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THE
PHYSICAL BASIS OF W
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DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY 15th, 1880,
BY
HENRY MAUDSLEY, M.D.
HontJan:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1880.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
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�THE
PHYSICAL BASIS OF WILL.
N a lecture which I gave here last year, and published
afterwards in the Fortnightly Review, I pointed out
*
that moral feeling is just as closely dependent upon
organization as is the meanest function of mind, and
asserted broadly “ that there was not an argument to
prove the so-called materialism of one part of mind which
did not apply with equal force to the whole mind.” For
this statement I was taken to task in an article in the
Spectator, the critic in that journal summoning up to
confront and confound me the alleged self-determining
power of human will—the freedom of the wiH. I pro
pose, then, to make this lecture supplementary to the
former one in some respects, by considering now whether
we are entitled to assume, as I hold, a Physical Basis of
WiH, or whether, as my critic thinks, we have in the Will
a self-sustained spiritual entity, which owns no cause,
obeys not law, and has no sort of affinity with matter.
’Tis not a discussion of much lively or fruitful promise,
but inasmuch as those who engage in the Freewill con
troversy, while repeating the old and trite arguments, for
the most part leave out of sight the physical aspect of the
subject, it may be instructive to bring that more into
notice, and to show that those who uphold a material
basis of will have some plain facts to go upon.
They who maintain that the wiH is not determined
I
* “ Materialism and its Lessons,’
�6
The Physical Basis of Will.
by motives, but is self-determined, free, do not for the
most part go so far as to imply that motives are not at
work in the mind, and that the will takes no account of
them; they affirm that there is not the uniform, in
separable connection between motive and will which
there is between cause and effect in physical nature. The
will is not the unconditionally necessary consequent of
its antecedent motives. It, or some other mysterious
entity in the individual which, having virtually abstracted
from the actual individual, they call his non-bodily self, has,
they allege, an independent, perfectly spontaneous, arbi
trary power to make this or that motive predominate as
it pleases ; to chose this or that one among motives and
make it the motive; in doing which this self-determining
principle is presumed by some, I believe, to act without
motive, of its own pure motion, without cause or reason;
by others to act from motives so high and fine, that they
constrain it instantly, without weighing at all upon its
*
freedom.
Clearly then we have here a very singular
power in nature, which we might call supernatural were
* “The noumenon, ding-an-sich, real self,” “is unknowable,
inscrutable,” “ exists outside Time, Space, and Causality, is ab
solutely free,” “ in itself, per se, is unchangeable; ” “ and, as it is
my only real being, my primitive and inborn self, it must be
present as a factor in every change and every action of which
my phenomenal Self, my empirical character, is capable.” That
is to say, itself outside Time, Space, and Causality, it is the
moving principle of every change in Time, Space, and Causality
which takes place through me. Of a truth a wonderful power
which can thus be actually and not be theoretically at the same
time in and outside Time, Space, and Causality! But more.
Why does a truthful man who has told a falsehood feel a remorse ?
Because “his conscience tells him that he is responsible, not indeed
for this particular act- since this he could not help—but for not
being a better man.” “ Blame not the action, then, but the man
for being capable of such an action. Whip him, not for telling
this particular lie, but for being a liar at heart, in his inmost
nature. For this inmost nature, his real Self, his ding-an-sich,
which, as a noumenon, is in some inscrutable manner emanci
pated from the laws of Time and Causality, from the operation
of motives, is absolutely free.” But surely it will be, on the
one hand, a singularly hard matter to lay hold of and whip the
inmost nature, the real self, the noumenon, when “ it exists out-
�, 'The Physical Basis of Will.
'.7
it not that it is allowed to be a part of nature acting in
and upon it, although coming from a mysterious source
outside it; but being thus an important agent in nature,
without being of the same kind or having anything in
common with anything else there—any sympathy, affinity,
or relationship whatever with the things which it works
in and upon—-we may fairly call it unnatural.
If there be a power of this kind in the Universe, the
reflection which occurs instantly is that causation is not
universal, as people are in the habit of assuming, but that
there is a large region of human events which is exempt
from the otherwise uniform law of cause and effect, the
region, that is to say, of man’s higher mental operations.
A great deal of the force which works in them and by
which they work on the external world obeys not the
law of conservation of energy. Now this is a rather
startling reflection, seeing that the great natural argu
ment for the existence of God is that everything must
have a cause, and that for cause of all things, therefore,
there must be a cause of causes, a great First Cause. At
the outset, then, we come to a perplexing dilemma—to
the obligation of concluding either that the will, like
other things, must have a cause, or that a great- first cause
is not a necessity of human thought.
side of Time, Space, and Causality,” and, on the other hand,
rather unfair to whip vicariously the empirical character which
cannot help itself, when the real culprit escapes. How whip it,
too, in any case, seeing that it is a thing-in-itself, incorporeal,
spiritual, “as the air invulnerable”? The foregoing extracts are
taken from an account of Kant’s Philosophy, by Professor Bowen,
of Harvard College, U.S., in his work on Modern Philosophy.
At the end of his exposition and comments, he says: “And thus
the deep and dark problem of fixed fate and freewill is solved,
the two contradictories being reconciled with each other.” No
doubt they are reconciled in the minds of those who, like Pro
*
fessor Bowen, can believe at the same instant two contradictories.
Sir W. Hamilton laid it down that one of two inconceivable con
tradictories must be true, and it passed for a long time for high
philosophy that a man should be able so to conceive inconceivables as to know them to be contradictory. Here we have
a step farther in philosophy, since we have two conceivable con.tradictories which are both true.
�8
The Physical Basis of Will.
But this is only a first difficulty. We are taught by
those who uphold the freedom of the will that although it
is not governed by motives, but is a self-determining
principle in us, it is wrought upon continually and most
powerfully by supernatural agency. A Divine grace is
ever near to help it in time of need, strengthening it to
do well, weakening it to do ill. It is God’s good purpose
to “ master our will,” and to make us “ surrender and
resign it to his just, wise, and gracious will; ” and to
make good his right, says that eloquent divine, Dr. I.
