First Article. On The Liberty Of The Will

Since day by day the number increases of those who not only theoretically attack the liberty of the will, but also infer practical consequences from its denial and contend that crimes committed cannot be imputed to criminals, and that for this reason they are by no means worthy of punishment, necessity demands that the existence of liberty be demonstrated and vindicated from the attacks of adversaries.

1. The Liberty Of The Will Is Asserted

19. On the different meanings. 1. Liberty in general signifies immunity from a bond; and since the bonds which can constrain us are various, the term liberty is also used in various senses.

a. Liberty from sin, which in this life is immunity from sin whereby we can not sin, and is called the liberty of grace; in the other life it is immunity from sin whereby we cannot sin, and is called the liberty of glory.

a. In this life the possibility, and through grace the facility, of performing moral good is available to us, although diverse difficulties stand in the way. In the other life there cease the difficulties and impediments which here sometimes render the choice of moral good difficult even for those who are in the state of grace.

b. This liberty of grace, which is sometimes called moral liberty, can and must be continually developed and perfected, to such a degree that man, already in this life, may gradually come to the liberty of the sons of God and may no longer be hindered by difficulties in choosing the good. For sometimes already here on earth it happens that the will, strengthened by the grace of God, yields to no temptations, but, the allurements of the senses having been rejected, without any trouble chooses the good of virtue; and to this the words of the Lord promise: "the truth shall make you free," namely from the determining influence of the passions.

b. Liberty from obligation, or from law, which is also called moral liberty, is immunity from the moral obligation of doing that which is commanded by a superior power.

It is clear that man is not endowed with this liberty: he has physical liberty of acting against the law, but he does not have moral liberty. Moral liberty is also called liberty of choosing between good and evil.

c. Liberty from coercion, or from external necessity, is immunity from force brought in from outside against the inclination of the will.

It is clear: a. that coercion can be brought to bear both upon one unwilling to act, as when someone is dragged unwillingly to prison, and upon one willing to act, as when exit is prohibited to someone shut up in prison; b. that liberty from coercion is rather liberty of acting than liberty of willing; c. that the will is immune from coercion, since a coerced act of the will is impossible.

d. Liberty from internal necessity is immunity from an internal force which would determine the will to acting or to acting in this way. This liberty is proper to the human will.

Internal necessity, therefore, would be a determination innate to the will itself toward willing or toward willing in this way. A determination of this kind is present in the human will with respect to good in general, which it must will, so that it cannot will evil as such, and with respect to happiness, which each one necessarily wills, so that he cannot will to be unhappy.

2. By reason of the object which is chosen, liberty is called liberty of contradiction, or of exercise, if the will can choose between acting and not acting; liberty of contrariety, if the will can choose a thing and its opposite, as to love and to turn away, good and evil; liberty of specification, if the will can choose between things diverse in species, this or that, to study or to walk.

a. Liberty of contrariety in the moral order, that is, liberty of choosing between good and evil, does not belong to the essence of liberty, but is a defect proper to human liberty in the state of the way.

b. Only liberty of contradiction is required and suffices for the will to be able to be called truly free, or mistress of its acts; nevertheless in man as wayfarer the other species are also found.

¹ Meyer, Institutiones iuris naturalis (Freiburg: Herder, 1906), I, n. 100 ff. Cathrein, Moralphilosophie^4 (Freiburg: Herder, 1904), I, p. 30 ff. Mach, Die Willensfreiheit des Menschen (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1887). Gutberlet, Die Willensfreiheit und ihre Gegner^2 (Fulda: Actiendruckerei, 1907). A. Beck, Die menschliche Willensfreiheit (Munich: Volksschriftenverlag, 1906). Encyclical of Leo XIII, Libertas (June 20, 1888).

