — Ja, auf derselben Wahrheit beruht die Möglichkeit des Gewissens, sofern dieses oft noch im späten Alter die Unthaten der Jugend uns vorhält, wie z. B. dem J. J. Rousseau, nach 40 Jahren, daß er die Magd Marion eines Diebstahls beschuldigt hatte, den er selbst begangen. Dies ist nur unter der Voraussetzung möglich, daß der Charakter unverändert derselbe geblieben; da, im Gegenteil, die lächerlichsten Irrtümer, die gröbste Unwissenheit, die wunderlichsten Thorheiten unserer Jugend uns im Alter nicht beschämen: denn das hat sich geändert, die waren Sache der Erkenntnis, wir sind davon zurückgekommen, haben sie längst abgelegt, wie unsere Jugendkleider. — Auf derselben Wahrheit beruht es, daß ein Mensch, selbst bei der deutlichsten Erkenntnis, ja, Verabscheuung seiner moralischen Fehler und Gebrechen, ja, beim aufrichtigsten Vorsatz der Besserung, doch eigentlich sich nicht bessert, sondern trotz ernsten Vorsätzen und redlichem Versprechen, sich, bei erneuerter Gelegenheit, doch wieder auf denselben Pfaden wie zuvor, zu seiner eigenen Ueberraschung, betreffen läßt. Bloß seine **Erkenntnis** läßt sich berichtigen; daher er zu der Einsicht gelangen kann, daß diese oder jene Mittel, die er früher anwandte, nicht zu seinem Zwecke führen, oder mehr Nachteil, als Gewinn bringen: dann ändert er die Mittel, nicht die Zwecke. Hierauf beruht das amerikanische Pönitenziarsystem: es unternimmt nicht, den **Charakter**, das **Herz** des Menschen zu bessern, wohl aber ihm den **Kopf** zurechtzusetzen und ihm zu zeigen, daß er die Zwecke, denen er vermöge seines Charakters unwandelbar nachstrebt, auf dem bisher gegangenen Wege der Unredlichkeit weit schwerer und mit viel größeren Mühseligkeiten und Gefahren erreichen würde, als auf dem der Ehrlichkeit, Arbeit und Genügsamkeit. Ueberhaupt liegt allein in der **Erkenntnis** die Sphäre und der Bereich aller Besserung und Veredelung. Der Charakter ist unveränderlich, die Motive wirken mit Notwendigkeit: aber sie haben durch die **Erkenntnis** hindurchzugehen, als welche das Medium der Motive ist. Diese aber ist der mannigfaltigsten Erweiterung, der immerwährenden Berichtigung in unzähligen Graden fähig: dahin arbeitet alle Erziehung. Die Ausbildung der Vernunft, durch Kenntnisse und Einsichten jeder Art, ist dadurch moralisch wichtig, daß sie Motiven, für welche ohne sie der Mensch verschlossen bliebe, den Zugang öffnet. Solange er diese nicht verstehen konnte, waren sie für seinen Willen nicht vorhanden. Daher kann, unter gleichen äußern Umständen, die Lage eines Menschen das zweite Mal doch in der That eine ganz andere sein, als das erste: wenn er nämlich erst in der Zwischenzeit fähig geworden ist, jene Umstände richtig und vollständig zu begreifen; wodurch jetzt Motive auf ihn wirken, denen er früher unzugänglich war. In diesem Sinn sagten die Scholastiker sehr richtig: *causa finalis* (Zweck, Motiv) *movet non secundum suum esse reale, sed secundum esse cognitum*. Weiter aber, als auf die Berichtigung der Erkenntnis, erstreckt sich keine moralische Einwirkung, und das Unternehmen, die Charakterfehler eines Menschen durch Reden und Moralisieren aufheben und so seinen Charakter selbst, seine eigentliche Moralität, umschaffen zu wollen, ist ganz gleich dem Vorhaben, Blei durch äußere Einwirkung in Gold zu verwandeln, oder eine Eiche durch sorgfältige Pflege dahin zu bringen, daß sie Aprikosen trüge. Die Ueberzeugung von der Unveränderlichkeit des Charakters finden wir als eine unzweifelhafte schon von **Apulejus** ausgesprochen, in seiner *Oratio de magia*, woselbst er, sich gegen die Beschuldigung der Zauberei verteidigend, an seinen bekannten Charakter appelliert und sagt: *Certum indicem cujusque animum esse, qui semper eodem ingenio ad virtutem vel ad malitiam moratus, firmum argumentum est accipiendi criminis, aut respuendi*. 4. Der individuelle Charakter ist **angeboren**: er ist kein Werk der Kunst, oder der dem Zufall unterworfenen Umstände; sondern das Werk der Natur selbst. Er offenbart sich schon im Kinde, zeigt dort im kleinen, was er künftig im großen sein wird. Daher legen, bei der allergleichesten Erziehung und Umgebung, zwei Kinder den grundverschiedensten Charakter aufs deutlichste an den Tag: es ist derselbe, den sie als Greise tragen werden. Er ist sogar, in seinen Grundzügen, erblich, aber nur vom Vater, die Intelligenz hingegen von der Mutter; worüber ich auf Kap. 43 der Ergänzungen zum 4. Buch der Welt als Wille u. Vorst. (Bd. VI dieser Ausgabe) verweise. ### Chapter III, 10 Aus dieser Darlegung des Wesens des individuellen Charakters folgt allerdings, daß Tugenden und Laster angeboren sind. Diese Wahrheit mag manchem Vorurteil und mancher Rockenphilosophie, mit ihren sogenannten praktischen Interessen, d. h. ihren kleinen, engen Begriffen und beschränkten Kinderschulansichten, ungelegen kommen: sie war aber schon die Ueberzeugung des Vaters der Moral, des **Sokrates**, der, laut Angabe des **Aristoteles** (*Eth. magna, I, 9*) behauptete: *οὐκ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν γενέσθαι τὸ σπουδαίους εἶναι, ἢ φαύλους, κ. τ. λ.* (*in arbitrio nostro positum non esse, nos probos, vel malos esse*). Was Aristoteles hier dagegen erinnert, ist offenbar schlecht: auch teilt er selbst jene Meinung des Sokrates und spricht sie auf das deutlichste aus, in der *Eth. Nicom., VI, 13*: „*Πᾶσι γὰρ δοκεῖ ἕκαστα τῶν ἠθῶν ὑπάρχειν φύσει πως· καὶ γὰρ δίκαιοι καὶ σωφρονικοὶ καὶ ἀνδρεῖοι καὶ τἆλλα ἔχομεν εὐθὺς ἐκ γενετῆς.*“ (*Singuli enim mores in omnibus hominibus quodammodo videntur inesse natura: namque ad justitiam, temperantiam, fortitudinem, ceterasque virtutes proclivitatem statim habemus, cum primum nascimur.*) Und wenn man die sämtlichen Tugenden und Laster in dem Buche des Aristoteles *de virtutibus et vitiis*, wo sie zu kurzer Uebersicht zusammengestellt sind, überschaut; so wird man finden, daß sie sämtlich, an wirklichen Menschen, sich nur denken lassen als **angeborene** Eigenschaften, und nur als solche echt wären: hingegen aus der Reflexion hervorgegangen und willkürlich angenommen, würden sie eigentlich auf eine Art **Verstellung** hinauslaufen, unecht sein, daher auch auf ihren Fortbestand und ihre Bewährung im Drange der Umstände dann durchaus nicht zu rechnen sein würde. Und auch wenn man die beim Aristoteles und allen Alten fehlende christliche Tugend der Liebe, *caritas*, hinzufügt; so verhält es sich mit ihr nicht anders. Wie sollte auch die unermüdliche Güte des **einen** Menschen und die unverbesserliche, tief wurzelnde Bosheit des andern, der Charakter der Antonine, des Hadrian, des Titus einerseits, und der des Caligula, Nero, Domitian andererseits, von außen angeflogen, das Werk zufälliger Umstände, oder bloßer Erkenntnis und Belehrung sein! Hatte doch gerade Nero den Seneca zum Erzieher. — Vielmehr liegt im angeborenen Charakter, diesem eigentlichen Kern des ganzen Menschen, der Keim aller seiner Tugenden und Laster. Diese dem unbefangenen Menschen natürliche Ueberzeugung hat auch die Hand des **Vellejus Paterculus** geführt, als er (II, 35) über den Cato folgendes niederschrieb: *Homo virtuti consimillimus, et per omnia genio diis, quam hominibus propior: qui nunquam recte fecit, ut facere videretur, sed quia* *aliter facere non poterat*∗). ∗) Diese Stelle wird allmählich zu einem regulären Armaturstück im Zeughause der Deterministen, welche Ehre der gute alte Historiker, vor 1800 Jahren, sich gewiß nicht träumen ließ. Zuerst hat sie **Hobbes** gelobt, nach ihm **Priestley**. Dann hat sie **Schelling** in seiner Abhandlung über die Freiheit, S. 478, in einer zu seinen Zwecken etwas verfälschten Uebersetzung wiedergegeben; weshalb er auch den Vellejus Paterculus nicht namentlich anführt, sondern, so klug wie vornehm, sagt „ein Alter“. Endlich habe auch ich nicht ermangeln wollen, sie beizubringen, da sie wirklich zur Sache ist. Woraus hingegen, unter der Annahme der Willensfreiheit, Tugend und Laster, oder überhaupt die Thatsache, daß zwei gleich erzogene Menschen, unter völlig gleichen Umständen und Anlässen, ganz verschieden, ja entgegengesetzt handeln, eigentlich entspringen soll, ist schlechterdings nicht abzusehen. Die thatsächliche, ursprüngliche Grundverschiedenheit der Charaktere ist unvereinbar mit der Annahme einer solchen Willensfreiheit, die darin besteht, daß jedem Menschen, in jeder Lage, entgegengesetzte Handlungen gleich möglich sein sollen. Denn da muß sein Charakter von Hause aus eine *tabula rasa* sein, wie nach **Locke** der Intellekt, und darf keine angeborene Neigung nach einer, oder der andern Seite haben; weil diese eben schon das vollkommene Gleichgewicht, welches man im *libero arbitrio indifferentiae* denkt, aufheben würde. Im **Subjektiven** kann also, unter jener Annahme, der Grund der in Betrachtung genommenen Verschiedenheit der Handlungsweise verschiedener Menschen nicht liegen; aber noch weniger im **Objektiven**: denn alsdann wären es ja die Objekte, welche das Handeln bestimmten, und die verlangte Freiheit ginge ganz und gar verloren. Da bliebe allenfalls nur noch der Ausweg übrig, den Ursprung jener thatsächlichen großen Verschiedenheit der Handlungsweisen in die Mitte zwischen Subjekt und Objekt zu verlegen, nämlich sie entstehen zu lassen aus der verschiedenen Art, wie das Objektive vom Subjektiven aufgefaßt, d. h. wie es von verschiedenen Menschen **erkannt** würde. Dann liefe aber alles auf richtige, oder falsche **Erkenntnis** der vorliegenden Umstände zurück, wodurch der moralische Unterschied der Handlungsweisen zu einer bloßen Verschiedenheit der Richtigkeit des Urteils umgestaltet und die Moral in Logik verwandelt würde. Versuchten nun die Anhänger der Willensfreiheit zuletzt noch sich aus jenem schlimmen Dilemma dadurch zu retten, daß sie sagten: angeborene Verschiedenheit der Charaktere gebe es zwar nicht, aber es entstände eine dergleichen Verschiedenheit aus äußeren Umständen, Eindrücken, Erfahrungen, Beispiel, Lehren u.s. w.: und wenn auf diese Weise einmal der Charakter zu stande gekommen wäre; so erklärte sich aus ihm nachher die Verschiedenheit des Handelns: so ist darauf zu sagen, erstlich, daß demnach der Charakter sich sehr spät einstellen würde (während er thatsächlich schon in Kindern zu erkennen ist) und die meisten Menschen sterben würden, ehe sie einen Charakter erlangt hätten; zweitens aber, daß alle jene äußeren Umstände, deren Werk der Charakter sein sollte, ganz außer unserer Macht liegen und vom Zufall (oder wenn man will, von der Vorsehung) so oder anders herbeigeführt würden: wenn nun also aus diesen der Charakter und aus diesem wieder die Verschiedenheit des Handelns entspränge; so würde alle moralische Verantwortlichkeit für diese letztere ganz und gar wegfallen, da sie offenbar zuletzt das Werk des Zufalls oder der Vorsehung wäre. So sehen wir also, unter der Annahme der Willensfreiheit, den Ursprung der Verschiedenheit der Handlungsweisen, und damit der Tugend, oder des Lasters, nebst der Verantwortlichkeit, ohne allen Anhalt schweben und nirgends ein Plätzchen finden, Wurzel darauf zu schlagen. Hieraus aber ergibt sich, daß jene Annahme, so sehr sie auch, auf den ersten Blick, dem rohen Verstande zusagt, doch im Grunde ebensosehr mit unsern moralischen Ueberzeugungen im Widerspruch steht, als, wie genugsam gezeigt, mit der obersten Grundregel unsers Verstandes. Die Notwendigkeit, mit der, wie ich oben ausführlich dargethan habe, die Motive, wie alle Ursachen überhaupt, wirken, ist keine voraussetzungslose. Jetzt haben wir ihre Voraussetzung, den Grund und Boden worauf sie fußt, kennen gelernt: es ist der angeborene, **individuelle Charakter**. Wie jede Wirkung in der unbelebten Natur ein notwendiges Produkt zweier Faktoren ist, nämlich der hier sich äußernden allgemeinen **Naturkraft** und der diese Aeußerung hier hervorrufenden einzelnen **Ursache**; gerade so ist jede That eines Menschen das notwendige Produkt seines **Charakters** und des eingetretenen **Motivs**. Sind diese beiden gegeben, so erfolgt sie unausbleiblich. Damit eine andere entstände, müßte entweder ein anderes Motiv oder ein anderer Charakter gesetzt werden. Auch würde jede That sich mit Sicherheit vorhersagen, ja, berechnen lassen; wenn nicht teils der Charakter sehr schwer zu erforschen, teils auch das Motiv oft verborgen und stets der Gegenwirkung anderer Motive, die allein in der Gedankensphäre des Menschen, andern unzugänglich, liegen, bloßgestellt wäre. Durch den angeborenen Charakter des Menschen sind schon die Zwecke überhaupt, welchen er unabänderlich nachstrebt, im wesentlichen bestimmt: die Mittel, welche er dazu ergreift, werden bestimmt teils durch die äußeren Umstände, teils durch seine Auffassung derselben, deren Richtigkeit wieder von seinem Verstande und dessen Bildung abhängt. Als Endresultat von dem allen erfolgen nun seine einzelnen Thaten, mithin die ganze Rolle, welche er in der Welt zu spielen hat. — Ebenso richtig daher, wie poetisch aufgefaßt, findet man das Resultat der hier dargelegten Lehre vom individuellen Charakter ausgesprochen in einer der schönsten Strophen Goethes: „Wie an dem Tag, der dich der Welt verliehen, Die Sonne stand zum Gruße der Planeten, Bist alsobald und fort und fort gediehen, Nach dem Gesetz, wonach du angetreten. So mußt du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen, So sagten schon Sibyllen, so Propheten; Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstückelt Geprägte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt.“ Jene Voraussetzung also, auf der überhaupt die Notwendigkeit der Wirkungen aller Ursachen beruht, ist das innere Wesen jedes Dinges, sei dasselbe nun bloß eine in diesem sich äußernde allgemeine Naturkraft, oder sei es Lebenskraft, oder sei es Wille: immer wird jegliches Wesen, welcher Art es auch sei, auf Anlaß der einwirkenden Ursachen, seiner eigentümlichen Natur gemäß reagieren. Dieses Gesetz, dem alle Dinge der Welt, ohne Ausnahme, unterworfen sind, drückten die Scholastiker aus in der Formel *operari sequitur esse*. Demselben zufolge prüft der Chemiker die Körper durch Reagenzien, und der Mensch den Menschen durch die Proben, auf welche er ihn stellt. In allen Fällen werden die äußeren Ursachen mit Notwendigkeit hervorrufen, was in dem Wesen steckt: denn dieses kann nicht anders reagieren, als nach dem wie es ist. ### Chapter III, 11 Hier ist daran zu erinnern, daß jede *Existentia* eine *Essentia* voraussetzt: d. h. jedes Seiende muß eben auch **etwas** sein, ein bestimmtes Wesen haben. Es kann nicht dasein und dabei doch nichts sein, nämlich so etwas wie das *Ens metaphysicum*, d. h. ein Ding welches ist und weiter nichts als ist, ohne alle Bestimmungen und Eigenschaften, und folglich ohne die aus diesen fließende entschiedene Wirkungsart: sondern so wenig eine *Essentia* ohne *Existentia* eine Realität liefert (was Kant durch das bekannte Beispiel von hundert Thalern erläutert hat); ebensowenig vermag dies eine *Existentia* ohne *Essentia*. Denn jedes Seiende muß eine ihm wesentliche, eigentümliche Natur haben, vermöge welcher es ist was es ist, die es stets behauptet, deren Aeußerungen von den Ursachen mit Notwendigkeit hervorgerufen werden; während hingegen diese Natur selbst keineswegs das Werk jener Ursachen, noch durch dieselben modifikabel ist. Alles dieses aber gilt vom Menschen und seinem Willen ebensosehr, wie von allen übrigen Wesen in der Natur. Auch er hat zur *Existentia* eine *Essentia*, d. h. grundwesentliche Eigenschaften, die eben seinen Charakter ausmachen und nur der Veranlassung von außen bedürfen, um hervorzutreten. Folglich zu erwarten, daß ein Mensch, bei gleichem Anlaß, einmal so, ein andermal aber ganz anders handeln werde, wäre wie wenn man erwarten wollte, daß derselbe Baum, der diesen Sommer Kirschen trug, im nächsten Birnen tragen werde. Die Willensfreiheit bedeutet, genau betrachtet, eine *Existentia* ohne *Essentia*; welches heißt, daß etwas sei und dabei doch **nichts sei**, welches wiederum heißt, **nicht sei**, also ein Widerspruch ist. Der Einsicht hierin, wie auch in die *a priori* gewisse und daher ausnahmslose Gültigkeit des Gesetzes der Kausalität, ist es zuzuschreiben, daß alle wirklich tiefen Denker aller Zeiten, so verschieden auch ihre sonstigen Ansichten sein mochten, darin übereinstimmten, daß sie die Notwendigkeit der Willensakte bei eintretenden Motiven behaupteten und das *liberum arbitrium* verwarfen. Sogar haben sie, eben weil die unberechenbar große Majorität der zum Denken unfähigen und dem Scheine und Vorurteil preisgegebenen Menge dieser Wahrheit allezeit hartnäckig widerstrebte, sie auf die Spitze gestellt, um sie in den entschiedensten, ja, übermütigsten Ausdrücken zu behaupten. Der bekannteste von diesen ist der Esel des **Buridan**, nach welchem man jedoch, seit ungefähr hundert Jahren, in den von **Buridan** noch vorhandenen Schriften vergeblich sucht. Ich selbst besitze eine augenscheinlich noch im 15. Jahrhundert gedruckte Ausgabe seiner *Sophismata*, ohne Druckort, noch Jahreszahl, noch Seitenzahl, in der ich oft vergeblich danach gesucht habe, obgleich fast auf jeder Seite Esel als Beispiele vorkommen. **Bayle**, dessen Artikel **Buridan** die Grundlage alles seitdem darüber Geschriebenen ist, sagt sehr unrichtig, daß man nur von dem **einen** Sophisma Buridans wisse; da ich einen ganzen Quartanten Sophismata von ihm habe. Auch hätte **Bayle**, da er die Sache so ausführlich behandelt, wissen sollen, was jedoch auch seitdem nicht bemerkt zu sein scheint, daß jenes Beispiel, welches gewissermaßen zum Symbol oder Typus der großen hier von mir verfochtenen Wahrheit geworden ist, weit älter ist, als **Buridan**. Es findet sich im **Dante**, der das ganze Wissen seiner Zeit inne hatte, vor Buridan lebte und nicht von Eseln, sondern von Menschen redet, mit folgenden Worten, welche das vierte Buch seines *Paradiso* eröffnen: *Intra duo cibi, distanti e moventi* *D'un modo, prima si morria di fame,* *Che liber’ uomo l'un recasse a' denti∗).* ∗) *Inter duos cibos aeque remotos unoque modo motos constitutus, homo prius fame periret, quam ut, absoluta libertate usus, unum eorum dentibus admoveret.* Ja, es findet sich schon im **Aristoteles**, *De coelo, II, 13*, mit diesen Worten: *καὶ ὁ λόγος τοῦ πεινῶντος καὶ διψῶντος σφόδρα μὲν, ὁμοίως δὲ, καὶ τῶν ἐδωδίμων καὶ ποτῶν ἴσον ἀπέχοντος, καὶ γὰρ τοῦτον ἠρεμεῖν ἀναγκαῖον* (*item ea, quae de sitiente vehementer esurienteque dicuntur, cum aeque ab his, quae eduntur atque bibuntur, distat: quiescat enim necesse est*). **Buridan**, der aus diesen Quellen das Beispiel überkommen hatte, vertauschte den Menschen gegen einen Esel, bloß weil es die Gewohnheit dieses dürftigen Scholastikers ist, zu seinen Beispielen entweder Sokrates und Plato, oder *asinum* zu nehmen. Die Frage nach der Willensfreiheit ist wirklich ein Probierstein, an welchem man die tief denkenden Geister von den oberflächlichen unterscheiden kann, oder ein Grenzstein, wo beide auseinandergehen, indem die ersteren sämtlich das notwendige Erfolgen der Handlung, bei gegebenem Charakter und Motiv, behaupten, die letzteren hingegen, mit dem großen Haufen, der Willensfreiheit anhängen. Sodann gibt es noch einen Mittelschlag, welcher, sich verlegen fühlend, hin und her laviert, sich und andern den Zielpunkt verrückt, sich hinter Worte und Phrasen flüchtet, oder die Frage so lange dreht und verdreht, bis man nicht mehr weiß, worauf sie hinauslief. So hat es schon **Leibniz** gemacht, der viel mehr Mathematiker und Polyhistor, als Philosoph war∗). Aber um solche Hin- und Herredner zur Sache zu bringen, muß man ihnen die Frage folgendermaßen stellen und nicht davon abgehen: ∗) Leibnizens Haltlosigkeit in diesem Punkte zeigt sich am deutlichsten in seinem Briefe an Coste, *Opera phil, ed. Erdmann, p. 447*; demnächst auch in der *Théodicée*, § 45–53. 1. Sind einem gegebenen Menschen, unter gegebenen Umständen, zwei Handlungen möglich, oder nur **eine**? — Antwort aller Tiefdenkenden: Nur **eine**. 2. Konnte der zurückgelegte Lebenslauf eines gegebenen Menschen — angesehen, daß einerseits sein Charakter unveränderlich feststeht und andererseits die Umstände, deren Einwirkung er zu erfahren hatte, durchweg und bis auf das Kleinste herab von äußeren Ursachen, die stets mit strenger Notwendigkeit eintreten, und deren aus lauter ebenso notwendigen Gliedern bestehende Kette ins Unendliche hinaufläuft, notwendig bestimmt wurden, — irgend worin, auch nur im Geringsten, in irgend einem Vorgang, einer Scene, anders ausfallen, als er ausgefallen ist? — Nein! ist die konsequente und richtige Antwort. Die Folgerung aus beiden Sätzen ist: **Alles was geschieht, vom Größten bis zum Kleinsten, geschieht notwendig.** *Quidquid fit necessario fit.* Wer bei diesen Sätzen erschrickt, hat noch einiges zu lernen und anderes zu verlernen: danach aber wird er erkennen, daß sie die ergiebigste Quelle des Trostes und der Beruhigung sind. — Unsere Thaten sind allerdings kein erster Anfang, daher in ihnen nichts wirklich Neues zum Dasein gelangt: sondern **durch das was wir thun, erfahren wir bloß was wir sind**. Auf der, wenn auch nicht deutlich erkannten, doch gefühlten Ueberzeugung von der strengen Notwendigkeit alles Geschehenden beruht auch die bei den Alten so fest stehende Ansicht vom *Fatum*, der *εἱμαρμένη*, wie auch der Fatalismus der Mohammedaner, sogar auch der überall unvertilgbare Glaube an *Omina*, weil eben selbst der kleinste Zufall notwendig eintritt und alle Begebenheiten, sozusagen, miteinander Tempo halten, mithin alles in allem widerklingt. Endlich hängt sogar dies damit zusammen, daß, wer ohne die leiseste Absicht und ganz zufällig einen andern verstümmelt oder getötet hat, dieses *Piaculum* sein ganzes Leben hindurch betrauert, mit einem Gefühl, welches dem der Schuld verwandt scheint, und auch von andern, als *persona piacularis* (Unglücksmensch), eine eigene Art von Diskredit erfährt. Ja sogar auf die christliche Lehre von der Gnadenwahl ist die gefühlte Ueberzeugung von der Unveränderlichkeit des Charakters und der Notwendigkeit seiner Aeußerungen wohl nicht ohne Einfluß gewesen. — Endlich will ich noch folgende ganz beiläufige Bemerkung hier nicht unterdrücken, die jeder, je nachdem er über gewisse Dinge denkt, beliebig stehen oder fallen lassen mag. Wenn wir die strenge Notwendigkeit alles Geschehenden, vermöge einer alle Vorgänge ohne Unterschied verknüpfenden Kausalkette nicht annehmen, sondern diese letztere an unzähligen Stellen durch eine absolute Freiheit unterbrochen werden lassen; so wird alles **Vorhersehen des Zukünftigen**, im Traume, im hellsehenden Somnambulismus und im zweiten Gesicht (*second sight*), selbst **objektiv**, folglich absolut unmöglich, mithin undenkbar; weil es dann gar keine objektiv wirkliche Zukunft gibt, die auch nur möglicherweise vorhergesehen werden könnte: statt daß wir jetzt doch nur die subjektiven Bedingungen hiezu, also die subjektive Möglichkeit, bezweifeln. Und selbst dieser Zweifel kann bei den Wohlunterrichteten heutzutage nicht mehr Raum gewinnen, nachdem unzählige Zeugnisse, von glaubwürdigster Seite, jene Anticipationen der Zukunft festgestellt haben. Ich füge noch ein paar Betrachtungen als Korollarien zur festgestellten Lehre von der Notwendigkeit alles Geschehenden hinzu. Was würde aus dieser Welt werden, wenn nicht die Notwendigkeit alle Dinge durchzöge und zusammenhielte, besonders aber der Zeugung der Individuen vorstände? Ein Monstrum, ein Schutthaufen, eine Fratze ohne Sinn und Bedeutung, — nämlich das Werk des wahren und eigentlichen Zufalls. — Wünschen, daß irgend ein Vorfall nicht geschehen wäre, ist eine thörichte Selbstquälerei: denn es heißt etwas absolut Unmögliches wünschen, und ist so unvernünftig, wie der Wunsch, daß die Sonne im Westen aufginge. Weil eben alles Geschehende, Großes wie Kleines, **streng** notwendig eintritt, ist es durchaus eitel, darüber nachzudenken, wie geringfügig und zufällig die Ursachen waren, welche jenen Vorfall herbeigeführt haben, und wie so sehr leicht sie hätten anders sein können: denn dies ist illusorisch; indem sie alle mit ebenso strenger Notwendigkeit eingetreten sind und mit ebenso vollkommener Macht gewirkt haben, wie die, infolge welcher die Sonne im Osten aufgeht. Wir sollen vielmehr die Begebenheiten, wie sie eintreten, mit eben dem Auge betrachten, wie das Gedruckte, welches wir lesen, wohl wissend, daß es dastand, ehe wir es lasen. ### Chapter IV, 1 **IV. Vorgänger.** Zum Beleg der obigen Behauptung über das Urteil aller tiefen Denker hinsichtlich unsers Problems, will ich von den großen Männern, welche sich in diesem Sinne ausgesprochen haben, einige in Erinnerung bringen. Zuvörderst, um diejenigen zu beruhigen, welche etwan glauben könnten, daß Religionsgründe der von mir verfochtenen Wahrheit entgegenständen, erinnere ich daran, daß schon Jeremias (10, 23) gesagt hat: „Des Menschen Thun stehet nicht in seiner Gewalt, und stehet in niemandes Macht, wie er wandele, oder seinen Gang richte.“ Besonders aber berufe ich mich auf **Luther**, welcher in einem eigens dazu geschriebenen Buche, *De servo arbitrio*, mit seiner ganzen Heftigkeit die Willensfreiheit bestreitet. Ein paar Stellen daraus reichen hin, seine Meinung zu charakterisieren, die er natürlich nicht mit philosophischen, sondern mit theologischen Gründen unterstützt. Ich citiere sie nach der Ausgabe von Seb. Schmidt, Straßburg 1707. — Daselbst S. 145 heißt es: Quare simul in omnium cordibus scriptum invenitur, liberum arbitrium nihil esse; licet obscuretur tot disputationibus contrariis et tanta tot virorum auctoritate. — S. 214: Hoc loco admonitos velim liberi arbitrii tutores, ut sciant, sese esse abnegatores Christi, dum asserunt liberum arbitrium. — S. 220: Contra liberum arbitrium pugnabunt Scripturae testimonia, quotquot de Christo loquuntur. At ea sunt innumerabilia, imo tota Scriptura. Ideo, si Scriptura judice causam agimus, omnibus modis vicero, ut ne jota unum aut apex sit reliquus, qui non damnet dogma liberi arbitrii. — Jetzt zu den Philosophen. Die Alten sind hier nicht ernstlich in Betracht zu ziehen, da ihre Philosophie, gleichsam noch im Stande der Unschuld, die zwei tiefsten und bedenklichsten Probleme der neuern Philosophie noch nicht zum deutlichen Bewußtsein gebracht hatte, nämlich die Frage nach der Freiheit des Willens und die nach der Realität der Außenwelt, oder dem Verhältnis des Jdealen zum Realen. Wie weit übrigens das Problem von der Freiheit des Willens den Alten klar geworden, kann man ziemlich ersehen aus des Aristoteles Ethica Nicom., III, c. 1—8, wo man finden wird, daß sein Denken darüber im wesentlichen bloß die physische und die intellektuelle Freiheit betrifft, daher er stets nur von ἑκουσιον και ἀκουσιον redet, willkürlich und frei als einerlei nehmend. Das sehr viel schwerere Problem der **moralischen Freiheit** hat sich ihm noch nicht dargestellt, obgleich allerdings bisweilen seine Gedanken bis dahin reichen, besonders Eth. Nicom., II, 2, und III, 7, wo er aber in den Fehler verfällt, den Charakter aus den Thaten abzuleiten, statt umgekehrt. Ebenso kritisiert er sehr fälschlich die oben von mir angeführte Ueberzeugung des Sokrates: an andern Stellen aber hat er diese wieder zu der seinigen gemacht, z. B. Nicom., X, 10: τὸ μὲν οὖν τῆς φύσεως δῆλον ὡς οὐκ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν ὑπάρχει, ἀλλὰ διά τινας θείας αἰτίας τοῖς ὡς ἀληθῶς εὐτυχέσιν ὑπάρχει (quod igitur a natura tribuitur, id in nostra potestate non esse, sed, ab aliqua divina causa profectum, inesse in iis, qui revera sunt fortunati, perspicuum est). Mox: Δεῖ δὴ τὸ ἦθος προϋπάρχειν πως οἰκεῖον τῆς ἀρετῆς, στέργον τὸ καλὸν καὶ δυσχεραῖνον το αἰσχρόν (Mores igitur ante quodammodo insint oportet, ad virtutem accommodati, qui honestum amplectantur, turpitudineque offendantur); welches mit der oben von mir beigebrachten Stelle stimmt, wie auch mit Ethica magna, I, 11. Οὐκ ἔσται ὁ προαιρούμενος εἶναι σπουδαιότατος, ἄν μὴ καὶ ἡ φύσις ὑπάρξῃ, βελτίων μέντοι ἔσται (non enim ut quisque voluerit, erit omnium optimus, nisi etiam natura exstiterit: melior quidem recte erit). Jn gleichem Sinn behandelt Aristoteles die Frage nach der Willensfreiheit in der Ethica magna, I, 9—18, und Ethica Eudemia, II, 6—10, wo er dem eigentlichen Problem noch etwas näher kommt: doch ist alles schwankend und oberflächlich. Es ist überall seine Methode, nicht direkt auf die Sachen einzugehen, analytisch verfahrend; sondern, synthetisch, aus äußern Merkmalen Schlüsse zu ziehen: statt einzudringen, um zum Kern der Dinge zu gelangen, hält er sich an äußere Kennzeichen, sogar an Worte. Diese Methode führt leicht irre und, bei tiefern Problemen, nie zum Ziele. Hier nun bleibt er vor dem vermeintlichen Gegensatz zwischen dem Notwendigen und dem Willkürlichen, ἀναγκαιον και ἑκουσιον, stehen, wie vor einer Mauer: über diese hinaus aber liegt erst die Einsicht, daß das Willkürliche gerade als solches **notwendig** ist, vermöge des Motivs, ohne welches ein Willensakt so wenig wie ohne ein wollendes Subjekt möglich ist, und welches Motiv eine Ursache ist, so gut wie die mechanische, von der es nur im Unwesentlichen sich unterscheidet; sagt er doch selbst (Eth. Eudem., II, 10): ἡ γὰρ οὗ ἕνεκα μία τῶν αἰτίων ἐστίν (nam id, cujus gratia, una e causarum numero est). Daher eben ist jener Gegensatz zwischen dem Willkürlichen und Notwendigen ein grundfalscher; wenn es gleich vielen angeblichen Philosophen noch heute ebenso geht wie dem Aristoteles. Schon ziemlich deutlich legt das Problem der Willensfreiheit **Cicero** dar, im Buche *De fato*, c. 10 et c. 17. Der Gegenstand seiner Abhandlung führt allerdings sehr leicht und natürlich darauf hin. Er selbst hält es mit der Willensfreiheit: aber wir sehen, daß schon Chrysippos und Diodoros sich das Problem, mehr oder weniger deutlich, zum Bewußtsein gebracht haben müssen. — Beachtenswert ist auch das dreißigste Totengespräch des **Lukianos**, zwischen Minos und Sostratos, welches die Willensfreiheit und mit ihr die Verantwortlichkeit leugnet. Aber gewissermaßen ist bereits das vierte Buch der Makkabäer, in der Septuaginta (bei Luther fehlt es), eine Abhandlung über die Willensfreiheit; sofern es sich zur Aufgabe macht, den Beweis zu führen, daß die Vernunft (λογισμος) die Kraft besitzt, alle Leidenschaften und Affekte zu überwinden, und dies belegt durch die jüdischen Märtyrer im zweiten Buch. Die älteste mir bekannte, deutliche Erkenntnis unsers Problems zeigt sich bei **Clemens Alexandrinus**, indem er (Strom. I, § 17) sagt: οὔτε δὲ οἱ ἐπαινοι, οὔτε οἱ ψογοι, οὐδ’ αἱ τιμαι, οὐδ’ αἱ κολασεις, δικαιαι, μη της ψυχης ἐχουσης την ἐξουσιαν της ὁρμης και ἀφορμης, ἀλλ’ ἀκουσιου της κακιας οὐσης (nec laudes, nec vituperationes, nec honores, nec supplicia justa sunt, si anima non habeat liberam potestatem et appetendi et abstinendi, sed sit vitium involuntarium): dann, nach einem sich auf früher Gesagtes beziehenden Zwischensatz: **ἱν’ ὁτι μαλιστα ὁ θεος μεν ἡμιν κακιας ἀναιτιος** (ut vel maxime quidem Deus nobis non sit causa vitii). Dieser höchst beachtenswerte Nachsatz zeigt, in welchem Sinne die Kirche sogleich das Problem faßte, und welche Entscheidung sie, als ihrem Interesse gemäß, sofort anticipierte. — Beinahe 200 Jahre später finden wir die Lehre vom freien Willen bereits ausführlich behandelt von **Nemesius**, in seinem Werke *De natura hominis*, Kap. 35 am Ende, und Kap. 39—41. Die Freiheit des Willens wird hier ohne weiteres mit der Willkür, oder Wahlentscheidung, identifiziert und demnach eifrigst behauptet und dargethan. Doch ist es immer schon eine Ventilation der Sache. Aber das völlig entwickelte Bewußtsein unsers Problems, mit allem, was daran hängt, finden wir zuerst beim Kirchenvater **Augustinus**, der deshalb, obwohl weit mehr Theolog, als Philosoph, hier in Betracht kommt. Sogleich jedoch sehen wir ihn durch dasselbe in merkliche Verlegenheit und unsicheres Schwanken versetzt, welches ihn bis zu Inkonsequenzen und Widersprüchen führt, in seinen drei Büchern *De libero arbitrio*. Einerseits will er nicht, wie **Pelagius**, der Freiheit des Willens so viel einräumen, daß dadurch die Erbsünde, die Notwendigkeit der Erlösung und die freie Gnadenwahl aufgehoben würde, mithin der Mensch durch eigene Kräfte gerecht und der Seligkeit würdig werden könnte. Er gibt sogar in dem Argumento in libros de lib. arb. ex Lib. I, c. 9, Retractationum desumto zu verstehen, daß er für diese Seite der Kontroverse (die Luther später so heftig verfocht) noch mehr gesagt haben würde, wenn jene Bücher nicht vor dem Auftreten des **Pelagius** geschrieben wären, gegen dessen Meinung er alsdann das Buch *De natura et gratia* abfaßte. Jnzwischen sagt er schon De lib. arb. III, 18: Nunc autem homo non est bonus, nec habet in potestate, ut bonus sit, sive non videndo qualis esse debeat, sive videndo et non volendo esse, qualem debere esse se videt. — Mox: vel ignorando non habet liberum arbitrium voluntatis ad eligendum quid recte faciat; vel resistente carnali consuetudine, quae violentia mortalis successionis quodammodo naturaliter inolevit, videat quid recte faciendum sit, et velit, nec possit implere: und im erwähnten Argumento: Voluntas ergo ipsa, nisi gratia Dei liberatur a servitute, qua facta est serva peccati, et, ut vitia superet, adjuvetur, recte pieque vivi non potest a mortalibus. ### Chapter IV, 2 Andererseits jedoch bewogen ihn folgende drei Gründe die Freiheit des Willens zu verteidigen: 1. Seine Opposition gegen die **Manichäer**, gegen welche ausdrücklich die Bücher De lib. arb. gerichtet sind, weil sie den freien Willen leugneten und eine andere Urquelle des Bösen, wie des Uebels, annahmen. Auf sie spielt er schon im letzten Kapitel des Buches *De animae quantitate* an: datum est animae liberum arbitrium, quod qui nugatoriis ratiocinationibus labefactare conantur, usque adeo coeci sunt, ut caet. 2. Die natürliche, von mir aufgedeckte Täuschung, vermöge welcher das „ich kann thun was ich will“ für die Freiheit des Willens angesehen und „**willkürlich**“ als sofort identisch mit „**frei**“ genommen wird: De lib. arb. I, 12. Quid enim tam in voluntate, quam ipsa voluntas, situm est? 3. Die Notwendigkeit, die moralische Verantwortlichkeit des Menschen mit der Gerechtigkeit Gottes in Einklang zu bringen. Nämlich dem Scharfsinn des Augustinus ist eine höchst ernstliche Bedenklichkeit nicht entgangen, deren Beseitigung so schwierig ist, daß, soviel mir bekannt, alle späteren Philosophen, mit Ausnahme dreier, die wir deshalb sogleich näher betrachten werden, sie lieber fein leise umschlichen haben, als wäre sie nicht vorhanden. Augustinus hingegen spricht sie, mit edler Offenheit, ganz unumwunden aus, gleich in den Eingangsworten der Bücher De lib. arb.: Dic mihi, quaeso, utrum Deus non sit auctor mali? — Und dann ausführlicher gleich im zweiten Kapitel: Movet autem animum, si peccata ex his animabus sunt, quas Deus creavit, illae autem animae ex Deo; quomodo non, parvo intervallo, peccata referantur in Deum. Worauf der Interlocutor versetzt: Id nunc plane abs te dictum est, quod me cogitantem satis excruciat. — Diese höchst bedenkliche Betrachtung hat **Luther** wieder aufgenommen und mit der ganzen Heftigkeit seiner Beredsamkeit hervorgehoben, *De servo arbitrio*, S. 144. At talem oportere esse Deum, qui **libertate** sua **necessitatem** imponat nobis, ipsa ratio naturalis cogitur confiteri. — Concessa praescientia et omnipotentia, sequitur naturaliter, irrefragabili consequentia, nos per nos ipsos non esse factos, nec vivere, nec agere quidquam, sed per illius omnipotentiam. — — Pugnat ex diametro praescientia et omnipotentia Dei cum nostro libero arbitrio. — Omnes homines coguntur inevitabili consequentia admittere, nos non fieri nostra voluntate, sed necessitate; ita nos non facere quod libet, pro jure liberi arbitrii, sed prout Deus praescivit et *agit* consilio et virtute infallibili et immutabili: u. s. w. Ganz erfüllt von dieser Erkenntnis finden wir, am Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts, den **Vanini**. Sie ist der Kern und die Seele seiner beharrlichen, wiewohl, unter dem Druck der Zeit, möglichst schlau verhehlten Auflehnung gegen den Theismus. Bei jeder Gelegenheit kommt er darauf zurück und wird nicht müde, sie von den verschiedensten Gesichtspunkten aus darzulegen. Z. B. in seinem *Amphitheatro aeternae providentiae*, exercitatio 16, sagt er: Si Deus vult peccata, igitur facit: scriptum est enim „omnia quaecunque voluit fecit“. Si non vult, tamen committuntur: erit ergo dicendus improvidus, vel impotens, vel crudelis; cum voti sui compos fieri aut nesciat, aut nequeat, aut negligat. — — — — Philosophi inquiunt: si nollet Deus pessimas ac nefarias in orbe vigere actiones, procul dubio uno nutu extra mundi limites omnia flagitia exterminaret, profligaretque: quis enim nostrum divinae potest resistere voluntati? Quomodo invito Deo patrantur scelera, si in actu quoque peccandi scelestis vires subministrat? Ad haec, si contra Dei voluntatem homo labitur, Deus erit inferior homine, qui ei adversatur, et praevalet. Hinc deducunt: Deus ita desiderat hunc mundum, qualis est: si meliorem vellet, meliorem haberet. — Und exercitatio 44 heißt es: Instrumentum movetur prout a suo principali dirigitur: sed nostra voluntas in suis operationibus se habet tanquam instrumentum, Deus vero ut agens principale: ergo si haec male operatur, Deo imputandum est. — — — Voluntas nostra non solum quoad motum, sed quoad substantiam quoque tota a Deo dependet: quare nihil est, quod eidem imputari vere possit, neque ex parte substantiae, neque operationis, sed totum Deo, qui voluntatem sic formavit, et ita movet. — — — — Cum essentia et motus voluntatis sit a Deo, adscribi eidem debent vel bonae, vel malae voluntatis operationes, si haec ad illum se habet velut instrumentum. Man muß aber bei **Vanini** im Auge behalten, daß er durchgängig das Stratagem gebraucht, in der Person eines Gegners, seine wirkliche Meinung als die, welche er perhorresziert und widerlegen will, aufzustellen und sie überzeugend und gründlich darzuthun; um ihr sodann, in eigener Person, mit seichten Gründen und lahmen Argumenten entgegenzutreten und darauf, *tanquam re bene gesta*, triumphierend abzugehen, — sich auf die Malignität seines Lesers verlassend. Durch diese Verschmitztheit hat er sogar die hochgelehrte Sorbonne getäuscht, welche, jenes alles für bare Münze nehmend, vor seine gottlosesten Schriften treuherzig ihr Jmprimatur gesetzt hat. Mit desto herzlicherer Freude sah sie ihn, drei Jahre darauf, lebendig verbrannt werden, nachdem ihm zuvor die gotteslästerliche Zunge ausgeschnitten worden. Dies nämlich ist doch das eigentlich kräftige Argument der Theologen, und seitdem es ihnen benommen ist, gehen die Sachen sehr rückwärts. Unter den Philosophen im engern Sinne ist, wenn ich nicht irre, **Hume** der erste, welcher nicht um die zuerst von Augustinus angeregte, schwere Bedenklichkeit herumgeschlichen ist, sondern sie, ohne jedoch des Augustinus, oder Luthers, geschweige Vaninis zu gedenken, unverhohlen darlegt, in seinem *Essay on liberty and necessity*, wo es, gegen das Ende, heißt: The ultimate author of all our volitions is the creator of the world, who first bestowed motion on this immense machine, and placed all beings in that particular position, whence every subsequent event, by an unevitable necessity, must result. Human actions therefore either can have no turpitude at all, as proceeding from so good a cause, or, if they have any turpitude, they must involve *our creator* in the same guilt, while he is acknowledged to be their ultimate cause and author. For as a man, who fired a mine, is answerable for all the consequences, whether the train employed be long or short; so wherever a continued chain of necessary causes is fixed, that Being, either finite or infinite, who produces the first, is likewise the author of all the rest ∗). Er macht einen Versuch, diese Bedenklichkeit zu lösen, gesteht aber am Schluß, daß er sie für unlösbar hält. ∗) Manchen deutschen Lesern wird eine Uebersetzung dieser und der übrigen englischen Stellen willkommen sein: „Der letzte Urheber aller unserer Willensakte ist der Schöpfer der Welt, als welcher diese unermeßliche Maschine zuerst in Bewegung gesetzt und alle Wesen in die besondere Lage gebracht hat, aus welcher jede nachmalige Begebenheit mit unvermeidlicher Notwendigkeit erfolgen mußte. Dieserhalb sind menschliche Handlungen entweder gar keiner Schlechtigkeit fähig, weil sie von einer so guten Ursache ausgehen; oder aber, wenn sie irgend schlecht sein können, so verwickeln sie unsern Schöpfer in dieselbe Schuld, indem er anerkanntermaßen ihre letzte Ursache, ihr Urheber ist. Denn wie ein Mann, der eine Mine anzündet, für alle Folgen hievon verantwortlich ist, der Schwefelfaden mag lang oder kurz gewesen sein; ebenso ist überall, wo eine ununterbrochene Verkettung notwendig wirkender Ursachen feststeht, das Wesen, es sei endlich oder unendlich, welches die erste bewirkt, auch der Urheber aller übrigen.“ ### Chapter IV, 3 Auch **Kant** gerät, unabhängig von seinen Vorgängern, an den nämlichen Stein des Anstoßes, in der Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, S. 180 ff. der vierten Auflage, und S. 232 der Rosenkranzischen: „Es scheint doch, man müsse, sobald man annimmt, Gott, als allgemeines Urwesen, sei die **Ursache** auch der **Existenz der Substanz**, auch einräumen, die Handlungen des Menschen haben in demjenigen ihren bestimmenden Grund, was gänzlich außer seiner Gewalt ist, nämlich in der Kausalität eines von ihm unterschiedenen höchsten Wesens, von welchem das Dasein des ersteren und die ganze Bestimmung seiner Kausalität ganz und gar abhängt. — — Der Mensch wäre ein Vaucançonsches Automat, gezimmert und aufgezogen vom obersten Meister aller Kunstwerke, und das Selbstbewußtsein würde es zwar zu einem denkenden Automat machen, in welchem das Bewußtsein seiner Spontaneität, wenn sie für Freiheit gehalten wird, bloße Täuschung wäre, indem sie nur komparativ so genannt zu werden verdient, weil die nächsten bestimmenden Ursachen seiner Bewegung und eine lange Reihe derselben zu ihren bestimmenden Ursachen hinauf, zwar innerlich sind, die letzte und höchste aber doch gänzlich in einer fremden Hand angetroffen wird.“ — Er sucht nun diese große Bedenklichkeit durch die Unterscheidung zwischen Ding an sich und Erscheinung zu heben: durch diese aber wird so offenbar im wesentlichen der Sache nichts geändert, daß ich überzeugt bin, es sei ihm damit gar nicht Ernst gewesen. Auch gesteht er selbst das Unzulängliche seiner Auflösung ein, S. 184, wo er hinzufügt: „allein ist denn jede andere, die man versucht hat, oder versuchen mag, leichter und faßlicher? Eher möchte man sagen, die dogmatischen Lehrer der Metaphysik hätten mehr ihre **Verschmitztheit** als Aufrichtigkeit darin bewiesen, daß sie diesen schwierigen Punkt so weit wie möglich aus den Augen brachten, in der Hoffnung, daß, wenn sie gar nicht davon sprächen, auch wohl niemand leichtlich an ihn denken würde.“ Ich kehre, nach dieser sehr beachtenswerten Zusammenstellung höchst heterogener Stimmen, die alle dasselbe sagen, zu unserm Kirchenvater zurück. Die Gründe, mit welchen er die schon von ihm in ihrer ganzen Schwere gefühlte Bedenklichkeit zu beseitigen hofft, sind theologische, nicht philosophische, also nicht von unbedingter Gültigkeit. Die Unterstützung derselben ist, wie gesagt, der dritte Grund, zu den zwei oben angeführten, warum er ein dem Menschen von Gott verliehenes *liberum arbitrium* zu verteidigen sucht. Ein solches, da es sich zwischen den Schöpfer und die Sünden seines Geschöpfes trennend in die Mitte stellte, wäre auch wirklich zur Beseitigung der ganzen Bedenklichkeit hinreichend; wenn es nur, wie es leicht mit Worten gesagt ist und allenfalls dem nicht viel weiter als diese gehenden Denken genügen mag, auch bei der ernstlichen und tiefern Betrachtung wenigstens **denkbar** bliebe. Allein wie soll man sich vorstellig machen, daß ein Wesen, welches seiner ganzen *Existentia* und *Essentia* nach, das Werk eines andern ist, doch sich selbst uranfänglich und von Grund aus bestimmen und demnach für sein Thun verantwortlich sein könne? Der Satz *Operari sequitur esse*, d. h. die Wirkungen jedes Wesens folgen aus seiner Beschaffenheit, stößt jene Annahme um, ist aber selbst unumstößlich. Handelt ein Mensch schlecht, so kommt es daher, daß er schlecht ist. An jenen Satz aber knüpft sich sein Corollarium: *ergo unde esse, inde operari*. Was würde man von dem Uhrmacher sagen, der seiner Uhr zürnte, weil sie unrichtig ginge? Wenn man auch noch so gern den Willen zu einer *tabula rasa* machen möchte; so wird man doch nicht umhin können einzugestehen, daß wenn z. B. von zwei Menschen der eine, in moralischer Hinsicht, eine der des andern ganz entgegengesetzte Handlungsweise befolgt, diese Verschiedenheit, die doch irgend woraus entspringen muß, ihren Grund entweder in den äußern Umständen hat, wo denn die Schuld offenbar nicht die Menschen trifft, oder aber in einer ursprünglichen Verschiedenheit ihres Willens selbst, wo dann Schuld und Verdienst abermals nicht sie trifft, wenn ihr ganzes Sein und Wesen das Werk eines andern ist. Nachdem die angeführten großen Männer sich vergeblich angestrengt haben, aus diesem Labyrinth einen Ausgang zu finden, gestehe ich willig ein, daß die moralische Verantwortlichkeit des menschlichen Willens ohne Aseität desselben zu denken, auch meine Fassungskraft übersteigt. Dasselbe Unvermögen ist es ohne Zweifel gewesen, was die siebente der acht Definitionen, mit welchen **Spinoza** seine Ethik eröffnet, diktiert hat: ea res libera dicetur, quae ex sola naturae suae necessitate existit, et a se sola ad agendum determinatur; necessaria autem, vel potius coacta, quae ab alio determinatur ad existendum et operandum. Wenn nämlich eine schlechte Handlung aus der Natur, d. i. der angeborenen Beschaffenheit, des Menschen entspringt, so liegt die Schuld offenbar am Urheber dieser Natur. Deshalb hat man den freien Willen erfunden. Aber woraus nun, unter Annahme desselben, sie entspringen soll, ist schlechterdings nicht einzusehen; weil er im Grunde eine bloß **negative** Eigenschaft ist und nur besagt, daß nichts den Menschen nötigt, oder hindert, so oder so zu handeln. Dadurch aber wird nimmermehr klar, **woraus** denn zuletzt die Handlung entspringt, da sie nicht aus der angeborenen, oder angeschaffenen Beschaffenheit des Menschen hervorgehen soll, indem sie alsdann seinem Schöpfer zur Last fiele; noch aus den äußern Umständen allein, indem sie alsdann dem Zufall zuzuschreiben wäre; der Mensch also jedenfalls schuldlos bliebe, — während er doch dafür verantwortlich gemacht wird. Das natürliche Bild eines freien Willens ist eine unbeschwerte Wage: sie hängt ruhig da, und wird nie aus ihrem Gleichgewicht kommen, wenn nicht in eine ihrer Schalen etwas gelegt wird. So wenig wie sie aus sich selbst die Bewegung, kann der freie Wille aus sich selbst eine Handlung hervorbringen; weil eben aus Nichts nichts wird. Soll die Wage sich nach einer Seite senken; so muß ein fremder Körper ihr aufgelegt werden, der dann die Quelle der Bewegung ist. Ebenso muß die menschliche Handlung durch etwas hervorgebracht werden, welches **positiv** wirkt und etwas mehr ist, als eine bloß **negative** Freiheit. Dies aber kann nur zweierlei sein: entweder thun es die Motive an und für sich, d. h. die äußern Umstände: dann ist offenbar der Mensch unverantwortlich für die Handlung; auch müßten alsdann alle Menschen unter gleichen Umständen ganz gleich handeln: oder aber es entspringt aus seiner Empfänglichkeit für solche Motive, also aus dem angeborenen Charakter, d. h. aus den dem Menschen ursprünglich einwohnenden Neigungen, welche in den Individuen verschieden sein können und kraft deren die Motive wirken. Dann aber ist der Wille kein freier mehr: denn diese Neigungen sind das auf die Schale der Wage gelegte Gewicht. Die Verantwortlichkeit fällt auf den zurück, der sie hineingelegt hat, d. h. dessen Werk der Mensch mit solchen Neigungen ist. Daher ist er nur in dem Fall, daß er selbst sein eigenes Werk sei, d. h. Aseität habe, für sein Thun verantwortlich. Der ganze hier dargelegte Gesichtspunkt der Sache läßt ermessen, was alles an der Freiheit des Willens hängt, als welche eine unerläßliche Kluft bildet, zwischen dem Schöpfer und den Sünden seines Geschöpfs; woraus begreiflich wird, warum die Theologen sie so beharrlich festhalten, und ihre Schildknappen, die Philosophieprofessoren, sie pflichtschuldigst dabei so eifrig unterstützen, daß sie, für die bündigsten Gegenbeweise großer Denker taub und blind, den freien Willen festhalten und dafür kämpfen, wie *pro ara et focis*. Um aber endlich meinen oben unterbrochenen Bericht über den **Augustinus** zu beschließen; so geht seine Meinung im ganzen dahin, daß der Mensch eigentlich nur vor dem Sündenfall einen ganz freien Willen gehabt habe, nach demselben aber, der Erbsünde anheimgefallen, von der Gnadenwahl und Erlösung sein Heil zu hoffen habe: — welches gesprochen heißt wie ein Kirchenvater. ### Chapter IV, 4 Inzwischen ist durch den **Augustinus** und seinen Streit mit Manichäern und Pelagianern die Philosophie zum Bewußtsein unsers Problems erwacht. Von nun an wurde es ihr, durch die Scholastiker, allmählich deutlicher, wovon **Buridans** Sophisma und die oben angeführte Stelle **Dantes** Zeugnis ablegen. — Wer aber zuerst der Sache auf den Grund gekommen, ist, allem Anschein nach, **Thomas Hobbes**, dessen diesem Gegenstand eigens gewidmete Schrift: *Quaestiones de libertate et necessitate, contra Doctorem Branhallum*, 1656 erschien: sie ist jetzt selten. Jn englischer Sprache findet sie sich in *Th. Hobbes moral and political works*, ein Band in Folio, London 1750, S. 469 ff., woraus ich folgende Hauptstelle hersetze. S. 483: 6. Nothing takes a beginning from itself; but from the action of some other immediate agent, without itself. Therefore, when first a man has an appetite or will to something, to which immediately before he had no appetite nor will; the cause of his will is not the will itself, but something else not in his own disposing. So that, whereas it is out of controversy, that of voluntary actions the will is the necessary cause, and by this which is said, the will is also necessarily *caused* by other things, whereof it disposes not, it follows that voluntary actions have all of them necessary causes, and therefore are *necessitated*. 7. I hold *that* to be a *sufficient* cause, to which nothing is wanting that is needfull to the producing of the *effect*. The same is also a *necessary* cause: for, if it be possible that a *sufficient* cause shall not bring forth the *effect*, then there wanteth somewhat, which was needfull to the producing of it; and so the cause was not *sufficient*. But if it be impossible that a *sufficient* cause should not produce the effect; then is a *sufficient* cause a *necessary* cause. Hence it is manifest, that whatever is produced, is produced *necessarily*. For whatsoever is produced has had a *sufficient* cause to produce it, or else it had not been: and therefore also *voluntary* actions are *necessitated*. 8. That ordinary definition of a free agent (namely that a free agent is that, which, wenn all things are present, which are needfull to produce the effect, can nevertheless not produce it) implies a contradiction and is Nonsense; being as much as to say, the cause may be *sufficient*, that is to say *necessary*, and yet the effect shall not follow. — S. 485. Every accident, how contingent soever it seem, or how *voluntary* soever it be, is produced *necessarily* ∗). ∗) 6. Nichts fängt von selbst an, sondern jedes durch die Einwirkung irgend einer andern, außer ihm gelegenen unmittelbaren Ursache. Daher, wenn jetzt ein Mensch etwas wünscht oder will, was er unmittelbar vorher nicht wünschte, noch wollte; so ist die Ursache seines Wollens nicht dies Wollen selbst, sondern etwas anderes, nicht von ihm Abhängendes. Demnach, da der Wille unstreitig die notwendige Ursache der willkürlichen Handlungen ist, und, dem eben Gesagten zufolge, der Wille notwendig verursacht wird, durch andere von ihm unabhängige Dinge; so folgt, daß alle willkürlichen Handlungen **notwendige** Ursachen haben, also **necessitiert** sind. 7. Als eine **zureichende** Ursache erkenne ich die an, welcher nichts abgeht von dem, was zur Hervorbringung der Wirkung nötig ist. Eine solche aber ist zugleich eine **notwendige** Ursache. Denn wenn es möglich wäre, daß eine **zureichende** Ursache ihre Wirkung nicht hervorbrächte; so müßte ihr etwas zur Hervorbringung dieser Nötiges gefehlt haben: dann aber war die Ursache nicht **zureichend**. Wenn es aber unmöglich ist, daß eine **zureichende** Ursache ihre Wirkung nicht hervorbrächte; dann ist eine **zureichende** Ursache auch eine **notwendige** Ursache. Hieraus folgt offenbar, daß alles was hervorgebracht wird, **notwendig** hervorgebracht wird. Denn alles was hervorgebracht ist, hat eine **zureichende** Ursache gehabt, die es hervorbrachte; sonst wäre es nie entstanden: also sind auch die **willkürlichen** Handlungen necessitiert. 8. Jene gewöhnliche Definition eines frei Handelnden (daß es nämlich ein solches wäre, welches, wenn alles zur Hervorbringung der Wirkung Nötige beisammen wäre, diese dennoch **auch nicht** hervorbringen könnte) enthält einen Widerspruch und ist Unsinn; da sie besagt, daß eine Ursache **zureichend**, d. i. **notwendig** sein und die Wirkung doch ausbleiben könne. S. 485. „Jede Begebenheit, so **zufällig** sie scheinen, oder so **willkürlich** sie sein mag, erfolgt **notwendig**.“ In seinem berühmten Buche *De cive*, c. 1, § 7, sagt er: Fertur unusquisque ad appetitionem ejus, quod sibi bonum, et ad fugam ejus, quod sibi malum est, maxime autem maximi malorum naturalium, quae est mors; idque necessitate quadam naturae non minore, quam qua fertur lapis deorsum. Gleich nach **Hobbes** sehen wir den **Spinoza** von derselben Ueberzeugung durchdrungen. Seine Lehre in diesem Punkte zu charakterisieren, werden ein paar Stellen hinreichen: Eth., P. I, prop. 32. Voluntas non potest vocari causa libera, sed tantum necessaria. — Coroll. 2. Nam voluntas, ut reliqua omnia, causa indiget, a qua ad operandum certo modo determinatur. Ibid., P. II, scholium ultimum. Quod denique ad quartam objectionem (de Buridani asina) attinet, dico, me omnino concedere, quod homo in tali aequilibrio positus (nempe qui nihil aliud percipit quam sitim et famem, talem cibum et talem potum, qui aeque ab eo distant) fame et siti peribit. Ibid., P. III, prop. 2. Schol. Mentis decreta eadem necessitate in mente oriuntur, ac ideae rerum actu existentium. Qui igitur credunt, se ex libero mentis decreto loqui vel tacere, vel quidquam agere, oculis apertis somniant. — Epist. 62. Unaquaeque res necessario a causa externa aliqua determinatur ad existendum et operandum certa ac determinata ratione. Ex. gr. lapis a causa externa, ipsum impellente, certam motus quantitatem accipit, qua postea moveri necessario perget. Concipe jam lapidem, dum moveri pergit, cogitare et scire, se quantum potest, conari, ut moveri pergat. Hic sane lapis, quandoquidem sui tantummodo conatus est conscius et minime indifferens, se liberrimum esse et nulla alia de causa in motu perseverare credet, quam quia vult. Atque haec humana illa libertas est, quam omnes habere jactant, et quae in hoc solo consistit, quod homines sui appetitus sint conscii, et causarum, a quibus determinantur, ignari. — — His, quaenam mea de libera et coacta necessitate, deque ficta humana libertate sit sententia, satis explicui. Ein beachtenswerter Umstand aber ist es, daß **Spinoza** zu dieser Einsicht erst in seinen letzten (d. i. vierziger) Jahren gelangt ist, nachdem er früher, im Jahr 1665, als er noch Cartesianer war, in seinen *Cogitatis metaphysicis*, c. 12, die entgegengesetzte Meinung entschieden und lebhaft verteidigt und sogar im geraden Widerspruch mit dem soeben angeführten Scholio ultimo Partis II, hinsichtlich des Buridanschen Sophismas gesagt hatte: si enim hominem loco asinae ponamus in tali aequilibrio positum, homo, non pro re cogitante, sed pro turpissimo asino erit habendus, si fame et siti pereat. Dieselbe Meinungsveränderung und Bekehrung werde ich weiter unten von zwei andern großen Männern zu berichten haben. Dies beweist, wie schwierig und tiefliegend die rechte Einsicht in unser Problem ist. **Hume**, in seinem *Essay on liberty and necessity*, aus welchem ich bereits oben eine Stelle beizubringen hatte, schreibt mit der klarsten Ueberzeugung von der Notwendigkeit der einzelnen Willensakte, bei gegebenen Motiven, und trägt sie in seiner allgemeinfaßlichen Weise höchst deutlich vor. Er sagt: Thus it appears that the conjunction between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and uniform as that between the cause and effect in any part of nature. Und weiterhin: It seems almost impossible, therefore, to engage either in science or action of any kind, without acknowledging the doctrine of necessity and his inference from motives to voluntary actions, from character to conduct∗). ∗) „So ergibt sich, daß die Verbindung zwischen Motiven und willkürlichen Handlungen so regelmäßig und gleichförmig ist, wie die zwischen Ursach und Wirkung in irgend einem Teile der Natur nur sein kann.“ — — — „Es scheint demnach fast unmöglich, weder in der Wissenschaft, noch auch in Handlungen irgend einer Art, etwas zu unternehmen, ohne die Lehre von der Notwendigkeit und jenen Schluß von Motiven auf Willensakte, vom Charakter auf die Handlungsweise, anzuerkennen.“ ### Chapter IV, 5 Aber kein Schriftsteller hat die Notwendigkeit der Willensakte so ausführlich und überzeugend dargethan, wie **Priestley**, in seinem diesem Gegenstand ausschließlich gewidmeten Werke: *The Doctrine of philosophical necessity*. Wen dieses überaus klar und faßlich geschriebene Buch nicht überzeugt, dessen Verstand muß durch Vorurteile wirklich paralysiert sein. Zur Charakterisierung seiner Resultate setze ich einige Stellen her, welche ich nach der zweiten Ausgabe, Birmingham 1782, citiere. Vorrede S. XX. There is no absurdity more glaring to my understanding, than the notion of philosophical liberty. — S. 26. Without a miracle, or the intervention of some foreign cause, no volition or action of any man could have been otherwise, than is has been. — S. 37. Trough an inclination or affection of mind be not gravity, it influences me and acts upon me as certainly and necessarily, at this power does upon a stone. — S. 43. Saying that the will is *self-determined*, gives no idea at all, or rather implies an absurdity, viz: that a *determination*, which is an *effect*, takes place, without any cause at all. For exclusive of every thing that comes under the denomination of *motive*, there is really nothing at all left, to produce the determination. Let a man use what *words* he pleases, he can have no more *conception* how we can sometimes be determined by motives, and sometimes without any motive, than he can have of a scale being sometimes weighed down by weights, and sometimes by a kind of substance that has no weight at all, which, whatever it be in itself, must, with respect to the scale be *nothing*. — S. 66. In proper philosophical language, the motive ought to be call'd the *proper cause* of the action. It is as much so as any thing in nature is the cause of any thing else. — S. 84. It will never be in our power to choose two things, when all the previous circumstances are the very same. — S. 90. A man indeed, when he reproaches himself for any particular action in his passed conduct, may fancy that, if he was in the same situation again, he would have acted differently. But this is a mere *deception*; and if he examines himself strictly, and takes in all circumstances, he may be satisfied that, with the same inward disposition of mind, and with precisely the same view of things, that he had then, and exclusive of all others, that he has acquired by reflection *since*, he could not have acted otherwise than he did. — S. 287. In short, there is no choice in the case, but of the doctrine of necessity or absolute nonsense. — ∗). ∗) S. XX. „Für meinen Verstand gibt es keine handgreiflichere Absurdität, als den Begriff der moralischen Freiheit.“ — S. 26. „Ohne ein Wunder, oder die Dazwischenkunft irgend einer äußern Ursach, hat kein Willensakt oder Handlung irgend eines Menschen anders ausfallen können, als sie ausgefallen ist.“ — S. 37. „Obwohl eine Neigung oder Bestimmung meines Gemütes nicht die Schwerkraft ist; so hat sie doch einen ebenso sichern und notwendigen Einfluß und Wirkung auf mich, wie jene Kraft auf einen Stein.“ — S. 43. „Der Ausdruck, daß der Wille ein **Sichselbstbestimmendes** sei, gibt gar keinen Begriff, oder vielmehr enthält eine Absurdität, nämlich diese, daß eine **Bestimmung**, welche eine Wirkung ist, eintritt ohne irgend eine Ursache. Denn ausschließlich von allem, was unter der Benennung **Motiv** verstanden wird, bleibt in der That gar nichts übrig, was jene Bestimmung hervorbringen könnte. Gebrauche einer was für **Worte** er will; einen **Begriff** davon, daß wir bisweilen durch Motive, bisweilen aber ohne alle Motive zu etwas bestimmt würden, kann er doch nicht mehr haben, als davon, daß eine Wagschale bisweilen durch Gewichte herabgezogen würde, bisweilen aber durch eine Art Substanz, die gar kein Gewicht hätte und die, was immer sie auch an sich selbst sein möchte, in Hinsicht auf die Wagschale **nichts** wäre.“ — S. 66. „Im angemessenen philosophischen Ausdruck sollte das Motiv die **eigentliche Ursache** der Handlung genannt werden: denn die ist es so sehr, wie irgend etwas in der Natur die Ursache eines andern ist.“ — S. 84. „Nie wird es in unserer Macht stehen, zwei verschiedene Wahlen zu treffen, wenn alle vorhergängigen Umstände genau dieselben sind.“ — S. 90. „Allerdings kann ein Mensch, der sich über irgend eine bestimmte Handlung in seinem vergangenen Lebenslaufe Vorwürfe macht, sich einbilden, daß wenn er wieder in derselben Lage wäre, er anders handeln würde. Allein dies ist bloße **Täuschung**: wenn er sich strenge prüft und alle Umstände in Anschlag bringt; so kann er sich überzeugen, daß, bei derselben innern Stimmung und genau derselben Ansicht der Dinge, die er damals hatte, mit Ausschluß aller andern **seitdem** durch Ueberlegung erlangten Ansichten, er nicht anders handeln konnte, als wie er gehandelt hat.“ — S. 287. „Kurzum, es liegt hier keine andere Wahl vor, als die zwischen der Lehre von der Notwendigkeit, oder absolutem Unsinn.“ Nun ist zu bemerken, daß es dem **Priestley** gerade so gegangen ist, wie dem **Spinoza** und noch einem sogleich anzuführenden sehr großen Manne. **Priestley** sagt nämlich in der Vorrede zur ersten Ausgabe, S. XXVII: I was not however a ready convert to the doctrine of necessity. Like Dr. Hartley himself, I gave up my liberty with great reluctance, and in a long correspondence, which I once had on the subject, I maintained very strenuously the doctrine of liberty, and did not at all yield to the arguments then proposed to me∗). ∗) „Ich bin jedoch nicht leicht zu der Lehre von der Notwendigkeit zu bekehren gewesen. Wie Dr. Hartley selbst habe ich meine Freiheit nur mit großem Widerstreben aufgegeben: in einem langen Briefwechsel, den ich einst über diesen Gegenstand geführt habe, behauptete ich sehr eifrig die Lehre von der Freiheit und gab keineswegs den Gründen nach, die man mir entgegensetzte.“ Der dritte große Mann, dem es ebenso ergangen, ist **Voltaire**, welcher es mit der ihm eigenen Liebenswürdigkeit und Naivetät berichtet. Nämlich in seinem *Traité de métaphysique*, chap. 7, hatte er die sogenannte Willensfreiheit ausführlich und lebhaft verteidigt. Allein in seinem, mehr als vierzig Jahre später geschriebenen Buche: *Le philosophe ignorant*, lehrt er die strengste Necessitation der Willensakte, im 13. Kapitel, welches er so beschließt: Archimède est également nécessité de rester dans sa chambre, quand on l'y enferme, et quand il est si fortement occupé d’un problème, qu’il ne reçoit pas l’idée de sortir: Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt. *L’ignorant qui pense ainsi n’a pas toujours pensé de même*, mais il est enfin contraint de se rendre. Im darauffolgenden Buche: *Le principe d’action*, sagt er chap. 13: Une boule, qui en pousse une autre, un chien de chasse, qui court nécessairement et volontairement après un cerf, ce cerf, qui franchit un fossé immense avec non moins de nécessité et de volonté: tout cela n'est pas plus invinciblement déterminé que nous le sommes à tout ce que nous fesons. Diese gleichmäßige Bekehrung dreier so höchst eminenter Köpfe zu unserer Einsicht muß denn doch wohl jeden stutzig machen, der mit dem gar nicht zur Sache redenden „aber ich kann doch thun was ich will“ seines einfältigen Selbstbewußtseins wohlgegründete Wahrheiten anzufechten unternimmt. ### Chapter IV, 6 Nach diesen seinen nächsten Vorgängern darf es uns nicht wundern, daß **Kant** die Notwendigkeit, mit welcher der empirische Charakter durch die Motive zu Handlungen bestimmt wird, als eine, wie bei ihm, so auch bei andern bereits ausgemachte Sache nahm und sich nicht damit aufhielt, sie von neuem zu beweisen. Seine „Jdeen zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte“ hebt er so an: „Was man sich auch in metaphysischer Absicht für einen Begriff von der **Freiheit des Willens** machen möge; so sind doch die **Erscheinungen** desselben, die menschlichen Handlungen, ebensowohl, als jede andere Naturbegebenheit, nach allgemeinen Naturgesetzen bestimmt.