Barrow, “ God bendeth all his forces and applieth all his
means both of sweetness and severity, persuading us by
arguments, soliciting us by entreaties, alluring us by fair
promises, scaring us by fierce menaces, indulging ample
benefits to us, inflicting sore corrections on us, working
in and upon us by secret influences of grace, by visible
dispensations of providence.” A stupendous array of
motives this, which it is a wonder any one ever withstands,
especially when it is borne in mind that they are worked
by the unlimited power of Omnipotence, which has fore
known and fore-ordained the result from all eternity I
However, we are not to suppose that these mighty agencies
are anywise incompatible with the freedom of will; indeed,
when it has surrendered itself to entire obedience it is
enjoying the most perfect freedom; when it is in the
grasp of Omnipotence it is most free. Hard sayings no
doubt for reason, but not at all hard to faith seemingly,
since many persons persuade themselves that they have
intelligent apprehension of them.
The will is assailed very powerfully in a second super
natural way—namely, by the Devil, if the Devil, that is
to say, be not defunct. For it seems to be an open
question now whether he has not undergone by evolution
such a transformation of kind as to have lost all his per
sonality and much of his power. At the time when he
paid Luther a memorable visit he was a distinct being
enough, with great horns and a tail and cloven hoofs;
later on, when Milton described him, he had lost these
appendages, and become the great Archfiend, above his
fellows “ in shape and gesture proudly eminent,” who
�9
The Physical Basis of Will.
amid the torments of a new-found Hell still flung defiance
at the Omnipotent, with unconquered will declaring it
better to “ reign in Hell than serve in Heaven; ” still
later he underwent philosophic transformation into the
polished, cultivated, intellectually subtile, but mocking,
doubting, cynical, Mephistopheles of Faust. What form
and substance has he now, if form and substance he has
any ? Those whose professional work it is to do battle
with him, and to frustrate his ever active wiles and malice,
and who ought therefore to know him best, do not tell us
clearly what their exact ideas on the subject are, if they
have clear and exact ideas; they apparently like to believe
in him as much in a vague and cloudy way as they dislike
to believe in him in any precise and definite way, or at
any rate dislike to be asked to define precisely their belief;
but although they may not be very sure of his present
form and dwelling-place, they have no doubt in a general
way of the evil desires and passions with which he inspires
poor human hearts, and of his open and insidious assaults
on the higher aspirations of human will, which he, un
tiring enemy, besets, besieges, beleaguers, bombards con
tinually. Again then we have a large region of human
events—a region the limits of which it is impossible to
define or to get defined—which is outside the natural
law of causation, and cannot ever be made matter of
scientific study. For as it is plain that we have no means
by which we can measure and register the quantity and
kind of energy which the Devil thus exerts continually
upon the will—no Satanometer or Diabolometer so to
speak—human events, so far as they are effects of his
counsels and instigations, must lie outside the range of
positive knowledge. But once more we are not to suppose
that these supernatural workings upon the will abridge in
the least degree its perfect freedom.
These are difficulties one might suppose great enough
to make even the theologico-metaphysical theorist pause,
but they have no effect to shake his faith in his dogma,
or to lessen his scorn of the profane persons who
doubt and dispute the freedom of the will. He is bold
enough in the last resort to affirm that man’s thoughts,
B
�10
The Physical Basis of Will.
feelings, and doings on earth are not proper subjects of
enquiry by a scientific method, and to avow that true
knowledge of them must come either by an extraordinary
metaphysical intuition or by revelation and faith. The
last key to the problem for him is indeed not “ Search and
know,” but “God spake these words and said:” not know
ledge by the well-tried paths of observation and reason,
but “ He that believeth not shall be damned.” Of which
text I hope it is not irreverent to say here that whosoever
believeth, whether it be on the authority of Holy Church
or of Holy Scripture, that which contradicts reason abso
lutely needs no further damnation: he has done himself
damage enough already as a rational being.
Meanwhile mankind has lived always and still lives in
conformity with quite an opposite theory of human will—
namely, that it is governed by natural motives. The
problem of freewill is a problem of the study, it never
has been a problem of practical life; a theoretical dogma
of faith, not a working belief, the doctrine has flourished
in an atmosphere of vague and cloudy phrases, and all
discussions about it have been in the air; it has shifted
its ground too and changed its form so often that it is
not possible to know where and how to seize and hold it.
Laws have been systematically made and punishments
inflicted upon those who broke them under a very definite
conviction that the will is not an uncaused power, but
does move in obedience to motive, and may be fashioned
to act in this way or that. The execution of a murderer
does not fail to influence his likeminded fellow, who cer
tainly has not the freedom of will to be unaffected thereby;
the aim and use of the punishment are to determine his
will, and it could not be of the least use if the will were
self-determined. We observe historically the past actions
of men in different situations and circumstances in order
to gain a knowledge of the springs of human action which
shall be of use to us in our present and future dealings.
The person who has had much experience, whether in
politics, business, or any other special department of
human labour, is esteemed a wiser guide than a new
comer, because of the certainty that the thoughts and
�The Physical Basis of Will.
11
acts of men are not in any respect chance-events, but
that what they have done before, that they will do again
when actuated by similar motives.
Prudence and forethought in the conduct of affairs, the
provisions made for education, social institutions and
usages, all the operations of daily life in the intercourse
of sane men are based upon the tacit implication that acts
of will are never motiveless, but conform to law and may
be counted upon. There is not a single department of
practical life which is not an implicit denial of a free self
determining power in each individual, and an implicit
recognition of a common nature in men affected by common
influences, and taking a common development in conse
quence. The only person who answers at all to the
metaphysical definition of a self-determining will is the
madman, since he exults in the most vivid consciousness
of freedom and power, sets reason at naught, and often
does things which no one can predict, because he acts
without motives, or at any rate from motives which no
one can penetrate. Did sane men possess freewill they,
like the madman, would be free from responsibility, since
their wills would act independently of their characters,
just as they listed, not otherwise than as men used to
declare, before they knew better, that “ the wind bloweth
where it listeth,” and no one would have much, if any,
motive left to try to improve his character.