20. In what it consists. 1. The liberty of the human will consists in that property and perfection of it by which, once all things required for acting have been posited, the will is not determined to acting or to acting in this way, but can and must determine itself to this. Therefore a twofold element is required for the notion of liberty, one negative and one positive: a. the absence of internal necessity; b. one's own determination to acting.

a. The liberty of the human will is called liberty of indifference, because once all things required for acting have been posited, the will remains indifferent, that is, it is not determined to one thing, namely to acting, but can act or not act, can do this or that. It is also called liberty of election, for it belongs to its nature that the will can choose between one thing and another. Indifference is opposed to determination to one thing. The indifference which belongs to the human will and essentially constitutes its liberty is active indifference, by which the will itself can determine itself to opposites or diverse things. It is distinguished from passive indifference, which consists in this, that something can be determined from without to opposites or diverse things.

b. The doctrine of those who defend liberty of the will is today called indeterminism; on the contrary, the theory of those who deny liberty is called determinism. But the doctrine concerning liberty is less aptly called indeterminism, both because the liberty of the will does not consist in a merely negative element, namely in the negation of determination or internal necessity to acting or to acting in this way, and because liberty does not exclude every determination of the will, but only necessity. That is, it is not denied that conditions preceding a free act exercise an influence upon the will, which influence can be called a determination of the will; nevertheless it does not exclude free choice.

c. Those things are called required for acting which must precede, or in fact do precede, a free act or free choice: some good proposed by the intellect together with motives for choosing or rejecting it, the consideration of these, the power of willing, the inclinations of the will, and the disposition of the soul, whether habitual or actual.

d. Today determinists of every kind chiefly deny liberty of indifference, affirming that our will is determined to one thing, or to acting and to acting in this way.¹ Most philosophers, except the Scholastics, are addicted to determinism. It is known that Luther denied human liberty and substituted the servile will for the free will of the Scholastics. Protestant theologians, having abandoned this doctrine of Luther, had until now defended liberty of the will; now, however, those Protestant theologians who adhere to monism return to Luther's servile will.

e. Liberty does not exclude an antecedent inclination of the will toward the proposed object, or diverse goods, but only internal necessity for willing or not willing the proposed good. For if some good is proposed to the will, the will naturally and necessarily is inclined toward it, but is not necessarily drawn to willing it; for the will determines itself to willing and pursuing it. The same must be said respectively of evil proposed to the will.

2. A free act is not an act elicited arbitrarily and without a cause, but an act produced by the will after the motives of acting have been considered.

a. Since determinists with one voice affirm that in our theory of liberty a free act is an effect without a cause, and therefore that indeterminism offends against the principle of causality, it is asked what the cause of a free act is. There are those who say that the cause of a free act is twofold: one objective, which is constituted by the good and the motives provoking to the act; the other subjective, which is constituted by the very power of freely willing. For, when the good and the motives for choosing it have been proposed, the will is not necessitated to choosing, but is furnished by nature with a force by which it itself can and must determine itself to choosing, so that the act may come to be. Others refer the objective element rather to the prerequisite conditions, and call the will, furnished with an innate force for producing the act, the cause of free choice. Therefore it has a cause, but one that acts not necessarily, but freely.

b. From the force and power in the will of determining itself to an act, there must be distinguished the virtue and energy of choosing the good, especially the moral good, although the choice appears arduous and impediments and difficulties stand in the way. The will is strengthened and helped both by exercise and by divine grace, so that choices may be prudent and consonant with reason, even if they are difficult for corrupt nature.

c. Pedagogy and ascetic theology treat of the means of strengthening and increasing the energy of the will. These consist especially in hardening and exercising the body, in strenuous labor whether bodily or spiritual, in good habits acquired through continual mortification of the passions, and finally in divine grace obtained by prayer and the use of the sacraments.

¹ Cf. A. Seitz, Willensfreiheit und Determinismus (Cologne: Bachem). Cathrein, loc. cit., p. 30 ff.

21. That it exists. Liberty from internal necessity, or liberty of indifference, belongs to the human will.

1. Theological arguments. a. There are many testimonies of Scripture by which the liberty of the human will is formally asserted.

"I call heaven and earth to witness today, that I have proposed to you life and death, blessing and curse; choose therefore life."¹ "He added His commandments and precepts; if thou wilt keep the commandments, they shall preserve thee ... Before man are life and death, good and evil; what pleases him shall be given to him."² "Blessed is the man ... who could have transgressed and did not transgress, could have done evil and did not do it."³

Likewise there are many testimonies by which the liberty of the human will is virtually asserted.

