Human Freedom. ence and power; and which, in doing so, and only in doing so, come also to be what they are in truth. The life of each particular tree is thus at once the universal vegetable life, in which all trees stand, and the single manifestation to which this life has come in that particular case. from it the invisible, ideal, universal force Abstract or fact, which as a mere particular tree it is not, but which belongs to it only in common with other trees, and you reduce its existence at once to a sheer nullity: an object absolutely single in the world, could never be anything more than a spectral prodigy for the senses. be attempted to sunder the particular from So also, if it the general. Vegetable life can have no reality, save as it shows itself through particular plants and trees. the particular here, are just as valid and The claims of full, as the claims of the general. We have no right to push either aside, in order to make room for the other. The ideal or general cannot subsist without the actual or particular; and it is equally impossible for this last to subsist without the first. They can subsist both, only in and by each other; and it is this mutual comprehension and inbeing of the two precisely, which gives life its proper realness and truth. The real is not the actual as such, nor the ideal as such, but the actual and ideal perfectly blended together, as the presence of the same fact. The same order holds in the sphere of humanity. Every man comprehends in himself a life, which is at once both single and general, the life of his own person, separately considered, and the life at the same time of the race to which he belongs. He is a man; the universal conception of humanity enters into him, as it enters also into all other men; while he is, besides, this or that man, as distinguished from all others by his particular position in the human world. Here again, too, as before, the relation between the general and the particular or single, is not one of outward conjunction simply; as though the man were, in the first place, complete in and of himself, and were then brought to stand in certain connections with other men, previously complete in the same way. completeness as an individual involves of His itself his comprehension in a life more general than his own. The first can have no 407 The two place apart from the second. sidered simply as a part of the general grows by a life which is comprehended in So in the case of the plant: it itself, but in the midst of all, it remains as dark as the stone that lies motionless by its side; its life is the power still of a foreign force, which it can neither apprehend able also to move itself from place to place; nor control. The animal can feel, and is yet in all this, the darkness of nature continues unsurmounted as before. The intelligence which rules the animal is not its own; and it cannot be said to have any inward possession whatever of the conof the world's meaning is reached at last, tents of its own life. This consummation only in the mind of man, which becomes thus, for this very reason, the microcosm whole inferior creation its true, intelligible or mirror, that reflects back upon the image. Here life is no longer blind and unfree. The reason and will, by which it is actuated, are required to enter into it fully, and to become, by means of it, in such separate form, self-conscious and self-possessed. This is the idea of personality, as distinguished from the conception of a simply individual existence in the form of nature. Man finds his proper being at last, only in such life of the spirit. Personality, however, in this case, does not supersede the idea of individual natural existence. On the contrary, it requires this as its necessary ground and support. The natural is the perpetual basis still of the intellectual and moral. The general character of life, therefore, in the view of it which is before us at this time, is not overthrown by this exaltation, as has been already intimated, but is only advanced by it into higher and more significant force. It still continues to revolve as before, between the two opposite poles, which we have found to enter into it from the start, and exhibits still to our contemplation the same dualistic aspect, resulting from the action of these forces, whose inseparable conjunction at the same time forms its only true and proper unity. It is still at once actual and ideal, singular and universal; only now the union of these two forms of existence is brought to be more perfect and intimate than before, by the intense spiritual fusion to which all is subjected in the great fact of consciousness. Consciousness is itself emphatically the apprehension of the particular and single, in the presence of the universal. The two forms of life flow together, in every act of thought or will. Personality is, by its very conception, the power of a strictly universal life, revealing itself through an individual existence as its necessary medi um. The universal is not simply in the individual here blindly, as in the case of the lower world, but knows itself, also, and has possession of itself, in this form; so far, at least, as the man has come to be actually what he is required to be by his own constitution. The perfection of his nature is found just in this, that as an individual, inseparably linked in this respect to