We may take it then to be true that the expEcit setting
forth, in formal knowledge, of what is implicit in the
course of human life would be a system of philosophy in
which a self-determining principle had no part nor place,
in which freewill would be a word void of meaning—
nonsense. But true knowledge has its foundation in
experience, and is really the conscious exposition of what
is implicit in human progress; it is implicit in action
before it is explicit in thought. Men do not divine
truth and then work to it consciously; it is instinct in
them before it is understanding; and when in mature
time the unconscious breaks forth into consciousness, it
is the man of genius who is the organ through which the
expansion takes place; he is the interpreter of its blind
�12
The Physical Basis of Will.
impulses to the age, and gives them thenceforth clear
utterance and definite aim. The truth then, as testified
practically by the experience of the whole world from the
beginning until now, is that will is a power which does
not stand outside the range of natural causation, but one
which is moved habitually by motive in every man from
his cradle to his grave. The freewill problem might be
compared well to that great logical puzzle which so long
and so much perplexed the philosophers: I mean the
race between Achilles and the tortoise, where the tortoise
being allowed a certain start, and Achilles supposed to
run ten times as fast, it was proved that he never could
logically overtake it. For if we suppose the tortoise to
have a thousand yards’ start, it would have run a hundred
yards when Achilles had run the thousand yards; when
Achilles again had run the hundred yards, the tortoise
would be ten yards ahead; when Achilles had run the
ten yards, the tortoise would have gone one yard ; when
Achilles had done the one yard, the tortoise would lead it
by the tenth of a yard; when Achilles had got over the
tenth of a yard, he would still be the hundredth of a yard
behind; and so on by successive subdivisions of the
diminishing space for ever. Clearly then Achilles never
could logically overtake the tortoise, whatever he might
do actually. So it has been with the freewill puzzle: the
philosophers, confusing themselves and others with a
juggling statement of the problem, have applied the word
free to the will instead of to the man, who has always
known himself to be free, not to will, but to do what he
willed when not hindered from doing it by internal or
external causes, just as they proved that Achilles would
not overtake the tortoise, by treating a finite space which
was infinitely divisible as if it were infinite.
*
Put the
race problem in a plain way, without ambiguous use of
words, and the result is plain enough: when Achilles had
run one thousand yards, the tortoise would have run one
* One is required to go on subdividing a unit indefinitely, and
to be surprised that the sum of the diminishing fractions never
can reach 1.
�The Physical Basis of Will.
13
hundred, but when Achilles had run two thousand yards,
where would the tortoise be ? Why, it would have run
two hundred yards altogether, and would of course be
eight hundred yards behind.
So much then for the facts in their relation to freewill.
Now what are the grounds of the metaphysician’s clear
conviction that he has a will and that it is free ? His
consciousness tells him so, he says, and all the arguments
in the world will not invalidate its direct and positive
testimony. But does it really tell him so ? One may
meet that statement truly by affirming that his conscious
ness does not tell him anything like that which he is in
the easy habit of supposing and declaring it to do.
Certainly it is not true that we know immediately by
consciousness that we have such a power as the metarphysician means by will. One-tenth only of that con
fident dogma is the direct deliverance of consciousness,
the other nine-tenths are pure and gratuitous hypothesis.
Consciousness tells us nothing whatever of an abstract
will-entity; it makes known a particular volition when
we have it and no more; the creation of an abstract will
which is supposed to execute the particular volition on
each occasion, and its further fashioning into a spiritual
entity, is an assumption as unwarranted as any that has
ever been made by the crudest materialism. It would be
no whit more absurd to make a spiritual entity of sensa
tion and to maintain that this abstract entity was
necessary to produce each sensation; or to postulate a
special emotional entity which operates in each emotion;
or to create a spirit of greenness and to detect it at work
in each green thing; or to discover the spirit of stoneness
in every stone by the roadside. What the metaphysician
has done has been to convert into an entity the abstract
word which embraces the multitude of particular volitions,
varying infinitely in degree and quality, just as at an
earlier period of thought, when the metaphysical spirit
had more life and sway than it has now, he explained the
sleep-producing properties of opium by a soporific essence
in it, and the difficulty of getting a vacuum by Nature’s
abhorrence of a vacuum; or as at a still earlier period of
�14
The Physical Basis of Will.
thought he put a Naiad in the fountain, a Dryad in the
tree, a Sun-god in the sun.
But, in the second place, while consciousness does not
tell him that he has a will such as he supposes, no more
has it the authority to tell him that his will is free.
Consciousness only illumines directly the mental state of
the moment; it reveals nothing of the long train of
antecedent states of which that state is the outcome—all
is dark beyond where its light directly falls; and it
cannot testify anything as an eyewitness concerning what
is happening there, any more than a person in the light
can testify of what is taking place in the dark. Let
there be a solitary gas-lamp lit in a large square on a
pitchdark night, it enables you to see immediately around
it, but it does not show what is going on in any other
part of the square; and if any one standing near it
chanced to get a severe blow on the head from a stone
coming out of the darkness, he would think it small
satisfaction to be told that the blow was by a selfdetermined stone. So it is with consciousness; it makes
known the present volition, it does not make known its
causes; and that, as Spinoza pointed out long ago, is the
origin of the illusion of Freewill. How, indeed, could a
present state of consciousness reveal immediately another
state of consciousness; in other words, how could it be
itself and a former state of consciousness at the same
time ? But whosoever will be at the pains to carry his
self-inspection patiently back from the present state of
consciousness to that state which went before it, and
from that again to its antecedent state, and so backwards
along the train of activity which has issued in the latest
mental outcome, lighting up in succession as well as he
can each link in an intricate chain of many-junctioned
associations, may easily assure himself that he would never
have present states of feeling were it not for past states of
feeling. Let the will be as free as any one chooses to sup
pose, it is certainly as impotent to will without previous
acts of will, as a child is to walk before it has learned to
step: the present volition contains the abstracts,, so to
speak, of a multitude of former volitions t by them it is in
�The Physical Basis of Will.