“ — Jn der Kritik der reinen Vernunft (S. 548 der ersten, oder S. 577 der fünften Auflage) sagt er: „Weil der empirische Charakter selbst aus den Erscheinungen als Wirkung, und aus der Regel derselben, welche Erfahrung an die Hand gibt, gezogen werden muß; so sind alle Handlungen des Menschen, in der Erscheinung, aus seinem empirischen Charakter und den mitwirkenden andern Ursachen nach der Ordnung der Natur bestimmt: und wenn wir alle Erscheinungen seiner Willkür bis auf den Grund erforschen könnten; so würde es keine einzige menschliche Handlung geben, die wir nicht mit Gewißheit vorhersagen und aus ihren vorhergehenden Bedingungen als notwendig erkennen könnten. Jn Ansehung dieses empirischen Charakters gibt es also keine Freiheit, und nach diesem können wir doch allein den Menschen betrachten, wenn wir lediglich **beobachten** und, wie es in der Anthropologie geschieht, von seinen Handlungen die bewegenden Ursachen physiologisch erforschen wollen.“ — Ebendaselbst S. 798 der ersten, oder S. 826 der fünften Auflage heißt es: „Der Wille mag auch frei sein, so kann dies doch nur die intelligible Ursache unsers Wollens angehen. Denn, was die Phänomene der Aeußerungen desselben, d. i. die Handlungen betrifft, so müssen wir, nach einer unverletzlichen Grundmaxime, ohne welche wir keine Vernunft im empirischen Gebrauch ausüben können, sie niemals anders, als alle übrigen Erscheinungen der Natur, nämlich nach unwandelbaren Gesetzen derselben erklären.“ — Ferner in der Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, S. 177 der vierten Auflage, oder S. 230 der Rosenkranzischen: „Man kann also einräumen, daß, wenn es für uns möglich wäre, in eines Menschen Denkungsart, so wie sie sich durch innere sowohl, als äußere Handlungen zeigt, so tiefe Einsicht zu haben, daß jede, auch die mindeste Triebfeder dazu uns bekannt würde, ingleichen alle auf diese wirkenden äußeren Veranlassungen, man eines Menschen Verhalten auf die Zukunft, mit Gewißheit, so wie eine Mond- oder Sonnenfinsternis ausrechnen könnte.“ Hieran aber knüpft er seine Lehre vom Zusammenbestehen der Freiheit mit der Notwendigkeit, vermöge der Unterscheidung des intelligibeln Charakters vom empirischen, auf welche Ansicht, da ich mich gänzlich zu ihr bekenne, ich weiter unten zurückkommen werde. **Kant** hat sie zweimal vorgetragen, nämlich in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 532—554 der ersten, oder S. 560—582 der fünften Auflage, noch deutlicher aber in der Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, S. 169—179 der vierten Auflage, oder S. 224—231 der Rosenkranzischen: diese überaus tief gedachten Stellen muß jeder lesen, der eine gründliche Erkenntnis von der Vereinbarkeit der menschlichen Freiheit mit der Notwendigkeit der Handlungen erlangen will. — Von den Leistungen aller dieser edeln und ehrwürdigen Vorgänger unterscheidet gegenwärtige Abhandlung des Gegenstandes sich bis hieher hauptsächlich in zwei Punkten: erstlich dadurch, daß ich, auf Anleitung der Preisfrage, die innere Wahrnehmung des Willens im Selbstbewußtsein, von der äußern streng gesondert und jede von beiden für sich betrachtet habe, wodurch die Aufdeckung der Quelle der auf die meisten Menschen so unwiderstehlich wirkenden Täuschung allererst möglich geworden; zweitens dadurch, daß ich den Willen im Zusammenhange mit der gesamten übrigen Natur in Betracht gezogen habe, was keiner vor mir gethan, und wodurch allererst der Gegenstand mit derjenigen Gründlichkeit, methodischen Einsicht und Ganzheit, deren er fähig ist, abgehandelt werden konnte. Jetzt noch ein paar Worte über einige Schriftsteller, die nach **Kant** geschrieben haben, welche ich jedoch nicht als meine Vorgänger betrachte. Von der soeben belobten, höchst wichtigen Lehre **Kants**, über den intelligibeln und empirischen Charakter, hat eine erläuternde Paraphrase **Schelling** geliefert, in seiner „Untersuchung über die menschliche Freiheit“, S. 465—471. Diese Paraphrase kann, durch die Lebhaftigkeit ihres Kolorits, dienen, manchem die Sache faßlicher zu machen, als die gründliche, aber trockene Kantische Darstellung es vermag. Inzwischen darf ich derselben nicht erwähnen, ohne zur Ehre der Wahrheit und **Kants** zu rügen, daß **Schelling** hier, wo er eine der wichtigsten und bewunderungswürdigsten, ja meines Erachtens, die tiefsinnigste aller Kantischen Lehren vorträgt, nicht deutlich ausspricht, daß, was er jetzt darlegt, dem Inhalte nach, **Kanten** angehört, vielmehr sich so ausdrückt, daß die allermeisten Leser, als welchen der Jnhalt der weitläuftigen und schwierigen Werke des großen Mannes nicht genau gegenwärtig ist, wähnen müssen, hier **Schellings** eigene Gedanken zu lesen. Wie sehr hierin der Erfolg der Absicht entsprochen hat, will ich nur durch einen Beleg aus vielen zeigen. Noch heutigentages sagt ein junger Professor der Philosophie in Halle, Hr. Erdmann, in seinem Buche von 1837, betitelt „Leib und Seele“, S. 101: „wenn auch Leibniz, ähnlich wie Schelling in seiner Abhandlung über die Freiheit, die Seele vor aller Zeit sich bestimmen läßt“ u. s. w. **Schelling** steht also hier zu **Kant** in der glücklichen Lage des **Amerigo** zum **Columbus**: mit seinem Namen wird die fremde Entdeckung gestempelt. Er hat es aber auch seiner Klugheit und nicht dem Zufall zu danken. Denn er hebt, S. 465, an: „Ueberhaupt hat erst der **Jdealismus** die Lehre von der Freiheit in dasjenige Gebiet erhoben“ u. s. w., und nun folgen unmittelbar die Kantischen Gedanken. Also statt hier, der Redlichkeit gemäß, zu sagen **Kant**, sagt er klüglich der **Jdealismus**: unter diesem vieldeutigen Ausdruck wird jedoch hier jeder **Fichtes** und **Schellings** erste, Fichtianische Philosophie verstehen, nicht aber **Kants** Lehre; da dieser gegen die Benennung **Jdealismus** für seine Philosophie protestiert (z. B. Prolegomena, S. 51, und S. 155, Rosenkr.), und sogar seiner zweiten Auflage der Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 274, eine „Widerlegung des Jdealismus“ eingefügt hatte. Auf der folgenden Seite erwähnt nun **Schelling** sehr klüglich, in einer beiläufigen Phrase, den „Kantischen Begriff“, um nämlich die zu beschwichtigen, welche schon wissen, daß es Kantischer Reichtum ist, den man hier so pomphaft als eigene Ware auskramt. Dann aber wird noch gar S. 472, aller Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit zum Trotz, gesagt, **Kant** hätte sich nicht zu derjenigen Ansicht in der Theorie erhoben, u. s. w., während aus den beiden oben von mir zum Nachlesen empfohlenen, unsterblichen Stellen **Kants** jeder deutlich sehen kann, daß gerade diese Ansicht ihm allein ursprünglich angehört, welche ohne ihn noch tausend solche Köpfe, wie die Herren **Fichte** und **Schelling** nimmermehr zu fassen fähig gewesen wären. Da ich hier von der Abhandlung **Schellings** zu sprechen hatte, durfte ich über diesen Punkt nicht schweigen, sondern habe nur meine Pflicht erfüllt gegen jenen großen Lehrer der Menschheit, der ganz allein neben **Goethe** der gerechte Stolz der deutschen Nation ist, indem ich was unwidersprechlich ihm allein angehört ihm vindiziere; — zumal in einer Zeit, von der ganz eigentlich **Goethes** Wort gilt: „das Knabenvolk ist Herr der Bahn“. — Uebrigens hat **Schelling**, in derselben Abhandlung ebensowenig Anstand genommen, die Gedanken, ja, die Worte **Jakob Böhmes** sich zuzueignen, ohne seine Quelle zu verraten. Außer dieser Paraphrase Kantischer Gedanken enthalten jene „Untersuchungen über die Freiheit“ nichts, was dienen könnte, uns neue oder gründliche Aufklärungen über dieselbe zu verschaffen. Dies kündigt sich auch schon gleich anfangs durch die Definition an: die Freiheit sei „ein Vermögen des Guten und Bösen“. Für den Katechismus mag eine solche Definition tauglich sein: in der Philosophie aber ist damit nichts gesagt und folglich auch nichts anzufangen. Denn Gutes und Böses sind weit davon entfernt, einfache Begriffe (*notiones simplices*) zu sein, die, an sich selbst klar, keiner Erklärung, Feststellung und Begründung bedürften. Ueberhaupt handelt nur ein kleiner Teil jener Abhandlung von der Freiheit: ihr Hauptinhalt ist vielmehr ein ausführlicher Bericht über einen Gott, mit welchem der Herr Verfasser intime Bekanntschaft verrät, da er uns sogar dessen Entstehung beschreibt; nur ist zu bedauern, daß er mit keinem Worte erwähnt, wie er denn zu dieser Bekanntschaft gekommen sei. Den Anfang der Abhandlung macht ein Gewebe von Sophismen, deren Seichtigkeit jeder erkennen wird, der sich durch die Dreistigkeit des Tons nicht einschüchtern läßt. Seitdem und infolge dieses und ähnlicher Erzeugnisse ist nun in der deutschen Philosophie an der Stelle deutlicher Begriffe und redlichen Forschens „intellektuale Anschauung“ und „absolutes Denken“ getreten: Jmponieren, Verdutzen, Mystifizieren, dem Leser durch allerlei Kunstgriffe Sand in die Augen streuen, ist die Methode geworden, und durchgängig leitet statt der Einsicht die Absicht den Vortrag. Durch welches alles denn die Philosophie, wenn man sie noch so nennen will, mehr und mehr und immer tiefer hat sinken müssen, bis sie zuletzt die tiefste Stufe der Erniedrigung erreichte in der Ministerkreatur **Hegel**: dieser, um die durch **Kant** errungene Freiheit des Denkens wieder zu ersticken, machte nunmehr die Philosophie, die Tochter der Vernunft und künftige Mutter der Wahrheit, zum Werkzeug der Staatszwecke, des Obskurantismus und protestantischen Jesuitismus: um aber die Schmach zu verhüllen und zugleich die größtmöglichste Verdummung der Köpfe herbeizuführen, zog er den Deckmantel des hohlsten Wortkrams und des unsinnigsten Gallimathias, der jemals, wenigstens außer dem Tollhause, gehört worden, darüber. ### Chapter IV, 7 In England und Frankreich steht die Philosophie, im ganzen genommen, fast noch da, wo **Locke** und **Condillac** sie gelassen haben. **Maine de Byran**, von seinem Herausgeber, Hrn. **Cousin**, le premier métaphysicien Français de mon tems genannt, ist, in seinen 1834 erschienenen *Nouvelles considérations du physique et moral*, ein fanatischer Bekenner des *liberi arbitrii indifferentiae*, und nimmt es als eine Sache, die sich ganz und gar von selbst versteht. Nicht anders machen es manche der deutschen neueren, philosophischen Skribenten: das *liberum arbitrium indifferentiae*, unter dem Namen „sittliche Freiheit“, tritt als eine ausgemachte Sache bei ihnen auf, gerade als ob alle die oben angeführten großen Männer nie dagewesen wären. Sie erklären die Freiheit des Willens für unmittelbar im Selbstbewußtsein gegeben und dadurch so unerschütterlich festgestellt, daß alle Argumente dagegen nichts anderes, als Sophismen sein können. Diese erhabene Zuversicht entspringt bloß daraus, daß die Guten gar nicht wissen, was Freiheit des Willens ist und bedeutet; sondern, in ihrer Unschuld, nichts anderes darunter verstehen, als die in unserm zweiten Abschnitt analysierte Herrschaft des Willens über die Glieder des Leibes, an welcher doch wohl nie ein vernünftiger Mensch gezweifelt hat und deren Ausdruck eben jenes „ich kann thun was ich will“ ist. Dies, meinen sie ganz ehrlich, sei die Freiheit des Willens, und pochen darauf, daß sie über allen Zweifel erhaben ist. Es ist eben der Stand der Unschuld, in welchen, nach so vielen großen Vorgängern, die Hegelsche Philosophie den deutschen denkenden Geist zurückversetzt hat. Leuten dieses Schlages könnte man freilich zurufen: „Seid ihr nicht wie die Weiber, die beständig Zurück nur kommen auf ihr erstes Wort, Wenn man Vernunft gesprochen stundenlang?“ Jedoch mögen, bei manchen unter ihnen, die oben angedeuteten theologischen Motive im stillen wirksam sein. Und dann wieder die medizinischen, zoologischen, historischen, politischen und belletristischen Schriftsteller unserer Tage, wie äußerst gern ergreifen sie jede Gelegenheit, um die „Freiheit des Menschen“, die „sittliche Freiheit“ zu erwähnen! Sie dünken sich etwas damit. Auf eine Erklärung derselben lassen sie sich freilich nicht ein: aber wenn man sie examinieren dürfte, würde man finden, daß sie dabei entweder gar nichts, oder aber unser altes, ehrliches, wohlbekanntes *liberum arbitrium indifferentiae* denken, in so vornehme Redensarten sie es auch kleiden möchten, also einen Begriff, von dessen Unstatthaftigkeit den großen Haufen zu überzeugen, wohl nimmer gelingen wird, von welchem jedoch Gelehrte sich hüten sollten, mit so viel Unschuld zu reden. Daher eben gibt es auch einige Verzagte unter ihnen, welche sehr belustigend sind, indem sie nicht mehr sich unterstehen, von der Freiheit des **Willens** zu reden, sondern, um es fein zu machen, statt dessen sagen „Freiheit des **Geistes**“ und damit durchzuschleichen hoffen. Was sie sich dabei denken, weiß ich glücklicherweise dem mich fragend ansehenden Leser anzugeben: Nichts, rein gar nichts, — als daß es eben, nach guter deutscher Art und Kunst, ein unentschiedener, ja eigentlich nichtssagender Ausdruck ist, welcher einen, ihrer Leerheit und Feigheit erwünschten Hinterhalt gewährt, zum Entwischen. Das Wort „Geist“, eigentlich ein tropischer Ausdruck, bezeichnet überall die **intellektuellen** Fähigkeiten, im Gegensatz des Willens: diese aber sollen in ihrem Wirken durchaus nicht frei sein, sondern sich zunächst den Regeln der Logik, sodann aber dem jedesmaligen **Objekt** ihres Erkennens anpassen, fügen und unterwerfen, damit sie rein, d. h. **objektiv** auffassen, und es nie heiße *stat pro ratione voluntas*. Ueberhaupt ist dieser „Geist“, der in jetziger deutscher Litteratur sich überall herumtreibt, ein durchaus verdächtiger Geselle, den man daher, wo er sich betreffen läßt, nach seinem Paß fragen soll. Der mit Feigheit verbundenen Gedankenarmut als Maske zu dienen, ist sein häufigstes Gewerbe. Uebrigens ist das Wort **Geist** bekanntlich mit dem Worte **Gas** verwandt, welches, aus dem Arabischen und der Alchimie stammend, Dunst oder Luft bedeutet, eben wie auch spiritus, πνευμα, animus, verwandt mit ἀνεμων. Besagtermaßen also steht es hinsichtlich unsers Themas, in der philosophischen und in der weitern gelehrten Welt, nach allem, was die angeführten großen Geister darüber gelehrt haben; woran sich abermals bestätigt, daß nicht allein die Natur, zu allen Zeiten, nur höchst wenige wirkliche Denker, als seltene Ausnahmen, hervorgebracht hat; sondern diese wenigen selbst stets auch nur für sehr wenige dagewesen sind. Daher eben behaupten Wahn und Jrrtum fortwährend die Herrschaft. — Bei einem moralischen Gegenstande ist auch das Zeugnis der großen Dichter von Gewicht. Sie reden nicht nach systematischer Untersuchung, aber ihrem Tiefblick liegt die menschliche Natur offen: daher treffen ihre Aussagen unmittelbar die Wahrheit. — Jm **Shakespeare**, *Measure for measure*, A. 2, Sc. 2, bittet Jsabella den Reichsverweser Angelo um Gnade für ihren zum Tode verurteilten Bruder: *Angelo.* I will not do it. *Isab.* But can you if you would? *Ang.* Look, what I *will* not, that I *cannot* do∗). ∗) **Angelo.** Ich will es nicht thun. **Isabella.** Aber könntet Ihr’s, wenn Ihr wolltet? **Angelo.** Seht, was ich nicht **will**, das **kann** ich nicht. In *Twelfth night*, A. 1, heißt es: Fate show thy force, ourselves we do not owe, What is decree'd must be, and be this so ∗∗). ∗∗) Jetzt, kannst du deine Macht, o Schicksal, zeigen: Was sein soll muß geschehn, und keiner ist sein eigen. Auch **Walter Scott**, dieser große Kenner und Maler des menschlichen Herzens und seiner geheimsten Regungen, hat jene tief liegende Wahrheit rein zu Tage gefördert, in seinem *St. Ronans Well*, Vol. 3, chap. 6. Er stellt eine sterbende reuige Sünderin dar, die auf dem Sterbebette ihr geängstetes Gewissen durch Geständnisse zu erleichtern sucht, und mitten unter diesen läßt er sie sagen: Go, and leave me to my fate; I am the most detestable wretch, that ever liv’d, — detestable to myself, worst of all; because even in my penitence there is a secret whisper that tells me, that were I as I have been, I would again act over all the wickedness I have done, and much worse. Oh! for Heavens assistance, to crush the wicked thought! ∗∗∗) ∗∗∗) „Geht und überlaßt mich meinem Schicksale. Ich bin das elendeste und abscheulichste Geschöpf, das je gelebt hat, — mir selber am abscheulichsten. Denn mitten in meiner Reue flüstert etwas mir heimlich zu, daß, wenn ich wieder wäre, wie ich gewesen bin, ich alle Schlechtigkeiten, die ich begangen habe, abermals begehen würde, ja noch schlimmere dazu. O, um des Himmels Beistand, den nichtswürdigen Gedanken zu ersticken.“ Einen Beleg zu dieser dichterischen Darstellung liefert folgende ihr parallele Thatsache, welche zugleich die Lehre von der Konstanz des Charakters auf das stärkeste bestätigt. Sie ist, 1845, aus der französischen Zeitung *La Presse* in die *Times*, vom 2. Juli 1845, übergegangen, woraus ich sie übersetze. Die Ueberschrift lautet: Militärische Hinrichtung zu Oran. „Am 24. März war der Spanier Aguilar, *alias* Gomez, zum Tode verurteilt worden. Am Tage vor der Hinrichtung sagte er, im Gespräch mit seinem Kerkermeister: Ich bin nicht so schuldig, wie man mich dargestellt hat: ich bin angeklagt, 30 Mordthaten begangen zu haben; während ich doch nur 26 begangen habe. Von Kindheit auf durstete ich nach Blut: als ich 7½ Jahre alt war, erstach ich ein Kind. Ich habe eine schwangere Frau gemordet, und in späterer Zeit einen spanischen Offizier, infolge wovon ich mich genötigt sah, aus Spanien zu entfliehen. Ich flüchtete nach Frankreich, woselbst ich zwei Verbrechen begangen habe, ehe ich in die Fremdenlegion trat. Unter allen meinen Verbrechen bereue ich am meisten folgendes: Jm Jahr 1841 nahm ich, an der Spitze meiner Kompanie, einen deputierten Generalkommissär, der von einem Sergeanten, einem Korporal und 7 Mann eskortiert war, gefangen: ich ließ sie alle enthaupten. Der Tod dieser Leute lastet schwer auf mir: ich sehe sie in meinen Träumen, und morgen werde ich sie erblicken in den mich zu erschießen beorderten Soldaten. **Nichtsdestoweniger würde ich, wenn ich meine Freiheit wieder erhielte, noch andere morden.**“ Auch folgende Stelle in Goethes Jphigenia (A. 4, Sc. 2) gehört hieher: **Arkas:** Denn du hast nicht der Treue Rat geachtet. **Iphigenia:** Was ich vermochte, hab' ich gern gethan. **Arkas:** Noch änderst du den Sinn zur rechten Zeit. **Iphigenia: Das steht nun einmal nicht in unsrer Macht.** Auch eine berühmte Stelle in Schillers Wallenstein spricht unsere Grundwahrheit aus: „Des Menschen Thaten und Gedanken, wißt! Sind nicht wie Meeres blind bewegte Wellen. Die innre Welt, sein Mikrokosmus, ist Der tiefe Schacht, aus dem sie ewig quellen. Sie sind **notwendig**, wie des Baumes Frucht, Sie kann der Zufall gaukelnd nicht verwandeln. Hab' ich des Menschen Kern erst untersucht, So weiß ich auch sein Wollen und sein Handeln.“ ### Chapter V, 1 **V. Schluß und höhere Ansicht.** Alle jene sowohl poetischen, als philosophischen, glorreichen Vorgänger in der von mir verfochtenen Wahrheit habe ich hier gern in Erinnerung gebracht. Inzwischen sind nicht Autoritäten, sondern Gründe die Waffe des Philosophen; daher ich nur mit diesen meine Sache geführt habe, und doch hoffe, ihr eine solche Evidenz gegeben zu haben, daß ich jetzt wohl berechtigt bin, die Folgerung *a non posse ad non esse* zu ziehen; wodurch die oben, bei Untersuchung des Selbstbewußtseins, direkt und thatsächlich, folglich *a posteriori* begründete Verneinung der von der Königlichen Societät aufgestellten Frage jetzt auch mittelbar und *a priori* begründet ist: indem was überhaupt nicht vorhanden ist, auch nicht im Selbstbewußtsein Data haben kann, aus denen es sich beweisen ließe. Wenn nun auch die hier verfochtene Wahrheit zu denen gehören mag, welche den vorgefaßten Meinungen der kurzsichtigen Menge entgegen, ja, dem Schwachen und Unwissenden anstößig sein können; so hat mich dies nicht abhalten dürfen, sie ohne Umschweife und ohne Rückhalt darzulegen: angesehen, daß ich hier nicht zum Volke, sondern zu einer erleuchteten Akademie rede, welche ihre sehr zeitgemäße Frage nicht aufgestellt hat zur Befestigung des Vorurteils, sondern zur Ehre der Wahrheit. — Ueberdies wird der redliche Wahrheitsforscher, solange es sich noch darum handelt, eine Wahrheit festzustellen und zu beglaubigen, stets ganz allein auf ihre Gründe und nicht auf ihre Folgen sehen, als wozu die Zeit dann sein wird, wann sie selbst feststeht. Unbekümmert um die Folgen, allein die Gründe prüfen und nicht erst fragen, ob eine erkannte Wahrheit auch mit dem System unserer übrigen Ueberzeugungen in Einklang stehe oder nicht, — dies ist es, was schon **Kant** empfiehlt, dessen Worte ich hier zu wiederholen mich nicht entbrechen kann: „Dies bestärkt die schon von andern erkannte und gepriesene Maxime, in jeder wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung mit aller möglichen Genauigkeit und Offenheit seinen Gang ungestört fortzusetzen, ohne sich an das zu kehren, wowider sie außer ihrem Felde etwan verstoßen möchte, sondern sie für sich allein, soviel man kann, wahr und vollständig zu vollführen. Oeftere Beobachtung hat mich überzeugt, daß, wenn man dieses Geschäft zu Ende gebracht hat, das, was in der Hälfte desselben, in Betracht anderer Lehren außerhalb, mir bisweilen sehr bedenklich schien, wenn ich diese Bedenklichkeit nur so lange aus den Augen ließ und bloß auf mein Geschäft achthatte, bis es vollendet sei, endlich auf unerwartete Weise mit demjenigen vollkommen zusammenstimmte, was sich ohne die mindeste Rücksicht auf jene Lehren, ohne Parteilichkeit und Vorliebe für dieselben, von selbst gefunden hatte. Schriftsteller würden sich manche Irrtümer, manche verlorene Mühe (weil sie auf Blendwerk gestellt war) ersparen, wenn sie sich nur entschließen könnten, mit etwas mehr Offenheit zu Werke zu gehen.“ (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, S. 190 der vierten Auflage, oder S. 239 der Rosenkranzischen.) Unsere metaphysischen Kenntnisse überhaupt sind doch wohl noch himmelweit davon entfernt, eine solche Gewißheit zu haben, daß man irgend eine gründlich erwiesene Wahrheit darum verwerfen sollte, weil ihre Folgen nicht zu jenen passen. Vielmehr ist jede errungene und festgestellte Wahrheit ein eroberter Teil des Gebiets der Probleme des Wissens überhaupt und ein fester Punkt, die Hebel anzulegen, welche andere Lasten bewegen werden, ja, von welchem aus man sich, in günstigen Fällen, mit einemmale zu einer höhern Ansicht des Ganzen, als man bisher gehabt, emporschwingt. Denn die Verkettung der Wahrheiten ist in jedem Gebiete des Wissens so groß, daß wer sich in den ganz sichern Besitz einer einzigen gesetzt hat, allenfalls hoffen darf, von da aus das Ganze zu erobern. Wie bei einer schwierigen algebraischen Aufgabe eine einzige positiv gegebene Größe von unschätzbarem Wert ist, weil sie die Lösung möglich macht; so ist, in der schwierigsten aller menschlichen Aufgaben, welches die Metaphysik ist, die sichere, *a priori* und *a posteriori* bewiesene Erkenntnis der strengen Notwendigkeit, mit der aus gegebenem Charakter und gegebenen Motiven die Thaten erfolgen, ein solches unschätzbares Datum, von welchem ganz allein ausgehend man zur Lösung der gesamten Aufgabe gelangen kann. Daher muß alles, was nicht eine feste, wissenschaftliche Beglaubigung aufzuweisen hat, einer solchen wohlbegründeten Wahrheit, wo es ihr im Wege steht, weichen, nicht aber diese jenem: und keineswegs darf sie sich zu Akkommodation und Beschränkungen verstehen, um sich mit unbewiesenen und vielleicht irrigen Behauptungen in Einklang zu setzen. Noch eine allgemeine Bemerkung sei mir hier erlaubt. Ein Rückblick auf unser Resultat gibt zu der Betrachtung Anlaß, daß in Hinsicht der zwei Probleme, welche schon im vorigen Abschnitt als die tiefsten der Philosophie der Neueren, hingegen den Alten nicht deutlich bewußt, bezeichnet wurden, — nämlich das Problem von der Willensfreiheit und das vom Verhältnis zwischen Idealem und Realem, — der gesunde, aber rohe Verstand nicht nur inkompetent ist; sondern sogar einen entschiedenen natürlichen Hang zum Irrtum hat, von welchem ihn zurückzubringen, es einer schon weit gediehenen Philosophie bedarf. Es ist ihm nämlich wirklich natürlich, hinsichtlich auf das **Erkennen** viel zu viel dem **Objekt** beizumessen; daher es **Lockes** und **Kants** bedurfte, um zu zeigen, wie sehr viel davon aus dem Subjekt entspringt. Hinsichtlich auf das **Wollen** hingegen hat er umgekehrt den Hang, viel zu wenig dem **Objekt** und viel zu viel dem **Subjekt** beizulegen, indem er dasselbe ganz und gar von **diesem** ausgehen läßt, ohne den im **Objekt** gelegenen Faktor, die Motive, gehörig in Anschlag zu bringen, welche eigentlich die ganze individuelle Beschaffenheit der Handlungen bestimmen, während nur ihr Allgemeines und Wesentliches, nämlich ihr moralischer Grundcharakter, vom **Subjekt** ausgeht. Eine solche dem Verstande natürliche Verkehrtheit in spekulativen Forschungen darf uns jedoch nicht wundern; da er ursprünglich allein zu praktischen und keineswegs zu spekulativen Zwecken bestimmt ist. — Wenn wir nun, infolge unserer bisherigen Darstellung, alle Freiheit des menschlichen Handelns völlig aufgehoben und dasselbe als durchweg der strengsten Notwendigkeit unterworfen erkannt haben; so sind wir eben dadurch auf den Punkt geführt, auf welchem wir die **wahre moralische Freiheit**, welche höherer Art ist, werden begreifen können. ### Chapter V, 2 Es gibt nämlich noch eine Thatsache des Bewußtseins, von welcher ich bisher, um den Gang der Untersuchung nicht zu stören, gänzlich abgesehen habe. Diese ist das völlig deutliche und sichere Gefühl der **Verantwortlichkeit** für das was wir thun, der **Zurechnungsfähigkeit** für unsere Handlungen, beruhend auf der unerschütterlichen Gewißheit, daß wir selbst **die Thäter unserer** Thaten sind. Vermöge dieses Bewußtseins kommt es keinem, auch dem nicht, der von der im Bisherigen dargelegten Notwendigkeit, mit welcher unsere Handlungen eintreten, völlig überzeugt ist, jemals in den Sinn, sich für ein Vergehen durch diese Notwendigkeit zu entschuldigen und die Schuld von sich auf die Motive zu wälzen, da ja bei deren Eintritt die That unausbleiblich war. Denn er sieht sehr wohl ein, daß diese Notwendigkeit eine **subjektive** Bedingung hat, und daß hier *objective*, d. h. unter den vorhandenen Umständen, also unter der Einwirkung der Motive, die ihn bestimmt haben, doch eine ganz andere Handlung, ja, die der seinigen gerade entgegengesetzte, sehr wohl möglich war und hätte geschehen können, **wenn nur Er ein anderer gewesen wäre**: hieran allein hat es gelegen. Ihm, weil er dieser und kein anderer ist, weil er einen solchen und solchen Charakter hat, war freilich keine andere Handlung möglich; aber an sich selbst, also *objective*, war sie möglich. Die **Verantwortlichkeit**, deren er sich bewußt ist, trifft daher bloß zunächst und ostensibel die That, im Grunde aber **seinen Charakter**: für **diesen** fühlt er sich verantwortlich. Und für **diesen** machen ihn auch die andern verantwortlich, indem ihr Urteil sogleich die That verläßt, um die Eigenschaften des Thäters festzustellen: „er ist ein schlechter Mensch, ein Bösewicht“, — oder „er ist ein Spitzbube“ — oder „er ist eine kleine, falsche, niederträchtige Seele“, — so lautet ihr Urteil, und auf seinen **Charakter** laufen ihre Vorwürfe zurück. Die That, nebst dem Motiv, kommt dabei bloß als Zeugnis von dem Charakter des Thäters in Betracht, gilt aber als sicheres Symptom desselben, wodurch er unwiderruflich und auf immer festgestellt ist. Ueberaus richtig sagt daher Aristoteles: Ἐγκωμιάζομεν πράξαντας· τὰ δ’ἔργα σημεῖα τῆς ἕξεώς ἐστι, ἐπεὶ ἐπαινοῖμεν ἂν καὶ μὴ πεπραγότα, εἰ πιστεύοιμεν εἶναι τοιοῦτον. — *Rhetorica, I, 9.* (*Encomio celebramus eos, qui egerunt: opera autem signa habitus sunt; quoniam laudaremus etiam qui non egisset, si crederemus esse talem.*) Also nicht auf die vorübergehende That, sondern auf die bleibenden Eigenschaften des Thäters, d. h. des Charakters, aus welchem sie hervorgegangen, wirft sich der Haß, der Abscheu und die Verachtung. Daher sind in allen Sprachen die Epitheta moralischer Schlechtigkeit, die Schimpfnamen, welche sie bezeichnen, vielmehr Prädikate des **Menschen** als der Handlungen. Dem **Charakter** werden sie angehängt: denn dieser hat die Schuld zu tragen, deren er auf Anlaß der Thaten bloß überführt worden. Da, wo die **Schuld** liegt, muß auch die **Verantwortlichkeit** liegen: und da diese das alleinige Datum ist, welches auf moralische Freiheit zu schließen berechtigt; so muß auch die **Freiheit** ebendaselbst liegen, also im **Charakter** des Menschen; um so mehr, als wir uns hinlänglich überzeugt haben, daß sie unmittelbar in den einzelnen Handlungen nicht anzutreffen ist, als welche, unter Voraussetzung des Charakters, streng necessitiert eintreten. Der Charakter aber ist, wie im dritten Abschnitt gezeigt worden, angeboren und unveränderlich. Die Freiheit in diesem Sinn also, dem alleinigen, zu welchem die Data vorliegen, wollen wir jetzt noch etwas näher betrachten, um, nachdem wir sie aus einer Thatsache des Bewußtseins erschlossen und ihren Ort gefunden haben, sie auch, soweit es möglich sein möchte, philosophisch zu begreifen. Im dritten Abschnitte hatte sich ergeben, daß jede Handlung eines Menschen das Produkt zweier Faktoren sei: seines Charakters mit dem Motiv. Dies bedeutet keineswegs, daß sie ein Mittleres, gleichsam ein Kompromiß zwischen dem Motiv und dem Charakter sei; sondern sie thut beiden volles Genüge, indem sie, ihrer ganzen Möglichkeit nach, auf beiden zugleich beruht, nämlich darauf, daß das wirkende Motiv auf diesen Charakter treffe und dieser Charakter durch ein solches Motiv bestimmbar sei. Der Charakter ist die empirisch erkannte, beharrliche und unveränderliche Beschaffenheit eines individuellen Willens. Da nun dieser Charakter ein ebenso notwendiger Faktor jeder Handlung ist, wie das Motiv; so erklärt sich hiedurch das Gefühl, daß unsere Thaten von uns selbst ausgehen, oder jenes „Ich will“, welches alle unsere Handlungen begleitet und vermöge dessen jeder sie als **seine** Thaten anerkennen muß, für welche er sich daher moralisch verantwortlich fühlt. Dieses ist nun wieder eben jenes oben bei Untersuchung des Selbstbewußtseins gefundene „Ich will, und will stets nur was ich will“, — welches den rohen Verstand verleitet, eine absolute Freiheit des Thuns und Lassens, ein *liberum arbitrium indifferentiae*, hartnäckig zu behaupten. Allein es ist nichts weiter, als das Bewußtsein des zweiten Faktors der Handlung, welcher für sich allein ganz unfähig wäre, sie hervorzubringen, hingegen beim Eintritt des Motivs ebenso unfähig ist, sie zu unterlassen. Aber erst indem er auf diese Weise in Thätigkeit versetzt wird, gibt er seine eigene Beschaffenheit dem Erkenntnisvermögen kund, als welches, wesentlich nach außen, nicht nach innen gerichtet, sogar die Beschaffenheit des eigenen Willens erst aus seinen Handlungen empirisch kennen lernt. Diese nähere und immer intimer werdende Bekanntschaft ist es eigentlich, was man **das Gewissen** nennt, welches auch eben deshalb **direkt** erst **nach** der Handlung laut wird; **vorher** höchstens nur **indirekt**, indem es etwan mittelst der Reflexion und Rückblick auf ähnliche Fälle, über die es sich schon erklärt hat, als ein künftig Eintretendes bei der Ueberlegung in Anschlag gebracht wird. Hier ist nun der Ort, an die schon im vorigen Abschnitt erwähnte Darstellung zu erinnern, welche **Kant** von dem Verhältnis zwischen empirischem und intelligibelm Charakter und dadurch von der Vereinbarkeit der Freiheit mit der Notwendigkeit gegeben hat, und welche zum Schönsten und Tiefgedachtesten gehört, was dieser große Geist, ja, was Menschen jemals hervorgebracht haben. Ich habe mich nur darauf zu berufen, da es eine überflüssige Weitläuftigkeit wäre, es hier zu wiederholen. Aber nur daraus läßt sich, soweit menschliche Kräfte es vermögen, begreifen: wie die strenge Notwendigkeit unserer Handlungen doch zusammenbesteht mit derjenigen Freiheit, von welcher das Gefühl der Verantwortlichkeit Zeugnis ablegt, und vermöge welcher wir die Thäter unserer Thaten und diese uns moralisch zuzurechnen sind. — Jenes von **Kant** dargelegte Verhältnis des empirischen zum intelligibeln Charakter beruht ganz und gar auf dem, was den Grundzug seiner gesamten Philosophie ausmacht, nämlich auf der Unterscheidung zwischen Erscheinung und Ding an sich: und wie bei ihm die vollkommene **empirische Realität** der Erfahrungswelt zusammenbesteht mit ihrer **transcendentalen Idealität**; ebenso die strenge **empirische Notwendigkeit** des Handelns mit dessen **transcendentaler Freiheit**. Der empirische Charakter nämlich ist, wie der ganze Mensch, als Gegenstand der Erfahrung eine bloße Erscheinung, daher an die Formen aller Erscheinung, Zeit, Raum und Kausalität gebunden und deren Gesetzen unterworfen: hingegen ist die als Ding an sich von diesen Formen unabhängige und deshalb keinem Zeitunterschied unterworfene, mithin beharrende und unveränderliche Bedingung und Grundlage dieser ganzen Erscheinung sein **intelligibler Charakter**, d. h. sein Wille als Ding an sich, welchem, in solcher Eigenschaft, allerdings auch absolute Freiheit, d. h. Unabhängigkeit vom Gesetze der Kausalität (als einer bloßen Form der Erscheinungen) zukommt. Diese Freiheit aber ist eine **transcendentale**, d.h. nicht in der Erscheinung hervortretende, sondern nur insofern vorhandene, als wir von der Erscheinung und allen ihren Formen abstrahieren, um zu dem zu gelangen, was, außer aller Zeit, als das innere Wesen des Menschen an sich selbst zu denken ist. Vermöge dieser Freiheit sind alle Thaten des Menschen sein eigenes Werk; so notwendig sie auch aus dem empirischen Charakter, bei seinem Zusammentreffen mit den Motiven, hervorgehen; weil dieser empirische Charakter bloß die Erscheinung des intelligibeln, in unserm an Zeit, Raum und Kausalität gebundenen **Erkenntnisvermögen**, d. h. die Art und Weise ist, wie diesem das Wesen an sich unsers eigenen Selbst sich darstellt. Demzufolge ist zwar der **Wille** frei, aber nur an sich selbst und außerhalb der Erscheinung: in dieser hingegen stellt er sich schon mit einem bestimmten Charakter dar, welchem alle seine Thaten gemäß sein und daher, wenn durch die hinzugetretenen Motive näher bestimmt, notwendig so und nicht anders ausfallen müssen. ### Chapter V, 3 Dieser Weg führt, wie leicht abzusehen, dahin, daß wir das Werk unserer **Freiheit** nicht mehr, wie es die gemeine Ansicht thut, in unsern einzelnen Handlungen, sondern im ganzen Sein und Wesen (*existentia et essentia*) des Menschen selbst zu suchen haben, welches gedacht werden muß als seine freie That, die bloß für das an Zeit, Raum und Kausalität geknüpfte Erkenntnisvermögen in einer Vielheit und Verschiedenheit von Handlungen sich darstellt, welche aber, eben wegen der ursprünglichen Einheit des in ihnen sich Darstellenden, alle genau denselben Charakter tragen müssen und daher als von den jedesmaligen Motiven, von denen sie hervorgerufen und im einzelnen bestimmt werden, streng necessitiert erscheinen. Demnach steht für die Welt der Erfahrung das *Operari sequitur esse* ohne Ausnahme fest. Jedes Ding wirkt gemäß seiner Beschaffenheit, und sein auf Ursachen erfolgendes Wirken gibt diese Beschaffenheit kund. Jeder Mensch handelt nach dem wie er ist, und die demgemäß jedesmal notwendige Handlung wird, im individuellen Fall, allein durch die Motive bestimmt. Die **Freiheit**, welche daher im *Operari* nicht anzutreffen sein kann, **muß im** *Esse* **liegen**. Es ist ein Grundirrtum, ein ὕστερον πρότερον aller Zeiten gewesen, die Notwendigkeit dem *Esse* und die Freiheit dem *Operari* beizulegen. Umgekehrt, im *Esse* **allein liegt die Freiheit**; aber aus ihm und den Motiven folgt das *Operari* mit Notwendigkeit: und **an dem was wir thun, erkennen wir was wir sind**. Hierauf, und nicht auf dem vermeinten *libero arbitrio indifferentiae*, beruht das Bewußtsein der Verantwortlichkeit und die moralische Tendenz des Lebens. Es kommt alles darauf an, was einer **ist**: was er **thut**, wird sich daraus von selbst ergeben, als ein notwendiges Korollarium. Das alle unsere Thaten, trotz ihrer Abhängigkeit von den Motiven, unleugbar begleitende Bewußtsein der Eigenmächtigkeit und Ursprünglichkeit, vermöge dessen sie **unsere** Thaten sind, trügt demnach nicht: aber sein wahrer Inhalt reicht weiter als die Thaten und fängt höher oben an, indem unser Sein und Wesen selbst, von welchem alle Thaten (auf Anlaß der Motive) notwendig ausgehen, in Wahrheit mit darin begriffen ist. In diesem Sinne kann man jenes Bewußtsein der Eigenmächtigkeit und Ursprünglichkeit, wie auch das der Verantwortlichkeit, welches unser Handeln begleitet, mit einem Zeiger vergleichen, der auf einen entfernteren Gegenstand hinweist, als der in derselben Richtung näher liegende ist, auf den er zu weisen scheint. Mit einem Wort: Der Mensch thut allezeit nur was er will, und thut es doch notwendig. Das liegt aber daran, daß er schon **ist** was er will: denn aus dem, was er **ist**, folgt notwendig alles, was er jedesmal thut. Betrachtet man sein Thun *objective*, also von außen; so erkennt man apodiktisch, daß es, wie das Wirken jedes Naturwesens, dem Kausalitätsgesetze in seiner ganzen Strenge unterworfen sein muß: *subjective* hingegen fühlt jeder, daß er stets nur thut was er **will**. Dies besagt aber bloß, daß sein Wirken die reine Aeußerung seines selbsteigenen Wesens ist. Dasselbe würde daher jedes, selbst das niedrigste Naturwesen fühlen, wenn es fühlen könnte. Die **Freiheit** ist also durch meine Darstellung nicht aufgehoben, sondern bloß hinausgerückt, nämlich aus dem Gebiete der einzelnen Handlungen, wo sie erweislich nicht anzutreffen ist, hinauf in eine höhere, aber unserer Erkenntnis nicht so leicht zugängliche Region: d.h. sie ist transcendental. Und dies ist denn auch der Sinn, in welchem ich jenen Ausspruch des Malebranche, *la liberté est un mystère*, verstanden wissen möchte, unter dessen Aegide gegenwärtige Abhandlung die von der Königlichen Societät gestellte Aufgabe zu lösen versucht hat. ### Appendix, 1 **Anhang, zur Ergänzung des ersten Abschnittes.** Infolge der gleich anfangs aufgestellten Einteilung der Freiheit in physische, intellektuelle und moralische, habe ich, nachdem die erstere und letztere abgehandelt sind, jetzt noch die zweite zu erörtern, welches bloß der Vollständigkeit wegen und daher in der Kürze geschehen soll. Der Intellekt, oder das Erkenntnisvermögen, ist das **Medium der Motive**, durch welches nämlich hindurch sie auf den Willen, welcher der eigentliche Kern des Menschen ist, wirken. Nur sofern dieses Medium der Motive sich in einem normalen Zustande befindet, seine Funktionen regelrecht vollzieht und daher die Motive unverfälscht, wie sie in der realen Außenwelt vorliegen, dem Willen zur Wahl darstellt, kann dieser sich seiner Natur, d. h. dem individuellen Charakter des Menschen gemäß, entscheiden, also **ungehindert**, nach seinem selbsteigenen Wesen sich äußern: dann ist der Mensch **intellektuell frei**, d. h. seine Handlungen sind das reine Resultat der Reaktion seines Willens auf Motive, die in der Außenwelt ihm ebenso wie allen andern vorliegen. Demzufolge sind sie ihm alsdann moralisch und auch juridisch zuzurechnen. Diese intellektuelle Freiheit wird **aufgehoben** entweder dadurch, daß das Medium der Motive, das Erkenntnisvermögen, auf die Dauer oder nur vorübergehend, zerrüttet ist, oder dadurch, daß äußere Umstände, im einzelnen Fall, die Auffassung der Motive verfälschen. Ersteres ist der Fall im Wahnsinn, Delirium, Paroxysmus und Schlaftrunkenheit; letzteres bei einem entschiedenen und unverschuldeten Irrtum, z. B. wenn man Gift statt Arznei eingießt, oder den nächtlich eintretenden Diener für einen Räuber hält und erschießt, u. dgl. m. Denn in beiden Fällen sind die Motive verfälscht, weshalb der Wille sich nicht so entscheiden kann, wie er unter den vorliegenden Umständen es würde, wenn der Intellekt sie ihm richtig überlieferte. Die unter solchen Umständen begangenen Verbrechen sind daher auch nicht gesetzlich strafbar. Denn die Gesetze gehen aus von der richtigen Voraussetzung, daß der Wille nicht moralisch frei sei, in welchem Fall man ihn nicht **lenken** könnte; sondern daß er der Nötigung durch Motive unterworfen sei: demgemäß wollen sie allen etwanigen Motiven zu Verbrechen stärkere Gegenmotive, in den angedrohten Strafen, entgegenstellen, und ein Kriminalkodex ist nichts anderes, als ein Verzeichnis von Gegenmotiven zu verbrecherischen Handlungen. Ergibt sich aber, daß der Intellekt, durch den diese Gegenmotive zu wirken hatten, unfähig war, sie aufzunehmen und dem Willen vorzuhalten; so war ihre Wirkung unmöglich: sie waren für ihn nicht vorhanden. Es ist wie wenn man findet, daß einer der Fäden, die eine Maschine zu bewegen hatten, gerissen sei. Die Schuld geht daher in solchem Fall vom Willen auf den Intellekt über: dieser aber ist keiner Strafe unterworfen; sondern mit dem Willen allein haben es die Gesetze, wie die Moral, zu thun. Er allein ist der eigentliche Mensch: der Intellekt ist bloß sein Organ, seine Fühlhörner nach außen, d. i. das Medium der Wirkung auf ihn durch Motive. Ebensowenig sind dergleichen Thaten **moralisch** zuzurechnen. Denn sie sind kein Zug des Charakters des Menschen; er hat entweder etwas anderes gethan, als er zu thun wähnte, oder war unfähig an das zu denken, was ihn davon hätte abhalten sollen, d. h. die Gegenmotive zuzulassen. Es ist damit, wie wenn ein chemisch zu untersuchender Stoff der Einwirkung mehrerer Reagenzien ausgesetzt wird, damit man sehe, zu welchem er die stärkste Verwandtschaft hat: findet sich, nach gemachtem Experiment, daß, durch ein zufälliges Hindernis, das eine Reagens gar nicht hat einwirken können; so ist das Experiment ungültig. Die intellektuelle Freiheit, welche wir hier als ganz aufgehoben betrachteten, kann ferner auch bloß **vermindert**, oder partiell aufgehoben werden. Dies geschieht besonders durch den Affekt und durch den Rausch. Der **Affekt** ist die plötzliche, heftige Erregung des Willens durch eine von außen eindringende, zum Motiv werdende Vorstellung, die eine solche Lebhaftigkeit hat, daß sie alle andern, welche ihr als Gegenmotive entgegenwirken könnten, verdunkelt und nicht deutlich ins Bewußtsein kommen läßt. Diese letzteren, welche meistens nur abstrakter Natur, bloße Gedanken, sind, während jene erstere ein Anschauliches, Gegenwärtiges ist, kommen dabei gleichsam nicht zum Schuß und haben also nicht was man auf englisch *fair play* nennt: die That ist schon geschehen, ehe sie kontragieren konnten. Es ist wie wenn im Duell der eine vor dem Kommandowort losschießt. Auch hier ist demnach sowohl die juridische, als die moralische Verantwortlichkeit, nach Beschaffenheit der Umstände, mehr oder weniger, doch immer zum Teil, aufgehoben. In England wird ein in vollkommener Uebereilung und ohne die geringste Ueberlegung, im heftigsten, plötzlich erregten Zorn begangener Mord *manslaughter* genannt und leicht, ja, bisweilen gar nicht bestraft. — Der **Rausch** ist ein Zustand, der zu Affekten disponiert, indem er die Lebhaftigkeit der anschaulichen Vorstellung erhöht, das Denken *in abstracto* dagegen schwächt und dabei noch die Energie des Willens steigert. An die Stelle der Verantwortlichkeit für die Thaten tritt hier die für den Rausch selbst: daher er juridisch nicht entschuldigt, obgleich hier die intellektuelle Freiheit zum Teil aufgehoben ist. Von dieser intellektuellen Freiheit, *το ἐκούσιον καὶ ἀκούσιον κατὰ διάνοιαν*, redet schon, wiewohl sehr kurz und ungenügend, **Aristoteles** in der *Ethic. Eudem., II, c. 7 et 9*, und etwas ausführlicher in der *Ethic. Nicom., III, c. 2.* — Sie ist gemeint, wenn die *Medicina forensis* und die Kriminaljustiz frägt, ob ein Verbrecher im Zustande der Freiheit und folglich zurechnungsfähig gewesen sei. Im allgemeinen also sind als unter Abwesenheit der intellektuellen Freiheit begangen alle die Verbrechen anzusehen, bei denen der Mensch entweder nicht wußte, was er that, oder schlechterdings nicht fähig war, zu bedenken, was ihn davon hätte abhalten sollen, nämlich die Folgen der That. In solchen Fällen ist er demnach nicht zu strafen. Die hingegen, welche meinen, daß schon wegen der Nichtexistenz der **moralischen** Freiheit und daraus folgender Unausbleiblichkeit aller Handlungen eines gegebenen Menschen, kein Verbrecher gestraft werden dürfte, gehen von der falschen Ansicht der Strafe aus, daß sie eine Heimsuchung der Verbrechen, ihrer selbst wegen, ein Vergelten des Bösen mit Bösem, aus moralischen Gründen, sei. Ein solches aber, wenngleich Kant es gelehrt hat, wäre absurd, zwecklos und durchaus unberechtigt. Denn wie wäre doch ein Mensch befugt, sich zum absoluten Richter des andern, in moralischer Hinsicht, aufzuwerfen und als solcher, seiner Sünden wegen, ihn zu peinigen! Vielmehr hat das Gesetz, d. i. die Androhung der Strafe, den Zweck, das Gegenmotiv zu den noch nicht begangenen Verbrechen zu sein. Verfehlt es, im einzelnen Fall, diese seine Wirkung; so muß es vollzogen werden; weil es sonst sie auch in allen zukünftigen Fällen verfehlen würde. Der Verbrecher seinerseits erleidet, in diesem Fall, die Strafe eigentlich doch infolge seiner moralischen Beschaffenheit, als welche, im Verein mit den Umständen, welche die Motive waren, und seinem Intellekt, der ihm die Hoffnung der Strafe zu entgehen vorspiegelte, die That unausbleiblich herbeigeführt hat. Hierin könnte ihm nur dann Unrecht geschehen, wenn sein moralischer Charakter nicht sein eigenes Werk, seine intelligible That, sondern das Werk eines andern wäre. Dasselbe Verhältnis der That zu ihrer Folge findet statt, wenn die Folgen seines lasterhaften Thuns nicht nach menschlichen, sondern nach Naturgesetzen eintreten, z. B. wenn liederliche Ausschweifungen schreckliche Krankheiten herbeiführen, oder auch wenn er beim Versuch eines Einbruchs, durch einen Zufall, verunglückt, z. B. in dem Schweinestall, in den er bei Nacht einbricht, um dessen gewöhnlichen Bewohner abzuführen, statt seiner den Bären, dessen Führer am Abend in diesem Wirtshause eingekehrt ist, vorfindet, welcher ihm mit offenen Armen entgegenkommt. ## Translation — Mouseia > Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the German, including the author’s notes and appendix. Source edition: Arthur Schopenhauers sämtliche Werke, vol. VII, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, n.d. [1890s]), Internet Archive item arthurschopenha07schouoft ### Chapter I, 1 **Prize Essay** on **the Freedom of the Will**, awarded the prize by the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences at Trondheim on January 26, 1839. **Motto:** *Freedom is a mystery.* The question set by the Royal Society reads: *Can human freedom of will be demonstrated from self-consciousness?* **In German: “Can the freedom of the human will be proved from self-consciousness?”** **I. Definitions.** A question so important, grave and difficult, touching in essence on one of the central problems of medieval and modern philosophy, calls for great precision. An analysis of its principal concepts is therefore very much in order. 1. **What does freedom mean?** Strictly considered, this is a **negative** concept. We think through it only the absence of everything that obstructs or restrains; whatever restrains, by contrast, must be something positive, since it exerts a force. According to the possible nature of this restraint, the concept has three very different subdivisions: physical, intellectual and moral freedom. a) **Physical freedom** is the absence of **material** obstacles of every kind. Thus we speak of an open sky, an unobstructed view, open air, an open field, a vacant space, free heat—which is not chemically bound—free electricity, and a river’s free course where mountains or sluices no longer check it, and so on. Even free lodging, free board, a free press and a postage-free letter signify the absence of the burdensome conditions that generally attach to such things as obstacles to their enjoyment. Most often, however, our thinking makes freedom an attribute of animals, whose distinctive feature is that their movements proceed from **their will** and are voluntary. Accordingly, these movements are called **free** when no material obstacle makes them impossible. Since these obstacles can be of very different kinds, while what they obstruct is always the will, we find it simpler to take the concept from its positive side: everything that moves solely through its will, or acts solely from its will, is thereby thought of as free. This reversal of the concept changes nothing essential. In this physical sense of freedom, then, animals and human beings are called **free** when neither bonds, nor imprisonment, nor paralysis—in short, no **physical, material** obstacle—impede their actions, which instead proceed in accordance with their **will**. This **physical meaning** of freedom, especially as an attribute of animals, is its original, immediate and therefore most common meaning. Precisely for that reason, it admits of neither doubt nor controversy: experience can always attest its reality. As soon as an animal acts from its will alone, it is **free** in this sense, regardless of whatever may influence that will itself. For the concept of freedom, in this original, immediate and thus popular meaning, concerns only **ability**: the absence of **physical** obstacles to action. Hence we say: the bird in the air is free, the wild animal in the forest is free; the human being is free by nature; only the free are happy. We also call a people free, meaning that it is governed by laws alone and has itself made those laws, so that it everywhere obeys only its own will. Political freedom must therefore be counted as physical freedom. But once we leave this **physical** freedom and consider its two other kinds, we are dealing no longer with the popular meaning of the concept but with a **philosophical** one, which, as everyone knows, opens the way to many difficulties. It divides into two entirely different kinds: intellectual and moral freedom. b) **Intellectual freedom**—what Aristotle calls *the voluntary and involuntary in respect of thought*—is considered here merely to complete the division of the concept. I therefore take the liberty of postponing its discussion to the very end of this essay. The concepts required for it will by then have been explained in the preceding argument, allowing it to be dealt with briefly. In the classification, however, it had to take its place beside physical freedom as its closest relative. c) I turn at once, then, to the third kind, **moral freedom**, which is properly the *freedom of choice* referred to in the Royal Society’s question. ### Chapter I, 2 This concept connects with physical freedom on a side that also makes its necessarily much later origin understandable. Physical freedom, as we have said, concerns only material obstacles and is present as soon as they are absent. Yet people observed cases in which a person, though restrained by no material obstacle, was prevented by mere motives—threats, promises, dangers and the like—from acting as would otherwise certainly have accorded with his will. The question then arose: had such a person still been free? Could a strong counter-motive really obstruct an action corresponding to his actual will and make it impossible, just as a physical obstacle could? Common sense could have little difficulty answering that a motive could never act as a physical obstacle does. A physical obstacle may readily exceed human bodily strength altogether and unconditionally; a motive, by contrast, can never be irresistible in itself or possess unconditional power. It may always be outweighed by a **stronger counter-motive**, provided such a motive exists and the particular person in question is susceptible to it. We often see even what is generally the strongest of all motives, the preservation of life, outweighed by others: in suicide, for example, or in sacrificing one’s life for other people, for opinions, or for interests of many kinds. Conversely, every degree of the most ingenious torture on the rack has sometimes been overcome by the mere thought that otherwise one’s life would be lost. But although this showed that motives carry no purely objective and absolute compulsion, they might still possess a subjective and relative compulsion—one applying to the person concerned—which came to the same thing in the result. The question therefore remained: is the will itself free? The concept of freedom, previously thought of only in relation to **ability**, had now been brought into relation with **willing**, and the problem arose whether willing itself was **free**. Yet closer examination shows that the original, purely empirical and thus popular concept of freedom cannot enter into this connection with **willing**. For according to that concept, “**free**” means “in accordance with one’s own will.” To ask whether the will itself is free is therefore to ask whether the will accords with itself: something self-evident, but also something that tells us nothing. The empirical concept of freedom says: “I am free if I can **do** what I **will**”; the words “what I will” already settle the question of freedom there. Now, however, we are asking about the freedom of **willing** itself. On the same terms, the question would read: “Can you also **will** what you will?” This amounts to supposing that willing depends on another willing lying behind it. Suppose that question were answered in the affirmative: a second would immediately arise, “Can you also will what you will to will?” The question would thus be pushed back into infinity. We should always be thinking of one willing as dependent on an earlier or more deeply situated willing, vainly striving by this route to reach one that we would have to think of and accept as dependent on nothing at all. But if we wished to assume such a willing, we could just as well take the first as any arbitrarily chosen last one. The question would thereby be reduced to the perfectly simple “Can you will?” Whether merely answering this question affirmatively establishes freedom of willing is precisely what we wanted to know, and remains unsettled. The original empirical concept of freedom, derived from doing, thus refuses to enter into a direct connection with the concept of the will. To apply freedom to the will nevertheless, it had to be modified by being understood more abstractly. This was done by thinking of **freedom**, in general, simply as the absence of all **necessity**. In doing so, the concept retains the **negative** character I assigned to it at the outset. We must therefore first discuss **necessity**, the **positive** concept that gives this **negative** one its meaning. We ask, then: what does **necessary** mean? The usual explanation, “Necessary is that whose opposite is impossible, or that which cannot be otherwise,” merely explains a word. It paraphrases the concept without increasing our understanding. As a definition of the thing itself, however, I propose this: **necessary is whatever follows from a given sufficient reason**. Like every correct definition, this proposition can also be reversed. According to whether the sufficient reason is logical, mathematical, or physical—in which last case it is called a cause—the **necessity** will be logical, as with a conclusion once its premises are given; mathematical, as with the equality of a triangle’s sides when its angles are equal; or physical and real, as with the occurrence of an effect once its cause is present. In every case, however, necessity attaches to the consequence with the same rigor once the reason is given. Only insofar as we understand something as a consequence of a given reason do we recognize it as necessary; conversely, as soon as we recognize something as a consequence of a sufficient reason, we see that it is necessary, for all reasons compel their consequences. This definition is so adequate and exhaustive that necessity and consequence of a given sufficient reason are interchangeable concepts: either can everywhere be put in place of the other∗). The absence of necessity would accordingly be identical with the absence of a determining sufficient reason. **Contingency**, however, is thought of as the opposite of **necessity**, and this does not conflict with what has been said. For everything contingent is so only **relatively**. In the real world—the only place where contingency is encountered—every event is **necessary** in relation to its cause, but **contingent** in relation to everything else with which it happens to coincide in space and time. Since absence of necessity is the mark of what is free, what is free would have to depend on no cause whatsoever. It would therefore have to be defined as the **absolutely contingent**: a highly problematic concept whose conceivability I do not guarantee, yet one that strangely coincides with the concept of **freedom**. In any case, **what is free** remains that which is necessary in no respect, meaning that it depends on no reason. Applied to the human will, this concept would mean that an individual will is not determined in its manifestations—its acts of will—by causes or by sufficient reasons of any kind. Otherwise, since a consequence of a given reason, whatever its kind, is always **necessary**, its acts would not be free but necessary. This is the basis of **Kant’s** definition of freedom as the capacity to begin a series of changes **of itself**. Reduced to its true meaning, “of itself” means “without a preceding cause,” which is identical with “without necessity.” Thus, although this definition gives freedom the appearance of a positive concept, closer examination brings its negative nature to light again. A free will, then, would be a will determined by no reasons—and since anything determining something else must be a reason, and in the case of real things a real ground, that is, a cause—a will determined by nothing whatsoever. Its individual manifestations, its acts of will, would therefore arise absolutely and originally from itself, without being brought about necessarily by prior conditions, and hence without being determined by anything in accordance with a rule. Clear thinking fails us at this concept, because the principle of sufficient reason, in all its meanings, is the essential form of our entire faculty of knowledge, yet here it is to be abandoned. There is nevertheless a *technical term* for this concept too: *freedom of indifferent choice*. It is, moreover, the only clearly defined, firm and definite concept of what is called freedom of the will. We cannot depart from it without falling into wavering, foggy explanations that conceal a hesitant refusal to go the whole way—as when people speak of reasons that do not necessarily bring about their consequences. Every consequence of a reason is necessary, and every necessity is a consequence of a reason. The immediate consequence of assuming such *freedom of indifferent choice*, one that characterizes the concept itself and must therefore be established as its defining mark, is this: for a human individual endowed with it, under given external circumstances that are entirely particular and determined in every respect, two diametrically opposed actions are equally possible. ∗) The concept of necessity is discussed in my treatise on the principle of sufficient reason, § 49, S. 184 f. of this edition. ### Chapter I, 3 2. **What does self-consciousness mean?** The answer is consciousness of **one’s own self**, as opposed to consciousness of **other things**, the latter being the faculty of knowledge. Before those other things appear in it, this faculty does indeed contain certain forms governing the manner of their appearance. These are therefore conditions of the possibility of their objective existence—that is, their existence as objects for us. Time, space and causality are familiar examples. Although these forms of knowledge lie within us, they do so only to enable us to become conscious of **other things** as such, and wholly in relation to those things. Thus, although these forms are within us, we must not regard them as belonging to **self-consciousness**, but rather as making **consciousness of other things**—that is, objective knowledge—possible. Nor will I let the double meaning of the word used in the question—*consciousness or conscience*—tempt me to include within self-consciousness the human moral impulses known as conscience, or sometimes as practical reason, with the categorical imperatives **Kant** attributes to it. For one thing, these impulses arise only through experience and reflection, and hence through consciousness of other things. For another, no sharp and indisputable boundary has yet been drawn between what in them belongs originally and intrinsically to human nature and what moral and religious education adds. Besides, the Royal Society can hardly intend that, by bringing conscience into self-consciousness, the question should be shifted onto moral ground, merely to see **Kant’s** moral proof—or rather postulate—of freedom repeated: freedom inferred from the moral law of which we are conscious *a priori*, through the conclusion “You can, because you ought.” What we have said makes it clear that by far the greatest part of our consciousness as a whole is not **self-consciousness**, but **consciousness of other things**, or the faculty of knowledge. With all its powers, this faculty is directed outward. It is the theater—and indeed, from a deeper standpoint of inquiry, the condition—of the real external world. It first apprehends that world in perception, then works what it has gained into concepts, as though chewing it over. **Thinking** consists in the endless combinations of these concepts accomplished with the aid of words. Only what remains after we subtract this by far greatest portion of our entire consciousness would therefore be **self-consciousness**. We can already see that its contents cannot be very rich. If the data we seek as proof of freedom of the will really do lie within it, we may consequently hope that they will not escape us. An **inner sense**∗) has also been proposed as the organ of self-consciousness, though this must be understood more figuratively than literally, since self-consciousness is immediate. Be that as it may, our next question is: what does self-consciousness contain? Or, how does a person become immediately conscious of his own self? The answer is: entirely as a **being that wills**. Anyone who observes his own self-consciousness will soon notice that its object is always his own willing. This, of course, must not be understood to include only decisive acts of will that immediately become deeds, or express resolutions together with the actions arising from them. Anyone who can hold fast to what is essential, even through differences of degree and kind, will have no hesitation in counting as manifestations of willing all desire, striving, wishing, wanting, yearning, hoping, loving, rejoicing, exulting and the like; no less than not-willing or resistance, and all abhorrence, flight, fear, anger, hatred, grief and suffering of pain—in short, all emotions and passions. These emotions and passions are only the movements of one’s own will, weaker or stronger, sometimes violent and stormy, sometimes gentle, as that will is checked or released, satisfied or unsatisfied. In their many forms, they all concern attaining or missing what is willed, and enduring or overcoming what is abhorred. They are therefore definite states of the same will that is active in resolutions and actions∗). Even what are called feelings of pleasure and displeasure belong here. Though present in a great variety of degrees and kinds, they can always be traced back to states of desire or aversion: to the will itself becoming conscious of itself as satisfied or unsatisfied, checked or released. Indeed, this extends to bodily sensations, pleasant or painful, and to the countless sensations lying between these two. The essence of all these states is that they enter self-consciousness immediately as something agreeable or contrary to the will. Strictly considered, one is even immediately conscious of one’s own body only as the outward-working organ of the will and the seat of receptivity to pleasant or painful sensations. Yet, as just said, these sensations themselves come down to wholly immediate states of the will, either agreeable or contrary to it. Whether or not we include these mere feelings of pleasure and displeasure, we find in any case that all those movements of the will—that changing willing and not-willing which, in its perpetual ebb and flow, forms the sole object of self-consciousness, or of the inner sense if we prefer—stand in a constant and universally acknowledged relation to what is perceived and known in the external world. As we have said, however, the latter no longer lies within immediate **self-consciousness**. As soon as we touch the external world, we have reached the boundary where self-consciousness meets the domain of **consciousness of other things**. Yet the objects perceived in that world are the material and occasion of all those movements and acts of the will. This will not be taken as *begging the question*. No one can deny that our willing always has external objects as its object: things toward which it is directed, around which it revolves, and which at least occasion it as motives. Otherwise, we should be left with a will wholly cut off from the external world and imprisoned in the dark interior of self-consciousness. Only the necessity with which those things in the external world determine the will’s acts remains problematic for us at present. ∗) It is already found in Cicero as *“inner touch”*: *Acad. quaest., IV, 7.