the world of nature, from whose bosom he springs, he shall yet recognize in himself the authority of reason, in its true universal character, and yield himself to it spontaneously as the proper form of his own being. Such clear recognition of the universal reason in himself, accompanied with such spontaneous assent to its authority, is that precisely, in the case of any human individual, which makes him to be at once rational and free. The person is necessarily individual; but in becoming personal, the individual life is itself made to transcend its own limits, and maintains its separate reality, only by merging itself completely in the universal life which it is called to represent. Personality and moral freedom are, properly speaking, the same. By this last we are to understand simply, the normal form of our general human life itself. As such, it is nothing more nor less than the full combination of its opposite poles, in a free way. In the sphere of nature this union is necessary and inevitable; in the human spirit, it can be accomplished only by intelligent, spontaneous action, on the part of the spirit itself. The individual life in this form, with a full sense of its own individual nature, and with full power to cleave to this as a separate, independent interest, must yet, with clear consciousness and full choice, receive into itself the general life to which it of right belongs, so as to be filled with it and ruled by it at every point. Then we have a proper human existence. Moral freedom then, the only liberty that is truly entitled to the name, includes in itself two elements or factors, which need to be rightly understood, first, in their separate character, and then in their relation to each other, in order that this idea itself may be rightly apprehended. It is the single will moving with self-conscious free activity in the orbit of the general will. The constituent powers by which it comes to exist, are the sense of self on the one hand, and the sense of a moral universe on the other, the sense of independence, and the sense of authority or law. It is the perfect union of the single and the universal, the subjective and the objective, joined together as mutually necessary, though opposite, polar forces in the clear consciousness of the spirit. Let us direct our attention now, for a moment, separately to each of these great constituents of freedom. Freedom supposes, in the first place, entire INDEPENDENCE on the part of its subject. clear. The subject is not simply an individual centre, but knows and seeks itself under this character. In such form first, it attains to what we call subjective independence. By means of intelligence, the individual self emerges out of the night of nature into the clear vision of its own existence, and is thus prepared to embrace itself as a separate living centre. It is no longer an object merely as before, acted upon from abroad, but is constituted a subject, in the strict sense of this term, having possession of itself, and capable of self-action. It can have no place accordingly, as we have already seen, in the sphere of mere nature. God is free in upholding and carrying forward the world, in this form, according to its appointed laws; but the world itself is not free. Its activity is for itself altogether blind and necessary, accompanied with no self-apprehension, and including in itself no self-motion. It is actuated throughout by a foreign force, with no possible alternative but to obey; while yet its obedience carries in itself no light or love, no intelligence or will. Nature is held in slavish bondage to its own law, as a power impressed upon it perpetually from abroad, and in no sense the product of its separate life. The earth rolls round the sun, the sap mounts upward in the tree, the dog pursues its game, with like subordination to a force by which they are continually mastered, without the least power to master in return. Animal im pulse and instinct are no better here, than the plastic power that fashions the growth of the plant. There is individual existence in each case, included in the bosom of a general ideal life, and comprising action powerfully turned in upon itself; but there is no independence: the subject of the action hangs always, with helpless necessity, on the action itself, and is borne passively along upon the vast objective stream of the world's life, without concur-vidual, so as to carry this along with overrence or resistance of its own. It is only in the sphere of self-conscious spirit, then, that individual independence becomes possible. Hence it involves two things, the light of intelligence and the power of choice. Both of these, in their very nature, refer to an individual centre, or self, from which their activity is made to radiate, and towards which, again, it is found continually to return. All knowledge begins and stands perpetually in the consciousness of self; and every act of the will may be denominated, at the same time, an act of self-apprehension. It belongs to the conception of individual life universally, that it should be in itself a centre of the manifold activities by which it makes itself known. In the sphere of nature, this relation holds in the form only of a blind plastic law, or at least in the form of an equally blind instinct. In the sphere of consciousness, which is above nature, it is no longer