15
formed. The most eager metaphysician, when he is not
thinking of his abstract dogma of freewill, or of an equally
abstract reason whose supreme dominion over will is sup
posed to constitute its singular freedom, will not deny
*
that an individual’s thinking, feeling,or acting as he does at
any moment of his life is the outcome of his nature and
training, the expression of his character; that his present
being is the organic development of his past being ; that
he is fast linked in a chain of causation which does not
suffer him ever to get out of himself. It is a chain, too,
which, if he reflects, he must perceive to reach a long
way farther back in an ancestral past than he can
estimate. We see plainly how a person inherits a father’s,
grandfather’s, or more remote ancestor’s tricks of speech,
of walk, of handwriting, and the like, without imitation
on his part, since the father or grandfather may have
died before he was born; and in the same way he inherits
moods of feeling, modes of thought, impulses of will, and
exhibits them in thoughts, feelings and acts which seem
essentially spontaneous, most his own. Has he done
well in some great and urgent emergency of life in which
he knew not what he did at the instant, he may justly
give thanks to the dead father or grandfather who en
dowed him with the actuating impulse or the happy
aptitude which served him so well on the critical occasion.
We little think, for the most part, how much we owe
to those who have gone before us. There is not a word
which I have used, or shall use, in this lecture which does
not attest by its origin and growth countless generations
of human culture extending from our far distant Aryan
forefathers of the Indian plains down to us ; in like
manner there is not a thought or feeling or volition
which any one in this room can have which he could have,
had not countless generations of human beings thought
and felt and willed before him, and had not he himself
been thinking, feeling, and willing ever since he left his
cradle. It is in vain we attempt by self-inspection to
make plain all the links of causation of any feeling or
* See note at the end of the lecture.
�16
The Physical Basis of Will.
volition; the impossibility is to seize and weigh each
minute and remote operative element—to bring all the
contributory factors into the light of consciousness. So
much is unconscious agency—temperament, character,
instinct, habit, potential thought and feeling, what you
will—something which lies deeper than direct self-obser
vation or even the utmost labours of self-analysis can
reach. Hence spring the illusions into which men often
times fall with regard to their motives on particular
occasions, the remarkable self-deceptions of which they
are capable. They think, perhaps, that they have acted
in their freedom from certain high motives of which
they were conscious when these were not the real
motives which actuated them.
*
From the unlit depths
of his being, the deep and silent stream of the indi
vidual’s nature, rise the forces which break on the sur
face in the currents and eddies of consciousness. One
may get a truer explanation sometimes of a person’s
conduct on a particular occasion by a knowledge of the
characters of his near relations than by his own expla
nation of his motives or one’s own speculations about
them ; for in their traits we may see displayed in full
detail what is potential mainly and of occasional out
come in him. When acts appear to be quite incommen
surate with motives, or when the same motive appears to
produce different acts, the just conclusion is not that an
arbitrary freewill has capriciously meddled and upset
calculation, but that the motives which we discover are
only a part of the complex causation, and that the most
important part thereof lies in the dark. Self-conscious
ness is a very incompetent witness in that matter : you
might as well try to illuminate the interior of St. Paul’s
with a rushlight. A motiveless will may be compared,
* A desire or motive does not generally go the direct way to
its issue in action any more than a person necessarily goes the
direct way from London to Edinburgh. He may go two or three
ways, or he might go all round by Exeter, and still get there.
So with desire, which goes a roundabout and very intricate way
sometimes, carrying with it, so to speak, something from each
place at which it has stopped on its journey.
�The Physical Basis of Will.
17
•perhaps, to a foundling baby; respecting which wise men
conclude, not that it had no parents and came by chance,
but that they do not know who its parents are.
The metaphysicians have yet another argument of
which they make much. They lay great stress upon
their assertion that there is nothing in the operations of
the body which is in the least like the energy we are
conscious of as will, and that we cannot put a finger on
anything in all the functions of the nervous system which
can conceivably serve as a physical basis of will. Let us
enquire then if that be so. The simplest nervous opera
tion, that which is the elemental type of which the more
complex functions are built up, as a great house is built
up of simple bricks, is what we call a reflex act: an
impression is made upon some part of the body, the
molecular change produced thereby is conducted along a
sensory nerve to a nerve-centre and arouses the energy
thereof, and that energy is thereupon transmitted or
reflected along a connected motor nerve and accomplishes
a particular movement, which may be purposive or not.
For example, a strong light falls upon the retina and the
pupil instantly contracts in order to exclude the excess of
light; a blow is threatened to the eye and the eyelids
wink involuntary to protect it; a lump of food gets to
the back of the throat and as soon as it is felt there the
muscles contract and push it on. These are operations
of the body in which, although they accomplish a purpose,
the will has no part whatever; they take place in spite of
the will, as everybody knows, and one of them even
when a person is completely unconscious.
A more
striking instance of an instructive reflex act is afforded
by a well-known experiment on the frog: if its right
thigh is irritated by a drop of acid it rubs it off with the
foot of that side, but if it is prevented from using that
foot for the purpose it makes use of the opposite leg.
Intelligent purpose and deliberate will, one would natur
ally say; but when the frog’s head is cut off and the
experiment made then the result is the same; it tries
first to use its right foot, and that being impossible bends
the other leg across and wipes off the acid with it. As
�18
The Physical Basis of Will.
its head has been, cut off it is certain that it has not
conscious intelligence and will in any definite and proper
signification of those terms ; it does not know what it is
doing although it acts with admirable purpose, any more
than the pupil does when it contracts in a strong light or
than the steam engine does when it performs its useful
*
work.