* More clearly in Augustine, *De lib. arb., II, 3 sqq.* Then in Descartes, *Princ. phil., IV, 190*; and fully developed in Locke. ∗) It is very noteworthy that the Church Father **Augustine** already understood this perfectly, while so many modern thinkers, with their alleged “faculty of feeling,” fail to see it. In *De civit. Dei, Lib. XIV, c. 6*, he speaks of the *affections of the mind*, which he had divided in the preceding book into four categories—*desire, fear, joy and sadness*—and says: “*Will is certainly present in them all; indeed, they are all nothing but acts of will. For what are desire and joy but the will’s agreement with the things we want? And what are fear and sadness but the will’s rejection of the things we do not want?*” We thus find self-consciousness very deeply, indeed exclusively, occupied with the **will**. Our object is now to see whether, in this its sole material, it encounters data from which the **freedom** of that very will would follow, in the sense explained above—the only clear and definite sense of the word. Toward this object we shall now steer directly, having so far approached it by tacking, yet already drawn perceptibly nearer. ### Chapter II, 1 **II. The Will Before Self-Consciousness.** When a person **wills**, he also wills something: his act of will is always directed toward an object and can be conceived only in relation to one. What, then, does it mean to will something? It means that the act of will, which in itself is initially only an object of self-consciousness, arises on the occasion of something belonging to the consciousness of **other things**, and thus an object of the faculty of cognition. In this relation that object is called a **motive**, and it is also the material of the act of will, since the act is directed toward it—that is, aims at some change in it, and so reacts to it: its whole essence consists in this **reaction**. This already makes it clear that the act could not occur without that object, since it would lack both an occasion and material. The question, however, is whether, once this object stands before the faculty of cognition, the act of will **must** also occur, or whether it could instead fail to occur, with either no act arising at all or a quite different, perhaps even opposite one; in other words, whether that reaction could fail to occur, or, under entirely identical circumstances, turn out differently, even oppositely. In short: does the motive necessarily call forth the act of will? Or, when the motive enters consciousness, does the will retain complete freedom to will or not to will? Here, then, the concept of freedom is taken in the abstract sense discussed above and shown to be the only one applicable here—as the mere negation of necessity—and our problem is thereby established. We must look for the data for its solution in immediate **self-consciousness**, and to that end we will examine its testimony closely, rather than cut the knot with a summary verdict, as **Descartes** did when he simply asserted: *“Yet we are so conscious of the freedom and indifference within us that there is nothing we comprehend more evidently and perfectly.” (Princ. phil., I, § 41.)* The untenability of this assertion was already recognized by **Leibniz** *(Theod., I, § 50, et III, § 292)*, although on this point he himself was only a wavering reed in the wind and, after the most contradictory pronouncements, finally arrived at the conclusion that motives incline the will but do not necessitate it. He says, namely: *“All actions are determined and never indifferent, because there is always a reason that inclines, though it does not necessitate, that things should happen in this way rather than another.” (Leibniz, De libertate: Opera, ed. Erdmann, p. 669.)* This gives me occasion to observe that such a middle course between the alternatives posed above cannot be maintained. We cannot, in keeping with a certain popular halfheartedness, say that motives determine the will only to some extent, that it undergoes their influence, but only up to a certain degree, and can then withdraw from it. For once we have conceded causality to a given force—that is, recognized that it acts—then, if it encounters resistance, we need only increase the force in proportion to that resistance, and it will complete its effect. Someone who cannot be won over with 10 ducats, but wavers, will be won over with 100, and so on. We therefore put our problem to immediate **self-consciousness** in the sense established above. What light can this self-consciousness shed on that abstract question: whether or not the concept of **necessity** applies to the occurrence of an act of will once a motive has been given—that is, presented to the intellect? Or on the possibility or impossibility of the act's failing to occur in such a case? We would find ourselves badly mistaken if we expected this self-consciousness to furnish thorough and far-reaching explanations of causality in general and motivation in particular, or of the necessity they may carry with them. For self-consciousness, as it dwells in every human being, is far too simple and limited a thing to have any say in such matters. These concepts are drawn instead from the pure understanding, which is directed outward, and can be brought up for discussion only before the tribunal of reflective reason. That natural, simple—indeed, simpleminded—self-consciousness, by contrast, cannot even understand the question, much less answer it. Its testimony about acts of will, which everyone can listen for within himself, might be expressed as follows once stripped of everything extraneous and inessential and reduced to its bare content: “I can will, and whenever I will an action, the movable limbs of my body will carry it out at once, as soon as I will it, without fail.” In short: “**I can do what I will.**” The testimony of immediate self-consciousness goes no further, however we turn it and in whatever form we put the question. Its testimony thus always concerns the **ability to act in accordance with the will**. But this is the empirical, original, and popular concept of freedom stated at the very beginning, according to which **free** means “**in accordance with the will**.” Self-consciousness will affirm this freedom unconditionally. But it is not the freedom we are asking about. Self-consciousness affirms freedom of **action**—on the assumption of **willing**; but it is freedom of **willing** that has been asked about. We are investigating the relation of willing itself to the motive; yet the statement “I can do what I will” says nothing about this. The dependence of our doing—that is, our bodily actions—on our will, to which self-consciousness certainly testifies, is something quite different from the independence of our acts of will from external circumstances. That independence would constitute freedom of the will, but self-consciousness can testify to nothing about it, because it lies outside its sphere: it concerns the causal relation of the external world, which is given to us as consciousness of other things, to our decisions. Self-consciousness, however, cannot judge the relation of what lies entirely outside its domain to what lies within it. For no cognitive faculty can establish a relation one of whose terms can in no way be given to it. Yet the **objects** of willing, which are precisely what determine the act of will, plainly lie beyond the boundary of **self-consciousness**, in the consciousness **of other things**; only the act of will itself lies within it, and the question concerns their causal relation to that act. Self-consciousness has to do only with the act of will, together with its absolute dominion over the body's limbs, which is what “what I will” really means. Moreover, only the exercise of this dominion—that is, **the deed**—stamps it as an act of will, even for self-consciousness. For as long as it is taking shape it is called a **wish**; when complete, a **decision**. But even to self-consciousness, only the **deed** proves it to be a decision, since until then it remains changeable. Here we already stand at the chief source of that admittedly undeniable semblance which leads the unreflective person—that is, the philosophically untrained person—to believe that in a given case opposite acts of will would be possible for him, and to insist on the authority of his self-consciousness, which, he thinks, testifies to this. He confuses wishing with willing. He can **wish** for opposite things ∗); but he can **will** only **one** of them, and which one that is becomes apparent even to self-consciousness only through the **deed**. Precisely for this reason, self-consciousness can contain nothing about the law-governed necessity by which, of opposite wishes, one and not the other becomes an act of will and a deed: it learns the result entirely *after the fact*, rather than knowing it *in advance*. Opposite wishes, with their motives, rise and fall before it, alternately and repeatedly. Of each, it testifies that it will become a deed if it becomes an act of will. For this last, purely **subjective** possibility is indeed present for each, and is precisely the “I can do what I will.” But this **subjective** possibility is entirely hypothetical: it says only, “If I will this, I can do it.” It does not, however, contain the determination required for willing, since self-consciousness contains only willing, not the grounds that determine one to will; these lie in the consciousness of other things, that is, in the faculty of cognition. What decides the issue, by contrast, is **objective** possibility. This lies outside self-consciousness, in the world of objects, to which the motive and the human being as an object belong; it is therefore foreign to self-consciousness and belongs to the consciousness of other things. That **subjective** possibility is of the same kind as a stone's possibility of giving off sparks, which is nevertheless conditional on the steel, to which the **objective** possibility belongs. I will return to this from the other side in the next section, where we will consider the will no longer from within, as here, but from without, and thus investigate the **objective** possibility of the act of will. Then, once the matter has been illuminated from two different sides, it will become entirely clear and will also be illustrated by examples. ∗) See on this point “Parerga”, Teil 2, § 327. ### Chapter II, 2 Thus the feeling lodged in self-consciousness, “I can do what I will,” accompanies us constantly, but says only that our decisions, or decided acts of will, though springing from the dark depths within us, will always pass at once into the perceptual world, to which our body, like everything else, belongs. This consciousness forms the bridge between the inner and outer worlds, which would otherwise remain separated by a bottomless chasm: the outer world would then contain, as objects, mere perceptions independent of us in every sense, while the inner would contain nothing but ineffectual acts of will, merely felt.—If we questioned someone entirely unreflective, he might express that immediate consciousness, so often taken for consciousness of a supposed freedom of the will, as follows: “I can do what I will: if I will to go left, I go left; if I will to go right, I go right. That depends entirely on my will alone, so I am free.” This statement is certainly perfectly true and correct; only, it already presupposes the will—it assumes that the will has already decided. It can therefore settle nothing about the will's own freedom. For it does not concern the dependence or independence of the occurrence of the act of will itself, but only the **consequences** of that act once it occurs—or, more precisely, its inevitable manifestation as bodily action. Yet the consciousness underlying this statement is the sole reason why the unreflective—that is, philosophically untrained—person, who may nevertheless be a great scholar in other fields, takes freedom of the will to be something so immediately certain that he declares it an unquestionable truth. He cannot really believe that philosophers seriously doubt it; in his heart he thinks all this talk is merely a fencing exercise in scholastic dialectic and, at bottom, a joke. But precisely because the certainty supplied by that consciousness, which is indeed important, is always so readily at hand, and because a human being, as a primarily and essentially practical rather than theoretical creature, becomes far more clearly conscious of the **active** side of his acts of will—their efficacy—than of the **passive** side—their dependence—it is difficult to make the real meaning of our problem intelligible to someone philosophically untrained. It is difficult to bring him to understand that the question now concerns not the **consequences** but the **grounds** of his willing on each occasion; that his **doing** certainly depends entirely on his **willing**, but what we now want to know is what **his willing itself** depends on: nothing at all, or something? He can indeed do one thing if he wills it, and just as readily do the other if he wills it; but now he is to consider whether he is also capable of **willing** the one as well as the other. If, with this aim, we put the question to him in some such form as this: “Can you really follow either of the opposite wishes that have arisen within you? For example, when choosing between two possessions that exclude each other, can you prefer the one just as readily as the other?” he will say: “The choice may be difficult for me; nevertheless, whether I will to choose the one or the other will always depend entirely on me alone, and on no other power. Here I have complete freedom to choose whichever I will, and in doing so I will always follow my will alone.”—If we now say, “But your willing itself—what does that depend on?” the person answers from self-consciousness: “On nothing but me! I can will what I will: what I will, I will.”—He says this last without intending a tautology, or even, in the innermost depths of his consciousness, falling back on the principle of identity, which alone makes it true. Rather, pressed here to the utmost, he speaks of a willing of his willing, which is as if he spoke of an I of his I. He has been driven back to the core of his self-consciousness, where he finds his I and his will indistinguishable, but nothing remains by which to judge either. Whether, in that choice, **his very willing** of the one rather than the other—his person and the objects of choice being assumed as given—could possibly turn out otherwise than it finally does; or whether the data just specified determine it as necessarily as the fact that in a triangle the largest side lies opposite the largest angle: this question lies so far from natural self-consciousness that it cannot even be brought to understand it, much less carry the answer within itself, ready-made or even as an undeveloped seed, needing only to express it without reflection.—As described, then, the unreflective but philosophically untrained person will still seek refuge from the perplexity the question must produce, if genuinely understood, behind that immediate certainty: “What I will, I can do, and I will what I will,” as stated above. He will try this again and again, countless times, so that it will be difficult to make him stand his ground before the actual question, which he is always trying to elude. Nor should we blame him: for the question is truly a deeply troubling one. With a probing hand it reaches into the human being's innermost essence. It asks whether he too, like everything else in the world, is a being determined once and for all by his very constitution, possessing, like every other being in nature, definite, enduring properties from which his reactions necessarily follow when an external occasion arises. Those reactions would accordingly bear a character unchangeable from this side, and consequently, in whatever may be modifiable in them, would be entirely at the mercy of determination by external occasions. Or does he alone form an exception to the whole of nature? If we nevertheless finally succeed in making him stand his ground before this troubling question, and in making clear to him that what is being investigated is the origin of his acts of will themselves, the possible rule—or complete absence of any rule—governing their arising, we will discover that immediate self-consciousness contains no information about it. For here the unreflective person himself abandons it and reveals his perplexity through reflection and all manner of attempted explanations. He tries to draw their grounds now from his experience of himself and others, now from general rules of the understanding; but the uncertainty and wavering of his explanations show clearly enough that his immediate self-consciousness supplies no information about the question properly understood, though it had an answer ready at once when the question was misunderstood. The ultimate reason is that a person's will is his actual self, the true core of his being. It therefore forms the ground of his consciousness, as something simply given and present, beyond which he cannot go. For he himself is as he wills, and wills as he is. To ask him whether he could also will otherwise than he wills is therefore to ask whether he could also be someone other than himself; and he does not know. For precisely this reason the philosopher too, who differs from him only in training, must, if he wants clarity in this difficult matter, turn to his understanding, which supplies knowledge *a priori*; to reason, which reflects on that knowledge; and to experience, which presents his own and others' actions to him for the interpretation and verification of such knowledge of the understanding. He must turn to these as the final and only competent tribunal. Its verdict will certainly not be as easy, immediate, and simple as that of self-consciousness, but it will address the matter and suffice. The head has raised the question, and the head must also answer it. ### Chapter II, 3 We should not, moreover, be surprised that immediate self-consciousness has no answer to that abstruse, speculative, difficult, and troubling question. For it is a very limited part of our consciousness as a whole, which, dark within, directs all its objective cognitive powers entirely outward. All its perfectly secure knowledge—that is, knowledge certain *a priori*—concerns the external world alone. There, following certain general laws rooted in itself, it can decide with certainty what is possible, impossible, or necessary outside it, and in this way produces pure mathematics, pure logic, and even a pure fundamental science of nature *a priori*. Next, the application of the forms of which it is conscious *a priori* to the data given in sensation supplies it with the real, perceptual external world, and with it experience. Further, the application of logic and the capacity for thought underlying it to that external world will supply concepts, the world of thoughts, and through these, in turn, the sciences, their achievements, and so on. **Outside**, then, great brightness and clarity lie before its eyes. But **within** it is dark, like a telescope thoroughly blackened inside: no *a priori* proposition illuminates the night of its own interior; these lighthouses shine only outward. As discussed above, the so-called inner sense has nothing before it but one's own will, to whose movements all so-called inner feelings must in fact be traced. Yet everything this inner perception of the will supplies comes down, as shown above, to willing and not willing, together with the much-praised certainty “What I will, I can do.” This really means: “I immediately see every act of my will manifest itself, in a way wholly incomprehensible to me, as an action of my body”—and, strictly speaking, is an empirical proposition for the knowing subject. Nothing beyond this is to be found here. The tribunal to which we have appealed thus has no jurisdiction over the question raised; indeed, the question cannot even be brought before it in its true sense, because it does not understand it. I will now sum up once more, in a shorter and simpler form, the answer received to our inquiry of self-consciousness. Everyone's **self-consciousness** states very clearly that he can **do** what he wills. Now, since entirely opposite actions can also be conceived as **willed** by him, it certainly follows that he can also **do** opposite things if he wills them. Only the untrained understanding confuses this with his being able, in a given case, also to **will** opposite things, and calls this **freedom of the will**. But his being able, in a given case, to **will** opposite things is absolutely not contained in the statement above. It contains only this: of two opposite actions, if he **wills this one** he can do it, and if he **wills that one** he can do it as well. Whether, in the given case, he can **will** the one just as well as the other remains unsettled by this and requires a deeper investigation than mere self-consciousness can decide. The shortest, though scholastic, formula for this result would run: the testimony of self-consciousness concerns the will only *from the side of what follows it*; the question of freedom, by contrast, concerns it *from the side of what precedes it*.—Thus that undeniable testimony of self-consciousness, “I can do what I will,” contains and decides absolutely nothing about freedom of the will. Such freedom would consist in the particular act of will itself, in each individual case, and thus with a given individual character, not being necessarily determined by the external circumstances in which this person finds himself, but being able to turn out one way or another. On this, however, self-consciousness remains entirely silent, for the matter lies wholly outside its domain, resting as it does on the causal relation between the external world and the human being. If we ask someone of sound understanding but without philosophical training what constitutes the freedom of the will that he so confidently asserts on the testimony of his self-consciousness, he will answer: “That I can do what I will, so long as I am not physically prevented.” Thus it is always the relation of his **doing** to his **willing** that he speaks of. But as shown in the first section, this is still merely **physical** freedom. If we ask him further whether, in a given case, he can then **will** both a thing and its opposite, he will indeed say yes in his initial eagerness. But as soon as he begins to grasp the question's meaning, he will also begin to grow uneasy, finally lapse into uncertainty and confusion, and prefer to escape from these by taking refuge once again behind his refrain, “I can do what I will,” entrenching himself there against all grounds and reasoning. The corrective answer to his refrain, however, would run—as I hope to establish beyond doubt in the next section: “You can **do** what you will; but at any given moment of your life you can **will** only one definite thing, and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.” The argument contained in this section would, strictly speaking, already have answered the Royal Society's question, and answered it in the negative, although only in its essentials, since this account of the facts within self-consciousness will itself receive some further completion in what follows. But there is also, in one eventuality, a further check on this negative answer of ours. Suppose we now put the question to the authority to which we were referred above as the only competent one: the pure understanding, reason reflecting on its data, and experience following in the train of both. Suppose its verdict were that *free choice* does not exist at all, but that human action, like everything else in nature, occurs in every given case as an effect that necessarily ensues. This would give us the further certainty that immediate self-consciousness **cannot even contain** data from which the *free choice* in question could be proved. By means of the inference *from impossibility to nonexistence*, which is the only possible way to establish **negative** truths *a priori*, our decision would thus receive a rational foundation in addition to the empirical one presented so far, and would then be doubly secured. For a decisive contradiction between the immediate testimony of self-consciousness and the results drawn from the principles of the pure understanding, together with their application to experience, must not be assumed possible: our self-consciousness cannot be so deceitful. Here it should be noted that even the alleged antinomy Kant advanced on this subject is not supposed, even by his own account, to arise from the thesis and antithesis proceeding from different sources of knowledge—for example, one from the testimony of self-consciousness, the other from reason and experience. Rather, thesis and antithesis both argue from purportedly objective grounds. But the thesis rests on nothing but lazy reason—that is, the need to come to a stop somewhere in the regress—whereas the antithesis really does have all the objective grounds on its side. The **indirect** investigation we must now undertake, keeping to the field of the faculty of cognition and the external world before it, will at the same time cast much light back on the **direct** investigation carried out so far, and so serve to supplement it. For it will uncover the natural illusions arising from a false interpretation of that exceedingly simple testimony of self-consciousness, when self-consciousness comes into conflict with the consciousness of other things, which is the faculty of cognition and is rooted in one and the same subject as self-consciousness. Indeed, only at the close of this indirect investigation will some light dawn on the true meaning and content of the “I will” that accompanies all our actions, and on the consciousness of being their origin and exercising our own power, by virtue of which they are **our** actions. Only through this will the direct investigation pursued so far attain its completion. ### Chapter III, 1 **III. The Will Before the Consciousness of Other Things.** If we now turn to the faculty of knowledge with our problem, we know in advance that, since this faculty is essentially directed outward, the will cannot be an object of immediate perception for it, as it was for self-consciousness—which nevertheless proved incompetent in our inquiry. Here we can consider only **beings** endowed with a will, which stand before the faculty of knowledge as objective, external phenomena, that is, as objects of experience. As such, they must now be examined and judged partly by general rules that determine the very possibility of experience and are certain *prior to experience*, and partly by the facts supplied by experience as it actually exists, already constituted. Thus we are no longer concerned, as we were before, with the **will** itself, which lies open only to the inner sense, but with **willing beings, moved by the will**, that are objects of the outer senses. Although this places us at the disadvantage of having to consider the true object of our inquiry only indirectly and from a greater distance, this is outweighed by the advantage of now being able to use a far more perfect instrument in our investigation than obscure, dull, one-sided, direct self-consciousness, the so-called inner sense: namely, the **understanding**, equipped with all the outer senses and all the powers of objective apprehension. We find the **law of causality** to be the most universal and fundamental form of this understanding, since only through its mediation does perception of the real external world come about at all. In such perception, we at once and quite directly apprehend the affections and changes felt in our sense organs as “**effects**” and instantly pass from them to their “**causes**” (without guidance, instruction, or experience). Through this very process of the understanding, these causes now present themselves as objects in space.∗) This shows incontestably that we are conscious of the **law of causality** *prior to experience*, and therefore as a law **necessary** to the possibility of any experience at all; we have no need of the indirect, difficult, and indeed inadequate proof Kant gave of this important truth. The law of causality is established *prior to experience* as the universal rule to which all real objects of the external world are subject without exception. It owes this absence of exceptions precisely to its independence from experience. It refers essentially and exclusively to **changes**, and states that wherever and whenever anything in the objective, real, material world changes—whether great or small, much or little—something else must necessarily have **changed** immediately **before** it; and for that to change, something else must have changed before it, and so on to infinity. No starting point in this regressive series of changes, which fills time as matter fills space, can ever be discerned or even conceived as possible, let alone presupposed. For the tirelessly recurring question “What brought about this change?” never allows the understanding a final resting place, however weary it may become. A first cause is therefore just as inconceivable as a beginning of time or a boundary of space.—The law of causality states no less that once the earlier change—the **cause**—has occurred, the later change it brings about—the **effect**—must occur without fail, and thus follows **necessarily**. Through this character of **necessity**, the law of causality proves to be a form of the **principle of sufficient reason**, which is the most universal form of our entire faculty of knowledge. Just as this principle appears in the real world as causality, so it appears in the world of thought as the logical law of the ground of knowledge, and even in empty space, perceived *prior to experience*, as the law by which the position of every part depends with strict necessity on that of all the others. To demonstrate this necessary dependence in detail is the sole subject of geometry. Thus, as I explained at the outset, **to be necessary** and **to follow from a given ground** are interchangeable concepts. ∗) A thorough exposition of this doctrine can be found in the treatise on the principle of sufficient reason, § 21. All **changes** occurring in objective things situated in the real external world are therefore subject to the law of **causality**, and so, whenever and wherever they occur, they always occur **necessarily** and without fail.—There can be no exception, since the rule is established *prior to experience* for every possible experience. As for its **application** to a given case, the only question is whether we are dealing with a **change** in a real object given in external experience. As soon as this is so, its changes fall under the application of the law of causality: that is, they must have been brought about by a cause, and for that very reason **necessarily**. ### Chapter III, 2 Let us now bring our general rule—which is certain *prior to experience* and therefore valid without exception for every possible experience—closer to experience itself, and consider the real objects given in it, to whose possible changes our rule refers. We soon notice certain profound, fundamental differences among these objects, according to which they have long been classified: some are inorganic, that is, lifeless; others organic, that is, living; and these in turn are either plants or animals. Although animals are essentially alike and conform to their concept, we find them arranged in an extraordinarily varied and finely graduated scale of perfection, from those still closely related to plants and difficult to distinguish from them, up to the most fully developed, which correspond most perfectly to the concept of an animal. At the summit of this scale we see the human being—ourselves. If, without allowing this diversity to mislead us, we consider all these beings solely as objective, real objects of experience, and accordingly proceed to apply our law of causality, established *prior to experience* as a condition of all possible experience, to whatever changes may occur in such beings, we will find that experience everywhere conforms to the law whose certainty *precedes it*. Yet the great **diversity** in the nature of all these objects of experience, recalled above, is matched by a corresponding modification in the way causality asserts its authority over them. More precisely: corresponding to the threefold distinction between inorganic bodies, plants, and animals, the causality governing all their changes also appears in three forms: as **cause** in the narrowest sense of the word, as **stimulus**, or as **motivation**—without this modification impairing in the slightest either its validity *prior to experience* or, consequently, the necessity of the result that it establishes. **Cause** in the narrowest sense of the word is that through which all mechanical, physical, and chemical changes in objects of experience occur. It is everywhere characterized by two features. First, Newton’s third fundamental law applies to it: “Action and reaction are equal.” That is, the preceding state, called the cause, undergoes a change equal to that of the succeeding state, called the effect.—Second, in accordance with Newton’s second law, the degree of the effect always corresponds exactly to the degree of the cause, so that an increase in the latter produces an equal increase in the former. Thus, once the mode of action is known, the degree of the effect can immediately be known, measured, and calculated from the degree of intensity of the cause, and *conversely*. In applying this second feature empirically, however, we must not confuse the actual effect with its visible manifestation. For example, in compressing a body, we must not expect its volume to go on diminishing in proportion to the increase in the compressing force. For the space into which the body is forced continually diminishes, and resistance consequently increases. Although here too the actual effect, which is the increase in density, really does grow in proportion to the cause, as Mariotte’s law states, this does not apply to its visible manifestation. Again, heat supplied to water will warm it up to a certain point, but beyond that point will only make it evaporate rapidly. Here, however, the same proportion once again holds between the degree of the cause and that of the effect; and so it is in many cases. **Causes in this narrowest sense** bring about the changes in all **lifeless**, that is, **inorganic** bodies. Knowledge and the presupposition of causes of this kind guide the investigation of all the changes studied by mechanics, hydrodynamics, physics, and chemistry. To be determined exclusively by causes of this kind alone is therefore the distinctive and essential characteristic of an inorganic or lifeless body. The second kind of cause is the **stimulus**: a cause that, first, does **not** itself undergo a reaction proportionate to its action, and, second, has no uniform relation whatever between its intensity and the intensity of its effect. Here, therefore, the degree of the effect cannot be measured and determined in advance from the degree of the cause. Rather, a small increase in the stimulus may cause a very great increase in the effect, or, conversely, may entirely cancel the previous effect and even produce its opposite. For example, plants can, as we know, be driven to extraordinarily rapid growth by warmth or by lime mixed into the soil, since these causes act as stimuli to their vital force. But if the proper degree of stimulus is exceeded even slightly, the result, instead of intensified and accelerated life, will be the plant’s death. Likewise, wine or opium can stimulate and considerably heighten our mental powers; but if the proper measure of stimulus is exceeded, the result will be precisely the opposite.—Causes of this kind, then, namely stimuli, determine all changes in organisms **as such**. All changes and developments in plants, and all purely organic and vegetative changes or functions in animal bodies, occur in response to **stimuli**. In this way light, warmth, air, nourishment, every drug, every touch, fertilization, and so on act upon them.—While the life of animals also has an entirely different sphere, of which I will speak shortly, the whole life of **plants**, by contrast, proceeds exclusively in response to **stimuli**. All their assimilation, growth, striving with their crowns toward the light and with their roots toward better soil, their fertilization, germination, and so on are changes in response to **stimuli**. In a few genera, these are joined by a distinctive rapid movement that likewise occurs only in response to stimuli, but on account of which they are called sensitive plants. As is well known, these are chiefly *Mimosa pudica*, *Hedysarum gyrans*, and *Dionaea muscipula*. To be determined exclusively and without exception by **stimuli** is the defining character of the plant. A **plant**, therefore, is any body whose distinctive movements and changes, in keeping with its nature, always and exclusively occur in response to **stimuli**. ### Chapter III, 3 The third kind of moving cause is the one that defines the character of **animals**: **motivation**, that is, causality mediated by **knowledge**. It appears in the ascending scale of natural beings at the point where a more complex being, with correspondingly varied needs, could no longer satisfy them merely in response to a stimulus, which has to be awaited, but had to be capable of choosing, seizing, and indeed seeking out the means of satisfaction. In beings of this kind, therefore, mere receptivity to **stimuli** and movement in response to them are replaced by receptivity to **motives**: that is, a faculty of representation, an intellect, in countless degrees of perfection, materially manifested as a nervous system and brain, and with it consciousness. It is well known that animal life rests on a foundation of plant life, which, as such, proceeds only in response to **stimuli**. But all the movements an animal performs as an **animal**, which for that very reason depend on what physiology calls **animal functions**, occur as a result of an object known, and thus in response to **motives**. An **animal**, accordingly, is any body whose distinctive outward movements and changes, in keeping with its nature, always occur in response to **motives**: that is, to certain **representations** present to its consciousness, which is already presupposed here. However infinitely the capacity for representations, and with it consciousness, may vary in degree throughout the animal series, every animal possesses enough of it for a motive to present itself and occasion its movement. To the self-consciousness now present, the inner moving force, whose particular expression is called forth by the motive, reveals itself as what we designate by the word **will**. Whether a given body moves in response to **stimuli** or to **motives** can never remain doubtful even to external observation, which is our standpoint here: so manifestly different is a stimulus’s mode of action from a motive’s. For the stimulus always acts through direct contact, or even through being taken into the body. And even where this contact is not visible, as when the stimulus is air, light, or warmth, it still reveals itself in the unmistakable relation of the effect to the duration and intensity of the stimulus, although this relation does not remain the same at every degree of the stimulus. Where a motive causes the movement, by contrast, all such differences disappear entirely. For here the actual and immediate medium of influence is not the atmosphere but **knowledge** alone. The object acting as a motive needs only to be **perceived**, to be **known**; it makes no difference how long, whether from near or far, or how distinctly it has entered conscious apprehension. None of these differences alters the degree of the effect in the least: as soon as the object has merely been perceived, it acts in exactly the same way, provided that it is at all a determining ground of the will to be aroused here. For physical and chemical causes, and likewise stimuli, also act only insofar as the body to be affected is receptive to them. I have just said “the will to be aroused here”: for, as already mentioned, what actually gives the motive its power to act—the hidden spring of the movement it calls forth—reveals itself inwardly and immediately to the being itself as what the word will designates. In bodies that move exclusively in response to stimuli (plants), we call this abiding inner condition the vital force; in bodies that move only in response to causes in the narrowest sense, we call it a force of nature, or a quality. Explanations always presuppose it as something inexplicable, because here, within these beings, there is no self-consciousness to which it would be directly accessible. But if we were to leave phenomena altogether and inquire into what Kant calls the thing in itself, might this inner condition of their reaction to external causes, present in beings without knowledge and even in lifeless beings, be essentially identical with what we call the **will** within ourselves—as a philosopher of recent times has in fact undertaken to demonstrate to us? I leave this undecided, without, however, wishing to contradict it outright.∗) ∗) It goes without saying that I mean myself here, and that only the required anonymity prevented me from speaking in the first person. ### Chapter III, 4 I cannot, however, leave unexamined the difference in motivation produced by what distinguishes human consciousness from that of every animal. This distinction, which is what the word **reason** properly designates, consists in the fact that human beings, unlike animals, are capable not merely of **perceptually** apprehending the external world, but also of abstracting universal concepts (*universal notions*) from it. To fix and retain these in their sensory consciousness, they designate them by words and then combine them in countless ways. Although these combinations, like the concepts of which they consist, always refer to the world known through perception, they constitute what is properly called **thinking**. Through thinking, the great advantages of the human race over all the others become possible: language, reflective awareness, looking back on the past, concern for the future, intention, resolve, the planned, concerted action of many, the state, sciences, arts, and so on. All this rests on the single capacity to have nonperceptual, abstract, universal representations, called **concepts** (that is, comprehensions of things) because each comprehends many particulars. Animals lack this capacity, even the cleverest of them: they therefore have no representations other than **perceptual** ones, and accordingly know only what is immediately present and live solely in the present. The motives that move their will must therefore always be perceptual and present. Consequently, they are allowed extremely little **choice**: only among what lies perceptually before them within their limited range of awareness and apprehension, and is thus present in time and space. Whichever of these is stronger as a motive immediately determines their will, making the motive’s causality very conspicuous here. **Training**, which is fear working through the medium of habit, makes an apparent exception; instinct makes a somewhat **genuine** one, insofar as, through it, an animal’s **overall** conduct is set in motion not properly by motives but by an inner inclination and drive. Yet this receives its more precise determination, in the details of **particular** actions and at each moment, from motives once again, and so returns to the rule. A closer discussion of instinct would take me too far from my subject here: chapter 27 of the supplements to Book 2 of The World as Will and Representation, volume 5 of this edition, is devoted to it.—Human beings, by contrast, through their capacity for **nonperceptual** representations, by means of which they **think and reflect**, have an infinitely wider range of awareness, embracing what is absent, past, and future. They therefore have a far greater sphere for the influence of motives, and consequently for choice, than animals, which are confined to the narrow present. As a rule, what determines human action is not what lies before sensory perception, present in space and time; rather, it is mere **thoughts**, carried everywhere in the head, that make a person independent of the impression of the present. When they fail to do this, however, we call the action irrational; conversely, we praise it as **rational** when it is performed exclusively according to well-considered thoughts and thus entirely independently of the impression of the perceptually present. The very fact that human beings are moved to action by a distinctive class of representations (abstract concepts, thoughts) that animals do not possess is visible even from outside. It stamps everything they do, even the most insignificant act, indeed all their movements and steps, with the character of **deliberateness and intention**. Their activity is thus so manifestly different from that of animals that we can positively see how, as it were, fine, invisible threads (motives consisting of mere thoughts) guide their movements, while those of animals are pulled by the coarse, visible ropes of what is perceptually present. But the difference goes no further. A thought becomes a **motive**, just as a perception becomes a **motive**, as soon as it can act on the will in question. All motives, however, are causes, and all causality carries necessity with it. By means of the capacity for thought, a person can bring to mind the motives whose influence on the will is felt, in any chosen order, alternately and repeatedly, in order to hold them before the will. This is called **deliberation**: human beings are capable of deliberating, and through this capacity have a far greater **choice** than is possible for animals. This does indeed make them **relatively free**: free, namely, from the immediate compulsion of **perceptually present** objects acting on the will as motives, to which animals are unconditionally subject. Human beings, by contrast, determine their actions independently of present objects, according to thoughts, which are **their** motives. This **relative** freedom is probably also what educated but not deeply thinking people essentially mean by the freedom of the will that human beings plainly possess in contrast to animals. Yet it is merely **relative**, namely in relation to what is perceptually present, and merely **comparative**, namely in comparison with **animals**. Through it, only the **manner** of motivation is changed; the **necessity** of the motives’ action, by contrast, is not abolished or even diminished in the slightest. The **abstract** motive, consisting of a mere **thought**, is an **external** cause determining the will just as much as the perceptual motive, consisting of a real, present object. It is therefore a cause like any other; indeed, like the others, it is always something real and material, insofar as it ultimately always rests on an impression received **from outside** at some time and place. It has only the advantage of a longer conducting wire. By this I mean that, unlike merely **perceptual** motives, it is not bound to a certain proximity in space and time, but can act across the greatest distance, through the longest time, and through the mediation of a long chain of concepts and thoughts. This follows from the constitution and exceptional receptivity of the organ that first experiences and receives its influence: the human brain, or **reason**. Yet this does not in the least abolish its **causality** or the **necessity** established with it. Only a very superficial view, therefore, can mistake this relative and comparative freedom for an absolute freedom, a *freedom of indifferent choice*. The capacity for deliberation arising from it in fact offers nothing but the very often painful **conflict of motives**, over which indecision presides, and whose battlefield is now the whole human mind and consciousness. For a person repeatedly lets the motives test their strength against one another upon the will, which thereby finds itself in the same situation as a body on which different forces act in opposite directions—until at last the decidedly strongest motive drives the others from the field and determines the will. This outcome is called a decision, and occurs as the result of the struggle with complete **necessity**. ### Chapter III, 5 Let us review the whole series of forms of causality once more. **Causes** in the narrowest sense, then **stimuli**, and finally **motives**—which divide in turn into perceptual and abstract motives—stand clearly apart. As we pass upward through the series of beings, we notice that cause and effect draw further apart, become more distinct and more unlike each other. The cause becomes less and less material and tangible; less and less seems to lie in the cause, and more and more in the effect. Taken together, these changes make the connection between cause and effect less immediately graspable and intelligible. Everything just described is least apparent in **mechanical** causality, which is therefore the easiest of all to grasp. This gave rise, in the previous century, to the mistaken endeavor, still surviving in France and recently appearing in Germany too, to reduce every other form of causality to mechanics: to explain all physical and chemical processes by mechanical causes, and then the process of life by those physical and chemical processes. A striking body moves a resting one, losing as much motion as it communicates. Here we seem to see the cause migrate into the effect: both are wholly of the same kind, precisely commensurable and tangible. This is really so with all purely mechanical effects. But as we ascend, we find less and less of this and more of the relationship described above. Consider, at each stage, the relation between heat as cause and its various effects—expansion, incandescence, melting, vaporization, combustion, thermoelectricity and so forth; or between evaporation as cause and cooling or crystallization as effects; or between the friction of glass as cause and free electricity, with its strange phenomena, as effect; or between the slow oxidation of the plates as cause and galvanism, with all its electrical, chemical and magnetic phenomena, as effect. Cause and effect become increasingly **distinct** and **unlike**; their connection becomes **less intelligible**. The effect seems to contain more than its cause could supply, as the cause appears less and less material and tangible. All this becomes clearer still when we turn to **organic** bodies. Mere **stimuli** are now the causes: some external, such as light, warmth, air, soil and food; others internal, arising from the action of fluids and parts upon one another. Their effect presents itself as life in its endless complexity and countless differences of kind, in the manifold forms of the plant and animal worlds∗). ∗) A fuller account of this divergence between cause and effect is given in “Willen in der Natur,” under “Astronomie,” S. 307 of the 6th volume of this edition. But has the **necessity** established by the relation between cause and effect diminished as that relation has become increasingly heterogeneous, incommensurable and unintelligible? Not at all, not in the least. With the same necessity with which a rolling ball sets a resting one in motion, a Leyden jar must discharge when touched with the other hand; arsenic must kill every living thing; and a seed that, kept dry, showed no change for thousands of years must germinate, grow and develop into a plant as soon as it is placed in suitable soil and exposed to air, light, warmth and moisture. The cause is more complicated and the effect more unlike it, but the necessity with which the effect occurs is not diminished by a hair’s breadth. In the life of a plant and the vegetative life of an animal, the stimulus differs greatly in every respect from the organic function it produces, and the two are clearly distinct. Yet they are not actually **separated**: some contact, however fine and invisible, must exist between them. Complete separation appears only in animal life, whose actions are produced by motives. Here the cause, previously still materially connected with its effect, stands wholly detached from it, of an entirely different nature: something initially immaterial, a mere representation. In the **motive** that produces an animal’s movement, the difference in kind between cause and effect, their separation, their incommensurability, the immateriality of the cause and hence its apparent insufficiency compared with the effect, have reached their highest degree. Their relation would become absolutely incomprehensible if we knew it only **from outside**, as we know the other causal relations. But here an entirely different kind of knowledge, an **inward** knowledge, supplements the outward one. We know intimately the process that occurs as effect once the cause has appeared, and give it a *term of its own*: will. Yet here too, just as with the stimulus above, we declare that the causal relation has lost none of its **necessity** as soon as we recognize it as **causal** and think it through this essential form of our understanding. We also find motivation wholly analogous to the other two forms of the causal relation already discussed: it is merely the highest stage to which they rise by a very gradual transition. On the lowest levels of animal life, the **motive** is still closely related to the **stimulus**. Zoophytes, radiates in general, and the Acephala among mollusks possess only a faint twilight of consciousness: just enough to perceive their food or prey and seize it when it offers itself, and, if need be, exchange their location for a more favorable one. On these low levels, therefore, the action of a motive lies before us as clearly, immediately, decisively and unambiguously as that of a stimulus. Small insects are drawn by the glow of light into the flame itself; flies settle trustingly on the head of a lizard that has just swallowed others of their kind before their eyes. Who would dream of freedom here? In the higher, more intelligent animals, the action of motives becomes increasingly indirect: a motive stands more clearly apart from the action it produces. We might even use this varying distance between motive and action as a measure of an animal’s intelligence. In humans, that distance becomes immeasurable. Even in the cleverest animals, however, the representation that becomes the motive of their action must still be **perceptual**. Even where a choice is possible, it can only be between things present in perception. A dog hesitates between its master’s call and the sight of a female dog: the stronger motive will determine its movement, which then occurs as necessarily as a mechanical effect. In mechanics too, we see a body displaced from equilibrium sway for a while first to one side and then to the other, until the side on which its center of gravity lies is decided and it falls that way. As long as motivation is limited to **perceptual** representations, its kinship with stimulus and cause in general is also made evident by this: the motive, as an effective cause, must be something real and present, and must still act physically on the senses through light, sound or smell, however indirectly. Moreover, the cause lies as openly before the observer as the effect. He sees the motive appear and the animal’s action inevitably follow, unless another equally evident motive, or training, counteracts it. It is impossible to doubt the connection between the two. Accordingly, no one will think of attributing *freedom of indifferent choice* to animals—that is, action determined by no cause. ### Chapter III, 6 Where consciousness is rational—that is, capable of knowledge beyond perception, of concepts and thoughts—motives become entirely independent of the present and the actual surroundings, and are thereby hidden from the spectator. They are now mere thoughts carried about in a person’s head. Their origin, however, lies outside it, often very far away: sometimes in his own experience of past years, sometimes in what others have handed down through speech and writing, even from the remotest times. Their **origin** is nevertheless **always real and objective**, although the often difficult combination of complicated external circumstances introduces many errors, and transmission introduces many deceptions, so that motives also include much folly. Moreover, people often hide the motives of their actions from everyone else, and sometimes even from themselves, when they shrink from recognizing what really moves them to do this or that. Meanwhile, we see their actions occur and seek to discover their motives by conjecture. We assume those motives as firmly and confidently as we would the cause of any observed movement of inanimate bodies, convinced that either event is impossible without a cause. Correspondingly, in our own plans and undertakings, we reckon with the effect of motives on people with a certainty that would fully equal our calculations of the mechanical effects of mechanical devices, if we knew the individual characters of the people concerned as precisely as we know the length and thickness of the beams, the diameters of the wheels, the weight of the loads, and so forth. Everyone follows this assumption while looking outward, dealing with others and pursuing practical ends, for human understanding is designed for those ends. But when someone tries to judge the matter theoretically and philosophically—something for which human intelligence is not really designed—and makes himself the object of judgment, he is misled by the immaterial nature of abstract motives just described. Consisting merely of thoughts, they are tied to no present moment or surrounding place, and meet their obstacles only in other thoughts as counter-motives. He is misled so far that he doubts their existence, or at least the necessity of their action, and imagines that whatever is done could just as well remain undone: that the will decides of itself, without a cause, and that each of its acts is a first beginning of an unforeseeable series of changes brought about by it. This error is especially supported by the false interpretation of the statement of self-consciousness sufficiently examined in the first section, “I can do what I will.” That statement may resound, as at any time, even while several mutually exclusive motives are acting, for the moment merely appealing to the will. Taken together, these things are the source of the natural illusion from which the error arises that self-consciousness contains certainty of freedom of our will: freedom understood as something deciding without sufficient reasons, contrary to all laws of pure understanding and of nature, whose resolutions, under given circumstances and in one and the same person, could turn out one way or the opposite. To explain the origin of this error, so important to our subject, particularly and as clearly as possible, and thus supplement the preceding section’s inquiry into self-consciousness, let us imagine someone standing in the street and saying to himself: “It is 6 in the evening; the day’s work is done. I can go for a walk now, or go to the club. I can climb the tower to watch the sunset; I can go to the theater; I can visit this friend or that one. Yes, I can even run out through the gate into the wide world and never return. All this rests with me alone; I have complete freedom to do it. Yet I shall do none of it now, but go home just as freely to my wife.” This is exactly as though water said: “I can rise in towering waves—yes, in the sea during a storm! I can rush down swiftly—yes, in a riverbed! I can plunge down foaming and bubbling—yes, in a waterfall! I can rise freely into the air as a jet—yes, in a fountain! I can even boil away and vanish—yes, at 80°! Yet I shall do none of these things now, but remain of my own free will, calm and clear, in the reflecting pond.” Just as water can do all this only when the determining causes of one occurrence or another appear, so that person can do what he imagines himself able to do only under the same condition. Until the causes appear, it is impossible for him; once they do, he must act, just as water must when placed in the corresponding circumstances. Strictly considered, his error—the illusion produced here by misinterpreted self-consciousness that he could do all those things right now—rests on this: only one image at a time can be present to his imagination, excluding everything else for the moment. When he pictures the motive for one of the actions proposed as possible, he immediately feels its effect on his will, which it draws toward itself. In technical language, this is called a *wish*. He now thinks he could raise this wish to an *act of will*—that is, carry out the proposed action—but this is an illusion. Reflection would immediately intervene, reminding him of the motives pulling in other directions or opposing it; he would then see that the deed does not occur. As these different, mutually exclusive motives are presented in succession, constantly accompanied by the inward “I can do what I will,” the will turns at once toward every motive imagination holds before it, like a weather vane on a well-greased pivot in an unsteady wind. It turns successively toward all the motives presented as possible, and at each one the person thinks he could **will** it and thus fix the vane at that point. This is mere illusion. His “I can will this” is in truth hypothetical, carrying the qualification “if I did not prefer to will that other thing.” That qualification, however, cancels the supposed ability to will the first. Let us return to our imagined person deliberating at 6 o’clock, and suppose he now notices me standing behind him, philosophizing about him and denying his freedom to perform all those actions possible for him. He might easily carry out one of them to refute me. But then my very denial, and its effect on his contrary spirit, would have been the motive compelling him to do it. This motive could move him only to one of the **easier** actions listed above, however—going to the theater, for example—and by no means to the last, running out into the wide world. For that, the motive would be far too weak. Equally mistaken is someone who, holding a loaded pistol, thinks he could shoot himself with it. The mechanical means of carrying out the act is the least of what is needed. The essential thing is an extraordinarily strong, and therefore rare, motive possessing the immense force required to outweigh the desire for life—or, more accurately, the fear of death. Only once such a motive has appeared can he actually shoot himself, and must do so, unless a still stronger counter-motive, if one is possible at all, prevents the deed. ### Chapter III, 7 I can do what I will: **if I will it**, I can give everything I possess to the poor and thus become one of them—if I will it! But I am unable to **will** it, because the opposing motives have far too much power over me. If, on the other hand, I had a different character, different enough for me to be a saint, then I could will it; but then I could not help willing it, and would therefore have to do it. All this is perfectly consistent with self-consciousness saying “I can do what I will.” Even today, some thoughtless dabblers in philosophy imagine that they find freedom of the will in this statement and accordingly put it forward as a given fact of consciousness. Among them, Mr. **Cousin** stands out and deserves an *honorable mention* here. In his *Cours d'histoire de la philosophie, professé en 1819, 20, et publié par Vacherot, 1841*, he teaches that freedom of the will is the most reliable fact of consciousness (*Vol. 1, p. 19, 20*). He reproaches **Kant** for proving it merely from the moral law and setting it up as a postulate when it is, after all, a fact: “*Why demonstrate what need only be recognized as a fact?