Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.

Will

Specialty Definition: Will

Top     

Specialty Definition: Free will

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Free will is the philosophical doctrine that our choices are, ultimately, "up to us". Consequently, an unfree action must be somehow "up to" something else. The phrase "up to us" is deliberately vague, and, just like free will itself, admits of a variety of interpretations. We can ask several logically independent questions about free will.

Determinism vs. indeterminism

Determinism holds that each state of affairs is necessitated (determined) by all the states of affairs that came before it. In other words, what happens next is completely fixed by what came before. Indeterminism holds that some states of affairs contain elements that were not necessitated by the previous states of affairs. In other words, what happens next is not completely fixed by what came before. The idea of determinism is sometimes illustrated by the story of Laplace's demon, who knows all the facts about the past and present and all the natural laws that govern our world, and uses this knowledge to see the future, down to every detail.

Many philosophers hold that determinism is at odds with free will. After all, if everything that happens is completely determined by the past, how can our choices be free? Wouldn't our choices just be one more outcome determined by the past? According to determinism, we can't just decide to disobey the immutable laws that govern the universe. So if determinism were true, then we would be trapped by the past and free will would be an illusion. This position is usually called "incompatibilism". "Hard determinists", such as d'Holbach, are those incompatibilists who reject free will. "Libertarians", such as van Inwagen, are those incompatiblists who accept free will and deny determinism (this kind of libertarianism should not be confused with the political position of the same name).

Other philosophers hold that determinism is consistent with free will. These "compatibilists", such as Hobbes, often point to clearcut cases of someone's free will being denied -- rape, murder, theft, and so on. The key to these cases is not that the past is determining the future, but that the aggressor is overriding the victim's desires and preferences about his or her own actions. The aggressor is coercing the victim, which is what nullifies free will. Determinism has nothing to do with it. It doesn't matter if our choices are determined by the past, what matters is that our choices are the results of our own desires and preferences, and are not overridden by some external force. This position is typical of compatibilism.

Moral responsibility

We tend to hold people responsible for their actions. And many believe that one must possess free will in order to be morally responsible. So another important issue is whether we are morally responsible, and in what sense.

Incompatibilists tend to think that determinism is at odds with moral responsibility. After all, how can you hold someone responsible for an action that was bound to happen since the first instant of the universe? Hard determinists say "So much the worse for moral responsibility!" and junk the concept -- Clarence Darrow famously used this argument to defend the murderers Leopold and Loeb -- while libertarians say "So much the worse for determinism!" This issue appears to be the heart of the dispute between hard determinists and compatibilists; hard determinists are forced to accept that we often have "free will" in the compatibilist sense, but they deny that this sense of free will truly matters -- that it can ground moral responsibility. Just because an agent's choices are uncoerced doesn't change the fact that determinism robs the agent of responsibility.

Compatibilists often argue that, on the contrary, determinism is a prerequisite for moral responsibility -- you can't hold someone responsible unless his actions were determined by something (this argument can be traced to Hume). After all, if indeterminism is true, then those events that are not determined are random. How can you blame or praise someone for performing an action that just spontaneously popped into his nervous system? Instead, they argue, you need to show how the action stemmed from the person's desires and preferences -- the person's character -- before you start holding the person morally responsible. Libertarians sometimes reply that undetermined actions aren't random at all, and that they result from a substantive will whose decisions are undetermined. This move is widely considered unsatisfactory, for it just pushes the problem back a step, and further, it involves some very mysterious metaphysics.

The could-have-done-otherwise principle

Many claim that, in order for an choice to be free in any sense that matters, it must be true that the agent could have done otherwise. They take this principle -- van Inwagen calls it the "principle of alternate possibilities" -- to be a necessary condition for freedom. For instance, if a scientist puts a machine in Bob's brain that makes him kill the President, his action was not free, for Bob couldn't have done otherwise. Incompatibilists often appeal to this principle to show that determinism cannot be reconciled with free will. "If a decision is completely determined by the past," they ask, "how could the agent have decided to do something else?" Compatibilists often reply that what's important is not simply that the agent could have done otherwise, but that the agent could have done otherwise if he or she had wanted to. Moreover, some compatibilists, such as Frankfurt or Dennett, argue that there are clear cases where the agent couldn't have done otherwise, but that the agent's choice was still free: what if Bob really wanted to kill the President and the machine in Bob's brain would only kick in if Bob lost his nerve? If Bob went through with it on his own, surely the act would be free. Or so it is claimed. The problem with this idea is that what Bob "wanted" was determined -- to the extent that it is not random -- before Bob was conceived. Once again, it merely passes the buck to another level. The more complicated and contrived the sense of possibility, the more the principle departs from common-sense notions of freedom.

