Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/80

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. III.

obscures the whole horizon of thought. It is possible that the analogy goes a little farther, and that the apparition is largely dependent on its vagueness for its size. It is and must be true that the libertarian doctrine denies the application of the law of physical causation to volitions. It is not necessarily true that it denies the application of the law of causation to volitions. The particular form of the libertarian doctrine which holds to the so-called 'liberty of indifference,' i.e., that a man chooses independently of, and without reference to, motives, has justified, to a degree, the wholesale charge that libertarianism denies that volitions are, in any sense, caused. But this extremely radical, not to say effete, form of libertarianism cannot be said to be the only, or even the prevailing, form of libertarianism. It is possible for a man to be a libertarian and hold that volitions are subject to the law of causation in two senses: (1) that they are caused by motives as being their essential conditions (in the last analysis, motives are always what are chosen, and it is plain that a man cannot choose without something to choose); (2) that volitions are caused by the conscious, choosing ego as being their efficient cause. When such a libertarian doctrine is practically held and defended, though with great variety of treatment, by such writers as Wundt, Paulsen, Lotze, Janet, Martineau, Green, James, and Baldwin, I submit that it is an anachronism to go back to the scholastic figment of the liberty of indifference, to find a form of libertarianism that can be successfully coped with by the clever determinism of to-day. If it is urged that the popular metaphysics of the present still clings to the absurdities of this form of libertarianism, the liberty of indifference, I would say that it is the part of valor to seek a foemen worthy of one's steel and not a man of straw ready to topple over at the lightest finger-touch.

The fact of the matter is that libertarianism, i.e., the modern and scientific form of libertarianism, does not deny that the law of causation is applicable to volitions, but simply denies that a particular form of the law of causation, namely, physical causation, applies to them. Whether it is scientific or unscientific in so doing, is a question naturally decided in relation, primarily, not to volitions but to sensations. If spiritualism is not unscientific, as over against materialism, in denying that the law of correlation and conservation of forms is applicable to psychical phenomena, then libertarianism is not unscientific, as over against determinism, in denying that the physical law of causation is applicable to volitions. Volitions, just as soon as