*” (*p. 50*); “*Freedom is a fact, not a belief*” (*ibid.*). Germany too has no shortage of ignorant people who throw to the winds everything great thinkers have said on the subject for two centuries. Insisting on the fact of self-consciousness analyzed in the preceding section—a fact they misunderstand just as the crowd does—they proclaim freedom of the will as something actually given. But perhaps I wrong them. They may not be as ignorant as they appear, merely hungry, and therefore ready to teach anything that might please a lofty ministry in return for a very dry piece of bread. It is neither metaphor nor hyperbole, but plain and literal truth, that just as a ball on a billiard table cannot begin moving before it receives a blow, a person cannot rise from his chair before a motive pulls or drives him away. Once it does, his rising is as necessary and inevitable as the ball’s rolling after the blow. To expect someone to do something to which no interest whatsoever prompts him is like expecting a piece of wood to move toward me without a rope to pull it. Someone asserting this in company and meeting stubborn opposition could settle the matter most quickly by having a third person suddenly cry out, loudly and earnestly, “The beams are collapsing!” The objectors would thereby learn that a motive is as powerful in throwing people out of the house as the most solid mechanical cause. For a human being, like every object of experience, is a phenomenon in time and space. Since the law of causality applies to all such phenomena *a priori*, and therefore without exception, a human being too must be subject to it. Pure understanding declares this *a priori*; analogy carried through the whole of nature confirms it; experience testifies to it at every moment, provided we are not deceived by the following illusion. As natural beings ascend and become more complicated, their receptivity rises and grows more refined—from the merely mechanical to the chemical and electrical, then to responsiveness to stimuli, sensitivity, intelligence and finally reason. The nature of the **causes acting on them** must keep pace, corresponding at each stage to the beings on which they are to act. Consequently, causes appear less and less tangible and material, until they are no longer visible to the eye but remain accessible to the understanding. In each particular case, the understanding assumes them with unshakable confidence and discovers them through appropriate inquiry. Here the effective causes have risen to mere thoughts, which fight with other thoughts until the strongest tips the balance and sets the person in motion. Everything proceeds with just as strict a causal connection as when purely mechanical causes, combined in a complicated way, oppose one another and the calculated result unfailingly occurs. Electrified little cork balls hopping about in every direction inside a glass appear just as causeless, because their cause is invisible, as human movements do. But judgment belongs not to the eye, but to the understanding. If freedom of the will were assumed, every human action would be an inexplicable miracle—an effect without a cause. If we venture to picture such *freedom of indifferent choice*, we soon become aware that the understanding actually comes to a standstill: it has no form in which to think such a thing. The principle of sufficient reason—the principle of thoroughgoing determination and mutual dependence of phenomena—is the most general form of our faculty of knowledge, itself taking different forms according to the different objects of that faculty. Here, however, we are asked to think of something that determines without being determined, depends on nothing while other things depend on it, and produces *A* now without compulsion and therefore without a reason, although it could just as well produce *B*, *C* or *D*. It could do so entirely, under the same circumstances: nothing in *A* now gives it a preference over *B*, *C* or *D*, for such a preference would be motivation and hence causality. We are brought back to the concept of the **absolutely contingent** stated at the very beginning. I repeat: the understanding actually comes to a standstill here, if only we can bring it to that point. But let us also recall what a **cause** is in general: the preceding change that makes the succeeding one necessary. No cause in the world brings forth its effect entirely or creates it from nothing. There is always something on which it acts. It merely occasions a change at this time, in this place, in this particular being, always in accordance with that being’s nature; the **power** for the change must therefore already have lain within it. Every effect thus arises from two factors, one inward and one outward: the original force of what is acted upon, and the determining cause that compels that force to manifest itself here and now. All causality, and every explanation through it, presupposes an original force. This is why explanation never explains everything, but always leaves something inexplicable. We see this throughout physics and chemistry. Their explanations everywhere assume the natural forces manifested in phenomena, and the whole explanation consists in tracing the phenomena back to those forces. A natural force itself is not subject to explanation, but is the principle of all explanation. Nor is it itself subject to causality: it is precisely what gives each cause its causality, its capacity to act. It is the common foundation of all effects of that kind and is present in each of them. Thus the phenomena of magnetism are traced back to an original force called electricity. Explanation stops there: it merely states the conditions under which such a force manifests itself, the causes that call its activity forth. The explanations of celestial mechanics presuppose gravitation as the force through which the individual causes determining the courses of celestial bodies act. Chemistry’s explanations presuppose the hidden forces manifested as elective affinities in certain stoichiometric proportions. All the effects that occur punctually when brought about by the specified causes ultimately rest on those forces. In the same way, every physiological explanation presupposes the vital force, which reacts in a determinate way to specific inward and outward stimuli. So it is everywhere, without exception. Even the causes with which readily intelligible mechanics deals, such as impact and pressure, presuppose impenetrability, cohesion, rigidity, hardness, inertia, weight and elasticity: natural forces just as unfathomable as those already mentioned. Everywhere, then, causes determine nothing beyond the when and where of the **manifestations** of original, inexplicable forces. Only on the assumption of those forces are they causes at all—that is, do they necessarily produce certain effects. What is true of causes in the narrowest sense and of stimuli is no less true of **motives**. Motivation is not essentially different from causality, but is merely one kind of it: causality passing through the medium of knowledge. Here too, the cause merely calls forth the manifestation of a force that cannot be traced back to further causes and therefore cannot be further explained. This force, here called will, is known to us not merely from outside, like the other natural forces, but also inwardly and immediately through self-consciousness. The causes directed toward it, here called motives, act only on the assumption that such a will exists and, in the particular case, has a definite nature. This specifically and individually determined nature of the will, through which its reaction to the same motives differs in every person, constitutes what we call a person’s **character**. Because we know it not *a priori* but only through experience, we call it **empirical character**. It determines, in the first place, how different kinds of motives act on the given person. It underlies every effect produced by motives, just as general natural forces underlie effects produced by causes in the narrowest sense, and the vital force underlies the effects of stimuli. Like natural forces, it is original, unchanging and inexplicable. In animals it differs with each species; in humans, with each individual. Only in the very highest and cleverest animals does a noticeable individual character already appear, though the character of the species still overwhelmingly predominates. ### Chapter III, 8 1. **Human character** is **individual**: it is different in every person. The character of the species does indeed underlie everyone, so that its chief qualities recur in each. Yet the differences of degree, the combinations of qualities and the ways they modify one another are so considerable that we may suppose moral differences of character to equal differences of intellectual ability—which is saying a great deal—and both to be incomparably greater than the bodily differences between giant and dwarf, Apollo and Thersites. The same motive therefore has a wholly different effect on different people, just as sunlight whitens wax but blackens silver chloride, and warmth softens wax but hardens clay. Consequently, knowing the motive alone does not allow us to predict the deed: we must also know the character precisely. 2. Human character is **empirical**. We learn to know it through experience alone, not merely in others but also in ourselves. Hence we are often disappointed in ourselves as in others, discovering that we do not possess some quality—justice, unselfishness or courage, for example—to the degree we had so kindly assumed. When a difficult choice lies before us, our own resolution therefore remains as much a secret to us as someone else’s until the choice is decided. Sometimes we think it will fall this way, sometimes that, according to which motive knowledge holds more closely before the will to try its strength upon it. Meanwhile, “I can do what I will” produces the illusion of freedom of the will. At last the stronger motive asserts its power over the will, and the choice often turns out differently from what we first supposed. Thus no one can know how another person, or even he himself, will act in a particular situation before having been in it. Only after the test has been passed is he sure of the other person, and only then of himself as well. But then he is sure: tested friends and proven servants are reliable. In general, we treat someone we know thoroughly like any other thing whose properties we have learned, confidently foreseeing what we may and may not expect from him. Whoever has done something once will do it again when the occasion arises, for good or ill. Someone needing great and extraordinary help will therefore turn to a person who has given proofs of generosity; someone wishing to hire a murderer will look among people whose hands have already been in blood. According to Herodotus (VII, 164), Gelo of Syracuse once had to entrust a very large sum of money entirely to one man, sending it abroad with him and leaving him free control over it. He chose Cadmus, who had given proof of rare, indeed unheard-of honesty and conscientiousness. His confidence was fully justified. In the same way, acquaintance with ourselves—the basis of self-confidence or self-distrust—arises only from experience, when the occasion comes. Depending on whether we have shown presence of mind, courage, honesty, discretion, tact or whatever else a particular occasion required, or have revealed our lack of these virtues, the acquaintance we have made with ourselves leaves us satisfied with ourselves afterward, or the opposite. Only precise knowledge of one’s own empirical character gives a person what is called **acquired character**. Someone possesses it when he knows his own qualities, good and bad, precisely, and thus knows with certainty what he may trust himself to do and demand of himself, and what he may not. He now plays his own part—which through his empirical character he previously performed merely by natural instinct—with art and method, firmness and decorum, never, as the saying goes, falling out of character. Such a lapse always shows that, in the particular case, someone had been mistaken about himself. ### Chapter III, 9 3. Human character is **constant**: it remains the same throughout life. Beneath the changing shell of one’s years, circumstances, even knowledge and opinions, the same actual person lies like a crab in its shell, wholly unchanging and always the same. Character undergoes only apparent modifications in its direction and material, resulting from the differences between stages of life and their needs. **A person never changes**: as he has acted in one case, so he will always act again under wholly identical circumstances—which, however, also include accurate knowledge of those circumstances. Daily experience confirms this truth, but most strikingly when we meet an acquaintance again after 20 to 30 years and soon catch him at exactly the same tricks as before. Many people will deny this truth in words, yet assume it in their conduct: they never again trust someone they have once found dishonest, but rely on someone who previously proved honest. This truth makes all knowledge of people possible, and all firm trust in those who have been examined, tested and proved. Even when such trust has deceived us, we never say, “His character has changed,” but “I was mistaken about him.” It is also why, when judging the moral worth of an action, we first seek certainty about its motive, but then direct our praise or blame not at the motive but at the character that allowed itself to be determined by that motive: the deed’s second factor, and the only one inherent in the person. On the same truth rests the fact that true honor—not chivalric honor, or fools’ honor—once lost can never be restored. The stain of a single base action clings to a person forever, branding him, as we say. Hence the proverb: “Once a thief, always a thief.” It is why, when important affairs of state call for treachery and a traitor is accordingly sought, used and rewarded, prudence then commands that he be removed once the purpose is achieved: circumstances change, but his character does not. It is why a dramatist’s greatest fault is failing to sustain his characters—that is, failing to develop them, like the characters portrayed by great poets, with the constancy and strict consistency of a natural force. I have demonstrated the latter in detail through an example from Shakespeare, in Parerga, T. 2, § 118. Indeed, the same truth makes conscience possible, insofar as even in old age it often confronts us with the misdeeds of youth: J. J. Rousseau, for example, after 40 years, with having accused the maid Marion of a theft he himself had committed. This is possible only on the assumption that character has remained unchanged. By contrast, the most ridiculous errors, the grossest ignorance and the strangest follies of our youth do not shame us in old age. That has changed: those were matters of knowledge; we have revised them and long since cast them off like the clothes of our youth. The same truth explains why someone does not actually improve even when he most clearly recognizes and indeed abhors his moral faults and defects, even when he most sincerely resolves to improve. Despite earnest resolutions and honest promises, when the occasion returns he is caught, to his own surprise, on the same paths as before. Only his **knowledge** can be corrected. He may come to see that the means he formerly used do not lead to his purpose, or bring more harm than gain; then he changes the means, not the ends. This is the basis of the American penitentiary system. It does not undertake to improve a person’s **character**, his **heart**, but to set his **head** right: to show him that the ends he invariably pursues through his character would be reached far less easily, and with much greater hardship and danger, by the path of dishonesty he has followed than by honesty, work and contentment. In general, **knowledge** alone is the sphere and domain of all improvement and refinement. Character is unchanging and motives act necessarily, but they must pass through **knowledge**, the medium of motives. Knowledge, however, is capable of expansion in the most varied ways, and of continual correction in countless degrees: all education works toward this. Developing reason through knowledge and insight of every kind is morally important because it opens access to motives from which the person would otherwise remain closed off. As long as he could not understand them, they did not exist for his will. Thus, with the same external circumstances, a person’s actual situation the second time may differ entirely from the first, if only in the interval he has become able to grasp those circumstances accurately and completely. Motives to which he was previously inaccessible now act on him. In this sense the Scholastics quite rightly said: “*A final cause*—an end, a motive—*moves not according to its real being, but according to its being as known.*” No moral influence extends beyond correcting knowledge. Trying to remove someone’s faults of character through speeches and moralizing, and thus remake his character itself, his actual morality, is just like trying to turn lead into gold by acting on it from outside, or tending an oak so carefully that it bears apricots. We find the conviction that character is unchanging already stated as an unquestionable truth by **Apuleius** in his *Oratio de magia*. Defending himself there against the charge of sorcery, he appeals to his known character and says: “*Each person’s mind is a reliable indicator: always disposed by the same temperament toward virtue or malice, it provides firm grounds for accepting or rejecting an accusation.*” 4. Individual character is **inborn**: it is not a product of human art or of circumstances subject to chance, but the work of nature itself. It already reveals itself in the child, showing in miniature what it will later be on a larger scale. Thus two children, with exactly the same upbringing and surroundings, display fundamentally different characters with the utmost clarity: the same characters they will bear as old people. It is even hereditary in its basic features, but only from the father, while intelligence comes from the mother. On this I refer to Kap. 43 of the Supplements to the 4th book of Welt als Wille u. Vorst. (Bd. VI of this edition). ### Chapter III, 10 This account of the nature of individual character does indeed imply that virtues and vices are inborn. The truth may be unwelcome to many prejudices and much old wives’ philosophy, with its so-called practical interests—that is, its small, narrow concepts and limited nursery-school views. Yet it was already the conviction of the father of moral philosophy, **Socrates**, who, according to **Aristotle** (*Eth. magna, I, 9*), maintained: “*It is not in our power to become virtuous or vicious, and so on*” (“*Whether we are good or bad does not lie within our choice*”). Aristotle’s objection here is plainly poor: he himself shares Socrates’ opinion and states it most clearly in *Eth. Nicom., VI, 13*: “*Everyone holds that our several traits of character somehow belong to us by nature: for justice, temperance, courage and the rest are ours from birth.*” (“*Each trait of character seems in some fashion to be present by nature in every person: for from the very moment of birth we have an inclination toward justice, temperance, fortitude and the remaining virtues.*”) If we survey all the virtues and vices briefly collected in Aristotle’s *de virtutibus et vitiis*, we shall find that in actual people they can all be conceived only as **inborn** qualities, and would be genuine only as such. If, instead, they arose from reflection and were deliberately assumed, they would really amount to a kind of **pretense** and be ungenuine; we could then place no reliance whatever on their continuance or on their holding firm under the pressure of circumstances. Nor is it otherwise if we add the Christian virtue of love, *charity*, which is absent from Aristotle and all the ancients. How could **one** person’s tireless goodness and another’s incorrigible, deep-rooted malice—the character of the Antonines, Hadrian and Titus on one side, and of Caligula, Nero and Domitian on the other—have flown in from outside, the work of chance circumstances or mere knowledge and instruction? Nero, after all, had Seneca as his tutor. Rather, the seed of all a person’s virtues and vices lies in his inborn character, the true core of the whole person. This conviction, natural to the unprejudiced person, also guided the hand of **Velleius Paterculus** when he wrote of Cato (II, 35): “*A man the very image of virtue, closer in every aspect of his nature to the gods than to men, who never did right to be seen doing so, but because* *he could not do otherwise*”∗). ∗) This passage is gradually becoming a regular weapon in the determinists’ arsenal, an honor the good old historian certainly never dreamed of 1800 years ago. **Hobbes** praised it first, and **Priestley** after him. **Schelling** then reproduced it in his treatise on freedom, S. 478, in a translation somewhat falsified to suit his purposes. For that reason he does not name Velleius Paterculus, but, with equal shrewdness and refinement, says “an ancient.” Finally, I too have not failed to bring it forward, since it really does bear on the subject. On the assumption of freedom of the will, however, it is quite impossible to see where virtue and vice—or indeed the fact that two people brought up alike act very differently, even oppositely, under entirely identical circumstances and occasions—could originate. The actual, original and fundamental difference between characters is incompatible with a freedom of the will in which opposite actions are supposed to be equally possible for every person in every situation. On that assumption, character must begin as a *blank slate*, just as the intellect does according to **Locke**, with no inborn inclination to either side. Such an inclination would already destroy the perfect balance conceived in *freedom of indifferent choice*. The ground of the observed differences in different people’s conduct therefore cannot lie, on that assumption, in the **subjective**; still less can it lie in the **objective**. For then objects would determine action, and the freedom demanded would be lost altogether. At most, one escape would remain: to place the origin of those actual great differences of conduct midway between subject and object, making them arise from the different ways the subjective apprehends the objective—that is, from the ways different people **know** it. But then everything would come down to correct or incorrect **knowledge** of the circumstances. Moral differences of conduct would be transformed into mere differences in the correctness of judgment, and morality would become logic. Suppose the advocates of freedom of the will finally tried to escape this awkward dilemma by saying that characters do not differ innately, but acquire their differences from external circumstances, impressions, experiences, example, teaching and so forth; and that once character had been formed in this way, differences of conduct would afterward be explained by it. We must answer, first, that character would then appear very late, whereas it is actually already recognizable in children, and most people would die before acquiring a character. Second, all those external circumstances, whose work character is supposed to be, lie wholly beyond our power and would be brought about one way or another by chance—or providence, if preferred. If character arose from those circumstances, and differences of conduct arose in turn from character, all moral responsibility for that conduct would disappear entirely, since it would ultimately and plainly be the work of chance or providence. Thus, on the assumption of freedom of the will, the origin of differences in conduct, and with them virtue, vice and responsibility, hangs unsupported, finding nowhere the smallest place to take root. It follows that this assumption, however pleasing it may look at first to an untrained understanding, fundamentally contradicts our moral convictions just as much as it contradicts the highest principle of our understanding, as we have sufficiently shown. The necessity with which motives act, like all causes in general, as I have shown at length above, is not without a presupposition. We have now learned what that presupposition is, the ground on which this necessity stands: inborn, **individual character**. Every effect in inanimate nature is the necessary product of two factors: the general **natural force** manifesting itself here, and the particular **cause** calling forth that manifestation here. In precisely the same way, every human deed is the necessary product of the person’s **character** and the **motive** that has appeared. Once these two are given, the deed follows inevitably. For a different deed to occur, either a different motive or a different character would have to be posited. Every deed could also be predicted with certainty, indeed calculated, were character not so difficult to investigate, and were the motive not often hidden and always exposed to counteracting motives that lie solely in the person’s sphere of thought, inaccessible to others. A person’s inborn character already essentially determines the ends he invariably pursues. The means he adopts are determined partly by external circumstances and partly by his apprehension of them, whose accuracy depends in turn on his understanding and its cultivation. The final result of all this is his individual deeds, and thus the whole part he has to play in the world. The doctrine of individual character developed here is expressed with as much truth as poetry in one of Goethe’s finest stanzas: “As on the day that gave you to the world The sun stood to salute the planets, You grew at once, and onward, ever onward, According to the law with which you entered. So you must be; you cannot flee yourself: So spoke the Sibyls, so the prophets; No time, no power can break to pieces The stamped form that unfolds in living growth.” The presupposition on which the necessity of every cause’s effects rests is therefore the inward nature of each thing, whether merely a general natural force manifesting itself in it, a vital force, or will. Every being, whatever its kind, will always react to the causes acting upon it in accordance with its own particular nature. The Scholastics expressed this law, to which all things in the world are subject without exception, in the formula “*Action follows being.*” Accordingly, a chemist tests bodies with reagents, and one person tests another through the trials to which he puts him. In every case, external causes will necessarily call forth what lies within the being, for it cannot react otherwise than according to what it is. ### Chapter III, 11 We must recall here that every *existence* presupposes an *essence*: whatever exists must also be **something**, must have a definite nature. It cannot exist and yet be nothing—something like a *metaphysical being*, a thing that is and merely is, without any determinations or qualities, and consequently without the definite mode of action flowing from them. Just as an *essence* without *existence* supplies no reality, as Kant explained through the familiar example of a hundred thalers, neither can an *existence* without *essence* do so. Whatever exists must have a nature essential and peculiar to it, through which it is what it is and which it always maintains. Causes necessarily call forth that nature’s manifestations, but the nature itself is neither the work of those causes nor something they can modify. All this applies to a person and his will just as much as to every other being in nature. He too has an *essence* along with his *existence*: fundamental qualities that constitute his character and need only an outward occasion to manifest themselves. To expect someone to act one way on one occasion and quite differently on another, with the same occasion in each case, would therefore be like expecting the same tree that bore cherries this summer to bear pears next summer. Strictly considered, freedom of the will means *existence* without *essence*: something being and yet **being nothing**, which in turn means **not being at all**, and is therefore a contradiction. Insight into this, and into the *a priori* certainty and therefore exceptionless validity of the law of causality, explains why all truly profound thinkers of every age, however different their other views, agreed in affirming the necessity of acts of will when motives appear and in rejecting *freedom of choice*. Indeed, precisely because the incalculably great majority of the crowd, incapable of thought and surrendered to semblance and prejudice, has always stubbornly resisted this truth, they sharpened it to its utmost point, asserting it in the most decisive, even defiant expressions. The best known is **Buridan**’s ass, which, however, people have searched for in vain for about a hundred years in **Buridan**’s surviving writings. I myself possess an edition of his *Sophismata*, apparently printed as early as the 15th century, without place of printing, year or page numbers. I have often searched it unsuccessfully for the example, although asses appear as examples on almost every page. **Bayle**, whose article **Buridan** is the foundation of everything written on the subject since, says quite incorrectly that only Buridan’s **one** sophism is known, whereas I have a whole quarto volume of his Sophismata. **Bayle**, having discussed the matter so fully, should also have known something that seems to have escaped notice even since: the example, which has become a symbol or type of the great truth I defend here, is far older than **Buridan**. It occurs in **Dante**, who held all the knowledge of his age, lived before Buridan, and speaks not of asses but of human beings in the following words opening the fourth canto of his *Paradiso*: *Between two foods, equally distant and inviting,* *A man would starve to death before* *He freely brought one of them to his teeth∗).* ∗) *Placed between two foods equally distant and equally moving him, a person would die of hunger before, exercising absolute freedom, he brought either of them to his teeth.* Indeed, it already occurs in **Aristotle**, *De coelo, II, 13*, in these words: “*And the argument about someone who is intensely hungry and thirsty, but equally so, and equally distant from food and drink: for he too must remain at rest*” (“*Likewise what is said of someone exceedingly thirsty and hungry, when he stands equally distant from things to eat and drink: for he must remain at rest*”). **Buridan**, having inherited the example from these sources, exchanged the human being for an ass merely because this impoverished Scholastic habitually takes either Socrates and Plato, or an *ass*, for his examples. The question of freedom of the will is truly a touchstone by which profound minds can be distinguished from superficial ones, or a boundary stone where the two part company. The former all maintain that, given character and motive, an action follows necessarily; the latter cling with the crowd to freedom of the will. Then there is a middling sort who, feeling embarrassed, tacks back and forth, shifts the point at issue for himself and others, takes refuge behind words and phrases, or twists and turns the question until no one knows any longer what it meant. **Leibniz** already behaved so, being far more a mathematician and polymath than a philosopher∗). To bring such back-and-forth talkers to the point, however, we must put the question to them as follows and not depart from it: ∗) Leibniz’s instability on this point is clearest in his letter to Coste, *Opera phil, ed. Erdmann, p. 447*; next in the *Théodicée*, § 45–53. 1. For a given person under given circumstances, are two actions possible, or only **one**?—The answer of all profound thinkers: only **one**. 2. Could the past course of a given person’s life have turned out differently in any respect, however slight, in any event or scene, from the way it did turn out? On the one hand, his character stands immutably fixed; on the other, the circumstances acting upon him were necessarily determined throughout, down to the smallest detail, by external causes that always occur with strict necessity, their chain of equally necessary links extending backward into infinity.—No! is the consistent and correct answer. The conclusion from both propositions is: **Everything that happens, from the greatest to the smallest, happens necessarily.** *Whatever occurs, occurs necessarily.* Anyone alarmed by these propositions still has something to learn and something else to unlearn. Afterward, however, he will recognize them as the richest source of comfort and reassurance. Our deeds are certainly no first beginning, and nothing truly new comes into existence through them. Rather, **through what we do, we merely learn what we are**. The conviction, though not clearly known yet felt, that everything happens with strict necessity also underlies the ancients’ firmly established belief in *fate*, or *destiny*, as well as the fatalism of Muslims, and even the ineradicable belief in *omens* found everywhere. Even the smallest chance occurrence happens necessarily, and all events, so to speak, keep time together, so that everything echoes in everything. Finally, this is connected even with the fact that someone who, without the slightest intention and entirely by accident, has maimed or killed another mourns this *deed requiring expiation* throughout his life, with a feeling that seems akin to guilt. Others too regard him with a peculiar discredit as a *person needing expiation*—an ill-fated person. Indeed, the felt conviction that character is unchanging and its manifestations necessary has probably not been without influence even on the Christian doctrine of election by grace. Finally, I will not suppress the following wholly incidental observation, which anyone may accept or reject as he pleases, according to his views on certain matters. If we do not assume the strict necessity of everything that happens through a causal chain linking all events without distinction, but allow this chain to be interrupted at countless points by absolute freedom, all **foreseeing of the future**—in dreams, clairvoyant trance states and *second sight*—becomes **objectively**, and therefore absolutely, impossible and thus inconceivable. There would then be no objectively real future that could even possibly be foreseen, whereas at present we doubt only the subjective conditions, and hence the subjective possibility, of such foreseeing. Even this doubt can no longer find a place among the well-informed today, after countless testimonies from the most credible sources have established such anticipations of the future. I add a few further considerations as corollaries to the established doctrine that everything happens necessarily. What would become of this world if necessity did not run through all things and hold them together, presiding especially over the generation of individuals? A monstrosity, a heap of rubble, a grimace without sense or meaning—the work, that is, of true and actual chance. To wish that some event had not happened is foolish self-torment: it means wishing for something absolutely impossible, and is as unreasonable as wishing that the sun rose in the west. Since everything that happens, great or small, occurs with **strict** necessity, it is utterly futile to ponder how slight and accidental the causes of an event were, and how very easily they might have been different. This is an illusion: all those causes occurred with just as strict a necessity and acted with just as complete a power as those through which the sun rises in the east. Rather, we should regard events as they occur with the same eyes with which we regard the printed words we read, knowing well that they stood there before we read them. ### Chapter IV, 1 **IV. Predecessors.** In support of my claim above concerning the judgment of all profound thinkers on our problem, I will call to mind a few of the great men who have spoken in this sense. First, to reassure those who might perhaps believe that religious grounds stand against the truth I defend, I recall that Jeremiah (10, 23) already said: “A person’s doings do not lie within his own power, and it lies in no one’s might how he walks or directs his steps.” But I appeal above all to **Luther**, who in a book written expressly for the purpose, *De servo arbitrio*, attacks freedom of the will with all his vehemence. A few passages from it suffice to characterize his view, which he supports, naturally, not with philosophical but with theological grounds. I cite them from the edition of Seb. Schmidt, Strasbourg 1707.—There, S. 145, we read: “Thus it is found written, all at once, in the hearts of all that free will is nothing, though this is obscured by so many opposing disputations and by the great authority of so many men.”—S. 214: “At this point I would have the defenders of free will take warning, that they may know they are deniers of Christ when they assert free will.”—S. 220: “All the testimonies of Scripture that speak of Christ will fight against free will. But these are innumerable—indeed, the whole of Scripture. Therefore, if we plead the case with Scripture as judge, I shall have prevailed in every way, so that not one iota or tittle remains that does not condemn the doctrine of free will.”— Now to the philosophers. The ancients need not be considered seriously here, since their philosophy, still in a state of innocence, as it were, had not yet brought to distinct consciousness the two deepest and most troubling problems of modern philosophy: the question of the freedom of the will and the question of the reality of the external world, or the relation of the ideal to the real. How far the problem of the freedom of the will had become clear to the ancients, incidentally, can be seen fairly well from Aristotle’s Ethica Nicom., III, c. 1–8, where one will find that his thinking on the subject essentially concerns only physical and intellectual freedom, which is why he speaks only of the voluntary and the involuntary (hekousion and akousion), taking “voluntary” and “free” as one and the same. The far more difficult problem of **moral freedom** has not yet presented itself to him, although his thoughts do at times reach that far, especially Eth. Nicom., II, 2, and III, 7, where, however, he falls into the error of deriving character from deeds instead of the reverse. Likewise he criticizes quite wrongly the conviction of Socrates that I cited above; in other places, however, he has made it his own again, e.g. Nicom., X, 10: “Now what comes from nature is clearly not up to us, but is present, through certain divine causes, in those who are truly fortunate” (“What is bestowed by nature is plainly not in our power, but, proceeding from some divine cause, is present in those who are truly fortunate”). Shortly after: “Character must therefore somehow exist beforehand, congenial to virtue, loving what is noble and loathing what is base” (“Dispositions, then, must in some way be present beforehand, suited to virtue, such as embrace the honorable and are offended by the shameful”); which agrees with the passage I adduced above, as also with Ethica magna, I, 11: “One who chooses to be the best will not be so unless nature too is present, though he will be better” (“For one will not be the best of all simply as he may wish, unless nature too has provided it; he will, however, rightly be better”). In the same sense Aristotle treats the question of the freedom of the will in the Ethica magna, I, 9–18, and the Ethica Eudemia, II, 6–10, where he comes somewhat closer to the real problem; yet everything is wavering and superficial. It is his method everywhere not to go directly into the matters themselves, proceeding analytically, but rather, synthetically, to draw conclusions from outward marks; instead of penetrating to reach the core of things, he holds to external indications, even to words. This method easily leads astray and, with deeper problems, never reaches its goal. Here he comes to a halt before the supposed opposition between the necessary and the voluntary (anankaion and hekousion), as before a wall; but only beyond this wall lies the insight that the voluntary is **necessary** precisely as such, by virtue of the motive, without which an act of will is as little possible as without a willing subject, and which motive is a cause no less than the mechanical kind, from which it differs only in what is inessential; indeed he himself says (Eth. Eudem., II, 10): “for that for the sake of which is one of the causes” (“for that for whose sake a thing is done is one of the number of causes”). That is precisely why this opposition between the voluntary and the necessary is fundamentally false, even though many would-be philosophers still fare today just as Aristotle did. **Cicero** presents the problem of the freedom of the will already quite clearly, in the book *De fato*, c. 10 and c. 17. The subject of his treatise, to be sure, leads to it very easily and naturally. He himself sides with freedom of the will; but we see that Chrysippus and Diodorus must already have become conscious of the problem, more or less distinctly.—Also noteworthy is **Lucian’s** thirtieth Dialogue of the Dead, between Minos and Sostratus, which denies freedom of the will and, with it, responsibility. But in a certain sense the Fourth Book of Maccabees, in the Septuagint (in Luther it is missing), is already a treatise on freedom of the will, insofar as it sets itself the task of proving that reason (logismos) has the power to overcome all passions and emotions, and supports this with the Jewish martyrs in the second book. The oldest clear recognition of our problem known to me appears in **Clement of Alexandria**, when he says (Strom. I, § 17): “Neither praises nor reproaches, neither honors nor punishments are just, if the soul does not have the power of impulse and aversion, but vice is involuntary” (“neither praises, nor reproaches, nor honors, nor punishments are just, if the soul does not have free power both of seeking and of abstaining, but vice is involuntary”); then, after an intervening clause referring to what was said earlier: “**so that above all God, at least, is not the cause of vice in us**” (“so that, most of all, God may not be the cause of vice for us”). This highly noteworthy concluding clause shows in what sense the Church at once grasped the problem and what decision, as suiting its interest, it immediately anticipated.—Almost 200 years later we find the doctrine of free will already treated at length by **Nemesius**, in his work *De natura hominis*, Kap. 35 at the end, and Kap. 39–41. Freedom of the will is here identified outright with the power of choice, or elective decision, and accordingly asserted and demonstrated with the greatest zeal. Yet it is at any rate already an airing of the matter. But the fully developed consciousness of our problem, with everything attached to it, we find first in the Church Father **Augustine**, who therefore comes into consideration here, although he is far more theologian than philosopher. Immediately, however, we see it throw him into marked embarrassment and uncertain wavering, which leads him as far as inconsistencies and contradictions, in his three books *De libero arbitrio*. On the one hand he does not wish, like **Pelagius**, to concede so much to freedom of the will that original sin, the necessity of redemption and free election by grace would thereby be abolished, and a person could consequently become righteous and worthy of eternal blessedness by his own powers. He even gives it to be understood, in the Argument to the books De lib. arb., taken from Lib. I, c. 9 of the Retractationes, that on this side of the controversy (which Luther later defended so vehemently) he would have said still more had those books not been written before the appearance of **Pelagius**, against whose opinion he then composed the book *De natura et gratia*. Meanwhile he says already in De lib. arb. III, 18: “But now man is not good, nor is it in his power to be good, either because he does not see what kind of person he ought to be, or because, seeing it, he is unwilling to be the kind of person he sees he ought to be.”—Soon after: “either through ignorance he has no free choice of the will to choose what he should rightly do; or, carnal habit resisting—which by the violence of mortal succession has in some way grown naturally into him—he sees what should rightly be done, and wills it, and cannot accomplish it”; and in the Argument just mentioned: “Therefore, unless the will itself is freed by God’s grace from the servitude by which it was made a slave of sin, and is helped to overcome its vices, mortals cannot live rightly and piously.” ### Chapter IV, 2 On the other hand, however, three considerations moved him to defend the freedom of the will: 1. His opposition to the **Manichaeans**, against whom the books De lib. arb. are expressly directed, because they denied free will and assumed another primal source of evil as well as of ills. He already alludes to them in the last chapter of the book *De animae quantitate*: “Free will has been given to the soul, and those who try to undermine it with frivolous reasonings are so blind that, etc.” 2. The natural illusion I have exposed, by which “I can do what I will” is taken for freedom of the will, and “**voluntary**” is taken as immediately identical with “**free**”: De lib. arb. I, 12. “For what lies so much within the will as the will itself?” 3. The need to bring man’s moral responsibility into harmony with the justice of God. For a most serious difficulty did not escape Augustine’s acuteness, one whose removal is so hard that, as far as I know, all later philosophers, with the exception of three, whom we shall therefore examine more closely at once, have preferred to creep softly around it, as though it did not exist. Augustine, on the other hand, states it quite unreservedly, with noble candor, right in the opening words of the books De lib. arb.: “Tell me, I pray you: is God not the author of evil?”—And then at greater length, right in the second chapter: “But the mind is troubled by this: if sins come from these souls which God created, and those souls from God, how are sins not, after a short interval, traced back to God?” To which the interlocutor replies: “What you have just said plainly is what torments me enough when I think of it.”—This most disquieting consideration **Luther** took up again and brought out with all the vehemence of his eloquence, *De servo arbitrio*, S. 144: “But that God must be such a one as imposes **necessity** on us by his own **freedom**, natural reason itself is compelled to confess.—If foreknowledge and omnipotence are granted, it follows naturally, by irrefutable consequence, that we have not been made by ourselves, and neither live nor do anything, but through his omnipotence.——The foreknowledge and omnipotence of God are in diametrical conflict with our free will.—All men are compelled by inevitable consequence to admit that we are made not by our own will but by necessity; that thus we do not do what we please, by right of free will, but as God has foreknown and *acts*, by infallible and immutable counsel and power: and so on.” We find **Vanini**, at the beginning of the 17th century, wholly filled with this insight. It is the core and soul of his persistent revolt against theism—a revolt concealed, under the pressure of the age, as cleverly as possible. On every occasion he returns to it and never tires of setting it out from the most varied points of view. For example, in his *Amphitheatrum aeternae providentiae*, exercitatio 16, he says: “If God wills sins, then he does them: for it is written, ‘Whatever he willed, he has done.’ If he does not will them, they are nonetheless committed: he must therefore be called improvident, or powerless, or cruel, since he either does not know how, or is unable, or neglects to bring about what he wills.————The philosophers say: if God did not want the worst and most nefarious actions to flourish in the world, he would doubtless, with a single nod, banish and sweep away all outrages beyond the bounds of the world: for which of us can resist the divine will? How are crimes committed against God’s will, if even in the act of sinning he furnishes the wicked with strength? Besides, if man falls contrary to God’s will, God will be inferior to man, who opposes him and prevails. From this they deduce: God desires this world just as it is; had he wanted a better one, he would have a better one.”—And in exercitatio 44 it reads: “An instrument is moved as it is directed by its principal; but our will in its operations stands as an instrument, God as the principal agent: therefore if it operates badly, this must be imputed to God.———Our will depends wholly on God, not only as to motion but also as to substance: hence there is nothing that can truly be imputed to it, neither on the side of substance nor of operation, but everything to God, who has so formed the will and so moves it.————Since the essence and motion of the will are from God, the operations of the will, whether good or bad, must be ascribed to him, if the will stands to him as an instrument.” But with **Vanini** one must keep in view that he consistently employs the stratagem of putting forward his real opinion, in the person of an opponent, as the one he abhors and wants to refute, and of demonstrating it convincingly and thoroughly; in order then, in his own person, to oppose it with shallow reasons and lame arguments and thereupon to depart in triumph, *as if the business had been well done*—relying on the malice of his reader. By this craftiness he deceived even the highly learned Sorbonne, which, taking all that for good coin, trustingly set its imprimatur before his most godless writings. With all the heartier joy it saw him, three years later, burned alive, after his blasphemous tongue had first been cut out. For this, after all, is the truly forceful argument of the theologians, and since it has been taken from them, matters have gone very much backward. Among philosophers in the narrower sense, if I am not mistaken, **Hume** is the first who did not creep around the grave difficulty first raised by Augustine, but sets it out openly—without, however, mentioning Augustine or Luther, let alone Vanini—in his *Essay on Liberty and Necessity*, where it says, toward the end: “The ultimate author of all our volitions is the creator of the world, who first set this immense machine in motion and placed all beings in that particular position from which every subsequent event must follow by unavoidable necessity. Human actions, therefore, either can have no baseness at all, since they proceed from so good a cause, or, if they have any baseness, they must implicate *our creator* in the same guilt, since he is acknowledged to be their ultimate cause and author. For just as a man who has fired a mine is answerable for all the consequences, whether the fuse he used was long or short, so wherever a continuous chain of necessary causes is fixed, that Being, finite or infinite, who produces the first is likewise the author of all the rest ∗).” He makes an attempt to resolve this difficulty, but admits at the end that he considers it insoluble. ∗) A translation of this and the other English passages will be welcome to many German readers: “The ultimate originator of all our acts of will is the creator of the world, who first set this immeasurable machine in motion and brought all beings into the particular situation from which every later occurrence had to follow with unavoidable necessity. For this reason human actions are either capable of no wickedness at all, since they proceed from so good a cause; or else, if they can be bad in any way, they involve our creator in the same guilt, since he is, by general acknowledgment, their ultimate cause, their originator. For as a man who sets off a mine is responsible for all its consequences, whether the sulfur fuse was long or short, so, wherever an unbroken linkage of necessarily operating causes stands firm, the being, whether finite or infinite, that brings about the first is also the originator of all the rest.” ### Chapter IV, 3 **Kant** too, independently of his predecessors, comes upon the very same stumbling block, in the Critique of Practical Reason, S. 180 ff. of the fourth edition, and S. 232 of Rosenkranz’s edition: “It seems, nevertheless, that as soon as one assumes that God, as the universal original being, is the **cause** also of the **existence of substance**, one must also concede that human actions have their determining ground in that which is wholly beyond his power, namely in the causality of a supreme being distinct from him, on whom the existence of the former and the entire determination of his causality depend wholly and entirely.——Man would be a Vaucanson automaton, built and wound up by the supreme master of all works of art, and self-consciousness would indeed make him a thinking automaton, in which the consciousness of his spontaneity, if it is taken for freedom, would be mere illusion, since it deserves to be so called only comparatively, because the nearest determining causes of his movement, and a long series of them up to their determining causes, are indeed internal, while the last and highest is nonetheless found wholly in an alien hand.”—He now tries to remove this great difficulty through the distinction between thing in itself and appearance; but this so obviously leaves the matter essentially unchanged that I am convinced he was not in earnest about it. He himself also admits the inadequacy of his solution, S. 184, where he adds: “but is any other that has been tried, or may be tried, easier and more comprehensible? One might rather say that the dogmatic teachers of metaphysics showed more of their **cunning** than of their sincerity in putting this difficult point out of sight as far as possible, in the hope that if they did not speak of it at all, no one would readily think of it.” After this highly noteworthy assembling of the most heterogeneous voices, all saying the same thing, I return to our Church Father. The grounds with which he hopes to remove the difficulty, already felt by him in its full gravity, are theological, not philosophical, and therefore not of unconditional validity. Their support is, as I said, the third reason, in addition to the two cited above, why he seeks to defend a *liberum arbitrium* conferred on man by God. Such a thing, since it would interpose itself as a separating partition between the Creator and the sins of his creature, would really be sufficient to remove the whole difficulty—if only it remained at least **conceivable** under serious and deeper reflection, as it is easily said in words and may do well enough for a thinking that goes not much further than words. But how is one to imagine that a being which, in its whole *existence* and *essence*, is the work of another can nonetheless determine itself originally and from the ground up, and consequently be responsible for its doing? The proposition that *action follows being*, that is, that the effects of every being follow from its constitution, overturns that assumption, yet is itself unassailable. If a person acts badly, it is because he is bad. To that proposition, however, attaches its corollary: *therefore, from whatever source a being has its existence, from that same source comes its action*. What would one say of the watchmaker who was angry at his watch because it ran wrong? However gladly one might make the will a *blank slate*, one will still be unable to avoid admitting that if, for example, of two people one follows, in moral respects, a way of acting entirely opposite to the other’s, this difference, which must after all spring from something, has its ground either in external circumstances, in which case the guilt plainly does not fall on the people, or else in an original difference of their wills themselves, in which case guilt and merit again do not fall on them, if their whole being and essence is the work of another. Since the great men cited have strained in vain to find an exit from this labyrinth, I willingly confess that to conceive the moral responsibility of the human will without its aseity exceeds my powers of comprehension as well. It was without doubt this same incapacity that dictated the seventh of the eight definitions with which **Spinoza** opens his Ethics: “A thing is called free that exists from the necessity of its own nature alone and is determined to act by itself alone; but necessary, or rather compelled, that which is determined by another to exist and to operate.” For if a bad action springs from the nature—that is, the innate constitution—of the human being, the guilt plainly lies with the author of this nature. That is why free will was invented. But from what the action is then supposed to spring, on the assumption of free will, is absolutely impossible to see; for free will is at bottom a merely **negative** property and says only that nothing compels or hinders a person from acting one way or another. This never makes clear **from what** the action finally does spring, since it is not supposed to come from the innate or created constitution of the person, for then it would be charged to his Creator; nor from external circumstances alone, for then it would have to be ascribed to chance; so that the person would remain guiltless in any case—while he is nonetheless held responsible for it. The natural image of a free will is an unloaded balance: it hangs there quietly and will never leave its equilibrium unless something is laid in one of its pans. As little as the balance can produce motion out of itself, can free will bring forth an action out of itself; because, precisely, from nothing comes nothing. If the balance is to sink to one side, a foreign body must be laid upon it, which is then the source of the motion. Likewise the human action must be produced by something that acts **positively** and is something more than a merely **negative** freedom. This, however, can be only one of two things: either the motives do it in and of themselves, that is, the external circumstances—in which case the person is plainly not responsible for the action, and, besides, all people would then have to act exactly alike under like circumstances; or else it springs from his susceptibility to such motives, hence from innate character, that is, from the inclinations originally inherent in the person, which can differ among individuals and by virtue of which the motives take effect. But then the will is no longer free: for these inclinations are the weight laid in the pan of the balance. Responsibility falls back on the one who put them in, that is, whose work the person with such inclinations is. Therefore he is responsible for his doing only in the case that he is himself his own work, that is, has aseity. The whole standpoint set out here lets us gauge how much hangs on the freedom of the will, which forms an indispensable gulf between the Creator and the sins of his creature; from which it becomes comprehensible why the theologians cling to it so tenaciously, and why their squires, the professors of philosophy, support them in it so dutifully and so zealously that, deaf and blind to the most cogent counterproofs of great thinkers, they hold fast to free will and fight for it *as for altar and hearth*. But to conclude, at last, my account of **Augustine**, interrupted above: his opinion on the whole comes to this, that man really had a wholly free will only before the Fall, but after it, fallen prey to original sin, has to hope for his salvation from election by grace and from redemption—which is speaking like a Church Father. ### Chapter IV, 4 Meanwhile, through **Augustine** and his dispute with the Manichaeans and Pelagians, philosophy awoke to consciousness of our problem. From then on it gradually became clearer to philosophy, through the Scholastics, as **Buridan’s** sophism and the passage from **Dante** cited above bear witness.—But the first to get to the bottom of the matter was, to all appearances, **Thomas Hobbes**, whose work devoted expressly to this subject, *Quaestiones de libertate et necessitate, contra Doctorem Branhallum*, appeared in 1656 and is now rare. In English it is found in *Th. Hobbes moral and political works*, one folio volume, London 1750, S. 469 ff., from which I set down the following principal passage. S. 483: 6. Nothing takes a beginning from itself, but only from the action of some other immediate agent outside itself. Therefore, when a man first has an appetite or will for something for which he had neither appetite nor will immediately before, the cause of his will is not the will itself but something else, not in his own disposing. So, since it is beyond controversy that the will is the necessary cause of voluntary actions, and since, by what has just been said, the will is also necessarily *caused* by other things over which it has no disposal, it follows that voluntary actions all have necessary causes and are therefore *necessitated*. 7. I hold *that* to be a *sufficient* cause from which nothing is lacking that is needed to produce the *effect*. The same is also a *necessary* cause. For if it were possible for a *sufficient* cause not to bring forth its *effect*, then something needed to produce it would be lacking, and so the cause was not *sufficient*. But if it is impossible for a *sufficient* cause not to produce its effect, then a *sufficient* cause is a *necessary* cause. Hence it is manifest that whatever is produced is produced *necessarily*. For whatever is produced has had a *sufficient* cause to produce it, or else it would never have been; and therefore *voluntary* actions too are *necessitated*. 8. That ordinary definition of a free agent (namely, that a free agent is one which, when everything needed to produce the effect is present, can nevertheless fail to produce it) implies a contradiction and is nonsense, since it amounts to saying that the cause may be *sufficient*, that is to say *necessary*, and yet the effect not follow.— S. 485. Every event, however contingent it may seem or however *voluntary* it may be, is produced *necessarily*∗). ∗) 6. Nothing begins of itself, but each thing through the action of some other, immediate cause lying outside it. Hence, when a person now wishes or wills something that he neither wished nor willed immediately before, the cause of his willing is not this willing itself but something else, not dependent on him. Accordingly, since the will is indisputably the necessary cause of voluntary actions, and, according to what has just been said, the will is necessarily caused by other things independent of it, it follows that all voluntary actions have **necessary** causes and are therefore **necessitated**. 7. I recognize as a **sufficient** cause one from which nothing is missing that is needed to produce the effect. Such a cause, however, is at the same time a **necessary** cause. For if it were possible for a **sufficient** cause not to bring forth its effect, something needed to produce that effect would have had to be lacking to it; but then the cause was not **sufficient**. If, however, it is impossible for a **sufficient** cause not to bring forth its effect, then a **sufficient** cause is also a **necessary** cause. From this it plainly follows that everything that is produced is **necessarily** produced. For everything that has been produced has had a **sufficient** cause that produced it; otherwise it would never have come into being. Therefore **voluntary** actions too are necessitated. 