XVI 



306 HUMANISM 



tinguished British philosophers have set out to discuss 

 the question of Freedom. Most of them have confused 

 the issue by playing upon the different senses of the 

 word. Not a few of them have attempted to hoodwink 

 the public by assurances that self-determination was 

 the only kind of Freedom thinkable or ethically needed. 

 But every one of them has propounded the same caricature 

 of the freedom of indetermination. And not one of them 

 has made the slightest attempt to show that the doctrine 

 they denounced was actually held by any Libertarian, 

 or formed a logical deduction from which no Libertarian 

 could escape. 1 



Now the caricature of Freedom which is in vogue for 

 controversial purposes is, briefly, this : If you allege that 

 there can be anything, however slightly, undetermined 

 about any action, you allege the reality of motiveless 

 choice. But this, so far from safeguarding responsibility, 

 really renders responsibility impossible. For you allege 

 that there is nothing in the agent s character or circum 

 stances to determine his act in one way or the other. 

 But if any choice is motiveless, all choice is motiveless. 

 Any one, therefore, may do anything. The Pope is as 

 likely to advocate atheism in his next Encyclical and to 

 make a Cardinal of Mr. Blatchford as to condemn 

 modernism and the writings of M. Loisy ; the Tsar is as 

 likely to declare for the Social Revolution as for further 

 repression, and to become a Jew as to rebuild his navy. 

 Thus all reasonable expectation is defeated ; all continuity 

 of character is destroyed, and with it all responsibility, 

 which rests on the connexion between action and char 

 acter. In short the inevitable conclusion is that a world, 

 into which the least taint of Freedom enters, lapses into 

 chaos. 



Now though common sense might find it pretty hard 

 to dissect this sort of argument and to refute its premisses, 

 it has little hesitation in declaring that its conclusions are 



1 Henry Sidgwick forms an honourable exception to whom these remarks do 

 not apply. The discussion in his Methods of Ethics is scrupulously fair, and 

 excellent so far as it goes. 