The concluson which we must come to and
emphasize is that the nervous system has the power,
instinct in its constitution or acquired by training, to
execute mechanically acts which have the semblance
of being designed and voluntary, without there being
the least consciousness or will in them. Have we not
here then a pretty fair physical foundation of a rudi
mentary will ?
Let us now go a step further. The will, as we know,
has not the power to execute only, but it has the power
to prevent execution, to hold impulses in check; indeed,
its higher energies are most tasked, and its highest
qualities shown, in the exercise of this controlling function.
Our appetites and passions urge us to immediate gratifica
tions ; it is the noble function of will to curb these lower
* A critic of my book, on the “ Physiology of Mind,” in the
“ Journal of Mental Science,” of January last, defines the theory
of freewill thus: “ that in every determination to act which con
stitutes a volition the determinant is not a mere datum of nerves,
or sense, or passion, but is an idea actively taken up, formulated
as an adequate end, and stamped as an element of happiness by
that nonbodily entity which we call self. . . . This is the
simple key to the whole problem of Responsibility.” The italics
are his. We may take notice here how admirably the acts of
the decapitated frog fit this definiton. It evidently takes up
actively the idea of getting rid of the pain, formulates it as an
adequate end, and stamps it as an element of happiness by that
nonbodily entity (clearly very much, if not entirely, non-bodily
seeing that it is headless) which we call self! Thus it gives
us the key to the whole problem of Responsibility. It were
well, perhaps, if all those who write about mind would follow
Spinoza’s advice—first study sufficiently the functions of the
body, so as to “ learn by experience what the body can do and
what it cannot do by the simple laws of its corporeal nature and
without receiving any determination from the mind.” They
might then, perhaps, as Schopenhauer thought, “ leave many
German scribblers unread.”
�The Physical Basis of Will.
19
impulses of our nature. Is there anything, then, in the
operations of the nervous system which can possibly be
the basis of this exalted governing function? Let us
take preliminary note here that there are reflex actions
going on in the body which are essential to life, but over
which this mighty despot of the mind, the will, has no
authority whatever—the movements of the heart and of
the intestines, for example; they go on regularly night
and day; if they did not we should die; but we cannot
slacken or quicken or stop them by any exertion of will
which we can make. The movements of breathing, which
are also reflex, we can control partially; we can breathe
quickly or slowly as we please, or even stop breathing for
a time, but not for long, since no one can kill himself
by simply holding his breath. The physiologist, however,
can easily quicken or retard the beatings of an animal’s
heart at will, by stimulating directly the proper nerves.
By irritating a nerve which goes to it—the so-called vagus
nerve—he can retard them, and by irritating another
nerve connected with it—the so-called sympathetic—he
can quicken them. He can do with its pulsations as the
coachman can with his horses, pull them in to go slowly
or send them on quickly. But more—and this is the
point I wish to come to—he can affect them not only in
the direct way which I have mentioned, but also indirectly
by a sharp impression on some part of the body. For
example, if he suspends a frog by its legs and then taps
sharply on its belly, he instantly stops its heart for a
time. What happens is that the stimulus of the tap is
carried by a nerve to a nerve-centre in the brain near
that centre from which a controlling nerve of the heart
proceeds, and so acts upon it as in the result to prevent
or inhibit the action of the heart; in other words, what
we have to apprehend and perpend in the experiment is
that the physiological sympathy of nerve-centres in the
organization of the nervous system is such that one
centre, when stimulated to function, has the power to
inhibit physically the function of another centre, just as
the will inhibits the movements of breathing.
This
temporary arrest of the heart’s beats by an intercurrent
�20
The Physical Basis of TFi'ZZ.
stimulus somewhere into its reflex arc is after all not
very unlike to temporary arrest of respiration by an in
tercurrent volition into its reflex arc.
Did time permit, I might bring forward many more,
and more striking, instances of this kind of inhibitory
action, selecting them from the operations of the human
body both in health and in disease; but it must suffice
for the present to set down and emphasize the broad con
clusion which they warrant, namely, that one nervous
centre, when stimulated into activity, may so act upon
another centre as either to help, or to hinder, or to suspend
its function by pure physiological mechanism. Have we
not here, then, a physical basis of the inhibitory power of
will ? Place the fact by the side of the fact on which I
laid emphatic stress just now—namely, that the nervous
system has the power of executing purposive acts without
any intervention of consciousness or will; and it is plain
we have in the two physical functions something which
runs closely parallel with the rudiments of volition and
may well be their material equivalents—that is to say,
power to command execution of a purpose and power to
stop execution.
Metaphysicians * get their theories of will by considering
its highest displays in a much cultivated self-conscious
ness, where the difficulties of satisfactory analysis are
insuperable; but a complete and sincere study of it must
deal with its small beginnings as well as with its finest
displays—ought, in fact, to commence with them; for to
ignore the facts of its genesis and development is to make
an artificial philosophy which may serve well for intel
lectual gymnastics in scholastic exercises, but has no
practical bearing on the concerns of real life. Let us
then examine the simplest instances of primitive volition
in the animal and in the infant. When a dog, in obedi
ence to its natural instinct, seizes a piece of meat which
* They appear to be desirous of abandoning their old name of
metaphysicians in favour of the new name of idealists. But they
have no right to that term, which is properly applicable only to
one who upholds the Berkleian theory.
�The Physical Basis of Will.
21
lies near it and is punished for the theft, the memory of
what it was made to suffer intervenes on another occasion
between the impression on sight and the ensuing impulse,
and checks or inhibits it; in like manner when an infant
grasps something bright which attracts its gaze and is
burnt, its memory of the pain which it suffered checks
or inhibits a similar hasty movement on another occasion.
Here then we have the simplest instance of will; the
animal or infant voluntarily refrains from doing what its
first impulse is to do—of two courses chooses the best.
But what is the probable physical side of the process ?