8. That common definition of a free agent (namely, that it would be one which, even when everything needed to produce the effect was present together, could still **fail** to produce it) contains a contradiction and is nonsense, since it says that a cause could be **sufficient**—that is, **necessary**—and the effect nevertheless fail to occur. S. 485. “Every event, however **contingent** it may seem or however **voluntary** it may be, occurs **necessarily**.” In his famous book *De cive*, c. 1, § 7, he says: “Everyone is borne toward the pursuit of what is good for him and toward flight from what is bad for him, above all from the greatest of natural evils, which is death; and this by a necessity of nature no less than that by which a stone is borne downward.” Immediately after **Hobbes** we see **Spinoza** permeated by the same conviction. A few passages will suffice to characterize his teaching on this point: Eth., P. I, prop. 32. “Will cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary one.”—Coroll. 2. “For will, like everything else, requires a cause by which it is determined to act in a certain way.” Ibid., P. II, scholium ultimum. “As for the fourth objection (concerning Buridan’s ass), I say that I grant entirely that a man placed in such an equilibrium (one, that is, who perceives nothing but thirst and hunger, and such food and such drink, which are equally distant from him) will perish of hunger and thirst.” Ibid., P. III, prop. 2. Schol. “The decrees of the mind arise in the mind with the same necessity as the ideas of things actually existing. Those, therefore, who believe that they speak or keep silent, or do anything at all, from a free decree of the mind are dreaming with open eyes.”—Epist. 62. “Each thing is necessarily determined by some external cause to exist and to act in a certain and determinate way. For example, a stone receives from an external cause that impels it a certain quantity of motion, with which it will afterward necessarily continue to move. Imagine now that the stone, while it continues to move, thinks and knows that it is striving, as far as it can, to continue in motion. This stone, since it is conscious only of its own striving and is by no means indifferent, will surely believe that it is perfectly free and that it perseveres in motion for no other reason than that it wills to. And this is that human freedom which all boast of having, and which consists in this alone, that people are conscious of their appetite and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined.”——“With this I have sufficiently explained what my opinion is concerning free and constrained necessity, and concerning the fictitious freedom of human beings.” A noteworthy circumstance, however, is that **Spinoza** arrived at this insight only in his last years (that is, in his forties). Earlier, in 1665, while he was still a Cartesian, he had decisively and warmly defended the opposite opinion in his *Cogitata metaphysica*, c. 12, and had even said, in direct contradiction to the scholium ultimum of Part II just cited, concerning Buridan’s sophism: “For if we put a human being in the place of the ass, placed in such an equilibrium, the human being must be regarded not as a thinking thing but as the most contemptible ass, if he perishes of hunger and thirst.” I shall have to report the same change of opinion and conversion further on of two other great men. This proves how difficult, and how deeply buried, true insight into our problem is. **Hume**, in his *Essay on liberty and necessity*, from which I have already had to cite a passage above, writes with the clearest conviction of the necessity of individual acts of will given motives, and sets it forth very plainly in his generally accessible manner. He says: “Thus it appears that the conjunction between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and uniform as that between cause and effect in any part of nature.” And further on: “It seems almost impossible, therefore, to engage in either science or action of any kind without acknowledging the doctrine of necessity and that inference from motives to voluntary actions, from character to conduct.”∗) ∗) “Thus it follows that the connection between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and uniform as the connection between cause and effect in any part of nature can possibly be.”———“It therefore seems almost impossible to undertake anything, either in science or in actions of any kind, without acknowledging the doctrine of necessity and that inference from motives to acts of will, from character to mode of conduct.” ### Chapter IV, 5 But no writer has demonstrated the necessity of acts of will so thoroughly and convincingly as **Priestley**, in his work devoted exclusively to this subject, *The Doctrine of philosophical necessity*. Anyone whom this book, written with such exceeding clarity and accessibility, fails to convince must have an understanding truly paralyzed by prejudice. To characterize his results I set down a few passages, which I cite from the second edition, Birmingham 1782. Preface, S. XX. “To my understanding there is no absurdity more glaring than the notion of philosophical liberty.”—S. 26. “Without a miracle, or the intervention of some foreign cause, no volition or action of any man could have been otherwise than it has been.”—S. 37. “Though an inclination or affection of mind is not gravity, it influences me and acts upon me as certainly and necessarily as that power does upon a stone.”—S. 43. “To say that the will is *self-determined* gives no idea at all, or rather implies an absurdity, namely, that a *determination*, which is an *effect*, takes place without any cause at all. For setting aside everything that comes under the name of *motive*, there is really nothing left to produce the determination. Let a man use whatever *words* he pleases, he can have no more *conception* of how we can sometimes be determined by motives and sometimes without any motive than he can have of a scale being sometimes weighed down by weights and sometimes by a kind of substance that has no weight at all, which, whatever it may be in itself, must, with respect to the scale, be *nothing*.”—S. 66. “In proper philosophical language, the motive ought to be called the *proper cause* of the action. It is as much so as anything in nature is the cause of anything else.”—S. 84. “It will never be in our power to choose two things when all the previous circumstances are exactly the same.”—S. 90. “A man, indeed, when he reproaches himself for some particular action in his past conduct, may fancy that, if he were in the same situation again, he would have acted differently. But this is a mere *deception*; and if he examines himself strictly and takes in all circumstances, he may be satisfied that, with the same inward disposition of mind and with precisely the same view of things that he had then—to the exclusion of all others that he has acquired by reflection *since*—he could not have acted otherwise than he did.”—S. 287. “In short, there is no choice in the case but between the doctrine of necessity and absolute nonsense.”—∗). ∗) S. XX. “For my understanding there is no more palpable absurdity than the concept of moral freedom.”—S. 26. “Without a miracle, or the intervention of some external cause, no act of will or action of any person could have turned out otherwise than it did turn out.”—S. 37. “Although an inclination or determination of my mind is not gravity, it nevertheless has as sure and necessary an influence and effect on me as that force has on a stone.”—S. 43. “The expression that the will is something **self-determining** gives no concept at all, or rather contains an absurdity, namely this: that a **determination**, which is an effect, occurs without any cause. For, setting aside everything understood under the name of **motive**, there is in fact nothing left that could produce that determination. Let a person use whatever **words** he likes; he can have no more **concept** of our being determined to something sometimes by motives and sometimes without any motives at all than he can have of a scale pan being sometimes drawn down by weights and sometimes by a kind of substance that had no weight whatever and that, whatever it might be in itself, would be **nothing** with respect to the scale pan.”—S. 66. “In proper philosophical expression the motive ought to be called the **real cause** of the action: for it is that as much as anything in nature is the cause of another.”—S. 84. “It will never lie in our power to make two different choices when all the preceding circumstances are exactly the same.”—S. 90. “Admittedly, a person who reproaches himself for some particular action in his past course of life can imagine that, if he were in the same position again, he would act differently. But this is mere **delusion**: if he examines himself strictly and takes all circumstances into account, he can convince himself that, with the same inner disposition and exactly the same view of things that he had then, to the exclusion of all other views obtained **since** through reflection, he could not have acted otherwise than he did act.”—S. 287. “In short, there is no other choice here than that between the doctrine of necessity and absolute nonsense.” Now it must be noted that things went with **Priestley** exactly as they did with **Spinoza** and with yet another very great man, to be cited at once. For **Priestley** says in the preface to the first edition, S. XXVII: “I was not, however, a ready convert to the doctrine of necessity. Like Dr. Hartley himself, I gave up my liberty with great reluctance, and in a long correspondence that I once had on the subject I maintained the doctrine of liberty very strenuously and did not at all yield to the arguments then proposed to me.”∗) ∗) “I have not, however, been easily converted to the doctrine of necessity. Like Dr. Hartley himself, I gave up my freedom only with great reluctance: in a long correspondence that I once conducted on this subject, I defended the doctrine of freedom very zealously and in no way yielded to the grounds that were set against me.” The third great man to whom the same thing happened is **Voltaire**, who reports it with the amiability and naïveté peculiar to him. In his *Traité de métaphysique*, chap. 7, he had defended the so-called freedom of the will at length and with spirit. But in his book *Le philosophe ignorant*, written more than forty years later, he teaches the strictest necessitation of acts of will, in the 13th chapter, which he concludes thus: “Archimedes is just as necessitated to stay in his room when he is locked in it as when he is so deeply absorbed in a problem that the idea of going out does not enter his mind:” Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling. “*The ignorant man who thinks thus has not always thought the same*, but he is at last compelled to yield.” In the book that follows, *Le principe d’action*, he says in chap. 13: “A ball that strikes another, a hunting dog that runs necessarily and willingly after a stag, that stag clearing an immense ditch with no less necessity and will: all this is no more invincibly determined than we are in everything we do.” This uniform conversion of three such supremely eminent minds to our insight must surely give pause to anyone who sets out to assail well-founded truths with the “but surely I can do what I will” of his simple-minded self-consciousness—words that have nothing to do with the matter. ### Chapter IV, 6 After these, his nearest predecessors, it need not surprise us that **Kant** took the necessity with which the empirical character is determined to actions by motives as a matter already settled, with him as with others, and did not pause to prove it anew. He opens his “Ideas for a General History” thus: “Whatever concept one may form of the **freedom of the will** for metaphysical purposes, its **appearances**, human actions, are determined by universal laws of nature just as much as any other natural occurrence.”—In the Critique of Pure Reason (S. 548 of the first, or S. 577 of the fifth edition) he says: “Because the empirical character itself must be drawn from the appearances as effect, and from the rule of these which experience supplies, all actions of the human being, in appearance, are determined from his empirical character and the other cooperating causes according to the order of nature; and if we could investigate all the appearances of his power of choice to the very bottom, there would be no single human action that we could not predict with certainty and recognize as necessary from its preceding conditions. With regard to this empirical character, therefore, there is no freedom, and it is only in accordance with it that we can consider the human being if we merely **observe** and, as happens in anthropology, want to investigate physiologically the moving causes of his actions.”—In the same work, S. 798 of the first, or S. 826 of the fifth edition, we read: “The will may well be free, but this can concern only the intelligible cause of our willing. For as to the phenomena of its manifestations, that is, actions, we must, in accordance with an inviolable fundamental maxim without which we can exercise no reason in empirical use, never explain them otherwise than all the other appearances of nature, namely according to their unchangeable laws.”—Further, in the Critique of Practical Reason, S. 177 of the fourth edition, or S. 230 of the Rosenkranz edition: “One may therefore grant that if it were possible for us to have so deep an insight into a person’s way of thinking, as it shows itself through inner as well as outer actions, that every incentive to it, even the slightest, became known to us, together with all the external occasions acting upon it, one could calculate a person’s future conduct with certainty, just as one calculates a lunar or solar eclipse.” To this, however, he links his doctrine of how freedom can coexist with necessity, by virtue of the distinction between the intelligible character and the empirical. Since I wholly profess that view, I shall return to it further below. **Kant** set it out twice: in the Critique of Pure Reason, S. 532–554 of the first, or S. 560–582 of the fifth edition, and still more clearly in the Critique of Practical Reason, S. 169–179 of the fourth edition, or S. 224–231 of the Rosenkranz edition. These profoundly thought passages must be read by everyone who wants to gain a thorough understanding of how human freedom is compatible with the necessity of actions.— From the achievements of all these noble and venerable predecessors, the present treatment of the subject differs so far chiefly in two points. First, guided by the prize question, I have strictly separated the inner perception of the will in self-consciousness from the outer, and considered each of the two by itself; only in this way did it become possible to uncover the source of the illusion that works so irresistibly on most people. Second, I have considered the will in connection with all the rest of nature, which no one before me has done; only in this way could the subject be treated with the thoroughness, methodical insight and completeness of which it is capable. Now a few more words about some writers who have written since **Kant**, but whom I do not regard as my predecessors. **Schelling** has supplied an explanatory paraphrase of **Kant’s** supremely important doctrine, just praised, concerning the intelligible and empirical character, in his “Inquiry into Human Freedom,” S. 465–471. By the vividness of its coloring, this paraphrase can help make the matter more accessible to some than Kant’s thorough but dry presentation can. Yet I cannot mention it without censuring, for the honor of truth and of **Kant**, that **Schelling**, here where he presents one of the most important and admirable of Kant’s doctrines—in my view the most profound of them all—does not state plainly that what he now sets out belongs, as to its content, to **Kant**. Instead he expresses himself so that the great majority of readers, who do not have the contents of the great man’s voluminous and difficult works exactly in mind, must suppose they are reading **Schelling’s** own thoughts. How fully the result has matched the intention here I will show by just one proof among many. Even today a young professor of philosophy at Halle, Mr. Erdmann, says in his book of 1837, titled “Body and Soul,” S. 101: “even if Leibniz, similarly to Schelling in his treatise on freedom, lets the soul determine itself before all time,” etc. **Schelling** thus stands to **Kant** here in the fortunate position of **Amerigo** to **Columbus**: the foreign discovery is stamped with his name. But he has his cleverness to thank for it, not chance. For he begins, S. 465: “In general, it was **idealism** that first raised the doctrine of freedom to that domain,” etc., and now the Kantian thoughts follow immediately. So instead of saying **Kant** here, as honesty demands, he shrewdly says **idealism**. Under this ambiguous expression, however, everyone will understand **Fichte’s** and **Schelling’s** first, Fichtean philosophy, not **Kant’s** doctrine, since Kant protested against the name **idealism** for his philosophy (e.g., Prolegomena, S. 51, and S. 155, Rosenkr.) and even inserted a “Refutation of Idealism” into the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, S. 274. On the following page **Schelling** very shrewdly mentions the “Kantian concept” in a passing phrase, namely to placate those who already know that it is Kantian wealth that is being so pompously unpacked here as his own merchandise. But then, on S. 472, in defiance of all truth and justice, it is even said that **Kant** had not risen to that view in theory, etc., whereas from the two immortal passages of **Kant** that I recommended above for reading, anyone can see plainly that precisely this view originally belongs to him alone—a view that a thousand such minds as Messrs. **Fichte** and **Schelling** would never have been capable of grasping without him. Since I had to speak here of **Schelling’s** treatise, I could not keep silent on this point, but have merely done my duty toward that great teacher of humanity who, alone beside **Goethe**, is the just pride of the German nation, by vindicating for him what indisputably belongs to him alone—the more so in a time to which **Goethe’s** saying applies with perfect precision: “the tribe of boys is master of the course.”—Moreover, in the same treatise **Schelling** has made no more scruple of appropriating the thoughts, indeed the words, of **Jakob Böhme** without disclosing his source. Apart from this paraphrase of Kantian thoughts, those “Inquiries into Freedom” contain nothing that could serve to give us new or thorough clarification of it. This announces itself right at the outset in the definition: freedom is said to be “a capacity for good and evil.” Such a definition may serve for the catechism, but in philosophy it says nothing and therefore gives us nothing to work with. For good and evil are far from being simple concepts (*notiones simplices*) that, clear in themselves, would need no explanation, fixing and grounding. In general, only a small part of that treatise deals with freedom; its main content is rather a detailed report about a God with whom the honorable author betrays intimate acquaintance, since he even describes this God’s origin. It is only to be regretted that he does not say a single word about how he came by this acquaintance. The treatise opens with a web of sophisms whose shallowness anyone will recognize who does not let himself be intimidated by the boldness of the tone. Since then, and as a result of this and similar productions, “intellectual intuition” and “absolute thinking” have taken the place of clear concepts and honest inquiry in German philosophy. Overawing, bewildering, mystifying, throwing sand in the reader’s eyes by every sort of trick has become the method, and throughout, design rather than insight guides the exposition. Through all this, philosophy, if one still wishes to call it that, has had to sink lower and lower, until at last it reached the lowest stage of degradation in the ministerial creature **Hegel**. To stifle again the freedom of thought won by **Kant**, he now made philosophy, the daughter of reason and future mother of truth, an instrument of state purposes, of obscurantism and Protestant Jesuitism. And to cover the disgrace and at the same time bring about the greatest possible stupefaction of minds, he drew over it the cloak of the hollowest verbiage and the most senseless gibberish ever heard, at least outside the madhouse. ### Chapter IV, 7 In England and France, philosophy on the whole stands almost where **Locke** and **Condillac** left it. **Maine de Byran**, called by his editor, Mr. **Cousin**, “the first French metaphysician of my time,” is in his *Nouvelles considérations du physique et moral*, published in 1834, a fanatical adherent of *freedom of indifferent choice*, and takes it as something that goes entirely without saying. Several of the more recent German philosophical scribblers do no differently: *freedom of indifferent choice*, under the name of “moral freedom,” appears with them as a settled matter, just as if all the great men cited above had never existed. They declare freedom of the will to be given immediately in self-consciousness and thereby so unshakably established that all arguments against it can be nothing but sophisms. This lofty confidence springs merely from the fact that these good souls do not at all know what freedom of the will is and means, but in their innocence understand by it nothing other than the mastery of the will over the limbs of the body that we analyzed in our second section—a mastery that surely no reasonable person has ever doubted, and whose expression is precisely that “I can do what I will.” This, they suppose in all honesty, is freedom of the will, and they insist that it is beyond all doubt. It is precisely the state of innocence into which, after so many great predecessors, the Hegelian philosophy has set the German thinking mind back. To people of this stamp one might indeed call out: “Are you not like the women, who forever Come back to nothing but their first word, When one has spoken reason for hours?” In some of them, however, the theological motives indicated above may be silently at work. And then again, the medical, zoological, historical, political and belletristic writers of our day—how eagerly they seize every opportunity to mention “the freedom of man,” “moral freedom”! They fancy themselves somebody for it. They do not, to be sure, venture an explanation of it; but if one were permitted to examine them, one would find that by it they think either nothing at all or else our good old honest, well-known *freedom of indifferent choice*, however grand the phrases in which they may dress it—a concept whose untenability will probably never be got across to the great mob, but of which scholars ought to take care not to speak with so much innocence. That is precisely why there are also some timid ones among them, highly amusing, who no longer dare to speak of freedom of the **will** but, to be refined about it, say “freedom of the **spirit**” instead and hope to slip through with that. What they think by it I am fortunately able to tell the reader who looks at me inquiringly: nothing, absolutely nothing—except that it is, in good German manner and art, an indecisive, indeed really meaningless expression, which affords their emptiness and cowardice a welcome hiding place from which to slip away. The word “spirit,” properly a figurative expression, everywhere designates the **intellectual** faculties, as opposed to the will; but these are by no means supposed to be free in their operation. They are to adapt, conform and submit themselves first to the rules of logic and then to the particular **object** of their knowing, so that they may apprehend purely—that is, **objectively**—and it may never be said: “*Will stands in place of reason*.” In general, this “spirit” that knocks about everywhere in present German literature is a thoroughly suspicious fellow, whom one should therefore ask for his passport wherever he is caught. Serving as a mask for poverty of thought joined with cowardice is his most frequent trade. Incidentally, the word **Geist**, as is well known, is related to the word **gas**, which, derived from Arabic and alchemy, means vapor or air, just as spiritus, pneuma (“breath”) and animus are related to anemon (“winds”). Such, then, is the state of things regarding our theme, in the philosophical and in the wider learned world, after all that the great minds cited have taught about it. This confirms once more that nature has not only at all times produced very few real thinkers, as rare exceptions, but that these few themselves have always existed only for very few. That is precisely why delusion and error continually hold sway.— On a moral subject the testimony of the great poets also carries weight. They do not speak after systematic investigation, but human nature lies open to their penetrating vision, and so their statements strike the truth directly.—In **Shakespeare’s** *Measure for measure*, A. 2, Sc. 2, Isabella begs the regent Angelo for mercy for her brother, who is condemned to death: *Angelo.* I will not do it. *Isab.* But could you, if you would? *Ang.* Look, what I *will* not, that I *cannot* do∗). ∗) **Angelo.** I will not do it. **Isabella.** But could you do it, if you wanted to? **Angelo.** Look, what I do not **will**, that I **cannot** do. In *Twelfth night*, A. 1, we read: Fate, show your force; we do not own ourselves. What is decreed must be, and let it be so∗∗). ∗∗) Now, O Fate, you can show your power: What is to be must come to pass, and no one is his own. **Walter Scott** too, that great connoisseur and painter of the human heart and its most secret stirrings, has brought that deep-lying truth plainly to light in his *St. Ronans Well*, Vol. 3, chap. 6. He portrays a dying, repentant sinner who on her deathbed seeks to ease her anguished conscience by confessions, and in the midst of these he has her say: “Go, and leave me to my fate. I am the most detestable wretch that ever lived—detestable to myself, worst of all, because even in my penitence there is a secret whisper telling me that, were I as I have been, I would again act over all the wickedness I have done, and much worse. Oh, for Heaven’s help to crush the wicked thought!”∗∗∗) ∗∗∗) “Go, and leave me to my fate. I am the most wretched and abominable creature that ever lived—most abominable to myself. For even in the midst of my remorse something whispers to me secretly that, if I were again as I have been, I would commit again all the wickedness I have committed, and even worse besides. Oh, for Heaven’s help to stifle the worthless thought.” A corroboration of this poetic portrayal is supplied by the following parallel fact, which at the same time confirms in the strongest way the doctrine of the constancy of character. In 1845 it passed from the French newspaper *La Presse* into the *Times* of July 2, 1845, from which I translate it. The heading reads: Military Execution at Oran. “On March 24, the Spaniard Aguilar, *alias* Gomez, had been sentenced to death. On the day before the execution he said, in conversation with his jailer: ‘I am not as guilty as I have been made out to be: I am accused of having committed 30 murders, whereas I have in fact committed only 26. From childhood on I thirsted for blood: when I was 7½ years old, I stabbed a child. I murdered a pregnant woman, and at a later time a Spanish officer, as a result of which I found myself obliged to flee from Spain. I fled to France, where I committed two crimes before I entered the Foreign Legion. Of all my crimes I repent most of the following: In 1841, at the head of my company, I captured a deputy commissary general, who was escorted by a sergeant, a corporal and 7 men; I had them all beheaded. The death of these people weighs heavily on me: I see them in my dreams, and tomorrow I shall see them again in the soldiers ordered to shoot me. **Nevertheless, if I were to regain my freedom, I would murder others still.**’” The following passage in Goethe’s Iphigenia (A. 4, Sc. 2) also belongs here: **Arkas:** For you have not heeded the counsel of loyalty. **Iphigenia:** What I was able to do, I have gladly done. **Arkas:** You may yet change your mind in time. **Iphigenia: That, once and for all, does not lie in our power.** A famous passage in Schiller’s Wallenstein also expresses our fundamental truth: “A person’s deeds and thoughts, know this, Are not like the sea’s blindly driven waves. The inner world, his microcosm, is The deep shaft from which they eternally well up. They are **necessary**, like the fruit of the tree; Chance, in its juggling, cannot transform them. Once I have examined the kernel of the person, I also know his willing and his doing.” ### Chapter V, 1 **V. Conclusion and Higher View.** I have gladly recalled here all those glorious predecessors, poets and philosophers alike, in the truth I defend. Still, it is not authorities but reasons that are the philosopher’s weapon. I have therefore conducted my case with reasons alone, and yet I hope to have given it such evidence that I am now entitled to draw the inference *from impossibility to nonexistence*. Thereby the negative answer to the question posed by the Royal Society—grounded above, in the examination of self-consciousness, directly and factually, and therefore *a posteriori*—is now grounded indirectly and *a priori* as well: for what does not exist at all cannot have data in self-consciousness either, from which it could be proved. Even if the truth defended here may be among those that run against the preconceived opinions of the shortsighted crowd, and may even give offense to the weak and ignorant, this has not been allowed to keep me from setting it out plainly and without reserve. I speak here not to the people but to an enlightened Academy, which did not pose its very timely question to fortify prejudice but to honor truth.—Moreover, the honest inquirer after truth, so long as the task is still to establish and authenticate a truth, will always look solely to its grounds and not to its consequences; the time for those will come once the truth itself stands firm. To examine the grounds alone, heedless of consequences, and not to ask first whether a recognized truth agrees with the system of our other convictions or not—this is what **Kant** already recommends, and I cannot refrain from repeating his words here: “This confirms the maxim, already recognized and praised by others, of pursuing in every scientific inquiry one’s course undisturbed, with all possible exactness and candor, without turning aside for anything it might perhaps offend against outside its own field, but carrying it out by itself, as far as one can, truly and completely. Frequent observation has convinced me that when this business has been brought to its end, what had seemed to me very questionable midway, with regard to other doctrines outside it, finally agreed in an unexpected way perfectly with what had turned up of itself, without the least regard for those doctrines, without partiality or preference for them—provided I only left that misgiving out of sight for as long as I attended solely to my business until it was completed. Writers would spare themselves many errors, much wasted effort (because it was built on illusion), if they could only resolve to go to work with a little more candor.” (Critique of Practical Reason, S. 190 of the fourth edition, or S. 239 of Rosenkranz’s.) Our metaphysical knowledge as a whole is surely still worlds away from having such certainty that we should reject any thoroughly proven truth merely because its consequences do not fit with it. On the contrary, every truth won and established is a conquered portion of the whole territory of the problems of knowledge, and a firm point at which to set the levers that will move other burdens—indeed, a point from which, in favorable cases, one may swing up all at once to a higher view of the whole than one has had before. For the interconnection of truths in every field of knowledge is so great that whoever has made himself entirely secure in the possession of a single one may at any rate hope to conquer the whole from there. As in a difficult algebraic problem a single positively given quantity is of inestimable value because it makes the solution possible, so in the most difficult of all human problems, which is metaphysics, the certain knowledge, proved *a priori* and *a posteriori*, of the strict necessity with which deeds follow from given character and given motives is such an inestimable datum, and starting from it alone one can arrive at the solution of the whole problem. Therefore everything that cannot show firm scientific authentication must give way to such a well-grounded truth where it stands in its path, and not the truth to it. Nor may that truth ever consent to accommodations and restrictions in order to bring itself into harmony with unproven and perhaps mistaken assertions. One more general remark may be allowed me here. A look back at our result prompts the reflection that, with regard to the two problems already identified in the previous section as the deepest of modern philosophy, though not clearly present to the ancients—namely, the problem of freedom of the will and that of the relation between the ideal and the real—the sound but crude understanding is not merely incompetent. It even has a decided natural bent toward error, and to bring it back from this a philosophy already far advanced is needed. For it is indeed natural to it, in matters of **knowing**, to attribute far too much to the **object**, which is why **Locke** and **Kant** were needed to show how very much of it springs from the subject. In matters of **willing**, by contrast, it has the opposite bent: to attribute far too little to the **object** and far too much to the **subject**. It lets willing proceed entirely from **the latter**, without duly taking into account the factor lying in the **object**, the motives, which actually determine the whole individual character of actions, while only what is general and essential in them, their basic moral character, proceeds from the **subject**. Such a perversity, natural to the understanding in speculative inquiries, need not surprise us, however, since it was originally destined solely for practical purposes and by no means for speculative ones.— If, as a result of our account so far, we have found all freedom of human action wholly removed and that action recognized as throughout subject to the strictest necessity, we have thereby been led to the point from which we shall be able to grasp **true moral freedom**, which is of a higher kind. ### Chapter V, 2 There is, namely, one more fact of consciousness, which I have so far set entirely aside in order not to disturb the course of the inquiry. This is the wholly distinct and certain feeling of **responsibility** for what we do, of **accountability** for our actions, resting on the unshakable certainty that we ourselves are **the doers of our** deeds. By virtue of this consciousness it never occurs to anyone—not even to someone fully convinced of the necessity, set out so far, with which our actions occur—to excuse a transgression by appeal to that necessity and to shift the guilt from himself onto the motives, since once they appeared the deed was unavoidable. For he sees very well that this necessity has a **subjective** condition, and that *objectively*, that is, under the existing circumstances and so under the influence of the very motives that determined him, a quite different action, even the exact opposite of his own, was entirely possible and could have happened, **if only he had been a different person**: it was on that alone that the matter turned. For him, because he is this person and no other, because he has such and such a character, no other action was indeed possible; but in itself, that is, *objectively*, it was possible. The **responsibility** of which he is conscious therefore falls, first and ostensibly, merely on the deed, but fundamentally on **his character**: for **this** he feels responsible. And for **this** the others too hold him responsible, since their judgment at once leaves the deed behind in order to fix the qualities of the doer: “he is a bad man, a villain”—or “he is a scoundrel”—or “he is a small, false, base soul”—so runs their judgment, and their reproaches come back to his **character**. The deed, together with its motive, comes into consideration there merely as testimony to the doer’s character, but counts as a sure symptom of it, by which he is irrevocably and forever fixed. Aristotle therefore says most truly: “We praise those who have acted; for deeds are signs of a settled disposition, since we would praise even someone who had not acted, if we believed him to be of that kind.”—*Rhetorica, I, 9.* (*We celebrate those who have acted with praise; but works are signs of a habit, since we would praise even one who had not acted, if we believed him to be of such a kind.*) So it is not at the passing deed but at the enduring qualities of the doer, that is, at the character from which the deed came, that hatred, abhorrence and contempt are cast. Hence in all languages the epithets of moral badness, the terms of abuse that denote it, are predicates of the **person** rather than of actions. They are attached to the **character**: for it has to bear the guilt, of which it was merely convicted on the occasion of the deeds. Where the **guilt** lies, the **responsibility** must lie as well; and since this is the sole datum that entitles us to infer moral freedom, the **freedom** too must lie in the same place, that is, in the **character** of the human being. This holds all the more since we have convinced ourselves sufficiently that freedom is not to be found immediately in individual actions, which, on the presupposition of the character, occur under strict necessity. The character, however, as was shown in the third section, is innate and unchangeable. Freedom in this sense, then, the only one for which the data are at hand, we now wish to consider somewhat more closely, so that, having inferred it from a fact of consciousness and found its place, we may also comprehend it philosophically, as far as that may be possible. In the third section it emerged that every action of a human being is the product of two factors: his character and the motive. This by no means signifies that the action is something intermediate, a compromise, as it were, between motive and character; rather it does full justice to both, in that, in its entire possibility, it rests on both at once, namely on the fact that the operative motive meets this character and that this character is determinable by such a motive. The character is the empirically known, persistent and unchangeable constitution of an individual will. Since this character is just as necessary a factor in every action as the motive, this explains the feeling that our deeds proceed from ourselves, or that “I will” which accompanies all our actions and by virtue of which everyone must acknowledge them as **his** deeds, for which he therefore feels morally responsible. This, once again, is precisely that “I will, and always will only what I will” found above in the examination of self-consciousness, which misleads the crude understanding into stubbornly asserting an absolute freedom of doing and refraining, a *freedom of indifferent choice*. But it is nothing more than the consciousness of the second factor of the action, which by itself would be wholly incapable of producing the action, yet equally incapable, once the motive enters, of leaving it undone. Only by being set in activity in this way, however, does that factor make its own constitution known to the faculty of knowledge, which, directed essentially outward and not inward, learns even the constitution of its own will only empirically, from its actions. This closer and ever more intimate acquaintance is what is properly called **conscience**, which for just this reason also speaks **directly** only **after** the action; **before** it, at most **indirectly**, in that, by means of reflection and a backward look at similar cases on which it has already pronounced, it is taken into account in deliberation as something that will occur in the future. Here is the place to recall the account, already mentioned in the previous section, which **Kant** gave of the relation between empirical and intelligible character, and thereby of the compatibility of freedom with necessity—an account that belongs among the most beautiful and profoundly conceived things that this great mind, indeed that human beings, have ever produced. I need only appeal to it, since it would be superfluous prolixity to repeat it here. But only from it can one comprehend, so far as human powers allow, how the strict necessity of our actions nevertheless coexists with that freedom to which the feeling of responsibility bears witness, and by virtue of which we are the doers of our deeds and these are morally attributable to us.—That relation of the empirical to the intelligible character set out by **Kant** rests entirely on what makes up the basic feature of his whole philosophy, namely the distinction between phenomenon and thing in itself. Just as for him the complete **empirical reality** of the world of experience coexists with its **transcendental ideality**, so does the strict **empirical necessity** of action coexist with its **transcendental freedom**. The empirical character, namely, like the whole human being as an object of experience, is a mere phenomenon, and therefore bound to the forms of all phenomena—time, space and causality—and subject to their laws. By contrast, the condition and foundation of this whole phenomenon, which as thing in itself is independent of these forms and therefore subject to no difference of time, and so persisting and unchangeable, is his **intelligible character**, that is, his will as thing in itself, to which, in this capacity, absolute freedom does indeed belong, that is, independence of the law of causality (as a mere form of phenomena). This freedom, however, is a **transcendental** one, that is, one that does not emerge in the phenomenon but exists only insofar as we abstract from the phenomenon and all its forms in order to arrive at what, outside all time, is to be thought as the inner essence of the human being in himself. By virtue of this freedom all the deeds of a human being are his own work, however necessarily they proceed from the empirical character when it meets the motives; for this empirical character is merely the phenomenon of the intelligible one in our **faculty of knowledge**, bound to time, space and causality—that is, it is the manner in which the essence in itself of our own self presents itself to that faculty. Accordingly, the **will** is indeed free, but only in itself and outside the phenomenon. In the phenomenon it already presents itself with a determinate character, to which all its deeds must conform, and they must therefore, when more closely determined by the motives that have been added, necessarily turn out thus and not otherwise. ### Chapter V, 3 This path leads, as is easily foreseen, to the conclusion that we must no longer seek the work of our **freedom**, as the common view does, in our individual actions, but in the whole being and essence (*existence and essence*) of the human being himself. This must be thought of as his free deed, which presents itself to the faculty of knowledge bound to time, space and causality alone as a multiplicity and diversity of actions. Precisely because of the original unity of what presents itself in them, however, those actions must all bear exactly the same character, and they therefore appear strictly necessitated by the motives of the moment, by which they are called forth and determined in detail. Thus for the world of experience the principle that *action follows being* stands firm without exception. Every thing acts in accordance with its constitution, and its acting, which follows upon causes, makes that constitution known. Every human being acts according to what he is, and the action, accordingly necessary each time, is determined in the individual case solely by the motives. **Freedom**, which therefore cannot be found in *action*, **must lie in** *being*. It has been a fundamental error of all ages, a hysteron proteron—the later put before the earlier—to ascribe necessity to *being* and freedom to *action*. The reverse is true: **freedom lies** in *being* **alone**; but from it and the motives *action* follows with necessity, and **from what we do we recognize what we are**. On this, and not on the supposed *freedom of indifferent choice*, rest the consciousness of responsibility and the moral tendency of life. Everything depends on what someone **is**: what he **does** will result from it of itself, as a necessary corollary. The consciousness of acting on our own authority and as the original source, which undeniably accompanies all our deeds despite their dependence on motives, and by virtue of which they are **our** deeds, therefore does not deceive. But its true content reaches further than the deeds and begins higher up, since our being and essence itself, from which all deeds necessarily proceed (on the occasion of motives), is in truth comprised in it. In this sense one may compare that consciousness of acting on our own authority and as the original source, like the consciousness of responsibility that accompanies our acting, to a pointer that indicates a more distant object than the nearer one lying in the same direction at which it seems to point. In a word: a human being always does only what he wills, and yet does it necessarily. But this is because he already **is** what he wills: for from what he **is**, everything he does at any time follows necessarily. If one considers his doing *objectively*, that is, from outside, one recognizes apodictically that, like the working of every natural being, it must be subject to the law of causality in all its strictness; *subjectively*, by contrast, everyone feels that he always does only what he **wills**. But this says merely that his working is the pure expression of his own very essence. Every natural being, even the lowest, would therefore feel the same, if it could feel. **Freedom** is thus not abolished by my account but merely moved out of the domain of individual actions, where it demonstrably cannot be found, up into a higher region, less easily accessible to our knowledge: that is, it is transcendental. And this is also the sense in which I should like that saying of Malebranche, “*freedom is a mystery*,” to be understood, under whose aegis the present treatise has tried to solve the task set by the Royal Society. ### Appendix, 1 **Appendix, Supplementing the First Section.** Following the division of freedom into physical, intellectual and moral that I laid down at the very outset, and now that the first and the last have been treated, I still have to discuss the second. This I shall do only for the sake of completeness, and therefore briefly. The intellect, or faculty of cognition, is the **medium of motives**: it is through this, that is, that they act upon the will, which is the true core of the human being. Only so far as this medium of motives is in a normal condition, performs its functions properly, and so presents the motives to the will for its choice unfalsified, just as they lie before it in the real external world, can the will decide in accordance with its nature, that is, with the person’s individual character, and thus express itself **unhindered**, according to its own essential being. Then the person is **intellectually free**; that is, his actions are the pure result of his will’s reaction to motives that lie before him in the external world just as they lie before everyone else. Accordingly they are then imputable to him, morally and legally as well. This intellectual freedom is **abolished** either because the medium of motives, the faculty of cognition, is disordered, whether lastingly or only for a time, or because external circumstances, in a particular case, falsify the apprehension of the motives. The former is the case in madness, delirium, paroxysm and sleep-drunkenness; the latter in a decisive and blameless error, for example when someone pours out poison instead of medicine, or takes a servant coming in at night for a robber and shoots him, and the like. For in both cases the motives are falsified, so that the will cannot decide as it would under the circumstances at hand if the intellect had delivered them to it correctly. Crimes committed under such circumstances are therefore not punishable by law either. For the laws proceed from the correct presupposition that the will is not morally free—in which case it could not be **steered**—but is subject to compulsion by motives. Accordingly they seek to set against any possible motives to crime stronger counter-motives, in the punishments they threaten, and a criminal code is nothing other than a register of counter-motives to criminal acts. But if it turns out that the intellect, through which these counter-motives were to act, was unable to take them in and hold them before the will, then their effect was impossible: they did not exist for it. It is as if one found that one of the threads meant to set a machine in motion had snapped. Guilt in such a case therefore passes from the will to the intellect; but the intellect is subject to no punishment, and the laws, like morality, have to do with the will alone. The will alone is the true human being: the intellect is merely its organ, its feelers extended outward, that is, the medium through which motives act upon it. Just as little are such deeds **morally** imputable. For they are no trait of the person’s character; he either did something other than what he thought he was doing, or was incapable of thinking of what should have restrained him, that is, of admitting the counter-motives. It is as when a substance to be examined chemically is exposed to the action of several reagents, so that one may see for which it has the strongest affinity: if, after the experiment, it turns out that through some accidental obstacle one of the reagents could not act at all, the experiment is invalid. The intellectual freedom that we have here considered as wholly abolished can also be merely **diminished**, or partially abolished. This happens especially through emotion and through intoxication. **Emotion** is the sudden, violent excitation of the will by a representation that bursts in from outside and becomes a motive, one of such vividness that it darkens all the others that could work against it as counter-motives and does not let them come distinctly into consciousness. These latter are mostly of an abstract nature, mere thoughts, whereas the former is something perceptual, something present; so they do not, as it were, get their shot, and thus do not get what in English is called *fair play*: the deed is already done before they could counteract. It is as if, in a duel, one man fired before the word of command. Here too, then, both legal and moral responsibility is abolished, more or less according to the circumstances, but always only in part. In England a murder committed in complete rashness and without the slightest reflection, in the most violent and suddenly aroused anger, is called *manslaughter* and is punished lightly, or sometimes not at all.—**Intoxication** is a state that predisposes to emotions, since it heightens the vividness of perceptual representation, weakens thinking *in the abstract*, and in addition increases the energy of the will. In place of responsibility for the deeds, responsibility for the intoxication itself steps in here; hence it is not excused in law, although intellectual freedom is here partly abolished. Of this intellectual freedom—*the voluntary and the involuntary in respect of thought*—**Aristotle** already speaks, though very briefly and inadequately, in the *Ethic. Eudem., II, c. 7 et 9*, and somewhat more fully in the *Ethic. Nicom., III, c. 2.*—It is this freedom that is meant when *forensic medicine* and criminal justice ask whether a criminal was in a state of freedom and was therefore accountable. In general, then, all those crimes are to be regarded as committed in the absence of intellectual freedom in which the person either did not know what he was doing, or was utterly incapable of considering what should have restrained him, namely the consequences of the deed. In such cases, accordingly, he is not to be punished. Those, by contrast, who think that no criminal ought to be punished, simply because **moral** freedom does not exist and all the actions of a given person consequently cannot fail to occur, proceed from a false view of punishment: that it is a visitation upon crimes for their own sake, a requiting of evil with evil on moral grounds. Such a thing, though Kant taught it, would be absurd, pointless and wholly unwarranted. For how could one human being be entitled to set himself up as the absolute judge of another in moral respects, and as such to torment him for his sins! Rather, the law, that is, the threat of punishment, has the purpose of being the counter-motive to crimes not yet committed. If in a particular case it fails of this effect, it must be carried out, because otherwise it would fail of it in all future cases too. The criminal for his part suffers the punishment in this case actually in consequence of his moral constitution, which, together with the circumstances that were the motives, and his intellect, which held out to him the hope of escaping punishment, inevitably brought the deed about. He could be wronged in this only if his moral character were not his own work, his intelligible deed, but the work of another. The same relation of deed to consequence holds when the consequences of his vicious doing come about not by human laws but by natural ones, for example when dissolute excesses bring on terrible diseases, or when, in attempting a burglary, he comes to grief through some accident—for example, in the pigsty he breaks into at night to carry off its usual occupant, he finds in its place the bear, whose keeper put up at this inn that evening, and who comes toward him with open arms. ## Translation — Mouseia > Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Plain English translation, made independently and directly from the German, not from the Musean edition or a published English translation, including the author’s notes and appendix. Source edition: Arthur Schopenhauers sämtliche Werke, vol. VII, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, n.d. [1890s]), Internet Archive item arthurschopenha07schouoft ### Chapter I, 1 **Prize Essay** on **the Freedom of the Will**, awarded the prize by the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences in Trondheim on January 26, 1839. **Motto:** *Freedom is a mystery.* The question set by the Royal Society is: *Can human freedom of the will be proved from self-consciousness?* **In German: “Can the freedom of the human will be proved from self-consciousness?”** **I. Definitions.** This question is important, serious, and difficult. In essence, it is also one of the central problems of all medieval and modern philosophy. Great precision is therefore certainly called for, along with an analysis of the main concepts in the question. 1. **What does freedom mean?** On close examination, this is a **negative** concept. By it we mean only the absence of anything that obstructs or restrains. Whatever does the obstructing, however, must be something positive, since it exerts a force. Depending on what kind of obstruction is possible, the concept has three very different forms: physical, intellectual, and moral freedom. a) **Physical freedom** is the absence of **material** obstacles of any kind. So we speak of an open sky, a clear view, open air, an open field, a free space, free heat (heat that is not chemically bound), free electricity, and the free flow of a river once mountains or locks no longer hold it back, and so on. Even free lodging, free meals, a free press, and a postage-free letter mean the absence of burdensome conditions that usually come with such things and obstruct our enjoyment of them. Most often, though, we think of freedom as a quality of animals. Their distinguishing feature is that their movements come from **their will** and are voluntary. We therefore call these movements **free** when no material obstacle makes them impossible. These obstacles can take very different forms, but what they obstruct is always the will. For simplicity, then, we prefer to approach the concept from its positive side. We use it to mean anything that moves solely through its own will, or acts solely from its own will. This reversal changes nothing essential in the concept. Accordingly, in this physical sense of freedom, animals and human beings are called **free** when neither bonds, imprisonment, nor paralysis—in short, no **physical, material** obstacle—hinder their actions, and these actions instead follow their **will**. This **physical meaning** of freedom, especially as a quality of animals, is its original, direct, and therefore most common meaning. For that very reason, it is not open to doubt or dispute: experience can always confirm its reality. As soon as an animal acts only from its own will, it is **free** in this sense. No account is taken here of what might influence its will itself. In its original, direct, and therefore everyday meaning, freedom concerns only **the ability to act**—that is, the absence of **physical** obstacles to action. So we say: the bird in the air is free, and so is the wild animal in the forest; human beings are free by nature; only the free person is happy. We also call a people free. By this we mean that it is governed only by laws, and has made those laws itself. In that case it always follows only its own will. Political freedom therefore belongs under physical freedom. But as soon as we leave this **physical** freedom behind and consider its two other forms, we are no longer dealing with the everyday meaning of the concept. We are dealing with a **philosophical** meaning, which, as everyone knows, opens the way to many difficulties. It divides into two entirely different forms: intellectual and moral freedom. b) **Intellectual freedom**, what Aristotle calls *the voluntary and involuntary in thought*, is considered here only to make the classification complete. I will therefore take the liberty of postponing its discussion until the very end of this essay. By then, the concepts it requires will already have been explained in the preceding discussion, so it can be dealt with briefly. In the classification, however, it had to take its place beside physical freedom, to which it is most closely related. c) I will therefore turn straight to the third kind, **moral freedom**. This is the *freedom of choice* that the Royal Society is asking about. ### Chapter I, 2 This concept connects with physical freedom in a way that also explains why it must have developed much later. As I have said, physical freedom concerns only material obstacles. As soon as these are absent, that freedom is present. But people noticed that in some cases a person could face no material obstacle and still be kept by motives alone—threats, promises, dangers, and the like—from acting as he would otherwise certainly have wanted. So they asked whether such a person had still been free. Could a strong opposing motive really obstruct an action that followed his actual will, and make it impossible, just as a physical obstacle could? Common sense could answer this without much difficulty. A motive can never work in the same way as a physical obstacle. A physical obstacle can easily exceed human bodily strength altogether and without qualification. A motive, by contrast, can never be irresistible in itself or have unconditional power. It can always possibly be outweighed by a **stronger opposing motive**, provided such a motive exists and can determine the particular person’s will in that case. We often see even what is usually the strongest motive of all, preserving one’s life, outweighed by other motives. Examples include suicide and sacrificing one’s life for others, for opinions, or for all sorts of interests. Conversely, people have sometimes endured every degree of the most carefully devised torture on the rack simply because they thought they would otherwise lose their lives. This showed that motives do not exert a purely objective and absolute compulsion. Still, they might exert a subjective and relative one—one that applies to the particular person concerned. The result would be the same. So the question remained: is the will itself free?—The concept of freedom, previously understood only in relation to **being able to act**, had now been applied to **willing**. The problem had arisen of whether willing itself was **free**. But a closer look shows that the original, purely experience-based, everyday concept of freedom cannot be connected with **willing** in this way. According to that concept, “**free**” means “in accordance with one’s own will.” To ask whether the will itself is free is therefore to ask whether the will agrees with itself. Of course it does, but saying so tells us nothing. According to this experience-based concept, “I am free when I can **do** what I **will**.” Here the words “what I will” already settle the question of freedom. But now that we are asking whether **willing** itself is free, the question would accordingly become: “Can you also **will** what you will?” This amounts to making willing depend on another act of willing behind it. Suppose the answer were yes. A second question would arise at once: “Can you also will what you will to will?” This would push the question back endlessly. We would always be thinking of one act of willing as dependent on an earlier or deeper one. We would try in vain to reach, by this route, a final act of willing that we would have to think of and accept as dependent on nothing at all. But if we were willing to assume such an act, we could just as well choose the first as any arbitrarily chosen last one. That would reduce the question to the very simple one: “Can you will?” Whether merely answering yes to this question settles the freedom of willing is precisely what we wanted to know. It remains unsettled. So the original, experience-based concept of freedom, drawn from action, resists a direct connection with the concept of will. To apply freedom to the will nonetheless, people therefore had to change the concept by making it more abstract. They did this by taking **freedom** to mean, in general, only the absence of all **necessity**. Here the concept keeps the **negative** character I assigned to it at the outset. So we must first discuss **necessity**, the **positive** concept that gives this **negative** one its meaning. We ask, then: what does **necessary** mean? The usual explanation is: “What is necessary is something whose opposite is impossible, or something that cannot be otherwise.” This merely explains a word. It restates the concept without increasing our understanding. Instead, I offer this definition of the thing itself: **what is necessary is what follows from a given sufficient ground**. Like every correct definition, this statement can also be reversed. That sufficient ground may be logical, mathematical, or physical, in which last case it is called a cause. The **necessity** will accordingly be logical (as with a conclusion when the premises are given), mathematical (for example, the equality of a triangle’s sides when its angles are equal), or physical and real (as with the occurrence of an effect as soon as its cause is present). But in every case the consequence follows with equally strict necessity once the ground is given. We recognize something as necessary only insofar as we understand it as following from a given ground. Conversely, as soon as we recognize something as following from a sufficient ground, we see that it is necessary. For all grounds compel their consequences. This definition of the thing itself is so fitting and complete that necessity and consequence from a given sufficient ground are interchangeable concepts: either can always be put in place of the other∗).