Determinism

65. To solve this question of spontaneity, it must be said that, on a rigorous definition, the soul has within it the principle of all its actions, and even of all its passions, and that the same is true in all the simple substances scattered throughout Nature, although there be freedom only in those that are intelligent.

In the popular sense notwithstanding, speaking in accordance with appearances, we must say that the soul depends in some way upon the body and upon the impressions of the senses: much as we speak with Ptolemy and Tycho in everyday converse, and think with Copernicus, when it is a question of the rising and the setting of the sun.

66. One may however give a true and philosophic sense to this mutual dependence which we suppose between the soul and the body. It is that the one of these two substances depends upon the other ideally, in so far as the reason of that which is done in the one can be furnished by that which is in the other. This had already happened when God ordered beforehand the harmony that there [159]would be between them. Even so would that automaton, that should fulfil the servant’s function, depend upon me ideally, in virtue of the knowledge of him who, foreseeing my future orders, would have rendered it capable of serving me at the right moment all through the morrow. The knowledge of my future intentions would have actuated this great craftsman, who would accordingly have fashioned the automaton: my influence would be objective, and his physical. For in so far as the soul has perfection and distinct thoughts, God has accommodated the body to the soul, and has arranged beforehand that the body is impelled to execute its orders. And in so far as the soul is imperfect and as its perceptions are confused, God has accommodated the soul to the body, in such sort that the soul is swayed by the passions arising out of corporeal representations. This produces the same effect and the same appearance as if the one depended immediately upon the other, and by the agency of a physical influence. Properly speaking, it is by its confused thoughts that the soul represents the bodies which encompass it. The same thing must apply to all that we understand by the actions of simple substances one upon another. For each one is assumed to act upon the other in proportion to its perfection, although this be only ideally, and in the reasons of things, as God in the beginning ordered one substance to accord with another in proportion to the perfection or imperfection that there is in each. (Withal action and passion are always reciprocal in creatures, because one part of the reasons which serve to explain clearly what is done, and which have served to bring it into existence, is in the one of these substances, and another part of these reasons is in the other, perfections and imperfections being always mingled and shared.) Thus it is we attribute action to the one, and passion to the other.

67. But after all, whatsoever dependence be conceived in voluntary actions, and even though there were an absolute and mathematical necessity (which there is not) it would not follow that there would not be a sufficient degree of freedom to render rewards and punishments just and reasonable. It is true that generally we speak as though the necessity of the action put an end to all merit and all demerit, all justification for praise and blame, for reward and punishment: but it must be admitted that this conclusion is not entirely correct. I am very far from sharing the opinions of Bradwardine, Wyclif, Hobbes and Spinoza, who [160]advocate, so it seems, this entirely mathematical necessity, which I think I have adequately refuted, and perhaps more clearly than is customary. Yet one must always bear testimony to the truth and not impute to a dogma anything that does not result from it. Moreover, these arguments prove too much, since they would prove just as much against hypothetical necessity, and would justify the lazy sophism. For the absolute necessity of the sequence of causes would in this matter add nothing to the infallible certainty of a hypothetical necessity.

68. In the first place, therefore, it must be agreed that it is permitted to kill a madman when one cannot by other means defend oneself. It will be granted also that it is permitted, and often even necessary, to destroy venomous or very noxious animals, although they be not so by their own fault.

69. Secondly, one inflicts punishments upon a beast, despite its lack of reason and freedom, when one deems that this may serve to correct it: thus one punishes dogs and horses, and indeed with much success. Rewards serve us no less in the managing of animals: when an animal is hungry, the food that is given to him causes him to do what otherwise would never be obtained from him.

70. Thirdly, one would inflict even on beasts capital punishments (where it is no longer a question of correcting the beast that is punished) if this punishment could serve as an example, or inspire terror in others, to make them cease from evil doing. Rorarius, in his book on reason in beasts, says that in Africa they crucified lions, in order to drive away other lions from the towns and frequented places, and that he had observed in passing through the province of Jülich that they hanged wolves there in order to ensure greater safety for the sheepfolds. There are people in the villages also who nail birds of prey to the doors of houses, with the idea that other birds of the same kind will then not so readily appear. These measures would always be justified if they were of any avail.