In the first case, where the dog seized the meat, an im
pression upon the sense of sight, the conduction of the
molecular change to the nerve-centre, and the production
of a special sensation, as the ingoing process; after which,
as the outgoing process, the transmission of the energy
along a motor nerve to muscle and a consequent adaptive
movement—a sensorimotor process; in the second event,
when a punishment was inflicted, the association of this
sensorimotor process with the painful stimulation of
another nerve-centre; and in the third case, when the
dog seeing the meat refrained from touching it, instead
of the instant reflexion of the sensation into movement,
there was the stimulation by it of the associated centre in
which the memory of the pain was registered, the conse
quence of which was the inhibition of the movement.
One of two catenated physiological centres was in fact
excited to inhibit the other. If we multiply in an endless
complexity this simple scheme of nerves and nerve-centres
we get the constitution of the brain, indeed of the whole
nervous system, which contains an innumerable multitude
of interconnected nerve-centres ready to be awakened into
action by suitable stimulation to increase, to combine, to
modify, to restrain one another’s functions. As counter
part on the mental side to this exceeding complexity of
physical structure, we have very complex deliberation
going before the formation of will, which comes out at
last from the intricate interactions of so many hopes,
fears, inclinations, promptings, desires, reflections, and
the like, of so many constituent elements of character,.
�22
The Physical Basis of Will.
that we are unable to analyze them and so to specify the
exact factors in its complex causation: it is the resultant
of a very intricate composition of forces. To me it seems
then a fair conclusion that in the inhibitory action of one
nerve-centre upon another, as disclosed by physiological
observation, and in the simplest instance of volition, as
known by consciousness, we have two processes which go
along together parallel, and not unfair therefore to main
tain that we have as good authority to believe in a physical
basis of will as in a physical basis of any mental state
whatever.
The plain truth is, when we look the facts fairly in the
face, that we never meet with will except in connection
with a certain organization of matter, varying with its
variations, and exhibiting every proof of being dependent
upon it. It is notably infantile in the child, imbecile in
the idiot, grows in power, range, and quality as the
mental powers grow by education, is mature in the adult,
falls sick with the body’s sicknesses, and becomes decrepit
in the decrepitude of age. However free and independent
in theory, it never shows its power in fact except from a
good physical basis. The aim, the use, and the result of
a sound moral training are to fashion a strong will; and
assuredly all training acts through the intimate develop
ment of the nervous system which it produces. Good
moral habits, like other habits, are formed by the structure
growing to the modes of its exercise. When the physical
basis is congenitally defective, as in the idiot, no excellence
of training will succeed in developing a normal will, any
more than much thought will add one cubit to the stature
of a dwarf. And when we make a survey of the various
forms of mental derangement, which we know to be the
deranged functions of disordered brain, we observe that
a first symptom of mischief is always a loss of power of
will over the thoughts and feelings : that is the sad sign
which portends the coming calamity. The person who is
about to fall into acute mania has ideas and feelings surge
up in his mind in the most irregular and tumultuous
fashion, and is impelled by them to strange and disorderly
acts. It is painfully interesting to watch the struggle
�The Physical Basis of Will.
23
which goes on sometimes at the beginning of the attack
before the failing will undergoes complete dissolution:
the patient will succeed by a strong effort in controlling
himself for a few moments when he knows that some one
is looking at him, or when he is spoken to, and in acting
and answering calmly and coherently, but the enfeebled
will cannot hold on to the reins, and he relapses soon into
incoherent thought, speech and conduct, becoming, as the
disease makes progress, incapable of even an instant’s
real self-control. The person who is falling melancholic
is tormented with painful thoughts and feelings, blasphe
mous or otherwise afflicting, which come into his mind
against his most earnest wish, cause him unspeakable
distress, and cannot be repressed or expelled by all the
efforts of his agitated will; so hateful are they to him, so
independent do they seem of his true self, that he ends
perhaps by thinking them the direct inspiration of Satan
and himself given over to eternal damnation. The mono
maniac broods upon some idea of greatness or of suspicion,
rooted in its congenial feeling of exaltation or of distrust,
until the weakened will looses all hold of it and it grows
to the height of an insane delusion; then he imagines
himself to be emperor, prophet, or some other great per
sonage, or believes all the world to be in a conspiracy
against him. The sufferer who is afflicted with a frequently
upstarting impulse to do harm to himself or to others,
conscious all the while of the horrible nature of the im
pulse, which he fights against with frenzied energy, goes
through agonies of distress in the struggles to prevent his
true will being mastered by it. Everywhere we observe
impaired will to go along with the beginnings of physical
derangement. And if we look to the last term of the
mental degeneration, as we have it in the demented
person in whom all traces of mind are well-nigh extin
guished, who must be fed, clothed, cared for in every way,
whose existence is little more than vegetative, we find an
almost complete abolition of rational will accompanying
extreme disorganization of special structure.
The lessons of mental pathology admit of no misread
ing ; they make known everywhere an entire dependence
�24
The Physical Basis of Will.
of will on physical organization. But there is an im
portant aspect of the matter which I ought not to pass
by altogether, although my allusion to it now must
necessarily be the briefest. It is this converse and
weighty truth—that actual derangement of the structure
of an organ can be brought about by the continuance of
excessive or disordered function ; that the habitual indul
gence of evil passions, ill-regulated thoughts, and de
praved will does lead to corresponding physical changes
in the brain; and that every person has thus in the patient
fashioning and timely exercise of will no mean power
over himself to prevent insanity. For the praises of such
a well-fashioned will, I cannot do better than borrow the
lines of Tennyson :—
Oh! well for him whose will is strong!
He suffers, but he will not suffer long;
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong:
For him nor moves the loud world’s random mock,
Nor all calamities hugest waves confound,
Who seems a promontory of rock
That, compassed round with turbulent sound,
In middle ocean meets the surging shock,
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crowned.
