38 KIDD’S OWN 
JOURNAL. 

Unuimitep Liserty. 
There are not wanting philosophers,who, seeing 
in man the image of the Deity, make him almost 
as free as God himself. They give him unlimited 
liberty ; but unlimited liberty would imply that 
man created his own nature; that he is himself 
the author of his desires and faculties ; that he 
governs himself independently of all law. As 
man has not unlimited power over his birth, nor 
over the duration of his existence, nor over his 
sex, nor his temperament, nor the influence of 
external things, such a liberty is completely in 
contradiction to hisnature. All that can be said 
in favor of this boastful opinion, reduces itself to 
emphatic declamations, void of sense and truth. 
ABSOLUTE LIBERTY. 
Other persons think it proper to admit at least 
an absolute liberty, by virtue of which a man may 
act without motive, internal or external. But, 
as there is no effect without a cause, as one thing 
is always the cause of another, and as nothing 
in nature can happen except in accordance with 
determinate laws, it follows that every phe- 
nomenon, such as that of an absolute liberty which 
might take effect without cause, is absolutely 
impossible. If man could act without motive, 
and solely from caprice, there would be no certainty, 
nor even probability, that, under given circum- 
stances, he would act in such or such a manner. 
Sex, temperament, and organisation more or less 
perfect ; the education received, habits, principles, 
laws, morality, religion, circumstances, natural 
propensities and faculties, fortuitous excitements, 
—nothing, in fact, would enable us to divine, with 
any probability, on what an individual, so con- 
stituted, would determine. For the rest, this 
liberty would be a faculty in contradiction with 
itself, since it would make a man act reasonably 
or unreasonably ; justly, or unjustly ; finally, well 
or ill, but always without motive. Why should 
we expect of a man in such case, friendship and 
fidelity rather than hatred and perfidy; virtue 
rather than vice? All institutions which have 
for their object the welfare of individuals and 
society, would be useless. Of what use would be 
education, the culture of the mind and heart, 
morality, contracts, promises, oaths, religion, pun- 
ishments, rewards, when nothing for such a man 
would be a determining motive? In this hy- 
pothesis, man alone would form an exception to 
the general laws, by virtue of which each phe- 
nomenon has its cause; and the ideas, the sensa- 
tions, the propensities, thoughts, and actions of 
man, would not be determined by previous causes 
in the manner every event without him would be 
regulated. Such hberty, then, is an absurd chi- 
mera. 
M. Ancillon, in maintaining the doctrine of ab- 
solute liberty, says—‘‘ The dignity of human 
nature is founded entirely on moral liberty : moral 
liberty is the power of obeying the law under all 
circumstances, the power of commencing a series 
of actions in spite of all the causes and all the 
motives, which would seem to involve, necessarily, 
a different series. To present actions in their 
relation with liberty, is to start with the principle 
that the actions of man belong to himself always, 
and that he is always at liberty to omit or to do 




them. When we are satisfied in history with 
simply explaining actions, we degrade man ; he 
becomes a passive instrument, ap integrant part 
of nature, and freedom disappears. We cease to 
take into account the power which the man had, 
of doing otherwise than he has done, and it follows 
that this was the only course left for him.” 
Thus, according to this author, man, as man, 
is an entirely insulated being, who has nothing in 
common with the rest of nature. On the one 
hand, M. Ancillon, abandoning himself to vain 
reveries on the noble nature of man, thinks, that 
always, and under all circumstances, he has the 
power to withdraw himself from the influence of 
all causes, of all motives, and of entire nature: 
liberty, according to him, is the only force which 
submits to no law, to no cause, and which has 
its support within itself. On the other hand, he 
confesses that nature exercises a great control over 
man, that the laws of nature tend, without ceas- 
ing, to encroach upon those of liberty ; and that 
the power which nature has over man, explains 
his actions. By adopting the true view of a sub- 
ject, one does not fall into such contradictions. 
Kant, therefore, and Feurbach, have reason to say 
that absolute liberty has nothing real, and is only 
speculative. That I may avoid difficulties arising 
from too much obscurity, I shall not enter into the 
discussion of the question—how actions can le 
necessary, and nevertheless voluntary and free. 
In maintaining that man has only to will, in 
order to be capable of every thing, philosophers 
endeavor to establish a principle in conformity 
with good morals. But, can a principle which is 
belied at each step we make in nature, and in the 
study of man, be a principle of good morals? A 
principle, which always tends to make us forget 
the motives, the true sources of our actions, and 
which, by that circumstance, deprives us of the 
means of directing them; a principle, which 
makes an independent will, or rather a caprice, the 
author of our good and evil actions, and which 
consequently destroys all the equality of our judg- 
ments on the actions of others, all justice in 
criminal legislation, all tolerance, all charity ; such 
a principle is certainly not a principle of good 
morals. 
Or Inuusory Liserry. 
To those who deny free will, is commonly op- 
posed the internal sense of individual freedom. It 
is said that every one has aconsciousness, that so 
long as no constraint, physical or moral, forces us 
to act, we act, freely,—that is, that we might 
have acted ina different manner. But, as the 
adversaries of free will prove, that this feeling, 
this internal consciousness, is only an illusion, it 
would be better, for the good cause, to abandon 
this argument. 
Tn fact, even when acting under the influence of 
desires more or less imperious, without choice, 
without will, man experiences a sense of satisfac- 
tion which connects itself with the accomplishment 
of his desires ; and which is the more lively, in pro- 
portion as these desires were the more urgent. It 
is this satisfaction which misleads the individual, 
and makes him imagine that in this case he acts 
with freedom. Thus, he thinks he acts with 
freedom when he walks erect, although his organi- 
sation obliges him to do so: the man agitated by |} 