71. Then, in the fourth place, since experience proves that the fear of chastisements and the hope of rewards serves to make men abstain from evil and strive to do good, one would have good reason to avail oneself of such, even though men were acting under necessity, whatever the necessity might be. The objection will be raised that if good or evil is necessary it is useless to avail oneself of means to obtain it or to hinder it: but the answer has already been [161]given above in the passage combating the lazy sophism. If good or evil were a necessity without these means, then such means would be unavailing; but it is not so. These goods and evils come only with the aid of these means, and if these results were necessary the means would be a part of the causes rendering them necessary, since experience teaches us that often fear or hope hinders evil or advances good. This objection, then, differs hardly at all from the lazy sophism, which we raise against the certainty as well as the necessity of future events. Thus one may say that these objections are directed equally against hypothetical necessity and absolute necessity, and that they prove as much against the one as against the other, that is to say, nothing at all.

72. There was a great dispute between Bishop Bramhall and Mr. Hobbes, which began when they were both in Paris, and which was continued after their return to England; all the parts of it are to be found collected in a quarto volume published in London in the year 1656. They are all in English, and have not been translated as far as I know, nor inserted in the Collection of Works in Latin by Mr. Hobbes. I had already read these writings, and have obtained them again since. And I had observed at the outset that he had not at all proved the absolute necessity of all things, but had shown sufficiently that necessity would not overthrow all the rules of divine or human justice, and would not prevent altogether the exercise of this virtue.

73. There is, however, a kind of justice and a certain sort of rewards and of punishments which appear not so applicable to those who should act by an absolute necessity, supposing such necessity existed. It is that kind of justice which has for its goal neither improvement nor example, nor even redress of the evil. This justice has its foundation only in the fitness of things, which demands a certain satisfaction for the expiation of an evil action. The Socinians, Hobbes and some others do not admit this punitive justice, which properly speaking is avenging justice. God reserves it for himself in many cases; but he does not fail to grant it to those who are entitled to govern others, and he exercises it through their agency, provided that they act under the influence of reason and not of passion. The Socinians believe it to be without foundation, but it always has some foundation in that fitness of things which gives satisfaction not only to the injured but also to the wise who see it; even as a beautiful piece of music, or again a good [162]piece of architecture, satisfies cultivated minds. And the wise lawgiver having threatened, and having, so to speak, promised a chastisement, it befits his consistency not to leave the action completely unpunished, even though the punishment would no longer avail to correct anyone. But even though he should have promised nothing, it is enough that there is a fitness of things which could have prompted him to make this promise, since the wise man likewise promises only that which is fitting. And one may even say that there is here a certain compensation of the mind, which would be scandalized by disorder if the chastisement did not contribute towards restoring order. One can also consult what Grotius wrote against the Socinians, of the satisfaction of Jesus Christ, and the answer of Crellius thereto.

74. Thus it is that the pains of the damned continue, even when they no longer serve to turn them away from evil, and that likewise the rewards of the blessed continue, even when they no longer serve for strengthening them in good. One may say nevertheless that the damned ever bring upon themselves new pains through new sins, and that the blessed ever bring upon themselves new joys by new progress in goodness: for both are founded on the principle of the fitness of things, which has seen to it that affairs were so ordered that the evil action must bring upon itself a chastisement. There is good reason to believe, following the parallelism of the two realms, that of final causes and that of efficient causes, that God has established in the universe a connexion between punishment or reward and bad or good action, in accordance wherewith the first should always be attracted by the second, and virtue and vice obtain their reward and their punishment in consequence of the natural sequence of things, which contains still another kind of pre-established harmony than that which appears in the communication between the soul and the body. For, in a word, all that God does, as I have said already, is harmonious to perfection. Perhaps then this principle of the fitness of things would no longer apply to beings acting without true freedom or exemption from absolute necessity; and in that case corrective justice alone would be administered, and not punitive justice. That is the opinion of the famous Conringius, in a dissertation he published on what is just. And indeed, the reasons Pomponazzi employed in his book on fate, to prove the usefulness of chastisements and rewards, even though all should come about in our [163]actions by a fatal necessity, concern only amendment and not satisfaction, κολασιν ου τιμωριαν. Moreover, it is only for the sake of outward appearances that one destroys animals accessary to certain crimes, as one razes the houses of rebels, that is, to inspire terror. Thus it is an act of corrective justice, wherein punitive justice has no part at all.