But assuredly we shall not have a will of that kind
formed by treating it as a free, independent, arbitrary entity
which has no affinities, is not moved by motive, and owns no
law but self-caprice; it can be formed only by painful
degrees, in conformity with stern laws of moral develop
ment, by one who is solicitous uniformly to use motives
and make good use of them, patiently watchful to with
stand and check the earliest invasion of his mind by low
motives, earnest to cultivate good feelings and noble aspi
rations, steadfast always to strengthen the will by habitual
practice in right doing—who aims, indeed, to make it, as
it should be, the highest and fullest expression of a wellformed character.
The acknowledgment that human
will is included within the law of causation—the appre
hension of the universal reign of law in mind and in
matter—so far from tending to dishearten men and to
�The Physical Basis of Will.
25
paralyze their highest efforts by driving them into a dreary
fatalism, seems to me to be essential in order to infix and
develop in their minds a vital sense of responsibility to
search out intelligently and to pursue deliberately the right
path of human progress; a responsibility, be it said, which
the metaphysical dogma of free-will not merely weakens
but logically destroys. Men have not been paralyzed in
intelligence or effort, but have gained in both immeasur
ably, by perceiving and comprehending the law of gravita
tion; and in like manner by apprehending the reign of law
in mind they will lose only the freedom to make ignorant
blunders and to waste their forces unintelligently : they
will obey the law whose service is their best freedom.
Knowing that their efforts rest securely upon eternal law,
they will know that their labours cannot be in vain: that
they have the power of the universe at their backs, “ the
everlasting arms ” beneath them.
It is unfortunate that people, scared by a horror of
materialism, the “uncreating word” before which freedom
of will and responsibility die, as a writer has described
it lately, cannot see that the application of a scientific
method of enquiry to human thoughts, feelings, and
doings in no way touches injuriously the supreme autho
rity of moral law and the power and wish to. obey it.
Neither moral feeling nor responsibility would be taken
out of life were a purely materialistic evolution proved
doctrine ; on the contrary, the course of that evolution in
the past would remain the best guarantee and yield the
strongest assurance of a further moral and intellectual
progress in the future. If it be true that men have risen
by a gradual evolution from a pre-moral state of barbarism
to their present height of intelligence and moral feeling,
and if it be, as it certainly is, the essential principle of
evolution to pass upwards from more simple and general
to more complex and special organisation, it is surely a
rational inference and a sound expectation that intelli
gence and moral feeling will reach a still higher develop
ment in the future. Science is only organised knowledge
and does not pretend to do more than find out and set
forth how things are as they are, and by help of what it
�26
The Physical Basis of Will.
thus learns to forecast what they will be in the future; it
perceives clearly how inexorably its range is limited by
the limitations of our few and feeble senses, and how
impossible it is that it should ever discover anything about
the primal origin of things—about the why and whence of
the mysterious universe of its observations. Evolution,
the modern name of that conception which the old Greek
philosophers, when they first formed it, called nature or
the becoming of things
is only a more exact and
true exposition of how things have become, not in the
least an explanation of the mystery of their why. By
the help of knowledge slowly widening we can look back
in retrospective imagination to the time and manner in
which our planet and the other planets of our solar
system took form by nebular condensation and started
on their several orbits; we can trace with patient
thought the successive changes which have taken place on
the surface of the earth and have culminated in man and
his achievements ; we may foresee, perhaps, a time when
a few miserable human beings, living degraded lives in
snow huts near the equator, shall represent all that is
left of the vanished myriads of the human race, or a still
later period when the earth, fallen to the condition in
which the moon now is, rolls on its solitary way through
space, a frozen and barren globe, the tomb of a Dead
Humanity;—we may, if we look far enough before and
after, do all that, but we can never tell what minute frac
tion our solar system may be—what a vortex-molecule,
so to speak—of countless other systems in the inconceiv
able immensities of space which lie beyond our utmost
ken, and what essential relations it may have to them;
we cannot tell why matter on earth has formed an ascend
ing series of more and more complex compounds, why
having reached a certain complexity of composition it
became living, why organic evolution have gone on to
higher and ever higher achievements until it reached the
complexity of human organization and gave birth to con
sciousness ; and we cannot tell in the least what will
happen in the long long time to come, when all the
operations of our solar system are ended, past as com-
�.The Physical Basis of Will.
27
" pletely as the light of the first human eyes that gazed on
them in wonder. Science is confined to a finite space
• between two infinities—the eternal past and eternity to
come; it measures only a single pulsation, so to speak,
in the working of a power whose source and end are
past finding out, which was and is, and is to come, from
everlasting to everlasting ; beyond that range, narrow it
is true, but more than wide enough to give full scope to
all human affections and to occupy usefully all human
energies, there is absolute nescience—agnosticism if you
will. Organised as we are we can no more know about
it than the oyster in its narrow home and with its very
limited sentiency can know of the events of the human
world—of the noise and turmoil, say, of an English electior,
or of the interesting chronicles of the “ Court Circular.”
-What science repudiates and condemns, I believe, is the
presumptuous pretence on the part of theology to know
and tell all about the inscrutable, to put forward as
truths, not ever to be questioned, childish explanations
which are an insult to the understanding and would be
its suicide if really accepted, to demand reverent assent
to doctrines which sometimes outrage moral feeling, and
to declare solemnly that whosoever believeth not the
fables which it proclaims “ shall without doubt perish
everlastingly.”
What it may furthermore well repudiate and condemn
is the evident want of sincerity of heart and veracity of
thought shown by those who proffer and accept these
explanations, by reason of which they do not honestly
sound their beliefs and pursue them rigidly to their
logical issues, but suffer themselves to use words habitu
ally in a non-natural sense, and to hold side by side
inconsistent and even directly contradictory doctrines,
without being troubled by their manifest inconsistencies.