Here belong all those testimonies by which counsels are given to man, precepts are proposed, and by which man is affirmed to be worthy of praise and reward, blame and punishment, on account of his works.

b. Since liberty is the foundation of moral imputation, the Church at all times, against heretics denying it, upholds and defends the liberty of the human will.⁴ Therefore those who deny liberty are considered heretics.

2. Philosophical arguments. a. The will is the power by which man can desire every good. Therefore, if some particular good is exhibited to it, it can desire that good because it is good; but it can also not desire it, or positively reject it, because, since it is a particular good, a defect is joined with it. Therefore the will, to which a particular good is exhibited, is indifferent; hence if it embraces that good, this happens because the will determines itself to embracing it.

a. The defect which is joined with a particular good consists in this, that it either brings some inconvenience, or impedes another good, or at least is too slight to be able to fill the breadth of the power or the desire for beatitude.

b. From these things it is clear that choice must be preceded by knowledge by which either we know the diverse respects of the proposed good, good and evil, advantage and disadvantage, or we know and compare several goods at once. Without this preceding knowledge no choice could have place.

b. One's own conscience manifests to us with inescapable certitude that in very many of our actions we are not led by internal necessity, but that we ourselves determine ourselves to acting or to acting in this way, to such a degree that we can also not act or act otherwise. But this testimony of conscience is evidently true.⁵

Some determinists deny the testimony of conscience itself; others say that it is an illusion. Cathrein refutes them briefly, p. 35 ff.; Gutberlet at length, p. 31 ff.

c. Liberty is also demonstrated by penal or criminal law, which among all nations not only visits crimes with punishments, but also accurately distinguishes between purpose, negligence (Fahrlassigkeit), and fault; indeed it also contains an entire system of punishments, which are heavier or lighter according to the gravity of the fault and the evil action. But all these things would be empty if crimes were nothing but signs of disease and not of true fault.

2. The Liberty Of The Will Is Vindicated

Three diverse sciences recently cultivated attack the liberty of the will: moral statistics, criminal anthropology, and psychopathology. Each tries in its own way to show that man in all his actions is governed and determined by necessary laws and impulses just as irrational and material beings are, and therefore that committed crimes cannot be morally imputed to him.

¹ Deut. 30:19.

² Ecclus. 15:15-16, 18.

³ Ecclus. 31:10.

⁴ Cf. Council of Trent, sess. 6, can. 5. Vatican Council, sess. 3, c. 3, De fide.

⁵ For arguments from the universal consent of the human race and from the consequences which would follow if liberty were denied, consult the cited authors.

22. On moral statistics. Moral statistics collects moral facts, especially criminal facts, in great number, and investigates their causes, both internal and external. Now, when statistical lists are considered, it appears that the same phenomena, namely crimes, under the same conditions constantly return in almost the same number. Therefore, just as in the physical order, so also in the moral order, there must exist a stable law by which these facts are governed and determined. Hence they conclude against liberty in this way: since from the same causes, especially from the same passions, the same crimes are constantly perpetrated, these must be attributed not to free will, but to passions and other circumstances determining one to the act, and therefore cannot be morally imputed to man. For facts which, according to a stable law, constantly happen in the same way and number cannot proceed from a free will. The conclusion is then extended to all acts of the will, and its liberty is simply denied. Concerning these matters the following must be noted.

a. A free action is not a merely arbitrary action, independent of every norm and law; on the contrary, even the will in its choices observes certain norms, both physical and moral. Moreover, there are several conditions, both external and internal, especially moral character, education, the example of others, and the like, which influence human choices and determine them more or less. For ordinarily man follows in his actions his own inclinations and customs, yet not under compulsion but freely. Therefore it is no wonder that men who are found in the same conditions act in the same way.