75. But we will not amuse ourselves now by discussing a question more curious than necessary, since we have shown sufficiently that there is no such necessity in voluntary actions. Nevertheless it was well to show that imperfect freedom alone, that is, freedom which is exempt only from constraint, would suffice as foundation for chastisements and rewards of the kind conducive to the avoidance of evil, and to amendment. One sees also from this that some persons of intelligence, who persuade themselves that everything is necessary, are wrong in saying that none must be praised or blamed, rewarded or punished. Apparently they say so only to exercise their wit: the pretext is that all being necessary nothing would be in our power. But this pretext is ill founded: necessary actions would be still in our power, at least in so far as we could perform them or omit them, when the hope or the fear of praise or blame, of pleasure or pain prompted our will thereto, whether they prompted it of necessity, or in prompting it they left spontaneity, contingency and freedom all alike unimpaired. Thus praise and blame, rewards and punishments would preserve always a large part of their use, even though there were a true necessity in our actions. We can praise and blame also natural good and bad qualities, where the will has no part—in a horse, in a diamond, in a man; and he who said of Cato of Utica that he acted virtuously through the goodness of his nature, and that it was impossible for him to behave otherwise, thought to praise him the more.

76. The difficulties which I have endeavoured up to now to remove have been almost all common to natural and revealed theology. Now it will be necessary to come to a question of revealed theology, concerning the election or the reprobation of men, with the dispensation or use of divine grace in connexion with these acts of the mercy or the justice of God. But when I answered the preceding objections, I opened up a way to meet those that remain. This confirms the observation I made thereon (Preliminary Dissertation, 43) that there is rather a conflict between the [164]true reasons of natural theology and the false reasons of human appearances, than between revealed faith and reason. For on this subject scarcely any difficulty arises that is new, and not deriving its origin from those which can be placed in the way of the truths discerned by reason.

77. Theologians of all parties are divided among themselves on this subject of predestination and grace, and often give different answers to the same objections, according to their various principles, one cannot avoid touching on the differences which prevail among them. One may say in general that some look upon God more metaphysically and others more morally: and it has already been stated on other occasions that the Counter-Remonstrants took the first course and the Remonstrants the second. But to act rightly we must affirm alike on one side the independence of God and the dependence of creatures, and on the other side the justice and goodness of God, which makes him dependent upon himself, his will upon his understanding or his wisdom.

78. Some gifted and well-intentioned authors, desiring to show the force of the reasons advocated by the two principal parties, in order to persuade them to a mutual tolerance, deem that the whole controversy is reduced to this essential point, namely: What was God’s principal aim in making his decrees with regard to man? Did he make them solely in order to show forth his glory by manifesting his attributes, and forming, to that end, the great plan of creation and providence? Or has he had regard rather to the voluntary movements of intelligent substances which he designed to create, considering what they would will and do in the different circumstances and situations wherein he might place them, so as to form a fitting resolve thereupon? It appears to me that the two answers to this great question thus given as opposites to one another are easy to reconcile, and that in consequence the two parties would be agreed in principle, without any need of tolerance, if all were reduced to this point. In truth God, in designing to create the world, purposed solely to manifest and communicate his perfections in the way that was most efficacious, and most worthy of his greatness, his wisdom and his goodness. But that very purpose pledged him to consider all the actions of creatures while still in the state of pure possibility, that he might form the most fitting plan. He is like a great architect whose aim [165]in view is the satisfaction or the glory of having built a beautiful palace, and who considers all that is to enter into this construction: the form and the materials, the place, the situation, the means, the workmen, the expense, before he forms a complete resolve. For a wise person in laying his plans cannot separate the end from the means; he does not contemplate any end without knowing if there are means of attaining thereto.