The scientific spirit claims entire veracity of thought,
whatever the result, knows that truth does not depend
upon our sympathies and antipathies, is resolute to follow
it to the end even at the sacrifice of the most cherished
beliefs. It cannot but think it to be as demoralizing in
tendency as it is insincere in fact, to profess to hold a
�28
The Physical Basis of Will.
faith in entire reverence after having given up most of
what is characteristic of it, and as certain in the end to lead
to grossly inconsistent conduct. Such disingenuous deal
ing with momentous matters marks indeed an unveracity
of thought which would be lamentable hypocrisy were it
not more often intellectual timidity and unconscious
self-deception. But whether the insincerity be conscious
or unconscious, it is incompatible with that rigid, hearty,
and entire devotion to truth in thought, feeling, and ex
pression which is the aim and at the same time the
strength of a good understanding.
Note to Page 15.—Kant’s doctrine is that there is a determi
nation of the will by pure reason, that so reason gets practical
reality, and that in this absolute obedience the will has absolute
assurance of its freedom. The moral law is a law spontaneously
imposed on the will by pure reason: it stands high above all the
motives, sensuous and their like, which determine the empirical
will; it pays no respect to them, but with an inward, irresistible
necessity, orders us, in independence of them, to follow it abso
lutely and unconditionally—'tis a categorical imperative, universal,
and binding on every rational will. A happy thing, certainly, that
a will determined to unconditional obedience by so absolute an
authority retains nevertheless the absolute assurance of its free
dom. But then comes the not unimportant question—What is
it that practical reason categorically commands ? How are we
to know what the moral law dictates and forbids ? The easiest
thing in the world, thinks Kant: let only those maxims of con
duct derived from experience be adopted as motives which are
susceptible of being made of universal validity—which are fit to
be regarded as universal laws of reason to govern the actions of
all mankind. I do right when I do what all persons would
think right in similar circumstances. Very good, without doubt,
although very like the common-place maxim of every ethical
system; but my difficulty has been to know in a particular case
what all intelligent beings would think right. How am I to get
at the universal standard or precept and apply it to my particu
lar occasion, so as to know absolutely what I ought then to do ?
Kant helps me by means of two remarkable illustrations. Suicide
is one. Is suicide, under the strongest temptation conceivable,
ever right ? I must ask myself then, “ Is the principle of the
admission that suicide is ever right fit to become a universal
law ?” No, says Kant, it is not fit, since the universal practice
�The Physical Basis of Will.
29
sary to come down from its supersensuous heights and to be no
better than gross Utilitarianism. All that it can tell me, panting
for its supreme utterance, is that suicide is inexpedient as a
universal principle of conduct—in fact, it makes use of the
common motives of an experience which is nowise supersen
suous, and instead of helping me to an absolute precept or
standard to measure them by, actually comes to them for its
authority. Kant’s philosophy, of which the metaphysical mind
is getting re-enamoured in some quarters at the present day, has
its head high in the clouds and dreams there sublimely; but
it finds it necessary to have its feet on the ground when the time
comes for it to march.
The second instance is no more helpful. May a person in the
greatest need of a loan, which he knows he will not get unless
he makes a solemn promise to repay what he is perfectly certain
he never will be able to repay, make the promise ? No, says
Kant, for if it were a universal law, all faith in promises would
be destroyed, and nobody would lend money. In other words,
in the long run it would be very bad for society that faith in
promises should be destroyed. An excellent truth, which no
body can deny, but it evidently smacks much of the earth
earthy; indeed, it would seem that those who discover the
basis of morality in the social sanction may claim Kant, when
he is not in the clouds, as an out-and-out supporter. It is dif
ferent when he is busy spinning empty supersensuous theories
which have no relation to actual life, and amusing his disciples
with the magnificent dissolving views of his metaphysical magic
lantern. First he presents a splendid view of supreme reason
to the spectator who, as he admires it, sees the picture dissolve
gradually and in its place appear the grand features of Moral
Law, which shared with the Starry Heaven Kant’s ever new
and rising admiration and reverence; as the gaze is fixed in ad
miration upon this view it melts into indistinctness, and, as it
does so, there comes by degrees into clear definition the mighty
figure of freewill. Thereupon, informing his enthusiastic audience
that there are not really three pictures, as they might suppose,
but one picture, the three being one and the one being three,
Reason being Will and Will Reason, and that they cannot fail
to perceive, when they reflect properly upon what they have
seen, that the belief in God and immortality have now been
made safe for ever, he retires amidst unbounded applause.
Meanwhile, the critic who has not been blinded by the magnificent
metaphysical display, and who feels that he does not live, move,
and have his being in an abstract land beyond physics, asks him
self with regard to the philosophy—Will it march ?—and is not
much surprised to find that when it begins to march it can only
do so on well-worn Utilitarian tracks.
All theories of freewill seem to come to this—that the will
which is swayed by low motives is not free, that the will which
�30
The Physical Basis of Will.
of suicide would reduce the world to chaos. Very true, but it is
sadly disappointing to perceive that the sublime and supreme
reason has, in order to become practical reality, found it necesis swayed by the higher motives is more free, and that the will
which is swayed by the highest motives is most free; conse
quently, when a person is blamed for having done ill, he is not
blamed for not having acted without motives, but for not having
been actuated by the highest motives. Create an artificial world
of names apart from the real world of facts—a world which shall
simply be made up of negations of all qualities of which we have
actual experience—and let the highest motives be known in it
as the Will of God or abstract Supreme Reason, you will get
your service which you may please yourself to call perfect
freedom. And there does not appear to be any reason why you
may not create and take refuge in another still more ideal world
beyond that, if persons of a positive spirit should show any dis
position to invade ideal word No. 1 with inconvenient enquiries.
�
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The physical basis of will: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, February 15th, 1890
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Maudsley, Henry
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 30, [2] p. ; 18 cm
Notes: Series list on preliminary pages unnumbered pages at the end.
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The Sunday Lecture Society
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1890
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G4844
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (The physical basis of will: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, February 15th, 1890), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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Subject
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Free will
Determinism
Free Will and Determinism