b. In order that anything could be gathered from moral statistics against liberty of the will, it would at least have to be established that a determinate passion in the same circumstances impels a great number of men to perpetrating the same crime, and that no man troubled by such a passion has overcome the temptation. But from moral statistics this is not established, nor can it be established. Besides, not even in this way would the inescapable and necessitating influence of the passions upon the will be proved, since men placed in the same circumstances freely determine themselves to the same action; thus, when winter approaches, all freely put on thicker garments. Finally, it is useful to note that statistics considers only external phenomena, and these criminal or indifferent, and their constancy; but it does not explore internal facts and external virtues. Therefore it can pronounce nothing about their origin, whether necessary or free.

c. The stability and constancy which is discerned in the perpetration of crimes from moral statistics is explained from the existence and influence of the same motives upon the human will. For it is established that men placed in the same external circumstances and subject to the same passions and temptations generally commit the same offenses. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that many others, troubled by the same passions, overcome the temptation, which statistics cannot report. Indeed this too must be affirmed, that most of those who yield to temptation, at least aided by the supernatural powers of grace, could have overcome the temptation and were conscious of this power in themselves.

From moral statistics two things are gathered: a. that in his choices man has great dependence upon the habitual disposition of the will and upon external conditions; b. since now very many are swept away to perpetrating the same crimes, that in our time certain passions, on account of social circumstances, rage more vehemently, and that there are very many men who, as languishing in faith and in religious life, and deprived of both natural and supernatural fortitude, are easily overcome by temptations.¹

¹ Cf. Gutberlet, loc. cit., chap. 3: "Die Moralstatistik." Lehmkuhl, "Der Selbstmord und die Misshandlung der Statistik" (Stimmen aus M. L. XX, II, p. 345 ff.). Huber, loc. cit., "Moralstatistik," p. 181 ff.

23. On criminal anthropology. 1. The theory is set forth. a. This science, first cultivated by Cesare Lombroso, professor at Turin, was afterwards variously changed and developed by his disciples. The account of criminal anthropology is this. Crimes in the human race are manifest facts; therefore their causes must be investigated. Both Lombroso himself and his disciples are addicted to materialism and Darwinian evolutionism. Therefore, in investigating the cause of crimes, some explain the atavistic theory and consider the delinquent as a man who has remained behind in the progress of evolution - an infant not yet developed, a savage man. Others, setting forth the pathological theory, consider the delinquent as a man sick in soul, indeed lacking the use of reason - morally insane, epileptic. Therefore, just as according to the former, crimes are necessary phenomena of an abnormal state of the body, so according to the latter, crimes are necessary phenomena of an abnormal habit of soul. Man therefore does not become a delinquent by free will, but is born a delinquent.

b. They investigate the abnormal marks and qualities which are found in delinquents, and these bodily, biological, and psychological. Delinquents, so they say, have the greatest conformity both in qualities of body and in habits of soul with epileptics and those laboring under moral dementia; therefore they are morally insane. And from these marks they construct, as it were, a universal form of the delinquent man, a Verbrechertypus. Indeed they affirm that a peculiar form corresponds to the individual kinds of crimes; thus thieves and murderers each display their own form. The form congenital to delinquents, according to them, is transmitted to descendants by heredity, so that from a thief a thief is born, from a murderer a murderer.

2. The theory is refuted. If the things which are affirmed were true, at most it would follow that men abnormal in body and sick in mind lack liberty; but it is not demonstrated that healthy men are lacking it. In particular these things must be noted.

a. The theory itself is founded upon inadequate experiments, arbitrary hypotheses, many exaggerations, and false explanations of facts.

b. If delinquents were infants not yet developed or savage men, all infants likewise and all savage men ought to be delinquents.

c. The theory is founded upon the Darwinian hypothesis of evolution, which in relation to men is false. The delinquent is not a man not yet developed, but a man who, by his own fault, has fallen away from the moral perfection which others have attained and which he himself also could and ought to have attained.

d. It can be conceded that there are delinquents who are not of sound mind, and in like manner it can be conceded that in the concrete it is sometimes difficult to determine whether a man is of sound mind or of a somewhat disturbed mind. Nevertheless in most cases we certainly know that delinquents are sane. Therefore it is equally false that all delinquents are insane and that all insane persons are delinquents.