79. I know not whether there are also perchance persons who imagine that, God being the absolute master of all things, one can thence infer that everything outside him is indifferent to him, that he considers himself alone, without concern for others, and that thus he has made some happy and others unhappy without any cause, without choice, without reason. But to teach so about God were to deprive him of wisdom and of goodness. We need only observe that he considers himself and neglects nothing of what he owes to himself, to conclude that he considers his creatures also, and that he uses them in the manner most consistent with order. For the more a great and good prince is mindful of his glory, the more he will think of making his subjects happy, even though he were the most absolute of all monarchs, and though his subjects were slaves from birth, bondsmen (in lawyers’ parlance), people entirely in subjection to arbitrary power. Calvin himself and some others of the greatest defenders of the absolute decree rightly maintained that God had great and just reasons for his election and the dispensation of his grace, although these reasons be unknown to us in detail: and we must judge charitably that the most rigid predestinators have too much reason and too much piety to depart from this opinion.

80. There will therefore be no argument for debate on that point (as I hope) with people who are at all reasonable. But there will always be argument among those who are called Universalists and Particularists, according to what they teach of the grace and the will of God. Yet I am somewhat inclined to believe that the heated dispute between them on the will of God to save all men, and on that which depends upon it (when one keeps separate the doctrine de Auxiliis, or of the assistance of grace), rests rather in expressions than in things. For it is sufficient to consider that God, as well as every wise and beneficent mind, is inclined towards all possible good, and that this inclination is proportionate to the excellence of the good. Moreover, this results (if we take the matter [166]precisely and in itself) from an ‘antecedent will’, as it is termed, which, however, is not always followed by its complete effect, because this wise mind must have many other inclinations besides. Thus it is the result of all the inclinations together that makes his will complete and decretory, as I have already explained. One may therefore very well say with ancient writers that God wills to save all men according to his antecedent will, but not according to his consequent will, which never fails to be followed by its effect. And if those who deny this universal will do not allow that the antecedent inclination be called a will, they are only troubling themselves about a question of name.

81. But there is a question more serious in regard to predestination to eternal life and to all other destination by God, to wit, whether this destination is absolute or respective. There is destination to good and destination to evil; and as evil is moral or physical, theologians of all parties agree that there is no destination to moral evil, that is to say, that none is destined to sin. As for the greatest physical evil, which is damnation, one can distinguish between destination and predestination: for predestination appears to contain within itself an absolute destination, which is anterior to the consideration of the good or evil actions of those whom it concerns. Thus one may say that the reprobate are destined to be condemned, because they are known to be impenitent. But it cannot so well be said that the reprobate are predestined to damnation: for there is no absolute reprobation, its foundation being final foreseen impenitence.

82. Some writers maintain that God, wishing to manifest his mercy and his justice in accordance with reasons worthy of him, but unknown to us, chose the elect, and in consequence rejected the damned, prior to all thought of sin, even of Adam, that after this resolve he thought fit to permit sin in order to be able to exercise these two virtues, and that he has bestowed grace in Jesus Christ to some in order to save them, while he has refused it to others in order to be able to punish them. Hence these writers are named ‘Supralapsarians’, because the decree to punish precedes, according to them, the knowledge of the future existence of sin. But the opinion most common to-day amongst those who are called Reformed, and one that is favoured by the Synod of Dordrecht, is that of the ‘Infralapsarians’, corresponding somewhat to the conception of St. Augustine. For [167]he asserts that God having resolved to permit the sin of Adam and the corruption of the human race, for reasons just but hidden, his mercy made him choose some of the corrupt mass to be freely saved by the merit of Jesus Christ, and his justice made him resolve to punish the others by the damnation that they deserved. That is why, with the Schoolmen, only the saved were called Praedestinati and the damned were called Praesciti. It must be admitted that some Infralapsarians and others speak sometimes of predestination to damnation, following the example of Fulgentius and of St. Augustine himself: but that signifies the same as destination to them, and it avails nothing to wrangle about words. That pretext, notwithstanding, was in time past used for maltreating that Godescalc who caused a stir about the middle of the ninth century, and who took the name of Fulgentius to indicate that he followed that author.

83. As for the destination of the elect to eternal life, the Protestants, as well as those of the Roman Church, dispute much among themselves as to whether election is absolute or is founded on the prevision of final living faith. Those who are called Evangelicals, that is, those of the Augsburg Confession, hold the latter opinion: they believe that one need not go into the hidden causes of election while one may find a manifest cause of it shown in Holy Scripture, which is faith in Jesus Christ; and it appears to them that the prevision of the cause is also the cause of the prevision of the effect. Those who are called Reformed are of a different opinion: they admit that salvation comes from faith in Jesus Christ, but they observe that often the cause anterior to the effect in execution is posterior in intention, as when the cause is the means and the effect is the end. Thus the question is, whether faith or salvation is anterior in the intention of God, that is, whether God’s design is rather to save man than to make him a believer.

