2. What then is this Moral Freedom? This final end to which all human nature is, or ought to be tending? (a) In one sense we are free already. That is, we have an animal freedom, a liberty to do as we like, and of course take the consequences. We are free in the same sense that a horse is free when out at grass on a wide common: his movements are determined by no law that we can discover, or if they are it is simply by the law of seeking the greenest pastures and the sweetest waters. This freedom is the boast of the savage, and the longing of the slave. But none but a savage or a slave could think there was anything really delightful about it: not even a savage or a slave could think there was anything noble about it. We are free to follow our own lusts and passions like the wild animals. We have an instinct within us which prompts us to satisfy our untutored appetites, and with more or less contrivance and skill, according to our knowledge, we satisfy them. This is man in his natural state-and this licence he calls liberty. But from another and a higher point of view it is not liberty at all-it is the veriest bondage,-bondage to every gust of impulse which comes to it from without. And thus by one great moral Teacher it has been fitly compared to a reed shaken with the wind'-the fragile and yielding reed which bows and nods to every lightest breeze no matter from what quarter it comes, because it has no self determining principle of resistance within. And so truly is this instinctive obedience to external motives a true bondage, that a whole school of philosophers, as well as whole religions, looking to man in his natural state and knowing no other state for him, have maintained that he is not really free at all— that there is no such thing as Free Will—and you will find for instance in the early chapters of Buckle's History of Civilization, a most convincing argument that men are really always swayed by the strongest motive, and what seems to be free will is really nothing but different motives acting in different directions and producing an equilibrium until something occurs to give a decided push one way. It is a well-known fact in physics that two forces meeting produce a third force, which is neither one nor the other, but a result of both, which bears a fixed relation to the quantity and direction of the original forces. And so Buckle says it is with what we call human wills: the only difference being that the forces are more complex, and therefore not so easily calculated as in the case of a ball or planet or the bough of a tree. Well, it is not my present purpose to pursue this further, but the wide and deep extent of this opinion of necessity is a standing witness that the animal freedom which we all enjoy, is no freedom in the true sense of the word, but a degrading bondage; and its favorite formula, which reminds one of a pettish child, I shall do as I like,' is really only the clanking of its iron chain. (b) And as a galling chain the better sort of men have always felt it. So far from exulting in this power of doing what they like, they have recognised it as an instinct of their lower, their animal nature which the upward-reaching powers of intellect, conscience, and affection were intended to subdue. As these for I say nothing about Revelation-discover to them a law which frequently runs counter to their animal instinct, they have recognised that the lower must give way to the higher. And then begins a strife-a strife such as we have no reason to suppose is possible in the lower animals -a strife in which the dignity of man as man is most conspicuously displayed, and which has ever been fiercest and most persistent, most penetrating to the very springs and sources of the life, in the best men. You must excuse me if I use, because I can find no better, words from the Bible to depict this strife-written there by the pen of a man from whom they were no utterance of a merely philosophic thought, but the record of his own most vital struggles. "I find then a law," says St. Paul, "that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in 'my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?"* (c) And then from this storm and struggle, this elemental conflict between the forces within and without which shape and mould the holy spirit of man, there is to come from some quarter the power, which allying itself with the higher nature of man and opposing itself to the lower, is to give victory to that higher nature, and through victory at last peace and freedom. This only is true moral freedom, when the animal instincts are so bound and subdued that they can never interrupt the calm course of him who has wilfully put himself in * Epistle to the Romans, vii. 21-24. 6 subjection to law-the law of what he knows to be right. St. Paul's name for this is "the liberty of the glory of the children of God"— but you see that this too is only liberty from a certain point of view -there is no such thing as an absolute liberty. It is the liberty which has come through the blessed law of self-restraint, and which is still subject to that law of its being: and therefore it is always possible to represent it as service, as a hard bondage. And therefore you remember Milton has put into the mouth of his Satan that maxim, which as we hear it seems to have a half noble ring about it: Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven.' It would be so, unless there be really a service which is perfect freedom, a self-chosen bondage to Right which is a better thing than a self asserted liberty to do wrong. When the Prince of Wales was amongst you not long ago I dare say some of you noticed that the Motto which he bore on his crest of ostrich feathers was a strange one. Ich dien. I serve. He inherited that motto from an ancestor of old time who had grasped firmly this great fact that he in his princely rank was yet not the possessor of a lawless will, but was proud to be the servant of a higher and holier law: not even for him did freedom mean liberty to do as he liked, but ability to do as he ought.