blind, but Mere intelligence, however, is not of itself independence. If a planet were endowed with the power of perceiving its own existence, without the least ability to modify it in the way of self-control, it is plain that it would be just as little independent as it is in its present state. Consciousness in absolute subjection to nature, would be, indeed, a species of bondage, that might be said to be even worse than that of nature itself. And so if the intelligence were ruled and actuated, not by nature, but by some other intelligence in the like irresistible way, the result would be the same. No matter what the actuating force might be, if it were even the Divine will itself, which were thus introduced into the conscious life of the indi whelming necessity in its own direction, the subject thus wrought upon from abroad, without the power of self-impulse, could not be regarded as having the least independence. The case calls for something more than mere intelligence. To this must be joined also the power of choice. The supposition, indeed, which has just been made, is in its own nature impossible. Reason and will necessarily involve each other; and the light of intelligence, therefore, can never be sundered in fact, (but only hypothetically,) from the motion of choice. Self-consciousness is itself always self-action. Individual independence, we say, requires the power of choice; that the selfconscious subject shall not be moved simply from abroad, but have the capacity of moving itself, as though it were the original fountain of its own action. If the will be itself bound by a force which is foreign from its own nature, the man in whom it dwells cannot be free. It lies in the very conception of freedom, that the subject of it should have power to choose his own action, and that this power should involve the possibility of his making a different choice from that which he is led to make in fact. He acts from himself, and for himself, and not in obedience merely to an extraneous power, whether in the sphere of nature, or in the sphere of spirit. The action springs truly and fully out of his own conscious purpose and design, and is strictly the product of that separate living nature which he calls himself. This is what Kant makes so much account of, in his philosophy, as the autonomy of the will. The idea is one of vast importance, notwithstanding the great abuse which has been made of it in his school. The will, in its very nature, must be autonomic in order that it may be free; that is, it must be a law to itself, in such sense that its activity shall be purely and strictly its own in opposition to the thought of everything like compulsion exerted upon it from abroad. It is a world within itself, no less magnificent than that with which it is surrounded in the external universe; and it may not be invaded by any form of power, that is not comprehended from the beginning in its own constitution. All such power, proceeding from earth, or hell, or heaven, must be counted heteronomic, and contradictory to its nature. The will can endure no heteronomy. It must be autonomic, subjectively independent, the fountain of its own activity, wherever it is found in its true and proper exercise. This then is the first grand constituent of Moral Freedom. The idea implies universally the presence of an individual will, which, as such, is perfectly unbound from all heteronomic extraneous restraints, and carries in itself the principle of its own action, in the way of law and impulse to itself. There can be no liberty where there is no subjective independence. But such autonomic will is not of itself at once, as some appear to think, the whole conception of freedom. This requires another constituent factor, no less essential than the first; the presence, namely, of an objective universal LAW, by which the individual will is of right bound, and without obedience to which it can never be true to its own nature. Self-consciousness is itself the power of a life that is general and universal, as well as individual. All life we have already seen to be the union of these two forms of existence in fact; though in the sphere of nature, of course, the fact prevails only in an outward and blind way. With the light of intelligence, however, including in itself the force of self-apprehension and self-action, it must itself enter into the life of the subject under the same character. That is, the union of the general and individual must hold in the form of consciousness itself; so that the subject of this, in coming to know himself properly as an individual being, shall have at the same time the apprehension of a life more comprehensive than his own, and, indeed, truly universal, in the bosom of which his own is carried as the necessary condition of its existence. It is the complete sense of this, theoretically and practically felt, that gives us the fact of personality; which is just the consciousness of an individual life, in the form of reason and will, as the universal truth of the world's life. Reason cannot be something merely particular or private. It is universal in its very nature. It is so theoretically, and it is so, also, of course, practically. In entering the sphere of thought and will, then, as distinguished from that of mere nature, man comes into conscious union with a life which is more than his own, and which exists