—The absence of necessity would therefore be the same as the absence of a determining sufficient ground. Yet we think of **the contingent** as the opposite of **the necessary**. There is no contradiction here. Anything contingent is contingent only in **relative** terms. In the real world, the only place where anything contingent can be found, every event is **necessary** in relation to its cause. But it is **contingent** in relation to everything else it happens to meet in space and time. Now, since freedom is defined by the absence of necessity, what is free would have to depend on no cause whatsoever. It would therefore have to be defined as the **absolutely contingent**. This is a highly problematic concept. I cannot guarantee that it can even be thought, yet strangely it coincides with the concept of **freedom**. In any case, **what is free** remains what is necessary in no respect, which means what depends on no ground. Applied to the human will, this concept would mean that an individual will is not determined in its expressions (acts of will) by causes, or by sufficient grounds of any kind. Otherwise its acts would be necessary rather than free, since whatever follows from a given ground, of whatever kind, is always **necessary**. This is the basis of **Kant’s** definition: freedom is the ability to begin a series of changes **by itself**. Reduced to its true meaning, “by itself” means “without a preceding cause.” But that is the same as “without necessity.” So although this definition makes freedom look like a positive concept, a closer look brings out its negative nature again.—A free will, then, would be a will not determined by grounds. Anything that determines something else must be a ground, and in the case of real things, a real ground—that is, a cause. A free will would therefore be determined by nothing at all. Its individual expressions (acts of will) would come entirely and originally from itself, without being made necessary by preceding conditions, and therefore without being determined by anything according to a rule. At this point we can no longer think clearly. The principle of sufficient reason, in all its meanings, is the essential form of our entire capacity for knowledge, yet here we are supposed to give it up. Still, there is a *technical term* for this concept too: *freedom of choice between alternatives with nothing determining the choice*. This, incidentally, is the only clear, fixed, and definite concept of what is called freedom of the will. We cannot depart from it without getting caught in wavering, foggy explanations that conceal a hesitant refusal to take a definite position—as when people speak of grounds that do not necessarily bring about their consequences. Every consequence of a ground is necessary, and every necessity is a consequence of a ground. The immediate consequence of assuming such *freedom of choice*, and one that characterizes the concept itself, must therefore be established as its distinguishing feature: a human individual who has this freedom can equally well perform two diametrically opposed actions under given external circumstances that are completely specified in every particular. ∗) A discussion of the concept of necessity can be found in my treatise on the principle of sufficient reason, § 49, S. 184 f. of this edition. ### Chapter I, 3 2. **What does self-consciousness mean?** The answer is: consciousness of **one’s own self**, as opposed to consciousness of **other things**. This latter is our ability to know other things. Even before those other things appear in it, this ability contains certain forms governing how they appear. These are therefore conditions that make their objective existence possible—that is, their existence as objects for us. As is well known, these forms include time, space, and causality. Although these forms of knowledge lie within us, they do so only to let us become conscious of **other things** as such, and they relate entirely to those things. So even though these forms lie within us, we must not regard them as belonging to **self-consciousness**. Rather, they make **consciousness of other things**—that is, objective knowledge—possible. Nor will I let the two meanings—*consciousness and conscience*—of the word used in the question lead me to include moral impulses in self-consciousness. These human impulses are known as conscience, or sometimes practical reason, with the categorical imperatives **Kant** attributes to it. I exclude them partly because they arise only through experience and reflection, and thus through consciousness of other things. I also exclude them because no sharp and indisputable boundary has yet been drawn between what originally belongs to human nature itself in these impulses and what moral and religious education adds. Besides, the Royal Society can hardly intend to include conscience in self-consciousness in order to shift the question onto moral ground. That would merely repeat **Kant’s** moral proof—or rather, postulate—of freedom from the moral law of which we are conscious *independently of experience*, through the inference “You can, because you ought.” What I have said shows that by far the greater part of our consciousness as a whole is not **self-consciousness**. It is **consciousness of other things**, or our ability to know other things. This ability directs all its powers outward. It is the stage on which the real external world appears (indeed, from a deeper standpoint of inquiry, the condition of that world). It first grasps that world through perception. It then works what it has gained in this way into concepts, as though chewing it over again. **Thinking** consists in combining these concepts endlessly with the help of words.—So **self-consciousness** would be only what remains after we subtract this by far greatest part of our consciousness as a whole. We can already see that its contents cannot be very rich. So if it really does contain the data we are looking for to prove freedom of the will, we may hope not to miss them. An **inner sense**∗) has also been proposed as the organ of self-consciousness. But this should be understood more figuratively than literally, since self-consciousness is immediate. However that may be, our next question is: what does self-consciousness contain? Or: how does a human being become immediately conscious of his own self? The answer is: entirely as a **being that wills**. Anyone who observes his own self-consciousness will soon notice that its object is always his own willing. Of course, this does not mean only definite acts of will that immediately become deeds, or explicit decisions together with the actions that follow from them. Anyone who can recognize what is essential despite differences in degree and kind will also readily count all desiring, striving, wishing, wanting, longing, hoping, loving, rejoicing, celebrating, and the like as expressions of willing. The same goes for not willing or resisting: all loathing, fleeing, fearing, anger, hatred, grieving, and suffering pain—in short, all emotions and passions. These emotions and passions are simply weaker or stronger movements of one’s own will, sometimes violent and stormy, sometimes quiet. This will may be held back or set loose, satisfied or unsatisfied. In all their varied forms, these movements concern getting or failing to get what we will, and enduring or overcoming what we loathe. They are therefore definite states of the same will that is active in decisions and actions∗). Even what we call feelings of pleasure and displeasure belong here. They come in a great variety of degrees and kinds, but they can always be traced back to states of desire or loathing. That is, they can be traced back to the will itself becoming conscious of itself as satisfied or unsatisfied, held back or set loose. This extends even to pleasant or painful bodily sensations and the countless sensations between those two extremes. The essential feature of all these states is that they enter self-consciousness immediately as something that agrees with the will or goes against it. Indeed, on close examination, we are immediately conscious even of our own body only as the organ through which the will acts outwardly and as the seat of our sensitivity to pleasant or painful sensations. But as I have just said, these sensations themselves come down to entirely immediate states of the will that either agree with it or go against it. Whether or not we include these mere feelings of pleasure or displeasure, we find in any case that all these movements of the will relate throughout to what we perceive and know in the external world. This relationship is acknowledged on all sides. This changing willing and not willing, with its constant ebb and flow, is the sole object of self-consciousness—or, if one prefers, of the inner sense. But as I have said, what we perceive and know in the external world no longer lies within immediate **self-consciousness**. As soon as we touch on the external world, we therefore reach the boundary where self-consciousness meets **consciousness of other things**. The objects perceived in that world are the material and the occasion for all these movements and acts of the will. This must not be taken as *begging the question*. No one can deny that our willing always has external objects that it aims at and revolves around, and that these objects, as motives, at least give rise to it. Otherwise we would be left with a will completely cut off from the external world and locked inside the dark interior of self-consciousness. For now, the only thing still in question is the necessity with which those things in the external world determine acts of will. ∗) It is already found in Cicero as *“inner touch”*: *Acad. quaest., IV, 7.* More clearly in Augustine, *De lib. arb., II, 3 sqq.* Then in Descartes: *Princ. phil., IV, 190*; and fully developed in Locke. ∗) It is very noteworthy that the Church Father **Augustine** already understood this perfectly, while so many modern thinkers with their supposed “faculty of feeling” fail to see it. In *De civit. Dei, Lib. XIV, c. 6*, he speaks of the *emotions of the mind*, which in the preceding book he has placed under four categories: *desire, fear, joy, and sadness*. He says: “*For the will is present in them all; indeed, they are all nothing other than acts of will. For what are desire and joy but the will agreeing with the things we want? And what are fear and sadness but the will disagreeing with the things we do not want?*” So we find self-consciousness very much occupied with the **will**—in fact, exclusively so. Our concern is whether, in this its sole subject matter, it finds data that establish the **freedom** of that very will in the sense explained above, the only clear and definite sense of the word. We will now head straight toward this question. Up to this point we have approached it only by tacking back and forth, but we have already come noticeably closer. ### Chapter II, 1 **II. The will as it appears to self-consciousness.** When someone **wills**, they will something. An act of will always aims at an object. We can think of it only in relation to such an object. What does it mean, then, to will something? It means this: an act of will is itself, at first, only an object of self-consciousness. But it arises in response to something that belongs to our consciousness of **other things**. That something is an object of our faculty of knowledge. In this connection we call it a **motive**. It also provides the act of will with its subject matter. The act aims at it, meaning that it seeks some change in it and so reacts to it. This **reaction** makes up the act's whole nature. It is already clear from this that the act could not occur without that object. It would lack both an occasion and something to act on. But here is the question. Once this object is present to the faculty of knowledge, **must** the act of will occur? Or could it fail to occur, with either no act of will arising or a completely different, perhaps even opposite one? In other words, could that reaction fail to happen? Or could it be different, or even opposite, under exactly the same circumstances? In short: does the motive necessarily produce the act of will? Or, when the motive enters consciousness, does the will retain complete freedom to will or not to will? Here we use the concept of freedom in the abstract sense discussed above and shown to be the only one applicable here: simply the absence of necessity. This defines our problem. We must look for the facts needed to solve it in immediate **self-consciousness**. To do this, we will examine its testimony closely. We will not cut the knot with a sweeping decision, as **Descartes** did. He simply asserted: *"But we are so conscious of the freedom and indifference within us that there is nothing we grasp more clearly and completely." (Princ. phil., I, § 41.)* **Leibniz** already pointed out that this assertion is untenable *(Theod., I, § 50, et III, § 292)*. Yet on this point he himself was only a reed swaying in the wind. After making the most contradictory statements, he finally reached the conclusion that motives incline the will but do not necessitate it. He says: *"All actions are determined and never indifferent, because there is always a reason that inclines, but does not necessitate, things to happen this way rather than another." (Leibniz, De libertate: Opera, ed. Erdmann, p. 669.)* This leads me to point out that no such middle course between the alternatives stated above can hold. We cannot adopt a certain popular half-measure and say that motives determine the will only to some extent: that it feels their influence, but only up to a certain point, and can then escape it. Once we grant a given force causal power, and so recognize that it has an effect, any resistance only calls for an increase in that force in proportion to the resistance. It will then complete its effect. Someone who cannot be won over with 10 ducats, but wavers, will be won over with 100, and so on. We therefore put our problem to immediate **self-consciousness**, in the sense established above. What can this self-consciousness tell us about that abstract question? Does the concept of **necessity** apply to the occurrence of an act of will once a motive is given—that is, presented to the intellect—or does it not? Can the act fail to occur in that case, or can it not? We would be badly mistaken to expect this self-consciousness to give us thorough, far-reaching answers about causality in general, motivation in particular, or the necessity either might involve. Self-consciousness, as it exists in everyone, is much too simple and limited to have a say in such matters. These concepts come instead from pure understanding, which is directed outward. They can be discussed only before the tribunal of reflective reason. Natural, simple, indeed naive self-consciousness cannot even understand the question, much less answer it. Each person can listen inwardly to its testimony about acts of will. Stripped of everything foreign and inessential, and reduced to its bare content, that testimony would run something like this: "I can will. And when I will an action, the movable parts of my body will carry it out at once, as soon as I will it, without fail." In short: "**I can do what I will.**" Immediate self-consciousness says nothing beyond this, however we turn its statement around or frame the question. Its testimony always concerns our **ability to act according to our will**. But this is the empirical, original, everyday concept of freedom set out at the very beginning. In that sense, **free** means "**in accordance with the will**." Self-consciousness will affirm this freedom without reservation. But it is not the freedom we are asking about. Self-consciousness affirms freedom of **action**—on the assumption that **we will**. Our question concerns freedom of **willing**. We are investigating the relation between willing itself and the motive. The statement "I can do what I will" says nothing about this. Self-consciousness does indeed tell us that our actions, meaning our bodily actions, depend on our will. But that is quite different from our acts of will being independent of external circumstances. Such independence would constitute freedom of the will. Self-consciousness can tell us nothing about it because it lies outside its sphere. It concerns the causal relation of the external world, given to us in our consciousness of other things, to our decisions. Self-consciousness cannot judge the relation between something entirely outside its range and something within it. No faculty of knowledge can establish a relation if one of its terms cannot be given to it in any way. Clearly, the **objects** of willing, which determine the act of will, lie outside the bounds of **self-consciousness**. They belong to our consciousness **of other things**. Only the act of will itself lies within self-consciousness. And our question concerns the causal relation of those objects to this act. Self-consciousness deals only with the act of will and its absolute control over the parts of the body. That control is what is really meant by "what I will." In fact, only the exercise of this control—**the deed**—marks it as an act of will even for self-consciousness. While it is still taking shape, it is called a **wish**. Once complete, it is called a **decision**. But even self-consciousness has proof that it is a decision only when the **deed** occurs. Until then it can change. Here we have already reached the main source of an illusory appearance that certainly cannot be denied. It leads the unreflective person—someone with no philosophical training—to think that opposite acts of will are possible for them in a given case. They insist that their self-consciousness tells them so. They are confusing wishing with willing. They can **wish** for opposite things ∗), but they can **will** only **one** of them. Even self-consciousness learns which one only from the **deed**. For that very reason, self-consciousness can tell us nothing about the law-governed necessity through which one of two opposite wishes, rather than the other, becomes an act of will and a deed. It learns the result entirely *after the event*, not *in advance*. Opposite wishes, with their motives, rise and fall before it, alternately and repeatedly. Of each it says that it will become a deed if it becomes an act of will. This last, purely **subjective** possibility does exist for each wish. It is precisely what "I can do what I will" means. But this **subjective** possibility is entirely conditional. It says only: "If I will this, I can do it." It does not include the determining factor needed for willing. Self-consciousness contains only willing, not the grounds that determine it. Those grounds lie in our consciousness of other things, that is, in our faculty of knowledge. What decides the matter, by contrast, is **objective** possibility. But that lies outside self-consciousness, in the world of objects. Both the motive and the human being considered as an object belong to that world. Objective possibility is therefore foreign to self-consciousness and belongs to our consciousness of other things. That **subjective** possibility is like a stone's capacity to give off sparks. This capacity is conditional on the steel, which carries the **objective** possibility. I will return to this from the other side in the next section. There we will no longer consider the will from within, as we do here, but from outside. We will thus investigate the **objective** possibility of an act of will. Once the matter has been lit up from these two different sides, it will become completely clear. Examples will also illustrate it. ∗) See "Parerga", Teil 2, § 327. ### Chapter II, 2 The feeling within self-consciousness, "I can do what I will," is always with us. But it says only this: our decisions, or settled acts of will, always pass straight into the world of perception, even though they arise in the dark depths within us. Our body belongs to that world like everything else. This consciousness forms the bridge between the inner and outer worlds. Without it, a bottomless chasm would keep them apart. The outer world would contain only perceptions as objects, independent of us in every sense. The inner world would contain only acts of will that we felt but that had no effect. If we questioned someone with no philosophical preconceptions, they would express this immediate consciousness roughly as follows. It is the consciousness so often mistaken for consciousness of a supposed freedom of the will: "I can do what I will. If I will to go left, I go left. If I will to go right, I go right. It depends entirely on my will alone. So I am free." This statement is certainly completely true and correct. But it already presupposes the will. It assumes that the will has already decided. So it can establish nothing about the will's own freedom. It says nothing at all about whether the occurrence of the act of will itself is dependent or independent. It concerns only the **consequences** of that act once it occurs. More precisely, it concerns the act's inevitable appearance as a bodily action. But the consciousness behind that statement is the sole reason why the unreflective person considers freedom of the will so immediately certain. Such a person lacks philosophical training, though they may be a great scholar in other fields. They declare this freedom to be an unquestionable truth. They cannot really believe that philosophers seriously doubt it. In their heart they think all this talk is just a fencing exercise in academic argument, and basically a joke. The certainty supplied by that consciousness is indeed important, and they always have it readily at hand. Besides, a human being is primarily and essentially a practical being, not a theoretical one. We are far more clearly conscious of the **active** side of our acts of will—their effectiveness—than of the **passive** side—their dependence. For these reasons it is hard to make someone without philosophical training grasp the real meaning of our problem. It is hard to get them to understand that we are now asking not about the **consequences** of their willing on each occasion, but about its **grounds**. Their **actions** certainly depend on their **willing** alone. But we now want to know what **that willing itself** depends on. Does it depend on nothing at all, or on something? They can certainly do one thing if they will it, and equally do the other if they will it. But they must now consider whether they are also capable of **willing** either one. To make this clear, suppose we ask: "Can you really follow either of two opposite wishes that have arisen within you? For example, if you must choose between two things you could own, and cannot have both, can you prefer either one just as well as the other?" They will say: "Perhaps I may find it hard to choose. But whether I will to choose one or the other will always depend entirely on me alone, and on no other power. I have complete freedom to choose whichever I will. And in doing so I will always follow only my own will." If we then ask, "But what does your willing itself depend on?" they answer from self-consciousness: "On nothing but me! I can will what I will. What I will is what I will." They say this last part without intending a tautology. Nor, even at the deepest level of their consciousness, are they appealing to the principle of identity, which alone makes it true. Instead, pressed to the limit here, they speak of willing their own willing. That is like speaking of an I belonging to their I. They have been driven back to the core of their self-consciousness. There they find that their I and their will cannot be distinguished, but nothing remains with which to judge either. Take that choice, with their person and the objects of choice assumed as given. Could **their willing** one thing rather than the other possibly turn out any differently from the way it finally does? Or do those given facts determine it as necessarily as the fact that a triangle's largest side lies opposite its largest angle? This question lies so far beyond natural self-consciousness that it cannot even be brought to understand it. Still less does it carry the answer within itself, ready-made or even as an undeveloped seed, needing only to state it without reflection. As explained, the unreflective person without philosophical training will keep trying to escape the perplexity that the question must cause if truly understood. As noted above, they take refuge behind the immediate certainty: "I can do what I will, and I will what I will." They will try this again and again, countless times. It will be hard to make them stop and face the real question, which they always try to slip away from. We should not blame them. The question really is deeply troubling. Its probing hand reaches into the innermost nature of a human being. It asks whether a person, like everything else in the world, is a being whose own constitution fixes what they are once and for all. Do they, like every other being in nature, have definite, lasting properties? Do their reactions to external occasions necessarily follow from those properties, so that their reactions have a character unchangeable from this side? And does this leave whatever may be changeable in those reactions entirely subject to determination by external occasions? Or does the human being alone form an exception to all of nature? Suppose we finally manage to make this person stop and face that troubling question. Suppose we make it clear that we are investigating the origin of their acts of will themselves: whether those acts arise according to some rule or with no rule at all. We will then discover that immediate self-consciousness has no information about this. The unreflective person now abandons it themselves. They reveal their bewilderment by thinking things over and trying all sorts of explanations. They try to ground these explanations sometimes in experience of themselves and others, sometimes in general rules of the understanding. But their uncertain, shifting explanations show clearly enough that immediate self-consciousness gives no answer to the question properly understood. Earlier, it had an answer ready at once to the question misunderstood. The ultimate reason is that a person's will is their actual self, the true core of their being. It therefore forms the basis of their consciousness, as something simply given and present, beyond which they cannot go. For they themselves are as they will, and will as they are. So asking whether they could will differently from the way they do means asking whether they could be someone other than themselves. And they do not know that. For just this reason, a philosopher, who differs from them only in training, must also look elsewhere to reach clarity in this difficult matter. They must turn to their understanding, which supplies knowledge *independent of experience*; to reason, which reflects on that knowledge; and to experience, which presents their own and others' actions for interpreting and checking this knowledge supplied by the understanding. These form the final and only competent authority. Its decision will not be as easy, immediate, and simple as that of self-consciousness. But it will address the question and answer it adequately. The head raised the question, and the head must answer it. ### Chapter II, 3 We should not be surprised that immediate self-consciousness has no answer to that obscure, speculative, difficult, and troubling question. It is a very limited part of our consciousness as a whole. That consciousness is dark within and directs all its objective powers of knowledge outward. All its completely certain knowledge—knowledge certain *independently of experience*—concerns only the external world. There it can decide with certainty what is possible, impossible, or necessary, according to certain general laws rooted in itself. In this way it produces pure mathematics, pure logic, and even a pure science of nature's foundations, *independently of experience*. Next, it applies the forms it is conscious of *independently of experience* to the facts given in sensation. This supplies it with the real external world of perception, and with experience. Further, applying logic and the power of thought underlying it to that external world supplies concepts and the world of thoughts. These in turn supply the sciences, their achievements, and so on. **Out there**, then, all is bright and clear before its eyes. But **inside** it is dark, like a well-blackened telescope. No principle known *independently of experience* lights up the night of its own interior. These lighthouses shine only outward. As discussed above, the so-called inner sense has nothing before it but our own will. All so-called inner feelings can really be traced back to the movements of that will. But as shown above, everything this inner perception of the will supplies comes down to willing and not willing, along with the much-praised certainty: "What I will, I can do." This really means: "I see every act of my will appear at once, in a way completely incomprehensible to me, as an action of my body." Strictly speaking, for the knowing subject this is a statement based on experience. Nothing beyond this can be found here. So the court we have approached has no authority to judge the question raised. In fact, the question in its true sense cannot even be put before that court, since it does not understand it. I will now restate the answer to our inquiry at self-consciousness in a shorter, simpler form. Everyone's **self-consciousness** says very clearly that they can **do** what they will. We can also think of them **willing** completely opposite actions. It certainly follows that they can also **do** opposite things if they will. Only an untrained understanding confuses this with being able to **will** opposite things in a given case, and calls this **freedom of the will**. But the statement above contains absolutely no claim that someone can **will** opposite things in a given case. It says only that, of two opposite actions, if they **will this one**, they can do it; and if they **will that one**, they can do that too. Whether they can **will** either one in the given case remains unsettled. That calls for a deeper investigation than self-consciousness alone can decide. The shortest formula for this result, though put in academic terms, would be: self-consciousness speaks about the will only *from the side of what follows it*; the question of freedom concerns *the side of what precedes it*. So the undeniable testimony of self-consciousness, "I can do what I will," contains and decides absolutely nothing about freedom of the will. Such freedom would mean that the act of will on each occasion, in each individual case and with a given individual character, was not necessarily determined by the external circumstances in which this person then found themselves. Instead, it could turn out this way or another. Self-consciousness remains completely silent about this. The matter lies entirely outside its range, since it rests on the causal relation between the external world and the human being. Ask someone of sound understanding but without philosophical education what constitutes the freedom of the will they assert so confidently on the testimony of self-consciousness. They will answer: "The fact that I can do what I will, as long as I am not physically prevented." So they are always speaking about the relation between their **action** and their **willing**. But as shown in the first section, this is still only **physical** freedom. Ask further whether, in that situation, they can **will** either a thing or its opposite in the given case. In their initial eagerness they will say yes. But as soon as they begin to grasp what the question means, they will also begin to have doubts. Finally they will become uncertain and confused. Their preferred escape will be to retreat behind their refrain, "I can do what I will," and entrench themselves there against all arguments and reasoning. But the corrected reply to their refrain would be as follows, as I hope to establish beyond doubt in the next section: "You can **do** what you will. But at any given moment of your life you can **will** only one definite thing, and absolutely nothing other than that one thing." The discussion in this section would, strictly speaking, already answer the Royal Society's question, and answer it in the negative. This is only the main outline of an answer, however. The account of the facts within self-consciousness will also be filled out somewhat in what follows. But in one eventuality we can also check this negative answer. We can now put the question to the authority to which we were referred above as the only competent one: pure understanding, reason reflecting on its data, and experience following in the wake of both. Suppose its decision were that *freedom of choice* does not exist at all. Instead, human action, like everything else in nature, occurs in each given case as an effect that necessarily follows. This would also assure us that immediate self-consciousness **cannot even contain** facts from which the *freedom of choice* in question could be proved. Our decision would then gain a rational basis in addition to the empirical basis already presented, and so would be doubly secured. This would happen through the inference *from impossibility to nonexistence*, the only possible way to establish **negative** truths *independently of experience*. For we cannot assume that a definite contradiction is possible between the immediate testimony of self-consciousness and the results of the principles of pure understanding, together with their application to experience. Our self-consciousness cannot be so deceitful. Here we should note that even the supposed antinomy Kant set out on this subject is not meant, even by Kant himself, to arise from the thesis and antithesis coming from different sources of knowledge. It is not that one starts, say, from the testimony of self-consciousness and the other from reason and experience. Instead, both thesis and antithesis argue from supposedly objective grounds. But the thesis rests on nothing but lazy reason: the need to stop somewhere in the backward search for grounds. The antithesis, by contrast, really has all the objective grounds on its side. We must now undertake this **indirect** investigation. It will stay within the field of the faculty of knowledge and the external world presented to it. But it will also cast much light back on the **direct** investigation carried out so far, and so help to complete it. It will expose the natural errors that arise from misreading that very simple testimony of self-consciousness when self-consciousness comes into conflict with consciousness of other things. This latter consciousness is the faculty of knowledge. It is rooted in one and the same subject as self-consciousness. Indeed, only at the end of this indirect investigation will some light dawn on the true meaning and content of the "I will" that accompanies all our actions. It will also illuminate our consciousness that these actions originate in us and are under our own power, which makes them **our** actions. Only then will the direct investigation carried out so far be complete. ### Chapter III, 1 **III. The will as seen by consciousness of other things.** Let us now take our problem to our capacity for knowledge. We know in advance that this capacity is directed outward by its very nature. The will therefore cannot be an object of direct perception for it. The will was such an object for self-consciousness, though self-consciousness proved unable to judge our question. Here we can examine only **beings** that have a will. They appear before our capacity for knowledge as objective, external phenomena—that is, as objects of experience. We must now study and judge them as such. We must partly use general rules that are certain *a priori* and hold for experience as a whole, as conditions of its possibility. We must partly use the facts that actual, existing experience provides. So we are no longer dealing with the **will** itself, as it is open only to the inner sense. We are dealing with **beings that will and are moved by the will**, and that are objects of the outer senses. This puts us at a disadvantage: we must examine the true object of our inquiry only indirectly and from farther away. But that is more than offset by an advantage. We can now use a much better tool in our inquiry than direct self-consciousness, the so-called inner sense, with its dim, dull, one-sided awareness. Our tool is the **understanding**, equipped with all the outer senses and all the powers needed to grasp things objectively. The most general and basic form of this understanding is the **law of causality**. Indeed, only through this law do we come to perceive the real external world. We immediately and quite directly take the sensations and changes felt in our sense organs as "**effects**." Without guidance, instruction, or experience, we instantly move from them to their "**causes**." Through this very process of understanding, these causes now present themselves as objects in space ∗). This makes one thing indisputably clear. We are aware of the **law of causality** *a priori*, and thus as a law **necessary** for any experience at all to be possible. We do not need the indirect, difficult, and even inadequate proof Kant gave for this important truth. The law of causality is established *a priori* as the general rule to which all real objects in the external world are subject, without exception. It admits no exceptions precisely because it is a priori. It applies essentially and exclusively to **changes**. It says that whenever and wherever anything changes in the objective, real, material world—whether large or small, much or little—something else must necessarily have **changed** just **before** it. For that earlier thing to change, something else must have changed before it, and so on to infinity. This backward chain of changes fills time as matter fills space. No starting point for it can ever be found, or even thought possible, much less assumed. The endlessly renewed question, "What brought about this change?" never lets the understanding reach a final resting place, however tired it may become. A first cause is therefore just as unthinkable as a beginning of time or a boundary of space.—The law of causality also says that once the earlier change—the **cause**—has occurred, the later change it brings about—the **effect**—must occur without fail. It therefore follows **necessarily**. This character of **necessity** shows that the law of causality is a form of the **principle of sufficient reason**. That principle is the most general form of our entire capacity for knowledge. In the real world it appears as causality. In the world of thought it appears as the logical law governing the grounds for knowledge. Even in empty space, which we perceive *a priori*, it appears as the law by which the positions of all parts depend on one another with strict necessity. Showing this necessary dependence in specific detail is the sole subject of geometry. That is precisely why, as I explained at the outset, **being necessary** and **following from a given ground** are interchangeable concepts. ∗) A thorough account of this theory is given in the treatise on the principle of sufficient reason, § 21. All **changes** in objects situated in the real external world are therefore subject to the law of **causality**. Whenever and wherever they occur, they always occur **necessarily** and without fail.—There can be no exception. The rule is established *a priori* for all possible experience. To **apply** it to a particular case, we need ask only whether the case involves a **change** in a real object given in external experience. If it does, the object's changes fall under the law of causality. That is, they must have been brought about by a cause, and for that very reason **necessarily**. ### Chapter III, 2 Let us now bring our general rule closer to experience itself. The rule is certain *a priori* and therefore holds without exception for all possible experience. We will examine the real objects found in experience, whose possible changes our rule concerns. We soon notice some deep, basic differences among them. These have long been used to classify them. Some are inorganic, that is, lifeless. Others are organic, that is, living. The latter are either plants or animals. Animals are essentially alike and fit their shared concept. Yet we find them arranged in a very varied and finely graded scale of perfection. It starts with animals still closely related to plants and hard to distinguish from them. It rises to the most fully developed animals, which most perfectly fit the concept of an animal. At the top of this scale we see human beings—ourselves. Let us not be distracted by this variety. Instead, let us consider all these beings simply as objective, real objects of experience. We can then apply the law of causality to any changes they may undergo. This law is established *a priori* as a condition of any experience being possible. We will find that experience everywhere agrees with the law that is certain *a priori*. But the great **differences** in the nature of these objects of experience, just recalled, are matched by a corresponding change in how causality governs them. More precisely, there are three forms of the causality that governs all their changes. These correspond to the threefold division into inorganic bodies, plants, and animals. They are **cause** in the narrowest sense of the word, **stimulus**, and **motivation**. These different forms do not in the least weaken causality's *a priori* validity, or the necessity of the result that it imposes. A **cause** in the narrowest sense of the word brings about all mechanical, physical, and chemical changes in objects of experience. It always has two distinguishing features. First, Newton's third fundamental law applies to it: "Action and reaction are equal." That is, the earlier state, called the cause, undergoes a change equal to that in the later state, called the effect.—Second, in keeping with Newton's second law, the degree of the effect always exactly matches the degree of the cause. So strengthening the cause brings an equal strengthening of the effect. Once we know how the effect works, we can know, measure, and calculate its degree from the intensity of the cause, and *the other way around*. But when applying this second feature to experience, we must not confuse the actual effect with its visible appearance. For example, when compressing a body, we must not expect its size to keep shrinking in proportion to the increase in the compressing force. The space into which we force the body keeps getting smaller, so resistance increases. Here too the actual effect, which is an increase in density, does grow in proportion to the cause, as Mariotte's law states. But this does not apply to the effect's visible appearance. Again, heat supplied to water will raise its temperature up to a certain point. Beyond that point it will only cause rapid evaporation. In evaporation, however, the same proportion between the degree of the cause and that of the effect applies again. The same holds in many cases. **Causes in this narrowest sense** bring about the changes in all **lifeless**, that is, **inorganic** bodies. Knowing and assuming causes of this kind guides our study of all the changes that are the subject of mechanics, hydrodynamics, physics, and chemistry. Being determined exclusively by causes of this kind is therefore the true and essential mark of an inorganic or lifeless body. The second kind of cause is the **stimulus**. First, this is a cause that does **not** itself undergo a reaction proportional to its action. Second, there is no proportional relation at all between its intensity and the intensity of its effect. We therefore cannot measure or predict the degree of the effect from the degree of the cause. Instead, a small increase in the stimulus can cause a very large increase in the effect. Or, the other way around, it can completely cancel the earlier effect and even produce the opposite one. For example, as everyone knows, plants can be made to grow extraordinarily fast by warmth or by lime mixed into the soil. These causes act as stimuli to their vital force. But if the proper degree of stimulus is exceeded even a little, the result will not be stronger, faster life. It will be the plant's death. Likewise, we can use wine or opium to heighten our mental powers and increase them considerably. But if the proper amount of stimulus is exceeded, the result will be exactly the opposite.—This kind of cause, then, namely stimuli, determines all the changes in organisms **as such**. All the changes and developments of plants occur in response to **stimuli**. So do all the purely organic and vegetative changes, or functions, of animal bodies. Light, heat, air, food, every drug, every touch, fertilization, and so on affect them in this way.—Animal life also has an entirely different sphere, which I will discuss in a moment. But the whole life of **plants** proceeds exclusively through **stimuli**. All their assimilation, growth, reaching toward the light with their crowns and toward better soil with their roots, their fertilization, germination, and so on are changes in response to **stimuli**. A few particular genera also have a distinctive rapid movement. This too occurs only in response to stimuli, though it has earned them the name sensitive plants. As is well known, the main examples are *Mimosa pudica*, *Hedysarum gyrans*, and *Dionaea muscipula*. Being determined exclusively and without exception by **stimuli** is the defining feature of a plant. Thus a **plant** is any body whose characteristic movements and changes, suited to its nature, always occur exclusively in response to **stimuli**. ### Chapter III, 3 The third kind of moving cause marks out **animals**. It is **motivation**: causality that works through **knowledge**. It appears at the point in the scale of natural beings where a more complex being, with many different needs, could no longer meet them simply in response to a stimulus. A stimulus has to be waited for. Instead, the being had to be able to choose, take hold of, and even seek out the means of meeting its needs. In beings of this kind, mere sensitivity to **stimuli** and movement in response to them are therefore replaced by sensitivity to **motives**. This means a capacity for representations, an intellect, in countless degrees of perfection. In material terms it appears as a nervous system and brain, and with it comes consciousness. It is well known that animal life rests on a basis of plant life, which as such proceeds only in response to **stimuli**. But all movements an animal makes as an **animal** depend on what physiology calls **animal functions**. They occur as a result of an object that is known, and thus in response to **motives**. An **animal** is therefore any body whose characteristic external movements and changes, suited to its nature, always occur in response to **motives**. These are particular **representations** present to its consciousness, whose existence we already assume here. Across the range of animals, the capacity for representations, and with it consciousness, may have infinitely many degrees. Still, every animal has enough of it for the motive to present itself and bring about movement. Self-consciousness is now present too. To it, the inner moving force, whose particular expression is called forth by the motive, reveals itself as what we call **will**. Even observation from outside, which is our standpoint here, can never leave it doubtful whether a given body moves in response to **stimuli** or to **motives**. A stimulus and a motive work in such visibly different ways. A stimulus always acts through direct contact or even through being taken into the body. Even when this contact is not visible, as when the stimulus is air, light, or heat, it still reveals itself. The effect has an unmistakable relation to the stimulus's duration and intensity, though this relation does not stay the same at every degree of stimulus. But when a motive causes movement, all these differences disappear. Here the actual, immediate medium of influence is not the atmosphere. It is **knowledge** alone. The object acting as a motive needs only to be **perceived**, to be **known**. It makes no difference how long it has been perceived, whether from nearby or far away, or how clearly it has entered awareness. None of these differences changes the degree of the effect at all. As soon as the object has been perceived, it acts in exactly the same way—provided that it is a determining ground for the will to be stirred into action here. For physical and chemical causes, and likewise stimuli, also act only insofar as the body they are to affect is receptive to them. I just said, "the will to be stirred into action here." As already mentioned, what we call will is what here makes itself known to the being itself, inwardly and directly. It is what actually gives the motive its power to act, the hidden spring driving the movement the motive brings about. In bodies that move exclusively in response to stimuli—plants—we call this enduring inner condition vital force. In bodies that move only in response to causes in the narrowest sense, we call it a force of nature or a quality. Explanations always assume it as something that cannot be explained. For inside these beings there is no self-consciousness to which it would be directly accessible. These beings lack knowledge and may even lack life. Yet they have this inner condition for their reaction to external causes. Suppose we were to leave phenomena altogether and inquire into what Kant calls the thing in itself. Might that inner condition then be essentially identical with what we call **will** in ourselves, as a recent philosopher has actually tried to prove to us? I leave that question open, though without wishing simply to deny it ∗). ∗) Of course I mean myself here. Only the required anonymity prevented me from speaking in the first person. ### Chapter III, 4 But I must discuss the difference that the special character of human consciousness, as opposed to all animal consciousness, makes to motivation. This special character is what the word **reason** actually means. It consists in this: unlike an animal, a human being is not limited to **perceiving** the external world through the senses. We can also draw general concepts (*universal notions*) from it. To fix and hold these in our sensory consciousness, we give them names. We then combine them in countless ways. These combinations, like the concepts they consist of, always refer to the world known through perception. But they make up what we call **thinking**. Thinking makes possible the great advantages the human species has over all others: language, reflection, looking back at the past, concern for the future, intentions, resolutions, planned joint action by many people, the state, sciences, arts, and so on. All this rests on a single ability: having abstract, general representations that are not presented to the senses. We call them **concepts**—that is, collections of things—because each includes many individual things. Animals, even the cleverest, lack this ability. They therefore have only **perceptual** representations. They know only what is present at the moment and live only in the present. So the motives that move their will must always be perceptual and present. As a result, they have very little **choice**. They can choose only among things directly presented to their limited field of perception and power of comprehension, things present in time and space. Of these, whichever is the stronger motive immediately determines their will. This makes the motive's causal role very obvious. **Training** is an apparent exception: it is fear acting through habit. Instinct is to some extent a **real** exception. Through instinct, an animal's **overall** behavior is set in motion not really by motives but by an inner pull and drive. Yet motives again determine the details of **individual** actions at each moment. So it returns to the rule. A closer discussion of instinct would take me too far from my subject here. Chapter 27 of the Supplements to Book 2 of The World as Will and Representation, volume 5 of this edition, is devoted to it.—Human beings, by contrast, can have representations that are **not presented to the senses**. Through these we **think and reflect**. This gives us an infinitely wider field of view, covering what is absent, past, and future. So the range in which motives can affect us, and therefore our range of choice, is far greater than an animal's, confined as it is to the narrow present. As a rule, what determines our actions is not what lies before our sensory perception, present in space and time. Instead, it is mere **thoughts**, which we carry around in our heads everywhere. These make us independent of the impression of the present. When they fail to do so, we call our actions unreasonable. On the other hand, actions are praised as **reasonable** when they follow well-considered thoughts alone and are therefore entirely independent of the impression made by what is presently perceived. Humans are driven by a special class of representations—abstract concepts and thoughts—that animals do not have. This is even visible from outside. It gives all human actions, even the most insignificant, indeed every movement and step, the character of being **planned and intended**. Human activity thus differs so obviously from that of animals that we can almost see fine, invisible threads guiding human movements. These threads are motives made up of mere thoughts. Animal movements, by contrast, are pulled by the thick, visible ropes of what is presently perceived. But the difference goes no further. A thought becomes a **motive** just as a perception **does**: as soon as it can act on the will in question. All motives, however, are causes, and all causality brings necessity with it. Through our ability to think, we can bring to mind the motives whose influence on our will we feel. We can do so in any order, taking turns and repeating them, to hold them before our will. This is called **deliberating**. We can deliberate, and this ability gives us a much wider **choice** than an animal can have. In this respect we are indeed **relatively free**. We are free from the immediate compulsion of objects **presently perceived** that act on the will as motives. Animals are wholly subject to this compulsion. Humans, by contrast, determine themselves independently of present objects, according to thoughts that are **their** motives. At bottom, this **relative** freedom is probably what educated but not deeply thoughtful people mean by freedom of the will, which humans clearly have over animals. Yet it is only **relative**: relative to what is presently perceived. And it is only **comparative**: in comparison with **animals**. It changes only the **way** motivation works. It does not in the least remove, or even lessen, the **necessity** with which motives act. An **abstract** motive consisting of a mere **thought** is an **external** cause determining the will, just as a perceptual motive consisting of a real, present object is. It is therefore a cause like any other. Like other causes, it is even always something real and material, since it ultimately always rests on an impression received **from outside** at some time and place. Its only advantage is the length of its conducting wire. By this I mean that, unlike purely **perceptual** motives, it is not bound to a certain closeness in space and time. It can act across the greatest distance and the longest time, and through a long chain of concepts and thoughts that transmit it. This results from the nature and exceptional receptiveness of the organ that first experiences and receives its influence: the human brain, or **reason**. But this does not in the least remove its **causal power** or the **necessity** that comes with it. Only a very superficial view, then, can take this relative and comparative freedom for absolute freedom, a *freedom of choice indifferent between alternatives*. The ability to deliberate that comes from it actually gives us nothing but the often painful **conflict of motives**. Indecision presides over it, and its battlefield is the person's whole mind and consciousness. We repeatedly let the motives test their strength against one another on our will. This puts the will in the same position as a body on which different forces act in opposite directions. At last, the decisively strongest motive drives the others from the field and determines the will. This outcome is called a decision, and it follows from the struggle with complete **necessity**. ### Chapter III, 5 Let us look once more at the whole range of forms of causality. Within it we can clearly distinguish **causes** in the narrowest sense of the word, then **stimuli**, and finally **motives**, which in turn divide into perceptual and abstract motives. As we move from lower to higher beings in this respect, we notice that cause and effect move further apart, become more clearly distinct, and differ more in kind. The cause becomes less and less material and tangible. As a result, less and less seems to be contained in the cause, and more and more in the effect. Taken together, all this makes the connection between cause and effect harder to grasp and understand directly. Everything just mentioned applies least to **mechanical** causality, which is therefore the easiest kind to understand. This gave rise, in the last century, to the mistaken attempt to reduce every other kind of causality to mechanical causality, explaining all physical and chemical processes through mechanical causes, and then explaining the process of life through those physical and chemical processes. This effort continues in France and has recently appeared in Germany too. One body strikes another that is at rest and moves it. The first loses as much motion as it gives the second. Here we seem to see the cause pass over into the effect. Both are entirely of the same kind, exactly measurable against each other, and tangible. This is really true of all purely mechanical effects. But we will find that it becomes less and less true, and that what was said above takes its place, the higher we go, if we consider the relation between cause and effect at each level. Examples are the relation between heat as a cause and its various effects, such as expansion, glowing, melting, vaporization, combustion, thermoelectricity, and so on; between evaporation as a cause and cooling or crystallization as effects; between rubbing glass as a cause and free electricity, with its strange phenomena, as an effect; or between the slow oxidation of plates as a cause and galvanism, with all its electrical, chemical, and magnetic phenomena, as an effect. So cause and effect become more and more **distinct** and **different in kind**, and their connection becomes **harder to understand**. The effect seems to contain more than the cause could supply, as the cause proves less and less material and tangible. All this becomes still clearer when we turn to **organic** bodies. Here the causes are mere **stimuli**. Some are external, such as those of light, heat, air, soil, and food; some are internal, as fluids and parts act on one another. Their effect is life, with its infinite complexity and countless differences of kind, appearing in the varied forms of the plant and animal worlds. ∗) ∗) A more detailed account of this growing separation of cause and effect can be found in “Willen in der Natur,” under “Astronomie,” p. 307 of volume 6 of this edition. But as the relation between cause and effect becomes increasingly different in kind, impossible to measure on a common scale, and hard to understand, has the **necessity** it establishes also decreased? Not at all, not in the slightest. Just as necessarily as a rolling ball sets a stationary one in motion, a Leyden jar must discharge when touched with the other hand; arsenic must kill every living thing; and a seed that has shown no change for thousands of years while stored dry must germinate, grow, and develop into a plant as soon as it is put in suitable soil and exposed to air, light, warmth, and moisture. The cause is more complex and the effect is more different in kind, but the necessity with which it occurs is not a hair less. In plant life and in an animal's vegetative life, the stimulus is indeed very different in every respect from the organic function it produces, and the two are clearly distinct. Yet they are not actually **separate**. There must be some contact between them, however subtle and invisible. Complete separation occurs only in animal life, whose actions are brought about by motives. Here the cause, which until now still had a material connection with the effect, stands entirely detached from it. It is of a completely different nature: something initially immaterial, a mere representation. So in the **motive** that makes an animal move, the difference in kind between cause and effect, their separation, the impossibility of measuring them on a common scale, and the immaterial nature of the cause—and thus its apparent lack of sufficient content to account for the effect—have reached their highest point. The relation between them would become absolutely incomprehensible if, like the other causal relations, we knew it only **from outside**. But here knowledge of a completely different kind, **inner** knowledge, supplements our knowledge from outside. We are intimately familiar with the process that takes place here as the effect once the cause has appeared. We give it a *special term*: will. Yet here too, just as with the stimulus discussed above, the causal relation has lost none of its **necessity**. We say as much as soon as we recognize it as a **causal relation** and think of it through this form essential to our understanding. We also find motivation completely analogous to the other two forms of the causal relation discussed above. It is simply the highest level to which they rise in an entirely gradual transition. At the lowest levels of animal life, the **motive** is still closely related to the **stimulus**. Zoophytes, radiates in general, and the headless mollusks have only a faint glimmer of consciousness. They have just enough to perceive their food or prey and seize it when it presents itself, and perhaps to move to a more favorable spot. At these low levels, then, the effect of a motive is still as clear, direct, definite, and unmistakable to us as the effect of a stimulus. Small insects are drawn by the glow of a light right into its flame. Flies trustingly land on the head of a lizard that has just swallowed others of their kind before their eyes. Who would dream of freedom here? In the higher, more intelligent animals, motives act less and less directly. The motive becomes more clearly separated from the action it produces. We could even use these differences in the distance between motive and action as a measure of animals' intelligence. In human beings this distance becomes immeasurable. But even in the cleverest animals, the representation that becomes the motive for what they do must still be **perceptual**. Even where a choice becomes possible, it can only be between things currently presented to their senses. A dog stands hesitating between its master's call and the sight of a female dog. The stronger motive will determine its movement. But then the movement follows as necessarily as a mechanical effect. Even in a mechanical case, we see a body thrown off balance rock first to one side and then to the other for a time, until it becomes clear which side its center of gravity is on, and it falls that way. As long as motivation is limited to **perceptual** representations, its relationship to the stimulus and to causes in general is also obvious in another respect. The motive, as the effective cause, must be something real and present. Through light, sound, or smell, it must still act physically on the senses, even if very indirectly. Moreover, the cause is as open to the observer here as the effect. The observer sees the motive appear and the animal's action inevitably follow, unless another equally obvious motive, or training, works against it. It is impossible to doubt the connection between the two. So no one would think of attributing to animals a *freedom of choice indifferent to its alternatives*—that is, action not determined by any cause. ### Chapter III, 6 But when consciousness is rational—that is, capable of knowledge that is not perceptual, of concepts and thoughts—motives become entirely independent of the present moment and the actual surroundings. They are therefore hidden from an observer. They are now mere thoughts that a person carries around in their head. Yet their origin lies outside it, often very far away: sometimes in the person's own experience of past years, sometimes in accounts passed on by others through speech and writing, even from the most distant times. Their **origin** is **always real and objective**. Still, the often difficult task of combining complex external circumstances introduces many errors, and accounts passed on by others introduce many deceptions. Consequently, motives also include many foolish ideas. Added to this, people often hide the motives for their actions from everyone else, and sometimes even from themselves, when they shrink from recognizing what is really moving them to do one thing or another. Meanwhile, we see their actions take place and try to discover their motives by guesswork. We assume those motives as firmly and confidently as we would assume a cause for any movement of lifeless bodies that we had seen occur. We are convinced that the one is as impossible without a cause as the other. Accordingly, in the other direction, when making our own plans and undertaking projects, we calculate how motives will affect people. We would do this with exactly the same certainty with which we calculate the mechanical effects of mechanical devices, if we knew the individual characters of the people we were dealing with as precisely as we know the length and thickness of beams, the diameters of wheels, the weight of loads, and so on. Everyone follows this assumption as long as they look outward, deal with other people, and pursue practical aims. Human understanding is designed for these purposes. But suppose someone tries to judge the matter theoretically and philosophically, which human intelligence is not really designed to do, and makes themselves the object of their judgment. Then they are misled by the immaterial nature, described above, of abstract motives consisting of mere thoughts. These motives are not tied to any present moment or surroundings, and even the obstacles they encounter are only other thoughts acting as opposing motives. This misleads the person so far that they doubt the existence of these motives, or at least the necessity of their effects. They think that what is done could just as well be left undone, that the will decides by itself, without a cause, and that each of its acts is a first beginning of an incalculable series of changes it brings about. This error is especially encouraged by a false interpretation of the statement of self-consciousness examined sufficiently in the first section: “I can do what I will.” This is particularly so when that statement makes itself heard, as it does at any time, even under the influence of several mutually exclusive motives that, for the moment, merely urge the will toward action. All this together is the source of the natural illusion from which the error arises that our self-consciousness gives us certainty of our will's freedom. Freedom here means that, contrary to all the laws of pure understanding and of nature, the will decides without sufficient grounds, and that under given circumstances, in one and the same person, its decisions could go either one way or the opposite way. To explain in specific and unmistakable terms how this error, so important to our subject, arises, and thus to supplement the investigation of self-consciousness in the preceding section, let us imagine a man standing, perhaps, in the street and saying to himself: “It is 6 p.m. The day's work is over. I can take a walk now, or I can go to the club. I can also climb the tower to watch the sunset. I can also go to the theater. I can also visit this friend or that one. In fact, I can also run out through the town gate into the wide world and never come back. All this is entirely up to me. I have complete freedom to do it. Yet I am doing none of it now, but going home to my wife just as freely.” This is exactly as if water were to say: “I can rise in high waves (yes—in the sea during a storm); I can rush rapidly downhill (yes—in a riverbed); I can plunge down, foaming and surging (yes—in a waterfall); I can rise freely into the air as a jet (yes—in a fountain); finally, I can even boil away and disappear (yes—at a temperature of 80°). Yet I am doing none of this now, but freely remaining still and clear in the reflecting pond.” Water can do all those things only when the causes determining one or another of them occur. In just the same way, the man can do what he imagines he can do only under that same condition. Until the causes occur, it is impossible for him. But once they do, he must do it, just as water must act once it is placed in the corresponding circumstances. His error, and in general the illusion arising here from misinterpreted self-consciousness that he can do all those things right now, rests, on closer inspection, on this: only one image at a time can be present to his imagination, and for the moment it excludes everything else. When he imagines the motive for one of the actions he has proposed as possible, he immediately feels its effect on his will, which is drawn toward it. This is technically called a *wish*. But he now thinks that he can also raise this to an actual *act of will*—that is, carry out the proposed action. This, however, is an illusion. Reflection would immediately step in and remind him of the motives pulling him in other directions or opposing the action. He would then see that the action does not take place. As he imagines different, mutually exclusive motives one after another, with the inner statement “I can do what I will” constantly accompanying them, the will turns, as it were, like a weathervane on a well-oiled pivot in a shifting wind. It immediately turns toward every motive that the imagination presents to it, toward all the possible motives in succession. At each one, the man thinks he can **will** it, and so fix the vane at that point. This is pure illusion. For his “I can will this” is really conditional and carries the qualification “if I did not prefer to will that other thing.” But this qualification cancels out that ability to will. Let us return to the man we imagined deliberating at 6 p.m. Suppose he now notices that I am standing behind him, philosophizing about him and denying his freedom to perform all those actions that are possible for him. He might very well perform one of them to refute me. But in that case, my denial and its effect on his urge to contradict me would have been precisely the motive compelling him to do it. Even so, this motive could move him only to one or another of the **easier** actions listed above, such as going to the theater, but certainly not to the last one, running off into the wide world. The motive would be far too weak for that. Many people are equally mistaken when, holding a loaded pistol, they think they can shoot themselves with it. The mechanical means of carrying it out is the least important part. The main thing is an extremely strong and therefore rare motive, with the enormous power needed to outweigh the desire to live, or more accurately, the fear of death. Only once such a motive has appeared can they actually shoot themselves, and must do so—unless an even stronger opposing motive, if such a thing is possible at all, prevents the act. ### Chapter III, 7 I can do what I will. **If I will it**, I can give everything I own to the poor and so become poor myself—if I will it! But I am unable to **will** it, because the opposing motives have far too much power over me for me to do so. If, on the other hand, I had a different character, so different that I was a saint, then I would be able to will it. But then I would also be unable to avoid willing it, and so would have to do it. All this fits perfectly well with self-consciousness's statement “I can do what I will.” Even today, some thoughtless pretenders to philosophy imagine they see freedom of the will in this statement, and accordingly present that freedom as a given fact of consciousness. Mr. **Cousin** stands out among them and therefore deserves an *honorable mention* here. In his *Cours d'histoire de la philosophie, professé en 1819, 20, et publié par Vacherot, 1841*, he teaches that freedom of the will is the most reliable fact of consciousness (*Vol. 1, p. 19, 20*). He criticizes **Kant** for having proved it only from the moral law and put it forward as a postulate, when it is actually a fact: “*Why demonstrate what it is enough to establish as a fact?