— "To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite, To forgive wrongs darker than death or night. This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free: This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory."* —Yes, poets have dreamt of a freedom which comes through struggle and endurance, and moralists have set it before them as the goal of their teaching, and now and then a man has seemed actually to realize it, or nearly realize it in this work-a-day world. 3 Now what I want finally to insist upon is this. That word ought' has a disagreeable sound to us, particularly when it is introduced into a sphere where we have not been accustomed to meet it. And it has this because wherever it comes there is that struggle of which I spoke as existing between the lower and higher nature: and the very characteristic of the truth, is that it creates a responsibility, has a tendency to widen and deepen that struggle and make it more *Shelley. Prometheus Unbound. fierce. If we do not know much about right and wrong, it is not difficult to do right: to know more about it is to render it more difficult. Now I say that from this struggle and its consequent responsibility we naturally shrink. Our whole lower nature revolts against it. Laziness and habit and self indulgence and appetite are strong and they will if they can effectually bar the door against the entrance of any disturber. There is an ancient legend which tells that the evil spirits had heard a prophecy of a Holy One who should one day come to destroy their reign, and as they spoke of Him they heard His thunderous voice at the door. 66 Go forth now said one, "if thou art able, and make stand against Him." But another was wiser, and said to his demons "make fast the gates of brass and the bolts of iron and secure me the locks, and watch all of you, standing on tiptoe, for if this man enters, woe betides us." Such is the manner in which the human passions make common cause against the entrance of that truth, which betokens the end of their reign. What then becomes of that boasted impartiality, that dry light of the pure reason which alone is to lead us into the truth? There is no such thing. We are naturally prejudiced against the truth, and that prejudice must be counteracted before it is possible that our moral vision can become clear to discern the knowledge of good and evil. And well may we shrink from it: : "From the invisible realm above us a Form comes, too vast for our eyes' comprehension― majestically slow the heavenly clouded weight descends, and bears an impress with it. The soul awaits in stillness that awful contact and embrace and while with meekest pliableness and unresisting faith and trust she commits herself to it, she fears is too. Safe and unformidable an idol truth may be not so truth living and divine. Ah! who can guess at all beforehand the power of that clasp, its subtlety, its penetration: may it not do anything, do everything, we think; and we shrink from the unknown, Change. is awful; Truth changes us. It is not a mere discovery, and then over and done with a goal reached, a prize won: but a power that reacts and operates upon ourselves. It is a new visitant that we are introduced to: we know it not at first; we get to know it after we have become acquianted with it. It is a new world that we are admitted into: what is in it we see not before we enter, but then we see. It is a new state of being, a higher life, into which a transi tion, a metempsychosis, and death conducts us. This is an awful aspect which [moral and spiritual] truth has, and which mere intellectual truth has not."* And now looking at the fact of this awfulness and formidableness of the truth, what is to prevent us from turning aside from it in cowardice and terror, but the deep rooted idea of duty, which inspires us with a determination to follow it at all costs. You remember that answer of Yama to Naciketas in the Katha Upanishad : "The good, the pleasant, these are separate ends, The one or other all mankind pursue: But those who seek the good alone are blest. Who choose the pleasant, miss man's highest aim: Think not to grasp it by the reasoning mina. Knows soul, to none but soul is soul revealed*." I have shown you that the ultimate end of all enquiry after truth must be the advancement of our moral being.† Knowledge is a glorious thing-never let me be thought to deny that—but it is glorious as a means and not as an end: and the end is moral Freedom. I have shown you that this moral Freedom can never be gained without a struggle which is fierce in proportion to the depth of our insight into truth and from this struggle man naturally shrinks: it means change, and he prefers the familiar: it means effort, and he prefers ease: it starts him on a course of action of which he does not foresee the end, and few have the courage or the faith to embark on the unknown. And from this I drew the conclusion that our natural bias must be against the truth, and therefore that this bias must be redressed by a real willingness to obey the laws of right and wrong before we can start fair in the pursuit of truth: and this willingness is what we call duty. This is what I undertook to prove that duty is the first condition required for the pursuit of truth. If in the course of the * Mozley's Essays, p. 146. + Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom p. 43. Cf. Wordsworth. Character of the Happy Warrior. "Who with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform is diligent to learn But makes his moral being his prime care." |