independently altogether of his particular knowledge or choice. He does not create it in any sense, but is simply received into it as a sea of existence already at hand, and altogether objective to himself as a separate single subject; while he knows it to be in truth, at the same time, the only proper form of his individual life itself subjectively considered. If this were not the case, there could be no room, in his case, for the idea either of intelligence or freedom. A purely particular or single intelligence would be as blind as the stork, which knoweth, we are told, her appointed times in the heaven; and a purely particular or single will, in like manner, would be as little free as the wind, which is said to blow where it listeth, or as a wave of the sea driven of the same wind, and tossed hither and thither without object or rule. Reason and will, to be truly subjective, must be apprehended always as truly objective, also, and universal. This necessity lies, as we have said, in the very idea of consciousness itself, and is the foundation of all personal life in the case of men. But the idea now of such universal reason and will, is itself the conception of law, in its deepest and most comprehensive sense. This is nothing more nor less than this boundless objective authority or necessity, in which the individual life of the human subject is required to enter freely that it may be complete. upheld for a single hour. The world, in its moral no less than in its physical constitution, lives, moves and has its being, only in the presence of the law, as a real existence in no sense dependent upon it for its character. Not indeed as though it might be supposed to exist, with its own separate entity, in no connection with the actual world whatever. As the ideal life of nature, it cannot be sundered from the actual manifestation in which this consists; and as the absolute truth and right of the moral universe, it cannot subsist except through the consciousness of the thinking and willing subjects of which this universe is composed. Abit-stracted from all subjective intelligence, its objective reality is reduced to a nullity. It is only in the form of reason and will, which have no being apart from selfconsciousness, that the law can have any true subsistence whatever. It supposes an intelligible and intelligent universe. But still it is no creature of the universe, no mere image abstracted from its actual constitution. In the order of being, though not of time, it is older than the universe. Without reason and will there could be no law, and yet all reason and will stand in it from the very start, and can enter into no living subject whatever except from its presence, as their ulterior objective source and ground. The law, in this character, is of course an idea, not an abstraction. It has in self, accordingly, the two grand attributes of an idea, universality and necessity. Its universality is not simply this, that it represents collectively all individual wills, or objects of will. On the contrary, it excludes every sort of distinction and comparison. No individual will, as such, can enter into the constitution of the law. It is absolute, and one within itself, merely revealing its presence through the single wills into which it enters, without deriving from them at all its being and force. So, again, its necessity is not simply this, that the world cannot be preserved in prosperity and order without it, or that the world itself may have been pleased to agree in establishing its authority as sacred. It is a necessity which is altogether unconditional, and which rests eternally and unchangeably in the nature of the law itself. As thus universal and necessary, the being of the law is infinitely real. It is not simply the thought or conception of what is right, not a name merely or mental abstraction representing a certain order of life which men are required to observe; but it is the very forms of truth and right themselves, the absolutely independent power by which they exist in the world. As in the sphere of nature, the law is in no respect the product of the forces which are comprehended in nature itself, but forms rather the inmost life of its entire constitution, which could not consist at all if it were not held together by this bond; so here in the sphere of free intelligence also, it is by no other power that the order of life, as thus intelligent and free, can be Concretely real in this way, and not simply an abstraction, the law has its seat primarily, as Hooker expresses it, in the bosom of God. Not so, however, as if God might be supposed, in the exercise of any private arbitrary will of his own, to have devised and ordained it as a proper scheme after which to fashion the order of the universe. The universality of the law excludes, as we have already seen, the idea of all merely private or particular will, even though it were conceived to be in this form the will of God himself. God's will. however, is not private or particular, but absolute; subjective indeed, in such sense as is required by the nature of personality, but objective and universal at the same time; these two forms of existence, subjective and objective, being with Him absolutely commensurate and identical. God is not the author of the law, as something standing out of himself and beyond himself; he does not make it, as a man might |