*” (*p. 50*) “*Freedom is a fact, not a belief*” (*ibid.*). Germany, too, has no shortage of ignorant people who dismiss everything great thinkers have said about this over the last two centuries. They insist on the fact of self-consciousness analyzed in the preceding section, which they misunderstand just as the general public does, and proclaim freedom of the will as a given fact. But perhaps I am being unfair to them. They may not be as ignorant as they seem, but merely hungry, and therefore willing, for a very dry piece of bread, to teach anything that might please a high government ministry. This is neither a metaphor nor an exaggeration, but the plain, literal truth: just as a billiard ball cannot start moving before it receives a push, a person cannot get up from their chair before a motive pulls or drives them away. But then their getting up is as necessary and inevitable as the ball's rolling after the push. And expecting someone to do something that no interest whatever prompts them to do is like expecting a piece of wood to move toward me without a rope pulling it. If someone made such an assertion in company and met stubborn opposition, the quickest way out of the argument would be to have a third person suddenly shout in a loud and serious voice: “The beams are collapsing!” The opponents would then realize that a motive is as powerful in throwing people out of a house as the most tangible mechanical cause. For a human being, like every object of experience, is a phenomenon in time and space. Since the law of causality applies to all such objects *a priori*, and therefore without exception, human beings too must be subject to it. Pure understanding tells us this *a priori*; analogy drawn through the whole of nature confirms it; and experience bears witness to it at every moment. We must simply not let ourselves be deceived by a misleading appearance. It arises because, as natural beings become more complex at higher and higher levels, their responsiveness rises and becomes more refined: from the merely mechanical to the chemical, electrical, responsive to stimuli, capable of sensation, intellectual, and finally rational. The nature of the **causes acting on them** must keep pace with this development and must, at each level, correspond to the beings they are to affect. Consequently, the causes also appear less and less tangible and material. In the end they are no longer visible to the eye, though still accessible to the understanding. In each individual case the understanding assumes them with unshakable confidence and discovers them through proper investigation. For here the effective causes have risen to the level of mere thoughts, which struggle with other thoughts until the most powerful one decides the outcome and sets the person in motion. All this takes place with a causal connection just as strict as when purely mechanical causes work against one another in a complex combination and the calculated result unfailingly occurs. Electrified little cork balls jumping about in every direction inside a glass give just as much of an appearance of having no cause, because their cause is invisible, as human movements do. But judgment belongs to the understanding, not to the eye. If freedom of the will were assumed, every human action would be an inexplicable miracle—an effect without a cause. And if we try to imagine such a *freedom of choice indifferent to its alternatives*, we will soon find that the understanding quite literally comes to a standstill. It has no form for thinking anything of the kind. For the principle of sufficient reason, the principle that phenomena are determined throughout and depend on one another, is the most general form of our capacity for knowledge. It takes different forms according to the different objects of that capacity. But here we are supposed to think of something that determines without being determined, that depends on nothing while other things depend on it, and that, without being necessitated, and therefore without a ground, now produces *A*, although it could just as well produce *B*, *C*, or *D*. It could do so completely, under the very same circumstances—that is, without there now being anything in *A* that would give it preference over *B*, *C*, or *D*. For such a preference would be motivation, and thus causality. This brings us back to the concept of the **absolutely contingent** established at the very beginning. I repeat: the understanding quite literally comes to a standstill here, if we can only get it to consider this. But now let us also remember what a **cause** is in general: the preceding change that makes the following change necessary. No cause anywhere in the world produces its effect entirely, or makes it out of nothing. Rather, something is always already there for it to act on. The cause merely brings about a change at this time, in this place, and in this particular being. The change always agrees with the nature of that being, so the **force** needed for it must already have been present in that being. Every effect therefore comes from two factors, one internal and one external: the original force of what is acted on, and the determining cause that compels that force to express itself here and now. All causality, and every explanation based on it, presupposes an original force. That is precisely why such an explanation never explains everything, but always leaves something inexplicable. We see this throughout physics and chemistry. Their explanations everywhere presuppose the natural forces that express themselves in phenomena, and the entire explanation consists in tracing the phenomena back to these forces. A natural force itself cannot be explained. Rather, it is the principle of all explanation. Nor is it itself subject to any causality. Rather, it is precisely what gives every cause its causality—that is, its ability to produce an effect. The force itself is the common basis of all effects of this kind and is present in each of them. Thus the phenomena of magnetism are traced back to an original force called electricity. Explanation stops here. It merely states the conditions under which such a force expresses itself—that is, the causes that bring it into action. Explanations in celestial mechanics presuppose gravitation as the force through which the individual causes determining the movements of celestial bodies act. Explanations in chemistry presuppose the hidden forces that express themselves as elective affinities according to certain stoichiometric ratios. All the effects that occur precisely when brought about by specified causes ultimately depend on these forces. In the same way, all explanations in physiology presuppose the vital force, which reacts in definite ways to specific internal and external stimuli. This is the case everywhere, without exception. Even the causes studied by mechanics, which is so easy to grasp, such as impact and pressure, presuppose impenetrability, cohesion, rigidity, hardness, inertia, gravity, and elasticity. These are natural forces just as unfathomable as those already mentioned. Everywhere, then, causes determine nothing more than when and where original, inexplicable forces **express themselves**. Only on the assumption of these forces are they causes at all—that is, do they necessarily bring about certain effects. What is true of causes in the narrowest sense and of stimuli is no less true of **motives**. For motivation is not essentially different from causality, but is only one kind of it: causality that passes through the medium of knowledge. Here too, then, the cause only brings about the expression of a force that cannot be traced back to further causes and therefore cannot be explained further. But this force, which is called will here, is known to us not merely from outside, like the other natural forces, but also from within and directly, through self-consciousness. Only on the assumption that such a will exists, and in the individual case that it has a definite nature, do the causes directed toward it, here called motives, take effect. This specifically and individually determined nature of the will, by which its reaction to the same motives differs in each person, makes up what is called that person's **character**. More precisely, it is called **empirical character**, because it is known not *a priori* but only through experience. This character directly determines how different kinds of motives affect a given person. It underlies all the effects produced by motives, just as the general forces of nature underlie effects produced by causes in the narrowest sense, and the vital force underlies the effects of stimuli. Like the forces of nature, it is original, unchanging, and inexplicable. In animals it differs from species to species; in human beings it differs from individual to individual. Only in the very highest and cleverest animals does a noticeable individual character already appear, though the character of the species still overwhelmingly predominates. ### Chapter III, 8 **Human character** is: 1. **individual**: it is different in every person. The character of the species does underlie everyone, so the main traits recur in each person. But the degree of these traits varies so greatly, and they combine with and modify one another in so many different ways, that we can assume the moral differences between characters equal the differences between intellectual abilities. That is saying a great deal. And both kinds of difference are incomparably greater than the physical differences between a giant and a dwarf, Apollo and Thersites. The same motive therefore has completely different effects on different people. Similarly, sunlight turns wax white but silver chloride black; heat softens wax but hardens clay. So knowing the motive alone does not let us predict the action. We must also know the person's character precisely. 2. Human character is **empirical**. We come to know it only through experience, not just in others but also in ourselves. So we are often disappointed in ourselves, just as we are in others, when we discover that we do not have some quality—justice, unselfishness, or courage, for example—to the degree we had kindly assumed. That is also why, when we face a difficult choice, our own decision remains as much a mystery to us as someone else's until the choice is settled. Now we think it will go one way, now the other, depending on which motive our capacity for knowledge presents more closely to the will, testing its strength against it. Here the thought "I can do what I will" produces the semblance of freedom of the will. Finally, the stronger motive asserts its power over the will, and the choice often turns out differently from what we first expected. Ultimately, then, no one can know how another person, or even they themselves, will act in a particular situation until they have been in it. Only after the test can we be sure of the other person, and only then of ourselves. But then we are sure: tried friends and tested servants are dependable. In general, we treat a person we know well like any other thing whose properties we have learned. We confidently predict what we can and cannot expect from that person. Anyone who has done something once will do it again when the occasion arises, whether for good or for evil. So someone who needs great, extraordinary help will turn to a person who has shown generosity. Someone who wants to hire a murderer will look among people who already have blood on their hands. According to Herodotus's account (VII, 164), Gelo of Syracuse found himself having to entrust a very large sum of money entirely to one man. He had to send the man abroad with it, leaving him free to dispose of it. He chose Cadmus, who had given proof of rare, indeed unheard-of honesty and conscientiousness. His trust was fully justified.—In the same way, we become acquainted with ourselves only through experience, as occasions arise. This acquaintance is the basis of our confidence, or lack of confidence, in ourselves. Depending on whether we have shown good judgment, courage, honesty, discretion, tact, or whatever else a situation called for—or whether a lack of these virtues came to light—we are afterward pleased with ourselves or the opposite, because of what we have learned about ourselves. Only precise knowledge of our own empirical character gives us what is called **acquired character**. Someone has this when they know their own qualities, good and bad, precisely, and so know for certain what they can trust themselves to do and demand of themselves, and what they cannot. Previously, guided by their empirical character, they played their own role merely by instinct. Now they play it with skill and method, firmly and appropriately, without ever, as people say, acting out of character. Acting out of character always shows that, in that particular case, someone was mistaken about themselves. ### Chapter III, 9 3. Human character is **constant**: it stays the same throughout life. Beneath the changing shell of a person's age, circumstances, and even knowledge and opinions is the same actual person, like a crab in its shell, completely unchanging and always the same. Character undergoes the apparent changes that result from different ages and their needs only in its direction and subject matter. **A person never changes**. As someone has acted in one case, they will always act again under completely identical circumstances. These circumstances, however, must include a correct knowledge of the circumstances themselves. Everyday experience confirms this truth. But its most striking confirmation comes when we meet an acquaintance again after 20–30 years and soon catch them at exactly the same tricks as before.—Some people may deny this truth in words. Yet they assume it in their own actions, never again trusting someone they have once found dishonest, but relying on someone who has proved honest before. This truth makes all knowledge of human character possible, as well as firm trust in those who have been tested, tried, and proved reliable. Even when such trust has let us down, we never say, "His character has changed," but, "I was mistaken about him."—This truth explains why, when we want to judge an action's moral worth, we first try to establish its motive for certain. But then we direct our praise or blame not at the motive but at the character that let itself be determined by that motive. Character is the action's second factor and the only one inherent in the person.—The same truth explains why true honor—not chivalric honor, or fools' honor—can never be restored once lost. The stain of a single shameful act clings to a person forever, branding them, as people say. Hence the saying, "Steal once, and you are a thief for life."—It explains why, in important affairs of state, when betrayal happens to be wanted and a traitor is therefore sought, used, and rewarded, prudence calls for getting rid of him once the goal is reached. Circumstances change, but his character does not.—It explains why a playwright's greatest fault is inconsistency in the characters: failing to carry them through with the constancy and strict consistency of a force of nature, as great writers do. I have demonstrated this last point with a detailed example from Shakespeare in Parerga, T. 2, § 118.—Indeed, this same truth makes conscience possible, insofar as conscience often confronts us even in old age with the wrongs we committed in youth. For example, 40 years later it still confronted J. J. Rousseau with his accusation that the maid Marion had committed a theft that he himself had committed. This is possible only on the assumption that character has stayed unchanged. By contrast, the most ridiculous errors, the grossest ignorance, and the strangest follies of our youth do not shame us in old age. That part of us has changed: those things concerned our knowledge. We have moved beyond them and long since put them aside, like our youthful clothes.—The same truth explains why a person does not really improve, even with the clearest awareness of their moral faults and failings, even with disgust at them, and even with the most sincere intention to improve. Despite serious resolutions and honest promises, when the occasion comes again, they find themselves, to their own surprise, back on the same paths as before. Only their **knowledge** can be corrected. They may therefore come to see that certain means they used before do not lead to their goal, or bring more harm than benefit. Then they change their means, not their goals. This is the basis of the American penitentiary system. It does not try to improve a person's **character**, or **heart**. Instead, it tries to put their **thinking** right and show them that the dishonest path they have followed would make it far harder, and involve far greater hardships and dangers, to reach the goals their character makes them pursue without change than the path of honesty, work, and contentment with little. In general, **knowledge** alone is the sphere and scope of all improvement and refinement. Character does not change; motives act with necessity. But they have to pass through **knowledge**, which is the medium of motives. Knowledge, however, can be expanded in the most varied ways and continually corrected to countless degrees. All education works toward this. Developing reason through knowledge and insight of every kind has moral importance because it opens the way for motives to which a person would otherwise remain closed. As long as someone could not understand these motives, they did not exist for that person's will. Thus, even with the same outward circumstances, a person's situation the second time may actually be completely different from the first. This happens if only in the meantime they have become able to understand those circumstances correctly and fully. Motives can now act on them to which they were previously unreceptive. In this sense the Scholastics said, quite correctly: *a final cause* (goal, motive) *moves us not according to its actual existence, but according to its existence as something known.* But no moral influence goes beyond correcting knowledge. Trying to remove someone's faults of character by talk and moral lectures, and so to remake their character itself, their actual morality, is exactly like trying to turn lead into gold by acting on it from outside, or to make an oak bear apricots by carefully tending it. We already find the conviction that character cannot change stated as something beyond doubt by **Apuleius** in his *Oratio de magia*. There, defending himself against the charge of sorcery, he appeals to his known character and says: "*Each person's character is a reliable sign: always inclined by the same nature toward virtue or wickedness, it provides solid grounds for accepting or rejecting a charge.*" 4. Individual character is **inborn**. It is not a product of artifice or of circumstances subject to chance, but a work of nature itself. It already appears in the child, showing on a small scale what it will later be on a large one. That is why, with exactly the same upbringing and surroundings, two children display radically different characters in the clearest way. These are the same characters they will have in old age. Character is even hereditary in its basic traits, but only from the father; intelligence, on the other hand, comes from the mother. On this I refer to Kap. 43 of the supplements to Book 4 of Welt als Wille u. Vorst. (Bd. VI of this edition). ### Chapter III, 10 This account of the nature of individual character does imply that virtues and vices are inborn. This truth may be unwelcome to many prejudices and much spinning-wheel philosophizing, with its so-called practical interests—that is, its small, narrow concepts and limited schoolroom views. But it was already the conviction of **Socrates**, the father of moral philosophy. According to **Aristotle** (*Eth. magna, I, 9*), he maintained: "*It is not in our power to become good or bad, etc.*" (*It is not a matter of our own choice whether we are good or bad.*) Aristotle's objection here is plainly poor. He himself also shares Socrates's opinion and expresses it very clearly in *Eth. Nicom., VI, 13*: "*For everyone thinks that each trait of character belongs to us in some way by nature: we are just, self-controlled, brave, and have the other traits right from birth.*" (*For individual traits seem in some way to be present by nature in all people: we have an inclination toward justice, self-control, courage, and the other virtues as soon as we are born.*) And if we look over all the virtues and vices in Aristotle's book *de virtutibus et vitiis*, where they are brought together in a short survey, we will find that in real people they can all be conceived only as **inborn** qualities. Only as such would they be genuine. If instead they arose from reflection and were adopted by choice, they would really amount to a kind of **pretense** and be false. We could then never count on their lasting or holding up under the pressure of circumstances. Nor is it any different if we add the Christian virtue of love, *charity*, which is absent from Aristotle and all the ancients. How could **one** person's tireless goodness and another's incorrigible, deeply rooted wickedness have drifted in from outside, the work of chance circumstances or mere knowledge and instruction? How could this explain the character of the Antonines, Hadrian, and Titus on the one hand, and Caligula, Nero, and Domitian on the other? Nero, after all, had Seneca as his tutor.—Rather, the seed of all a person's virtues and vices lies in their inborn character, the actual core of the whole person. This conviction, natural to anyone without preconceptions, also guided the hand of **Velleius Paterculus** when he wrote the following about Cato (II, 35): "*A man who was the very image of virtue, and in his whole nature closer to gods than to human beings: he never did right in order to seem to do so, but because* *he could not act otherwise*."∗) ∗) This passage is gradually becoming a standard piece of equipment in the determinists' arsenal—an honor the good old historian certainly never dreamed of 1800 years ago. **Hobbes** was the first to praise it, followed by **Priestley**. Then **Schelling** reproduced it in his treatise on freedom, S. 478, in a translation somewhat distorted to suit his purposes. That is also why he does not name Velleius Paterculus, but says, with as much cunning as condescension, "an ancient writer." Finally, I too have not wanted to neglect quoting it, since it really is relevant. On the assumption of freedom of the will, however, it is simply impossible to see where virtue and vice are actually supposed to come from. The same applies more generally to the fact that two people brought up alike act quite differently, even in opposite ways, under completely identical circumstances and occasions. The actual, original, fundamental differences between characters cannot be reconciled with the assumption of a freedom of the will that makes opposite actions equally possible for every person in every situation. On that assumption, a person's character must start out as a *blank slate*, as the intellect does according to **Locke**. It must have no inborn inclination to one side or the other, since that would already destroy the perfect balance conceived in *freedom of choice through indifference*. So, on that assumption, the reason for the different ways different people act cannot lie in the **subjective** side. Still less can it lie in the **objective** side, since then objects would determine action, and the freedom demanded would be lost altogether. At most, one way out would remain: to locate the origin of those great actual differences in behavior midway between subject and object. They would arise from the different ways the subjective side apprehends the objective side—that is, from the way different people **know** it. But then everything would come down to correct or incorrect **knowledge** of the circumstances at hand. The moral difference between ways of acting would become a mere difference in the accuracy of judgment, and morality would turn into logic. Suppose, finally, that supporters of freedom of the will tried to escape this awkward dilemma by saying that there are no inborn differences between characters, but that such differences arise from external circumstances, impressions, experiences, examples, teachings, and so on. Once character had come into being in this way, it would explain the subsequent differences in action. The first answer is that character would then arrive very late—although in fact it can already be recognized in children—and most people would die before acquiring one. The second is that all the external circumstances supposedly producing character lie entirely outside our power. They are brought about one way or another by chance, or, if one prefers, by providence. So if character arose from them, and differences in action then arose from character, all moral responsibility for those differences would disappear completely. They would clearly be, in the end, the work of chance or providence. Thus, on the assumption of freedom of the will, we see the origin of differences in action, and with them virtue or vice together with responsibility, left hanging without any support and unable to find even a small place to take root. This shows that, however much that assumption may appeal at first sight to an untrained understanding, it is fundamentally just as much at odds with our moral convictions as it is, as has been amply shown, with the highest basic rule of our understanding. As I showed in detail above, motives act with necessity, like all causes in general. But this necessity is not without a precondition. We have now learned what that precondition is, the ground on which it rests: inborn **individual character**. Every effect in inanimate nature is the necessary product of two factors: the general **force of nature** expressing itself here, and the particular **cause** that calls forth its expression here. In exactly the same way, every human action is the necessary product of a person's **character** and the **motive** that has appeared. Given these two, the action follows without fail. For a different action to occur, there would have to be either a different motive or a different character. Every action could even be predicted with certainty, indeed calculated, if character were not so hard to investigate, and if the motive were not often hidden and always exposed to the opposing force of other motives. These other motives lie solely within the person's thoughts, inaccessible to others. A person's inborn character already essentially determines the general goals they pursue without change. The means they use to reach them are determined partly by outward circumstances and partly by how they grasp those circumstances. How accurately they grasp them depends in turn on their understanding and its training. The final result of all this is the person's individual actions, and thus the entire role they have to play in the world.—So one of Goethe's finest stanzas expresses the result of the account of individual character given here both accurately and poetically: "As on the day that gave you to the world The sun stood to greet the planets, You grew at once and kept on growing, By the law under which you first began. This you must be; you cannot escape yourself, So the Sibyls said, and so the prophets; And no time and no power can break apart The stamped form that develops as it lives." The precondition on which the necessary effects of all causes depend is therefore the inner nature of each thing. This may be simply a general force of nature expressing itself in that thing, or it may be a vital force, or it may be will. Whatever kind of being it is, it will always react to the causes acting on it in accordance with its own particular nature. The Scholastics expressed this law, to which all things in the world are subject without exception, in the formula: *action follows being*. In keeping with it, the chemist tests substances with reagents, and one person tests another through the trials they put them through. In every case external causes will necessarily call forth what lies within a being, since it cannot react otherwise than according to what it is. ### Chapter III, 11 Here we should remember that every *existence* presupposes an *essence*. That is, anything that exists must also be **something**: it must have a definite nature. It cannot exist yet be nothing, like the so-called *metaphysical being*—a thing that is and does nothing but be, without any defining features or properties, and consequently without any definite way of acting that follows from them. An *essence* without *existence* cannot give us something real, as Kant explained with his well-known example of a hundred thalers. Just as little can an *existence* without an *essence*. Anything that exists must have an essential nature of its own, through which it is what it is. It always maintains that nature, whose expressions are necessarily called forth by causes. But this nature itself is not the work of those causes at all, nor can they modify it. All this applies to a human being and their will just as much as to all other beings in nature. A person, too, has an *essence* as well as an *existence*: fundamental properties that make up their character and need only an occasion from outside to appear. So expecting someone to act one way on one occasion and completely differently on another, when the occasion is the same, would be like expecting the same tree that bore cherries this summer to bear pears next summer. Examined closely, freedom of the will means an *existence* without an *essence*. This means that something is, yet **is nothing**—which in turn means that **it is not**. So it is a contradiction. Insight into this, as well as into the validity of the law of causality, which is certain *independently of experience* and therefore allows no exceptions, explains why all truly deep thinkers of every age have agreed on this point, however different their other views may have been. They have maintained that acts of will follow necessarily when motives appear, and have rejected *free choice*. The unimaginably great majority of the crowd, incapable of thought and at the mercy of appearances and prejudices, has always stubbornly resisted this truth. For that very reason, these thinkers have even pushed it to extremes, asserting it in the most decisive, indeed most defiant terms. The best-known example is **Buridan**'s ass. Yet for about a hundred years people have searched in vain for it in **Buridan**'s surviving writings. I myself own an edition of his *Sophismata*, evidently printed back in the 15th century, with no place of printing, date, or page numbers. I have often searched it in vain for this example, although asses appear as examples on almost every page. **Bayle**, whose article **Buridan** is the basis of everything written about the matter since, says quite incorrectly that we know of only **one** sophism by Buridan. I have a whole quarto volume of his Sophismata. And since **Bayle** deals with the matter at such length, he should have known something that apparently no one has noticed since, either: this example, which has become something of a symbol or model of the great truth I am defending here, is much older than **Buridan**. It appears in **Dante**, who possessed all the knowledge of his age, lived before Buridan, and speaks not of asses but of people. These words open the fourth book of his *Paradiso*: *Between two foods, equally distant and tempting* *In the same way, a person would starve to death* *Before freely bringing either one to their teeth∗).* ∗) *Placed between two foods equally far away and offering the same inducement, a person would die of hunger before, exercising absolute freedom, bringing either of them to their teeth.* Indeed, it already appears in **Aristotle**, *De coelo, II, 13*, in these words: "*And the argument about someone who is intensely but equally hungry and thirsty, and equally far from food and drink: this person too must necessarily remain still.*" (*Likewise, what is said about someone intensely thirsty and hungry, when equally far from things to eat and drink: that person must necessarily remain at rest.*) **Buridan**, who inherited the example from these sources, replaced the person with an ass simply because this limited Scholastic habitually uses either Socrates and Plato or an *ass* for his examples. The question of freedom of the will really is a touchstone for distinguishing deep thinkers from superficial ones, or a boundary marker where the two part ways. The former all maintain that, given character and motive, the action necessarily follows. The latter, along with the crowd, cling to freedom of the will. Then there is an intermediate kind who feel awkward and maneuver back and forth, shift the target for themselves and others, take refuge behind words and phrases, or twist and turn the question until no one knows any longer what it was getting at. **Leibniz** already did this. He was much more a mathematician and a scholar of many subjects than a philosopher∗). But to bring such evasive talkers to the point, we must put the question to them as follows and refuse to move away from it: ∗) Leibniz's lack of any firm position on this point appears most clearly in his letter to Coste, *Opera phil, ed. Erdmann, p. 447*; and next in the *Théodicée*, § 45–53. 1. For a given person under given circumstances, are two actions possible, or only **one**?—The answer of all deep thinkers: only **one**. 2. Consider the life a given person has already lived. On the one hand, their character is fixed and unchanging. On the other, the circumstances whose influence they had to undergo were necessarily determined, throughout and down to the smallest detail, by external causes. These causes always arise with strict necessity, and their chain, made up entirely of equally necessary links, extends backward to infinity. Given this, could that life have turned out differently in any respect, even in the slightest, in any event or scene, from the way it did?—No! That is the consistent and correct answer. The conclusion from these two propositions is: **everything that happens, from the greatest to the smallest, happens necessarily.** *Whatever happens, happens necessarily.* Anyone frightened by these propositions still has some things to learn and others to unlearn. Afterward, however, they will recognize them as the richest source of comfort and peace of mind.—Our actions are certainly not a first beginning, so nothing truly new comes into existence through them. Rather, **through what we do, we merely learn what we are**. The ancients' firmly held belief in *fate*, in *destiny*, also rests on a conviction, felt even if not clearly understood, of the strict necessity of everything that happens. So does the fatalism of Muslims, and even the ineradicable belief in *omens* found everywhere. For even the smallest chance event occurs necessarily, and all events, so to speak, keep time with one another, so that everything echoes in everything else. Finally, this is also connected with the following fact: someone who has maimed or killed another person without the slightest intention, entirely by accident, mourns this *deed requiring atonement* throughout their life, with a feeling that seems akin to guilt. Other people also regard them with a peculiar kind of discredit, as a *person requiring expiation* (an unlucky person). Indeed, the felt conviction that character cannot change and that its expressions are necessary probably also had some influence on the Christian doctrine of election by grace.—Finally, I do not want to hold back the following entirely incidental observation. Anyone may accept or reject it as they please, depending on what they think about certain matters. Suppose we do not accept the strict necessity of everything that happens through a causal chain linking all events without distinction. Suppose instead we let this chain be broken at countless points by absolute freedom. Then all **foreseeing of the future**—in dreams, in clairvoyant trance, and in *second sight*—becomes impossible even **objectively**, and therefore absolutely impossible and inconceivable. For there would then be no objectively real future that could even possibly be foreseen. As things stand, by contrast, we doubt only the subjective conditions for this, and thus its subjective possibility. And nowadays even this doubt can no longer find a place among well-informed people, since countless testimonies from the most trustworthy sources have established these anticipations of the future. I will add a few more reflections as consequences of the established account of the necessity of everything that happens. What would become of this world if necessity did not run through all things and hold them together, and especially govern the generation of individuals? A monster, a heap of rubble, a meaningless, senseless grotesque shape—the work, that is, of true and actual chance.— Wishing that some event had not happened is foolish self-torment. It means wishing for something absolutely impossible and is as unreasonable as wishing that the sun would rise in the west. Precisely because everything that happens, great or small, occurs with **strict** necessity, it is completely pointless to reflect on how trivial and accidental the causes were that brought that event about, and how very easily they might have been different. That is an illusion. They all occurred with just as strict a necessity and acted with just as complete a power as the causes through which the sun rises in the east. Instead, we should view events as they occur in just the same way as the printed words we read, knowing full well that they were already there before we read them. ### Chapter IV, 1 **IV. Earlier Thinkers.** To support my claim above about the judgment of all deep thinkers on our problem, I will recall a few of the great men who have spoken in this sense. First, I want to reassure anyone who might think that religious grounds stand against the truth I am defending. So I remind them that Jeremiah (10, 23) already said: "A person's actions are not within their power, and it is in no one's power how to walk or how to direct their steps." But I appeal above all to **Luther**. In a book written for exactly this purpose, *De servo arbitrio*, he attacks freedom of the will with all his vehemence. A few passages from it are enough to show his view. Naturally he supports it not with philosophical reasons but with theological ones. I cite them from the edition of Seb. Schmidt, Strasbourg 1707.—In the same book, S. 145, it says: "At the same time, then, it is found written in the hearts of all that free choice is nothing, even though this is clouded by so many arguments to the contrary and by the great authority of so many men."—S. 214: "At this point I would like those who defend free choice to be warned, so that they know they are deniers of Christ when they assert free choice."—S. 220: "All the testimonies of Scripture that speak of Christ will fight against free choice. And these are countless—indeed, all of Scripture. So if we argue the case with Scripture as judge, I will win in every way, so that not one iota or dot is left that does not condemn the doctrine of free choice."— Now to the philosophers. The ancients need not be taken seriously here. Their philosophy was still, so to speak, in a state of innocence. It had not yet brought to clear awareness the two deepest and most troubling problems of modern philosophy: the question of the freedom of the will, and the question of the reality of the external world, or the relation of the ideal to the real. We can see fairly well how far the ancients understood the problem of freedom of the will from Aristotle's Ethica Nicom., III, c. 1–8. There one finds that his thinking about it essentially concerns only physical and intellectual freedom. That is why he always speaks only of the voluntary and the involuntary (hekousion kai akousion), treating "voluntary" and "free" as one and the same. The far harder problem of **moral freedom** has not yet come before him. His thoughts do sometimes reach that far, especially in Eth. Nicom., II, 2, and III, 7. But there he makes the mistake of deriving character from deeds instead of the other way around. He also criticizes quite wrongly the conviction of Socrates that I cited above. Elsewhere, though, he makes that conviction his own again, for example Nicom., X, 10: "Now it is clear that what comes from nature is not up to us, but is present, through some divine causes, in those who are truly fortunate." (So it is clear that what is given by nature is not in our power, but comes from some divine cause and is present in those who are truly fortunate.) Soon after: "So character must somehow already be present, kindred to virtue, loving what is noble and disliking what is shameful." (So there must already be in some way a character suited to virtue, one that embraces the honorable and is offended by the base.) This agrees with the passage I gave above, and also with Ethica magna, I, 11: "A person who chooses to be the best will not be so unless nature is also present, though they will be better." (For not whoever wishes will be the best of all, unless nature has also supplied it. They will, however, rightly be better.) In the same sense Aristotle treats the question of freedom of the will in the Ethica magna, I, 9–18, and in the Ethica Eudemia, II, 6–10. There he comes somewhat closer to the real problem. Yet everything remains wavering and superficial. His method everywhere is not to go straight into the matter and proceed analytically. Instead he proceeds synthetically, drawing conclusions from outward marks. Rather than pressing inward to reach the core of things, he holds to outward signs, even to words. This method easily leads astray, and with deeper problems it never reaches its goal. Here, then, he stops before the supposed opposition between the necessary and the voluntary (anagkaion kai hekousion) as before a wall. Only beyond that wall lies the insight that what is voluntary is **necessary** precisely as such. It is necessary by virtue of the motive. Without a motive, an act of will is as impossible as it is without a willing subject. And the motive is a cause, just like the mechanical kind, from which it differs only in inessentials. Aristotle himself says (Eth. Eudem., II, 10): "For that for the sake of which is one of the causes." (For that for whose sake something is done is counted among the causes.) That is exactly why the opposition between the voluntary and the necessary is completely false. Yet many so-called philosophers today are still in the same position as Aristotle. **Cicero** sets out the problem of freedom of the will already fairly clearly, in his book *De fato*, c. 10 and c. 17. The subject of his treatise does indeed lead to it very easily and naturally. He himself sides with freedom of the will. But we can see that Chrysippus and Diodorus must already have become aware of the problem, more or less clearly.—Also worth noting is **Lucian's** thirtieth Dialogue of the Dead, between Minos and Sostratus. It denies freedom of the will, and with it responsibility. But in a certain way the fourth book of Maccabees, in the Septuagint (it is missing in Luther's Bible), is already a treatise on freedom of the will. It sets itself the task of proving that reason (logismos) has the power to overcome all passions and emotions. It supports this with the Jewish martyrs in the second book. The oldest clear recognition of our problem that I know of appears in **Clement of Alexandria**. He says (Strom. I, § 17): "Neither praise nor blame, neither honors nor punishments are just, if the soul does not have the power to move toward something and away from it, but vice is involuntary." (Neither praise nor blame, neither honors nor punishments are just, if the soul does not have the free power both to desire and to refrain, but vice is involuntary.) Then, after a clause in between that refers back to something said earlier: "**so that, above all, God at least is not to blame for our vice**" (so that above all God may not be the cause of vice for us). This highly noteworthy closing clause shows in what sense the Church at once took up the problem, and what decision it immediately anticipated as suiting its interest.—Almost 200 years later we find the doctrine of free will already treated at length by **Nemesius**, in his work *De natura hominis*, Kap. 35 at the end, and Kap. 39–41. Here freedom of the will is simply identified with the power of choice, or the decision to choose, and is therefore eagerly asserted and demonstrated. Even so, it is already an airing of the matter. But we find the fully developed awareness of our problem, with everything connected to it, first in the Church Father **Augustine**. He was far more a theologian than a philosopher, but for this reason he comes into consideration here. At once, however, we see that the problem puts him into marked embarrassment and uncertain wavering. In his three books *De libero arbitrio*, this leads him into inconsistencies and contradictions. On the one hand, he does not want to grant as much to freedom of the will as **Pelagius** did. Doing so would abolish original sin, the need for redemption, and the free election by grace, and so a person could become righteous and worthy of blessedness by their own powers. In the Argumento in libros de lib. arb. ex Lib. I, c. 9, Retractationum desumto, he even lets it be understood that he would have said still more for this side of the controversy (which Luther later defended so fiercely) if those books had not been written before **Pelagius** appeared. Against the view of Pelagius he then wrote the book *De natura et gratia*. In the meantime, he already says in De lib. arb. III, 18: "But now a human being is not good, and does not have it in their power to be good, either because they do not see what they ought to be, or because they see it and do not will to be what they see they ought to be." Soon after: "Either through ignorance a person has no free choice of will to choose what to do rightly; or else, when carnal habit resists—a habit that has in some way grown naturally in us through the violent force of mortal succession—they see what should be done rightly, and will it, and cannot carry it out." And in the Argumentum just mentioned: "So unless the will itself is freed by the grace of God from the slavery by which it was made a slave of sin, and is helped to overcome its vices, mortals cannot live rightly and piously." ### Chapter IV, 2 On the other hand, however, the following three reasons moved him to defend the freedom of the will: 1. His opposition to the **Manichaeans**. The books De lib. arb. are expressly aimed against them, because they denied free will and assumed another original source of evil, and of ills as well. He already alludes to them in the last chapter of the book *De animae quantitate*: "Free choice has been given to the soul. Those who try to shake it with trifling reasonings are so blind that, etc." 2. The natural illusion, which I have exposed, by which "I can do what I will" is taken for freedom of the will, and "**voluntary**" is taken to be at once the same as "**free**": De lib. arb. I, 12. "For what lies so fully in the will as the will itself?" 3. The need to bring human moral responsibility into agreement with the justice of God. Augustine's sharp mind did not miss a most serious difficulty here. It is so hard to remove that, as far as I know, all later philosophers except three, whom we will therefore look at more closely in a moment, have preferred to tiptoe quietly around it, as though it did not exist. Augustine, by contrast, states it with noble candor, quite plainly, right in the opening words of the books De lib. arb.: "Tell me, please, whether God is not the author of evil?"—And then at greater length, right in the second chapter: "But this troubles the mind: if sins come from these souls that God created, and those souls come from God, how are sins not traced back to God after only a short step?" The other speaker in the dialogue replies: "What you have just said plainly is what torments me quite enough when I think about it."—**Luther** took up this most troubling reflection again and brought it out with all the vehemence of his eloquence, *De servo arbitrio*, S. 144. "But natural reason itself is forced to admit that God must be one who imposes **necessity** on us through God's own **freedom**.—Once foreknowledge and omnipotence are granted, it follows naturally, by irrefutable consequence, that we were not made by ourselves, and do not live or do anything by ourselves, but through God's omnipotence.——God's foreknowledge and omnipotence stand in direct opposition to our free choice.—All people are forced by inevitable consequence to admit that we do not come to be through our own will but by necessity. So we do not do what we please, by the right of free choice, but as God has foreseen and *acts*, with infallible and unchangeable counsel and power, etc." At the start of the 17th century we find **Vanini** completely filled with this insight. It is the core and soul of his persistent revolt against theism, which, under the pressure of his time, he hid as cleverly as he could. He comes back to it on every occasion and never tires of setting it out from the most varied points of view. For example, in his *Amphitheatro aeternae providentiae*, exercitatio 16, he says: "If God wills sins, then God does them. For it is written, 'God has done all that God willed.' If God does not will them, they are committed anyway. Then God must be called unforeseeing, or powerless, or cruel, since God either does not know how to get what God wishes, or cannot, or neglects to.————The philosophers say: if God did not want the worst and most wicked actions to flourish in the world, God would undoubtedly wipe out all shameful deeds and drive them beyond the limits of the world with a single nod. For who among us can resist the divine will? How are crimes committed against God's will, if God even supplies the wicked with strength in the very act of sinning? Besides, if a human being falls against the will of God, God will be inferior to the human being, who opposes God and prevails. From this they conclude: God desires this world just as it is. If God wanted a better one, God would have a better one."—And in exercitatio 44 it says: "An instrument is moved as its principal agent directs it. But our will, in its workings, stands as an instrument, and God as the principal agent. So if the will works badly, this must be charged to God.———Our will depends wholly on God, not only as to its motion but also as to its substance. So nothing can truly be charged to the will, neither on the side of substance nor of operation. It is all to be charged to God, who has formed the will in this way and moves it in this way.————Since the essence and the motion of the will come from God, the workings of the will, whether good or bad, must be ascribed to God, if the will stands to God as an instrument." With **Vanini**, however, one must keep in mind that he uses the same stratagem throughout. In the person of an opponent, he sets out his real opinion as the one he abhors and wants to refute, and he proves it convincingly and thoroughly. Then, in his own person, he opposes it with shallow reasons and lame arguments, and walks off in triumph, *as though a job well done*—counting on the malice of his reader. By this slyness he even fooled the very learned Sorbonne. It took all of that at face value and trustingly put its Imprimatur on his most godless writings. It watched with all the more heartfelt joy when, three years later, he was burned alive, after his blasphemous tongue had first been cut out. For this, after all, is the theologians' truly powerful argument, and since it has been taken away from them, things have gone very much backward. Among philosophers in the narrower sense, **Hume** is, if I am not mistaken, the first who did not tiptoe around the heavy difficulty that Augustine first raised. He states it openly, though without mentioning Augustine or Luther, let alone Vanini. It is in his *Essay on liberty and necessity*, where, toward the end, it says: "The ultimate author of all our volitions is the creator of the world. The creator first set this immense machine in motion and placed all beings in that particular position from which every later event must follow by unavoidable necessity. So human actions either can have no wrongness at all, since they come from so good a cause, or, if they do have some wrongness, they must involve *our creator* in the same guilt, since the creator is acknowledged to be their ultimate cause and author. A man who sets off a mine is answerable for all the consequences, whether the fuse he used was long or short. In the same way, wherever a continuous chain of necessary causes is fixed, the Being who produces the first, whether finite or infinite, is also the author of all the rest" ∗). He makes an attempt to solve this difficulty, but admits at the end that he considers it unsolvable. ∗) Some German readers will welcome a translation of this and the other English passages: "The ultimate author of all our acts of will is the Creator of the world, who first set this immense machine in motion and put all beings into the particular position from which every later event had to follow with unavoidable necessity. For this reason, human actions are either capable of no wickedness at all, because they come from so good a cause; or, if they can be wicked in any way, they involve our Creator in the same guilt, since the Creator is acknowledged to be their ultimate cause, their author. For just as a man who lights a mine is responsible for all the consequences, whether the fuse was long or short, so wherever an unbroken chain of necessarily working causes is fixed, the being, finite or infinite, that brings about the first is also the author of all the rest." ### Chapter IV, 3 **Kant**, too, independently of his predecessors, runs up against the very same stumbling block in the Critique of Practical Reason, S. 180 ff. of the fourth edition, and S. 232 of Rosenkranz's edition: "It seems, after all, that as soon as we assume that God, as the universal original being, is also the **cause** of the **existence of substance**, we must also admit that the actions of a human being have their determining ground in something entirely outside the human being's power. That is, they have it in the causality of a highest being distinct from the human, on which the human's existence and the whole determination of the human's causality depend entirely.——The human being would be a Vaucanson automaton, built and wound up by the supreme master of all works of art. Self-consciousness would indeed make it a thinking automaton. But in it the consciousness of its spontaneity, if that is mistaken for freedom, would be mere illusion. For spontaneity deserves that name only in a comparative sense: the nearest determining causes of its movement, and a long series of them reaching up to their own determining causes, are indeed internal, but the last and highest is found entirely in a foreign hand."