24. On psychopathology. a. Psychopathology, or psychiatry, is the science which considers the abnormal life of the soul, so that from this it may draw rules concerning the education of children, the imputation of crimes, and the care of those sick in soul. This science itself brings great usefulness to pedagogues, judges in criminal cases, and moralists. Nevertheless there are some who draw arguments from the same science against liberty of the will. For they consider the way of acting of men laboring under diverse diseases of the soul - insanity, dementia, paranoia, epilepsy, hysteria - who, since they lack liberty in their actions, lead them to infer this general principle, that man is not furnished with liberty.

b. But: a. from the fact that those sick in soul, or psychopathics, appear to be lacking liberty in acting, it does not follow that those sound in mind are also lacking liberty, unless someone wishes to affirm that there is no man perfectly sound in mind, but that all are more or less insane. b. It cannot be conceded that psychopathics are altogether lacking liberty: for just as disease of soul itself has diverse grades, so also liberty, from the influence of the same disease, is in some lessened more or less, and in others entirely extinguished. Besides, discussion will return to this matter below, where the impediments of the human act are treated.

3. On Those Things Which Influence Free Choice

25. Here we consider free moral activity, by which the will chooses between good and evil. The exercise of liberty is perfect if the will determines itself to an act fully from itself, without any other influence besides that which the nature of the will requires; this happens when the intellect adequately knows the object, and the will, according to the norm of reason, moves itself promptly to willing or rejecting it. Now there are many things, whether in man himself or outside man, which exercise an influence upon his free activity or upon his choice, and determine it more or less. And these indeed diminish the liberty of the will and the imputability of the action, yet they do not remove them.

26. On the relation of the knowledge of the intellect to the free act. a. The intellect must exhibit the thing to be desired in such a way that we know both its merits, namely perfection, goodness, usefulness, and its demerits, namely imperfection, detriment, inconvenience, which it has for us. This knowledge is the more perfect, the more accurately the moments of each side are apprehended. By these are supplied the reasons and motives which direct us in making a choice. Hence the more adequately the merits and demerits of a thing are exhibited, the more easily a choice can be made which is according to reason. But if more the merits than the demerits of the proposed thing are known, or conversely more the demerits than the merits, the choice will indeed be free, but less according to reason. Choice becomes impossible if only one motive is known.

b. From these things it is understood that all those things exercise a determining influence upon the free choices of man which impede the merits and demerits of desirable things, especially moral things, from being adequately known. Although they do not remove the physical liberty of choice, nevertheless they bring it about that choices are imprudent, irrational, and morally evil. Moments of this sort are especially education and the social and political circumstances of the times in which we live.¹ Since in many men a defective and inadequate knowledge of things and actions, on account of these circumstances, is more or less involuntary and inculpable, even morally evil actions which proceed from it cannot be imputed to them according to their whole malice.

¹ Cf. Huber, Die Hemmnisse der Willensfreiheit (Munster: Schoningh, 1904), p. 112 ff., 152 ff.

27. On the relation of the inclination of the will to the free act. a. When the object has been sufficiently proposed, there necessarily arises in the will an inclination, or aversion, which is sometimes slight, but sometimes more vehement. These inclinations, although inveterate and vehement, do not introduce necessity, but the will retains the power of resisting them; this the experience of all those teaches who, after a life long passed in sins, have returned to the path of virtue. Nevertheless they draw the will so that, by a free determination, it wills that to which it is already vehemently inclined; and therefore they render morally good choice difficult, and the more difficult the more intense the opposite inclination is. Vicious affections render free choice impossible only when, in a particular case, having suddenly arisen, they so cloud or impede the mind that it can no longer weigh contrary motives.

b. From these things it is understood that everything exercises an influence upon moral choices which brings it about that, on the one hand, bad inclinations and vices arise and grow strong in the appetite, and on the other hand, the energy of the will in repressing bad inclinations grows weak and is debilitated. Of this kind are heredity, age, temperament, habit, nourishment, temperature of the air, and so forth.¹

¹ Cf. Huber, p. 102 ff., 130 ff.