84. Hence we see that the question between the Supralapsarians and the Infralapsarians in part, and again between them and the Evangelicals, comes back to a right conception of the order that is in God’s decrees. Perhaps one might put an end to this dispute at once by saying that, properly speaking, all the decrees of God that are here concerned are simultaneous, not only in respect of time, as everyone agrees, but also in signo rationis, or in the order of nature. And indeed, the Formula of Concord, building upon some passages [168]of St. Augustine, comprised in the same Decree of Election salvation and the means that conduce to it. To demonstrate this synchronism of destinations or of decrees with which we are concerned, we must revert to the expedient that I have employed more than once, which states that God, before decreeing anything, considered among other possible sequences of things that one which he afterwards approved. In the idea of this is represented how the first parents sin and corrupt their posterity; how Jesus Christ redeems the human race; how some, aided by such and such graces, attain to final faith and to salvation; and how others, with or without such or other graces, do not attain thereto, continue in sin, and are damned. God grants his sanction to this sequence only after having entered into all its detail, and thus pronounces nothing final as to those who shall be saved or damned without having pondered upon everything and compared it with other possible sequences. Thus God’s pronouncement concerns the whole sequence at the same time; he simply decrees its existence. In order to save other men, or in a different way, he must needs choose an altogether different sequence, seeing that all is connected in each sequence. In this conception of the matter, which is that most worthy of the All-wise, all whose actions are connected together to the highest possible degree, there would be only one total decree, which is to create such a world. This total decree comprises equally all the particular decrees, without setting one of them before or after another. Yet one may say also that each particular act of antecedent will entering into the total result has its value and order, in proportion to the good whereto this act inclines. But these acts of antecedent will are not called decrees, since they are not yet inevitable, the outcome depending upon the total result. According to this conception of things, all the difficulties that can here be made amount to the same as those I have already stated and removed in my inquiry concerning the origin of evil.

85. There remains only one important matter of discussion, which has its peculiar difficulties. It is that of the dispensation of the means and circumstances contributing to salvation and to damnation.

This comprises amongst others the subject of the Aids of Grace (de auxiliis gratiae), on which Rome (since the Congregation de Auxiliis under Clement VIII, when a debate took place between the Dominicans and the Jesuits) does not readily permit [169]books to be published. Everyone must agree that God is altogether good and just, that his goodness makes him contribute the least possible to that which can render men guilty, and the most possible to that which serves to save them (possible, I say, subject to the general order of things); that his justice prevents him from condemning innocent men, and from leaving good actions without reward; and that he even keeps an exact proportion in punishments and rewards. Nevertheless, this idea that one should have of the goodness and the justice of God does not appear enough in what we know of his actions with regard to the salvation and the damnation of men: and it is that which makes difficulties concerning sin and its remedies.

86. The first difficulty is how the soul could be infected with original sin, which is the root of actual sins, without injustice on God’s part in exposing the soul thereto. This difficulty has given rise to three opinions on the origin of the soul itself.

The first is that of the pre-existence of human souls in another world or in another life, where they had sinned and on that account had been condemned to this prison of the human body, an opinion of the Platonists which is attributed to Origen and which even to-day finds adherents. Henry More, an English scholar, advocated something like this dogma in a book written with that express purpose. Some of those who affirm this pre-existence have gone as far as metempsychosis.

The younger van Helmont held this opinion, and the ingenious author of some metaphysical Meditations, published in 1678 under the name of William Wander, appears to have some leaning towards it. The second opinion is that of Traduction, as if the soul of children were engendered (per traducem) from the soul or souls of those from whom the body is engendered.

St. Augustine inclined to this judgement the better to explain original sin. This doctrine is taught also by most of the theologians of the Augsburg Confession. Nevertheless it is not completely established among them, since the Universities of Jena and Helmstedt, and others besides, have long been opposed to it. The third opinion, and that most widely accepted to-day, is that of Creation: it is taught in the majority of the Christian Schools, but it is fraught with the greatest difficulty in respect of original sin.