—He now tries to remove this great difficulty through the distinction between thing in itself and phenomenon. But this so plainly changes nothing essential in the matter that I am convinced he was not serious about it. He himself also admits that his solution falls short, S. 184, where he adds: "But is any other solution, whether one that has been tried or one that may yet be tried, easier and more graspable? One might rather say that the dogmatic teachers of metaphysics have shown more **cunning** than honesty in this, by keeping this difficult point out of sight as far as possible, in the hope that if they never spoke of it, probably no one would easily think of it." After this very noteworthy collection of highly different voices, which all say the same thing, I return to our Church Father. The reasons by which he hopes to remove the difficulty, which he already felt in its full weight, are theological, not philosophical. So they are not unconditionally valid. Supporting them is, as I said, the third reason, in addition to the two given above, why he tries to defend a *free choice* granted to human beings by God. Such a free choice, since it would stand in the middle and separate the Creator from the sins of the creature, would really be enough to remove the whole difficulty. That is so, if only it also remained at least **conceivable** under serious and deeper reflection. It is easily said in words, and it may satisfy thinking that goes hardly further than words. But how are we to picture that a being that is, in its whole *existence* and *essence*, the work of another can nevertheless determine itself from the very beginning and from the ground up, and so be responsible for its doing? The principle "*action follows being*"—that is, the effects of every being follow from its nature—overturns that assumption, but is itself unshakable. If a person acts badly, it is because they are bad. But a corollary attaches to that principle: *therefore the place where a being's existence comes from is the place where its action comes from*. What would we say of a watchmaker who was angry at their watch because it ran wrong? However much we might like to make the will a *blank slate*, we cannot avoid admitting the following. Suppose, for example, that of two people one follows a way of acting, in moral terms, that is quite the opposite of the other's. This difference must come from somewhere. Its ground lies either in outward circumstances, in which case the guilt clearly does not fall on the people, or in an original difference in their wills themselves. In that case too, guilt and merit again do not fall on them, if their whole being and nature is the work of another. The great men I have named have strained in vain to find a way out of this labyrinth. So I readily admit that to think the moral responsibility of the human will without its self-existence also goes beyond my power of understanding. Without doubt the same inability dictated the seventh of the eight definitions with which **Spinoza** opens his Ethics: "That thing will be called free which exists from the necessity of its own nature alone and is determined to act by itself alone. But a thing is called necessary, or rather compelled, if it is determined by another to exist and to act." If a bad action springs from the nature of the human being, that is, from the inborn constitution, then the guilt clearly lies with the author of this nature. That is why the free will was invented. But from what the action is then supposed to spring, once free will is assumed, is absolutely impossible to see. For free will is at bottom a merely **negative** property. It says only that nothing compels the person or hinders them from acting this way or that. But that never makes clear **what** the action finally springs from. It is not supposed to come from the person's inborn or created constitution, because then it would fall on their Creator. Nor is it supposed to come from outward circumstances alone, because then it would have to be put down to chance. So in any case the person would stay blameless—while they are nevertheless held responsible for it. The natural picture of a free will is an unloaded scale. It hangs there calmly and will never leave its balance unless something is put into one of its pans. A free will can no more produce an action out of itself than the scale can produce movement out of itself, because nothing comes from nothing. If the scale is to sink to one side, a foreign body must be laid on it, and that body is then the source of the movement. In the same way, the human action must be produced by something that works **positively** and is something more than a merely **negative** freedom. But this can be only one of two things. Either the motives do it in and of themselves, that is, the outward circumstances. Then the person is clearly not responsible for the action, and all people would also have to act exactly alike in equal circumstances. Or else the action springs from the person's receptiveness to such motives, and so from the inborn character, that is, from the inclinations originally dwelling in the person, which can differ from one individual to another and by virtue of which the motives work. But then the will is no longer free. For these inclinations are the weight laid in the scale's pan. The responsibility falls back on whoever put them there, that is, on whoever's work the person with such inclinations is. So a person is responsible for their doing only if they are their own work, that is, have self-existence. The whole view of the matter set out here lets us gauge how much hangs on freedom of the will. It forms an indispensable gulf between the Creator and the sins of the creature. That makes it understandable why the theologians hold on to it so stubbornly. It also explains why their shield-bearers, the philosophy professors, dutifully support them so eagerly in this. Deaf and blind to the most conclusive counterproofs of great thinkers, they hold on to free will and fight for it *as for their altars and hearths*. But to close my account of **Augustine** at last, which I interrupted above: his opinion as a whole is that the human being really had a fully free will only before the Fall. After the Fall, having come under original sin, the human being must hope for salvation from election by grace and from redemption.—That is speaking just like a Church Father. ### Chapter IV, 4 In the meantime, **Augustine** and his dispute with the Manichaeans and the Pelagians had awakened philosophy to an awareness of our problem. From then on the Scholastics gradually saw it more clearly, as **Buridan's** sophism and the passage from **Dante** quoted above show.—But the first to get to the bottom of the matter was, by all appearances, **Thomas Hobbes**. He devoted a work specially to this subject, *Quaestiones de libertate et necessitate, contra Doctorem Branhallum*, which appeared in 1656. It is rare now. In English it can be found in *Th. Hobbes moral and political works*, one volume in folio, London 1750, S. 469 ff. I give the following main passage from it. S. 483: 6. Nothing takes a beginning from itself. It begins from the action of some other immediate agent outside itself. So when a person first has an appetite or will for something that they had no appetite or will for just before, the cause of that will is not the will itself but something else, which is not theirs to command. Now there is no dispute that the will is the necessary cause of voluntary actions. And what has just been said shows that the will is itself necessarily *caused* by other things, which it does not control. It follows that voluntary actions all have necessary causes, and therefore are *necessitated*. 7. I hold *a cause* to be *sufficient* when nothing is missing that is needed to produce the *effect*. Such a cause is also a *necessary* cause. For suppose it were possible for a *sufficient* cause not to bring forth its *effect*. Then something needed to produce the effect would be missing, and so the cause was not *sufficient*. But if it is impossible for a *sufficient* cause not to produce its effect, then a *sufficient* cause is a *necessary* cause. From this it is clear that whatever is produced is produced *necessarily*. For whatever is produced has had a *sufficient* cause to produce it; otherwise it would not have come to be. And so *voluntary* actions are *necessitated* as well. 8. The ordinary definition of a free agent (namely, that a free agent is one that, when all the things needed to produce the effect are present, can nevertheless fail to produce it) contains a contradiction and is nonsense. It is the same as saying that the cause may be *sufficient*, that is, *necessary*, and yet the effect not follow.— S. 485. Every event, however much a matter of chance it may seem, and however *voluntary* it may be, is produced *necessarily* ∗). ∗) 6. Nothing starts by itself. Each thing starts through the working of some other, immediate cause that lies outside it. So when a person now wishes or wants something that they neither wished nor wanted just before, the cause of their wanting is not this wanting itself but something else, something that does not depend on them. Now the will is, beyond dispute, the necessary cause of voluntary actions. And, according to what was just said, the will is necessarily caused by other things that are independent of it. It follows that all voluntary actions have **necessary** causes, and so are **necessitated**. 7. I recognize as a **sufficient** cause one that lacks nothing needed to bring about its effect. Such a cause is at the same time a **necessary** cause. For if it were possible for a **sufficient** cause not to bring about its effect, then it would have to have lacked something needed to bring that effect about. But then the cause was not **sufficient**. And if it is impossible for a **sufficient** cause not to bring about its effect, then a **sufficient** cause is also a **necessary** cause. From this it plainly follows that everything that is brought about is brought about **necessarily**. For everything that has been brought about had a **sufficient** cause that brought it about; otherwise it would never have come into being. So **voluntary** actions are necessitated too. 8. That common definition of a free agent (namely, that it would be something which, even when everything needed to bring about the effect is present, could still **fail** to bring it about) contains a contradiction and is nonsense. For it says that a cause can be **sufficient**, that is, **necessary**, and the effect can still fail to appear. S. 485. "Every event, however **accidental** it may seem, or however **voluntary** it may be, happens **necessarily**." In his famous book *De cive*, c. 1, § 7, he says: Everyone is driven to pursue what is good for them and to flee what is bad for them, and above all the greatest of natural evils, which is death; and this happens by a necessity of nature no less than the necessity by which a stone is driven downward. Right after **Hobbes** we see **Spinoza** filled with the same conviction. A few passages will be enough to show what his teaching on this point is: Eth., P. I, prop. 32. The will cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary one.—Coroll. 2. For the will, like everything else, needs a cause by which it is determined to act in a certain way. Ibid., P. II, scholium ultimum. As for the fourth objection (about Buridan's ass), I say that I fully grant this: a person placed in such a balance (that is, one who perceives nothing but thirst and hunger and a certain food and a certain drink, both equally far from them) will die of hunger and thirst. Ibid., P. III, prop. 2. Schol. The decisions of the mind arise in the mind by the same necessity as the ideas of things that actually exist. So those who believe they speak or keep silent, or do anything at all, from a free decision of the mind are dreaming with their eyes open.—Epist. 62. Each thing is necessarily determined by some external cause to exist and to act in a certain fixed way. For example, a stone receives from an external cause that pushes it a certain quantity of motion, with which it will necessarily keep moving afterward. Now imagine that the stone, while it keeps moving, thinks and knows that it is trying, as much as it can, to keep moving. This stone is conscious only of its own effort and is not at all indifferent. So it will believe that it is perfectly free and that it stays in motion for no other reason than that it wants to. And this is that human freedom which everyone boasts of having, and which consists in this alone: that people are conscious of their appetite and ignorant of the causes that determine them.——With this I have explained well enough what my opinion is about free and compelled necessity, and about the invented human freedom. A remarkable fact, however, is that **Spinoza** reached this insight only in his last years (that is, in his forties). Earlier, in 1665, when he was still a Cartesian, he had firmly and warmly defended the opposite opinion in his *Cogitata metaphysica*, c. 12. In direct contradiction to the final scholium of Part II just quoted, he had even said this about Buridan's sophism: If we put a human being in the place of the ass, in such a balance, that human being must be regarded not as a thinking creature but as the most disgraceful of asses, if they die of hunger and thirst. I will have to report the same change of opinion and conversion about two other great men further below. This proves how difficult and deeply hidden the right insight into our problem is. **Hume**, in his *Essay on liberty and necessity*, from which I already had to quote a passage above, writes with the clearest conviction that individual acts of will are necessary once the motives are given. He presents this very plainly, in his usual manner, which everyone can follow. He says: So it appears that the connection between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and uniform as the connection between cause and effect in any part of nature. And further on: It seems almost impossible, then, to take part in science or in action of any kind without accepting the doctrine of necessity and this inference from motives to voluntary actions, from character to conduct∗). ∗) "So it follows that the connection between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and uniform as the connection between cause and effect in any part of nature can possibly be."———"So it seems almost impossible to undertake anything, whether in science or in actions of any kind, without accepting the doctrine of necessity and that inference from motives to acts of will, from character to way of acting." ### Chapter IV, 5 But no writer has shown the necessity of acts of will as fully and as convincingly as **Priestley**, in his work devoted entirely to this subject: *The Doctrine of philosophical necessity*. Anyone who is not convinced by this book, which is written with great clarity and is easy to follow, must have an understanding truly paralyzed by prejudice. To show what his results are, I give a few passages, which I cite from the second edition, Birmingham 1782. Preface S. XX. There is no absurdity more glaring to my understanding than the notion of philosophical liberty.—S. 26. Without a miracle, or the intervention of some foreign cause, no volition or action of any person could have been other than it has been.—S. 37. Though an inclination or affection of mind is not gravity, it influences me and acts upon me as certainly and necessarily as this force does upon a stone.—S. 43. Saying that the will is *self-determined* gives no idea at all, or rather it implies an absurdity, namely that a *determination*, which is an *effect*, takes place without any cause at all. For leaving out everything that comes under the name of *motive*, there is really nothing left to produce the determination. Let a person use whatever *words* they please, they can have no more *conception* of how we can sometimes be determined by motives and sometimes without any motive, than they can have of a scale sometimes being weighed down by weights and sometimes by a kind of substance that has no weight at all, which, whatever it may be in itself, must be *nothing* with respect to the scale.—S. 66. In proper philosophical language, the motive ought to be called the *proper cause* of the action. It is as much so as anything in nature is the cause of anything else.—S. 84. It will never be in our power to choose two things when all the previous circumstances are exactly the same.—S. 90. A person, indeed, who reproaches themselves for some particular action in their past conduct may imagine that if they were in the same situation again, they would act differently. But this is a mere *deception*. If they examine themselves strictly and take in all the circumstances, they may be satisfied that, with the same inward disposition of mind and exactly the same view of things that they had then, leaving out all the others they have acquired by reflection *since*, they could not have acted otherwise than they did.—S. 287. In short, there is no choice in the case but between the doctrine of necessity and absolute nonsense.—∗). ∗) S. XX. "For my understanding there is no more glaring absurdity than the concept of moral freedom."—S. 26. "Without a miracle, or the intervention of some external cause, no act of will or action of any person could have turned out differently from the way it did turn out."—S. 37. "Although an inclination or state of my mind is not gravity, it still has as sure and necessary an influence and effect on me as that force has on a stone."—S. 43. "The statement that the will is something that **determines itself** gives no concept at all, or rather contains an absurdity, namely this: that a **determination**, which is an effect, occurs without any cause. For leaving out everything understood by the name **motive**, nothing in fact remains that could produce that determination. Let someone use whatever **words** they like, they can have no more **concept** of our being determined sometimes by motives and sometimes to something without any motives at all, than of a scale being pulled down sometimes by weights and sometimes by a kind of substance that has no weight at all and that, whatever it may be in itself, would be **nothing** with respect to the scale."—S. 66. "In proper philosophical language the motive should be called the **actual cause** of the action. For it is that as much as anything in nature is the cause of something else."—S. 84. "It will never be in our power to make two different choices when all previous circumstances are exactly the same."—S. 90. "Admittedly, a person who reproaches themselves for some particular action in their past life can imagine that if they were in the same position again, they would act differently. But this is a mere **delusion**. If they examine themselves strictly and take all the circumstances into account, they can convince themselves that, with the same inner state of mind and exactly the same view of things that they had at the time, leaving out all other views gained **since** through reflection, they could not have acted otherwise than they did."—S. 287. "In short, there is no other choice here than between the doctrine of necessity and absolute nonsense." Now it should be noted that things went for **Priestley** just as they did for **Spinoza** and for another very great man whom I will cite in a moment. For in the preface to the first edition, S. XXVII, **Priestley** says: I was not however a ready convert to the doctrine of necessity. Like Dr. Hartley himself, I gave up my liberty with great reluctance. In a long correspondence that I once had on the subject, I maintained the doctrine of liberty very strenuously, and I did not at all yield to the arguments then put to me∗). ∗) "I have not, however, been easy to win over to the doctrine of necessity. Like Dr. Hartley himself, I gave up my freedom only with great reluctance. In a long correspondence that I once carried on about this subject, I eagerly maintained the doctrine of freedom, and in no way gave way to the arguments that were set against me." The third great man to whom the same thing happened is **Voltaire**, who reports it with the charm and naive openness that are his own. In his *Traité de métaphysique*, chap. 7, he had defended the so-called freedom of the will at length and with spirit. But in his book *Le philosophe ignorant*, written more than forty years later, he teaches the strictest necessitation of acts of will, in the 13th chapter, which he ends like this: Archimedes is just as necessitated to stay in his room when he is locked in as when he is so deeply absorbed in a problem that the idea of going out does not occur to him: The fates lead the willing and drag the unwilling. *The ignorant person who thinks this way has not always thought the same way*, but is at last forced to give in. In the book that follows, *Le principe d'action*, he says in chap. 13: A ball that pushes another, a hunting dog that runs necessarily and willingly after a stag, this stag that leaps an immense ditch with no less necessity and will: all of this is no more irresistibly determined than we are in everything we do. That three such eminent minds were converted in the same way to our insight must surely give pause to anyone who sets out to challenge well-founded truths with the "but I can do what I will" of a simple-minded self-consciousness, a remark that has nothing to do with the matter. ### Chapter IV, 6 After these nearest predecessors of his, it should not surprise us that **Kant** took the necessity with which motives determine the empirical character to actions as a settled matter. It was settled for him and for others too, so he did not stop to prove it again. He opens his "Ideas toward a Universal History" like this: "Whatever idea one may form, for metaphysical purposes, of the **freedom of the will**, its **appearances**, human actions, are determined by universal laws of nature, just as much as any other natural event."—In the Critique of Pure Reason (S. 548 of the first edition, or S. 577 of the fifth) he says: "Since the empirical character itself must be drawn from the phenomena as an effect, and from their rule, which experience supplies, all of a person's actions, as phenomena, are determined by their empirical character and the other causes that work with it, according to the order of nature. And if we could investigate all the phenomena of their power of choice down to the ground, there would be no single human action that we could not predict with certainty and recognize as necessary from its preceding conditions. With respect to this empirical character there is therefore no freedom. And only according to this can we consider a person, if we merely **observe** and, as is done in anthropology, want to investigate the moving causes of their actions physiologically."—In the same work, S. 798 of the first edition, or S. 826 of the fifth, it says: "Even if the will is free, this can concern only the intelligible cause of our willing. As for the phenomena of its expressions, that is, actions, we must by an inviolable basic maxim, without which we can use no reason in its empirical use, never explain them otherwise than all the other phenomena of nature, namely by their unchangeable laws."—Further, in the Critique of Practical Reason, S. 177 of the fourth edition, or S. 230 of Rosenkranz's: "So we can grant the following. Suppose it were possible for us to have so deep an insight into a person's way of thinking, as it shows itself in inner as well as outer actions, that every incentive to it, even the slightest, became known to us, and likewise all the outer occasions acting on these incentives. Then one could calculate a person's future conduct with certainty, just like a lunar or solar eclipse." Kant ties to this his doctrine that freedom and necessity can exist together. He bases it on the distinction between the intelligible character and the empirical. I fully accept this view, so I will return to it further below. **Kant** presented it twice: in the Critique of Pure Reason, S. 532–554 of the first edition, or S. 560–582 of the fifth, and still more clearly in the Critique of Practical Reason, S. 169–179 of the fourth edition, or S. 224–231 of Rosenkranz's. These deeply thought passages must be read by everyone who wants a thorough understanding of how human freedom can be reconciled with the necessity of actions.— Up to here, this treatment of the subject differs from the achievements of all these noble and venerable predecessors chiefly in two points. First, following the guidance of the prize question, I have kept the inner perception of the will in self-consciousness strictly apart from the outer perception, and considered each by itself. Only this made it possible to uncover the source of the illusion that works so irresistibly on most people. Second, I have considered the will in connection with the whole of the rest of nature. No one before me did that. Only this made it possible to treat the subject with the thoroughness, methodical insight, and completeness of which it is capable. Now a few words about some writers who wrote after **Kant**, but whom I do not regard as my predecessors. **Schelling** has given an explanatory paraphrase of **Kant's** doctrine of the intelligible and empirical character, which I just praised as highly important. It is in his "Inquiry into Human Freedom," S. 465–471. The liveliness of its coloring can help make the matter easier for some readers to grasp than Kant's thorough but dry presentation can. Still, I cannot mention this paraphrase without protesting, for the honor of truth and of **Kant**. **Schelling** is presenting one of the most important and admirable of all Kant's doctrines, and in my view the most profound. Yet he does not say clearly that what he now sets out belongs to **Kant** as far as its content goes. Instead he words it so that the great majority of readers must suppose they are reading **Schelling's** own thoughts. Most readers do not have the content of the great man's long and difficult works clearly in mind. I will show how well the result has matched this aim with just one example out of many. Even today a young professor of philosophy in Halle, Mr. Erdmann, says in his book of 1837, titled "Body and Soul," S. 101: "even if Leibniz, similarly to Schelling in his treatise on freedom, lets the soul determine itself before all time," etc. So **Schelling** stands to **Kant** in the fortunate position of **Amerigo** to **Columbus**: another's discovery is stamped with his name. But he owes this to his cleverness, not to chance. For he begins, S. 465: "In general, it was **idealism** that first raised the doctrine of freedom into that domain," etc. The Kantian thoughts follow immediately. Honesty would have him say **Kant** here. Instead he cleverly says **idealism**. But this expression has many meanings. Everyone here will understand by it **Fichte's** and **Schelling's** first, Fichtean philosophy, and not **Kant's** doctrine. Kant protested against the name **idealism** for his philosophy (for example Prolegomena, S. 51, and S. 155, Rosenkranz). He even inserted a "Refutation of Idealism" into the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, S. 274. On the following page **Schelling** very cleverly mentions "the Kantian concept" in a passing phrase. This is to soothe those who already know that the wealth being unpacked so grandly here as his own goods is Kant's. But then, S. 472, against all truth and justice, he even says that **Kant** had not risen to that view in theory, etc. Yet anyone can see clearly from the two immortal passages of **Kant** that I recommended above for reading that precisely this view belongs originally to him alone. Without Kant, a thousand more heads like Messrs. **Fichte** and **Schelling** would never have been able to grasp it. Since I had to speak here of **Schelling's** treatise, I could not stay silent on this point. I have only done my duty toward that great teacher of humanity, who, quite alone beside **Goethe**, is the rightful pride of the German nation. I have claimed for him what undeniably belongs to him alone. This matters all the more in an age to which **Goethe's** saying truly applies: "the crowd of boys is master of the road."—Besides, in the same treatise **Schelling** had just as little hesitation in making the thoughts, and even the words, of **Jakob Böhme** his own, without revealing his source. Apart from this paraphrase of Kant's thoughts, that "Inquiry into Freedom" contains nothing that could give us new or thorough clarification about freedom. The definition right at the start already announces this: freedom is "a capacity for good and evil." Such a definition may suit the catechism. In philosophy it says nothing, and so nothing can be done with it. For good and evil are far from being simple concepts (*notiones simplices*) that are clear in themselves and need no explanation, pinning down, or grounding. In general, only a small part of that treatise is about freedom. Its main content is a detailed report about a God with whom the author shows intimate acquaintance, since he even describes God's origin for us. It is only a pity that he does not say in a single word how he came by this acquaintance. The treatise begins with a web of sophisms. Anyone who does not let the boldness of the tone intimidate them will see how shallow they are. Since then, as a result of this work and others like it, "intellectual intuition" and "absolute thinking" have taken the place of clear concepts and honest inquiry in German philosophy. Impressing, bewildering, and mystifying people, and throwing sand in the reader's eyes by all sorts of tricks, has become the method. All the way through, intention rather than insight guides the presentation. Because of all this, philosophy—if one still wants to call it that—has had to sink more and more, and ever deeper. At last it reached the lowest step of degradation in the minister's creature **Hegel**. He wanted to smother again the freedom of thought that **Kant** had won. So he made philosophy, the daughter of reason and future mother of truth, into a tool of the state's purposes, of obscurantism, and of Protestant Jesuitism. And to hide the disgrace, and at the same time to dull people's heads as much as possible, he drew over it the cloak of the emptiest word-mongering and the most senseless gibberish ever heard, at least outside the madhouse. ### Chapter IV, 7 In England and France, philosophy, taken as a whole, still stands almost where **Locke** and **Condillac** left it. **Maine de Byran**, called "the foremost French metaphysician of my time" by his editor, Mr. **Cousin**, is a fanatical believer in *freedom of choice through indifference* in his *Nouvelles considérations du physique et moral*, which appeared in 1834. He takes it as something that goes entirely without saying. Some recent German philosophical scribblers do no differently. Under the name "moral freedom," *freedom of choice through indifference* appears in their writing as a settled matter, just as if all the great men cited above had never existed. They declare the freedom of the will to be given directly in self-consciousness. They say this settles it so firmly that all arguments against it can be nothing but sophisms. This lofty confidence comes simply from the fact that these good people do not know what freedom of the will is and means. In their innocence they understand by it nothing other than the control of the will over the limbs of the body, which we analyzed in our second section. No reasonable person has ever doubted that control, and "I can do what I will" is exactly its expression. This, they honestly think, is freedom of the will, and they insist that it is beyond all doubt. It is precisely this state of innocence to which Hegelian philosophy, after so many great predecessors, has set the German thinking mind back. To people of this stamp one could indeed call out: "Are you not like women, who always Go back to nothing but their first word, When someone has spoken sense for hours on end?" Still, with some of them the theological motives hinted at above may be quietly at work. And then there are the medical, zoological, historical, political, and literary writers of our day. How very eagerly they seize every chance to mention "the freedom of man" and "moral freedom"! They think it makes them somebody. They do not go into an explanation of it, of course. But if we were allowed to examine them, we would find that by it they mean either nothing at all or our old, honest, well-known *freedom of choice through indifference*, however grand the phrases they dress it in. Convincing the great crowd that this concept cannot stand will probably never succeed. But scholars should take care not to speak of it with so much innocence. That is also why some of them are timid, and very amusing. They no longer dare to speak of freedom of the **will**. To be refined, they say "freedom of the **spirit**" instead and hope to slip through with it. Fortunately I can tell the reader who looks at me with that question what they are thinking by it. Nothing, absolutely nothing—except that, in good German fashion and art, it is an undecided, indeed really empty expression. It gives their emptiness and cowardice a welcome refuge for slipping away. The word "spirit" is really a figurative expression. Everywhere it means the **intellectual** faculties, as opposed to the will. But these faculties are by no means supposed to be free in their working. They must first adapt, bend, and submit themselves to the rules of logic. Then they must do so to the particular **object** of their knowing in each case. That way they grasp purely, that is, **objectively**, and it is never said, "*will stands in place of reason*." In general, this "spirit" that roams about everywhere in present-day German literature is a thoroughly suspicious fellow. Wherever he is caught, one should ask him for his passport. His most frequent trade is to serve as a mask for poverty of thought joined with cowardice. Besides, the word **Geist** is known to be related to the word **gas**. Gas comes from Arabic and alchemy and means vapor or air. In the same way spiritus (breath), pneuma (breath, wind), and animus (soul) are related to anemon (winds). That, then, is how things stand on our subject in the philosophical world and in the wider learned world, after everything the great minds I have named have taught about it. This confirms once more that nature has at all times produced only very few real thinkers, as rare exceptions. It also confirms that these few themselves have always existed for only very few people. That is exactly why delusion and error keep their rule continually.— On a moral subject the testimony of the great poets also carries weight. They do not speak after systematic inquiry, but human nature lies open to their deep gaze. So what they say strikes the truth directly.—In **Shakespeare**, *Measure for measure*, A. 2, Sc. 2, Isabella begs the regent Angelo for mercy for her brother, who has been condemned to death: *Angelo.* I will not do it. *Isab.* But can you if you would? *Ang.* Look, what I *will* not do, that I *cannot* do∗). ∗) **Angelo.** I will not do it. **Isabella.** But could you do it, if you wanted to? **Angelo.** Look: what I do not **want**, that I **cannot** do. In *Twelfth night*, A. 1, it says: Fate, show your force: we do not own ourselves. What is decreed must be, and so let it be ∗∗). ∗∗) Now, Fate, you can show your power: What is meant to be must happen, and no one belongs to themselves. **Walter Scott** too, that great connoisseur and painter of the human heart and its most secret stirrings, has brought this deep-lying truth clearly into daylight, in his *St. Ronans Well*, Vol. 3, chap. 6. He portrays a dying, repentant female sinner, who tries on her deathbed to ease her tormented conscience with confessions. In the middle of these he has her say: Go, and leave me to my fate. I am the most detestable wretch that ever lived—detestable to myself, worst of all. Even in my repentance there is a secret whisper telling me that if I were as I have been, I would act over again all the wickedness I have done, and much worse. Oh, for Heaven's help to crush the wicked thought! ∗∗∗) ∗∗∗) "Go and leave me to my fate. I am the most miserable and abominable creature who ever lived—most abominable to myself. For in the middle of my remorse something whispers to me secretly that if I were again as I have been, I would commit all the wickednesses I have committed once more, and even worse ones besides. Oh, for Heaven's help, to choke this worthless thought." The following fact, which runs parallel to this poetic portrayal, gives evidence for it, and at the same time confirms the doctrine of the constancy of character in the strongest way. In 1845 it passed from the French newspaper *La Presse* into the *Times* of July 2, 1845, and I translate it from there. The headline reads: Military Execution at Oran. "On March 24, the Spaniard Aguilar, *alias* Gomez, was sentenced to death. On the day before the execution he said, in conversation with his jailer: I am not as guilty as I have been made out to be. I am accused of having committed 30 murders, though I have committed only 26. From childhood I thirsted for blood. When I was 7½ years old, I stabbed a child. I murdered a pregnant woman, and later a Spanish officer, and because of that I was forced to flee from Spain. I escaped to France, where I committed two crimes before I entered the Foreign Legion. Of all my crimes, I repent most of the following: In the year 1841, at the head of my company, I took prisoner a deputy commissary general who was escorted by a sergeant, a corporal, and 7 men. I had them all beheaded. The death of these men weighs heavily on me. I see them in my dreams, and tomorrow I will see them in the soldiers ordered to shoot me. **Nevertheless, if I were given my freedom again, I would murder others.**" The following passage in Goethe's Iphigenia (A. 4, Sc. 2) also belongs here: **Arkas:** For you have not listened to the advice of loyalty. **Iphigenia:** What I was able to do, I have gladly done. **Arkas:** You will still change your mind in time. **Iphigenia: That, once and for all, is not in our power.** A famous passage in Schiller's Wallenstein also expresses our basic truth: "A person's deeds and thoughts, know this, Are not like the sea's blindly moving waves. The inner world, a person's microcosm, is The deep shaft from which they well up forever. They are **necessary**, like the fruit of the tree. Chance, with its juggling, cannot change them. Once I have examined a person's core, Then I also know their willing and their acting." ### Chapter V, 1 **V. Conclusion and Higher View.** I was glad to recall all those glorious predecessors, poets and philosophers alike, who held the truth I defend. Still, a philosopher's weapons are reasons, not authorities. So I have argued my case with reasons alone, and I hope I have made it so clear that I am now entitled to draw the conclusion *from "cannot be" to "is not."* Earlier, when I examined self-consciousness, I gave a direct and factual answer, and so an *a posteriori* one, denying the question the Royal Society posed. Now that denial is also established indirectly and *a priori*. For something that does not exist at all cannot have any data in self-consciousness from which it could be proved. The truth I defend here may well be one that runs against the preconceived opinions of the short-sighted crowd. It may even offend the weak and ignorant. That could not stop me from setting it out openly and holding nothing back. After all, I am speaking here not to the people but to an enlightened academy. It did not pose its very timely question to shore up prejudice, but to honor the truth.—Besides, an honest seeker of truth looks only at the grounds of a truth, never at its consequences, as long as the task is still to establish it and make it credible. The time for consequences comes once the truth itself stands firm. To ignore the consequences, to examine only the grounds, and not even to ask first whether a recognized truth agrees with the system of our other convictions—this is what **Kant** already recommends. I cannot help repeating his words here: "This strengthens a maxim that others have already recognized and praised: in every scientific inquiry, we should go on our way undisturbed, with all possible precision and openness. We should pay no attention to anything outside the field that the inquiry might happen to clash with. Instead, we should carry it out by itself, as truly and completely as we can. Repeated observation has convinced me of this. Halfway through the work, a point sometimes seemed very troubling to me, in view of other doctrines outside it. But once the work was finished, I found that if I had only kept that worry out of sight until then and attended to my work alone, the point agreed perfectly in the end, in an unexpected way, with what had turned up by itself, with no regard at all for those doctrines and without bias or fondness for them. Writers would save themselves many errors and much wasted effort (because it rested on illusion) if they could only decide to go to work with a little more openness." (Critique of Practical Reason, S. 190 of the fourth edition, or S. 239 of Rosenkranz's.) Our metaphysical knowledge as a whole is surely still very far from having such certainty that we should reject a thoroughly proved truth just because its consequences do not fit with other things. On the contrary, every truth that has been won and established is a conquered piece of the whole territory of the problems of knowledge. It is also a firm point on which to set the levers that will move other loads. In favorable cases, it is even a point from which one swings up all at once to a higher view of the whole than one had before. For truths are so closely linked in every field of knowledge that anyone who has taken secure possession of a single one may hope, at the very least, to conquer the whole from there. Take a difficult algebra problem. One quantity that is positively given is priceless, because it makes the solution possible. In the same way, metaphysics is the most difficult of all human tasks. In it, the certain knowledge—proved *a priori* and *a posteriori*—of the strict necessity with which actions follow from a given character and given motives is just such a priceless given fact. Starting from it alone, one can reach the solution of the whole problem. So anything that cannot show firm scientific backing must give way to such a well-founded truth wherever it stands in its path. The truth must not give way to it. It must never agree to compromises and limits just to bring itself into line with claims that are unproved and perhaps mistaken. Let me make one more general remark. Looking back at our result, we can see something about the two problems that the previous section already named as the deepest in modern philosophy, though the ancients were not clearly aware of them. They are the problem of freedom of the will and the problem of the relation between the ideal and the real. On both, the healthy but unrefined understanding is not only unqualified to judge. It even has a definite natural tendency toward error, and it takes a philosophy that is already far advanced to bring it back. When it comes to **knowing**, it is really natural for the understanding to credit the **object** with far too much. That is why **Locke** and **Kant** were needed, to show how much of it comes from the subject. When it comes to **willing**, it has the opposite tendency: it credits the **object** with far too little and the **subject** with far too much. It lets willing come wholly from **the subject**. It fails to count properly the factor that lies in the **object**, the motives. Yet the motives really determine the whole individual character of actions, while only what is general and essential in them, their basic moral character, comes from the **subject**. We should not be surprised by such a natural perversity of the understanding in speculative inquiry. It was originally meant only for practical purposes, and not at all for speculative ones.— Our account so far has shown that all freedom of human action is completely removed, and that action is subject throughout to the strictest necessity. That very result has led us to the point where we will be able to grasp **true moral freedom**, which is of a higher kind. ### Chapter V, 2 There is one more fact of consciousness that I have so far left entirely aside, so as not to disturb the course of the inquiry. This is the completely clear and certain feeling of **responsibility** for what we do, of **being accountable** for our actions. It rests on the unshakable certainty that we ourselves are **the doers of our** deeds. Because of this awareness, it never occurs to anyone to excuse a wrongdoing by this necessity and to shift the guilt from themselves onto the motives, on the grounds that once the motives appeared the deed could not fail to happen. This is true even of someone who is fully convinced of the necessity, set out above, with which our actions occur. For such a person sees very well that this necessity has a **subjective** condition. They see that, *objectively*, a quite different action was entirely possible under the given circumstances, that is, under the influence of the motives that determined them. It could even have been exactly the opposite of theirs, and it could have happened, **if only they had been a different person**. That alone was the cause. For them, because they are this person and no other, because they have this particular character, no other action was possible. But in itself, that is, *objectively*, it was possible. So the **responsibility** they are aware of falls, first of all and on the surface, only on the deed. At bottom, however, it falls on **their character**. For **that character** they feel responsible. And others, too, hold them responsible for **it**. Their judgment at once leaves the deed behind in order to fix the qualities of the doer: "he is a bad man, a villain," or "he is a scoundrel," or "he is a small, false, base soul." That is their verdict, and their reproaches come back to his **character**. The deed, together with the motive, counts here only as evidence of the doer's character. But it is taken as a sure symptom of that character, by which the person is fixed irrevocably and for good. Aristotle therefore says, very rightly: "We praise those who have acted. For deeds are signs of a settled disposition, since we would praise even someone who had not acted, if we believed him to be that kind of person."—*Rhetorica, I, 9.* (*We celebrate with praise those who have acted; deeds are signs of a habit; for we would also praise one who had not acted, if we believed him to be such.*) So hatred, disgust, and contempt are aimed not at the passing deed but at the lasting qualities of the doer, that is, at the character from which the deed came. That is why, in all languages, the words that name moral badness, the insulting names for it, are predicates of the **person** rather than of the actions. They are attached to the **character**. For the character has to bear the guilt, of which it was convicted merely on the occasion of the deeds. Where the **guilt** lies, the **responsibility** must lie too. This responsibility is the only fact that entitles us to infer moral freedom. So the **freedom** must lie in the same place: in a person's **character**. This is all the more so because we have convinced ourselves sufficiently that freedom cannot be found directly in individual actions, since these occur with strict necessity once the character is given. And the character, as was shown in the third section, is inborn and unchangeable. So we want to look somewhat more closely at freedom in this sense, the only one for which there is any evidence. We have inferred it from a fact of consciousness and found where it is located. Now we want to understand it philosophically as well, as far as that may be possible. The third section showed that every human action is the product of two factors: the person's character and the motive. This does not mean at all that the action is something in between, a kind of compromise between the motive and the character. It satisfies both fully, because its whole possibility rests on both at once. That is, it rests on the fact that the acting motive meets this character, and that this character can be determined by such a motive. The character is the lasting and unchangeable nature of an individual will, as it is known through experience. This character is as necessary a factor in every action as the motive is. That explains the feeling that our deeds come from ourselves, the "I will" that accompanies all our actions. Because of it, everyone must acknowledge their actions as **their own** deeds, and so feels morally responsible for them. This is again the very "I will, and I always will only what I will" that we found earlier, when we examined self-consciousness. It misleads the unrefined understanding into stubbornly asserting an absolute freedom to do or not to do, a *free choice of indifference*. But it is nothing more than the awareness of the second factor of the action. By itself, this factor would be quite unable to bring the action about. But when the motive appears, it is just as unable to refrain from it. Only when it is set in motion in this way does it reveal its own nature to the faculty of knowledge. That faculty is directed essentially outward, not inward. It learns even the nature of its own will only from experience, from the will's actions. This closer acquaintance, which keeps growing more intimate, is what we really call **conscience**. For that very reason, conscience speaks up **directly** only **after** the action. **Before** the action it speaks at most **indirectly**. Through reflection and a look back at similar cases on which it has already pronounced, it can be counted in our deliberation as something that will come later. This is the place to recall the account that **Kant** gave of the relation between the empirical and the intelligible character, and through it of how freedom can be reconciled with necessity. I already mentioned it in the previous section. It is among the most beautiful and profound things that this great mind, indeed that any human beings, have ever produced. I need only refer to it, since it would be needless length to repeat it here. But only from it can we understand, as far as human powers allow, how the strict necessity of our actions can still exist alongside the freedom to which the feeling of responsibility bears witness. By virtue of this freedom we are the doers of our deeds, and the deeds are morally to be charged to us.—This relation of the empirical to the intelligible character, as **Kant** set it out, rests entirely on what forms the basic feature of his whole philosophy: the distinction between phenomenon and thing in itself. In his system, the complete **empirical reality** of the world of experience exists alongside its **transcendental ideality**. In the same way, the strict **empirical necessity** of action exists alongside its **transcendental freedom**. The empirical character, like the whole human being, is a mere phenomenon, as an object of experience. So it is bound to the forms of all phenomena—time, space, and causality—and subject to their laws. By contrast, the condition and foundation of this whole phenomenon is the person's **intelligible character**. That is, it is the person's will as thing in itself. As a thing in itself, it is independent of those forms, and so not subject to any difference of time. It is therefore lasting and unchangeable. In that capacity it does have absolute freedom, that is, independence from the law of causality (which is a mere form of phenomena). But this freedom is **transcendental**. That is, it does not show up in the phenomenon. It exists only to the extent that we set aside the phenomenon and all its forms, in order to reach what must be thought of, outside all time, as the inner essence of the human being in itself. By virtue of this freedom, all of a person's deeds are their own work, however necessarily they follow from the empirical character when it meets the motives. For this empirical character is merely the phenomenon of the intelligible one in our **faculty of knowledge**, which is bound to time, space, and causality. In other words, it is the way the essence in itself of our own self presents itself to that faculty. Accordingly, the **will** is free, but only in itself and outside the phenomenon. In the phenomenon it already presents itself with a definite character, to which all its deeds must conform. And so, once the motives that come along determine it more closely, those deeds must turn out necessarily this way and no other. ### Chapter V, 3 As is easy to see, this path leads to the conclusion that we must no longer look for the work of our **freedom** in our individual actions, as the common view does. We must look for it in the whole being and essence of the human being (*existence and essence*). That being must be thought of as the person's free act. For the faculty of knowledge, which is tied to time, space, and causality, this act presents itself only as a multitude and variety of actions. But the original unity of what presents itself in them means that all of them must bear exactly the same character. So they appear strictly determined by necessity through the motives of the moment, which call them forth and fix them in detail. Therefore, for the world of experience, the rule that *action follows being* holds without exception. Every thing acts according to its nature, and its acting, which follows on causes, makes that nature known. Every person acts according to what they are. The action that is necessary on that basis is determined, in the individual case, by the motives alone. So **freedom**, which cannot be found in *action*, **must lie in** *being*. It has been a basic error in every age, a putting of the later before the earlier, to assign necessity to *being* and freedom to *action*. It is the other way around. **Freedom lies** in *being* **alone**. But from being and the motives, *action* follows with necessity. And **from what we do, we recognize what we are**. On this, and not on the supposed *free choice of indifference*, rest the awareness of responsibility and the moral tendency of life. Everything depends on what a person **is**. What they **do** will follow from that by itself, as a necessary consequence. Despite their dependence on motives, all our deeds are undeniably accompanied by an awareness of acting by our own power and as the original source of what we do. This awareness is what makes them **our** deeds, and it does not deceive us. But its true content reaches further than the deeds and begins higher up. For our being and essence itself, from which all deeds necessarily proceed (on the occasion of the motives), is truly included in it. In this sense, we can compare that awareness of acting by our own power and as the original source, and likewise the awareness of responsibility that accompanies our acting, to a pointer. It points to an object farther away than the nearer one lying in the same direction, which it seems to point to. In a word: a human being always does only what they will, and yet does it necessarily. The reason is that they already **are** what they will. For everything they do at any time follows necessarily from what they **are**. If we look at their doing *objectively*, that is, from outside, we recognize with absolute certainty that it must be subject to the law of causality in its full strictness, like the working of every natural being. *Subjectively*, however, everyone feels that they always do only what they **will**. But this says merely that their acting is the pure expression of their own essence. So every natural being would feel the same, even the lowest, if it could feel. So my account has not abolished **freedom**. It has only moved it out of the area of individual actions, where it demonstrably cannot be found, and up into a higher region that is not so easily reached by our knowledge. That is, freedom is transcendental. This is also the sense in which I would like Malebranche's saying, "*Freedom is a mystery*," to be understood. Under its shield the present treatise has tried to solve the task set by the Royal Society. ### Appendix, 1 **Appendix, to Supplement the First Section.** At the very beginning I divided freedom into physical, intellectual, and moral freedom. The first and the last have now been dealt with. So I still have to discuss the second, intellectual freedom. I do this only for the sake of completeness, and so I will be brief. The intellect, or the faculty of knowledge, is the **medium of motives**. Motives act on the will through it, and the will is the real core of a human being. The will can decide according to its own nature, that is, according to the person's individual character, only if this medium is in a normal state. The medium must do its work properly. It must present the motives to the will for its choice unaltered, exactly as they exist in the real outer world. Only then can the will express itself **without hindrance**, in line with its own essence. In that case the person is **intellectually free**. That is, their actions are the pure result of their will's reaction to motives that exist in the outer world for them just as they do for everyone else. And then the actions can be attributed to them, both morally and legally. This intellectual freedom is **removed** in one of two ways. In the first, the medium of motives, the faculty of knowledge, is disordered, either permanently or only for a while. In the second, outside circumstances falsify how the motives are grasped in a particular case. The first happens in madness, delirium, paroxysms, and sleep-drunkenness. The second happens with a definite error that is not the person's fault. For example, someone pours poison instead of medicine. Or someone takes a servant who enters at night for a robber and shoots him. And the like. In both cases the motives are falsified. So the will cannot decide as it would under the circumstances if the intellect had handed the motives over to it correctly. Crimes committed in such circumstances are therefore also not punishable by law. The laws start from a correct assumption. The will, they assume, is not morally free, because in that case it could not be **steered**. Instead it is subject to compulsion by motives. Accordingly, the laws want to set stronger counter-motives, in the form of the punishments they threaten, against any motives there may be for crimes. A criminal code is nothing other than a list of counter-motives to criminal acts. But suppose it turns out that the intellect, through which these counter-motives had to work, was unable to take them in and hold them before the will. Then they could not have any effect. For the will they did not exist. It is like finding that one of the threads meant to set a machine moving has snapped. In such a case the fault passes from the will to the intellect. But the intellect is not subject to any punishment. The laws, like morality, deal only with the will. It alone is the real human being. The intellect is merely its organ, its feelers toward the outside. That is, it is the medium through which motives act on the will. Nor, in the same way, can such deeds be attributed to a person **morally**. They are not a trait of the person's character. Either they did something other than what they thought they were doing, or they were unable to think of what should have held them back, that is, to admit the counter-motives. It is like what happens when a substance that is to be tested chemically is exposed to the action of several reagents, to see which one it has the strongest affinity for. Suppose that after the experiment we find that, because of some accidental obstacle, one reagent could not act at all. Then the experiment is invalid. The intellectual freedom that we have just treated as completely removed can also be merely **reduced**, or removed in part. This happens especially through emotion and through intoxication. **Emotion** is the sudden, violent excitement of the will by a representation that pushes in from outside and becomes a motive. This representation is so vivid that it darkens all the others that could work against it as counter-motives, and does not let them come clearly into consciousness. These other representations are mostly abstract in nature, mere thoughts, while the first is something perceptual and present. So the counter-motives do not, as it were, get a shot off. They do not get what in English is called *fair play*. The deed is already done before they could act against it. It is as if, in a duel, one man fires before the command is given. So here too both legal and moral responsibility are removed, depending on the circumstances, to a greater or lesser degree, but always only in part. In England a murder committed in complete haste, without the slightest reflection, in the most violent and suddenly aroused anger, is called *manslaughter*. It is punished lightly, and sometimes not at all.—**Intoxication** is a state that predisposes a person to emotions. It raises the vividness of perceptual representations, weakens thinking *in the abstract*, and also increases the energy of the will. Here, in place of responsibility for the deeds, responsibility for the intoxication itself takes over. That is why intoxication is not excused in law, even though intellectual freedom is partly removed here. **Aristotle** already speaks of this intellectual freedom, "*the voluntary and the involuntary with respect to thought*," though very briefly and inadequately, in the *Ethic. Eudem., II, c. 7 et 9*, and somewhat more fully in the *Ethic. Nicom., III, c. 2.*—This is the freedom meant when *forensic medicine* and criminal justice ask whether a criminal was in a state of freedom, and was therefore accountable for their acts. In general, then, we should regard as committed in the absence of intellectual freedom all those crimes in which the person either did not know what they were doing, or was simply unable to consider what should have held them back, namely the consequences of the deed. In such cases, then, they are not to be punished. Some people, by contrast, think that no criminal should be punished, simply because **moral** freedom does not exist and so all the actions of any given person are inevitable. These people start from a false view of punishment. They think punishment is a penalty sent down on crimes for their own sake, a repaying of evil with evil, on moral grounds. But such a thing, even though Kant taught it, would be absurd, pointless, and entirely unjustified. For how could anyone have the right to set themselves up as the absolute judge of another person in moral matters, and as such to torment that person for their sins! Rather, the law, that is, the threat of punishment, has the purpose of being the counter-motive to crimes not yet committed. If it fails to have this effect in a particular case, it must be carried out. Otherwise it would fail in all future cases as well. In that case the criminal, for their part, really suffers the punishment because of their moral nature. That nature, together with the circumstances that were the motives, and with their intellect, which held out to them the false hope of escaping punishment, unavoidably brought about the deed. They could be wronged in this only if their moral character were not their own work, their intelligible deed, but the work of someone else. The relation of the deed to its consequence is the same when the consequences of their vicious conduct come about not by human laws but by laws of nature. One example is when dissolute debauchery brings on terrible diseases. Another is when they come to grief by accident while attempting a burglary. For instance, they break into a pigsty at night to carry off its usual occupant. Instead of the pig they find the bear whose handler stopped at this inn that evening, and the bear comes toward them with open arms.