The science of free will

Throughout the history of science, attempts have been made to answer the question of free will using scientific principles. Early scientific thought often pictured the universe as a highly deterministic place, and some assumed that it was simply a matter of gathering sufficient information to be able to predict future events with perfect accuracy. More recently, developments such as quantum mechanics and chaos theory have introduced greater uncertainty and complexity into the issue.

Like physicists, biologists have also frequently addressed the question of free will. One of the greatest and oldest debates of biology is that of "nature versus nurture". How important are genetics and biology in human behavior compared to culture and environment? Genetic studies have identified many specific genetic factors that affect the personality of the individual, from obvious cases such as Down's syndrome to more subtle effects such as a statistical predisposition towards schizophrenia.

It has also become possible to study the living brain and researchers can now watch the decision-making "machinery" involved in what is commonly referred to as free will. A seminal experiment in this field was conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, wherein he asked subjects to choose a random moment to flick their wrist while he watched the associated activity in their brains. Libet found that the brain activity leading up to the subject flicking their wrist began approximately one-third of a second before the subject consciously decided to move, suggesting that the decision was actually first being made on a subconscious level and only afterward being translated into a "conscious decision." A related experiment performed later by Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone involved asking subjects to choose at random which of their hands to move. He found that by stimulating different hemispheres of the brain using magnetic fields it was possible to strongly influence which hand the subject picked. Normally right-handed people would choose to move their right hand 60% of the time, for example, but when the right hemisphere was stimulated they would instead choose their left hand 80% of the time (recall that the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for the left side of the body, and the left hemisphere for the right). Despite the external influence on their decision-making, the subjects continued to report that they believed their choice of hand had been made freely.

Other issues

The theological doctrine of divine foreknowledge is often alleged to be in conflict with human freedom. After all, if God knows exactly what will happen, right down to every choice you make, how can your choices be free? God's already-true or timelessly-true knowledge about your choices seems to constrain your freedom. This problem is related to the Aristotelian problem of the sea-battle: tomorrow there will or will not be a sea-battle. If there will be one, then it was true yesterday that there would be one. Then it would be necessary that the sea battle will occur. If there won't be one, then by similar reasoning, it is necessary that it won't occur. This means that the future, whatever it is, is completely fixed by past truths -- true propositions about the future. And if what will be, will be, why bother trying? Such fatalistic arguments -- arguments that only the actual world is possible -- are usually rife with modal mistakes. A good introduction to the problems of modality is to try to debunk such arguments by isolating their specious entailments.

Some philosophers believe that free will is equivalent to having a soul, and thus that (at least some) animals don't have free will.

See also

• Free will and the problem of evil
• Consciousness
• Gödel, Escher, Bach
• Randomness
• Block time
• Newcomb's paradox
• Elbow Room a book by Daniel Dennett

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Free will."

Top     

Will

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

• Will (law)
• Will (philosophy)

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Will."

Top     

Will (law)

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

In the law, a will or testament is a documentary instrument by which a person regulates the rights of others over his property or family after his death. For the devolution of property not disposed of by will, see inheritance and intestacy. In strictness will is a general term whilst testament applies only to dispositions of personality, but this distinction is seldom observed.

The conception of freedom of disposition by will, familiar as it is in modern England and the United States, both generally considered common law systems, is by no means universal. In fact, complete freedom is the exception rather than the rule. Legal systems which are based upon Roman law, such as those of Scotland, France and Quebec, known as civil law systems allow whole estates to be alienated only where the deceased leaves no widow or near relatives. In France, this restriction has met with condemnation from eminent legal and economical authorities.

(From the 1911 Britannica (copyediting in progress):)

History

The will, if not purely Roman in origin, at least owes to Roman law its complete development, a development which in most European countries was greatly aided at a later period by ecclesiasticss versed in Roman law. In India, the will was unknown before English conquest; in law of Moes and in ancient Athens the will, if it existed at all, was of a very rudimentary character. The same is the case with the Leges barbarorum, where they are unaffected by Roman law. The will is, on the other hand, recognized by Rabbinical and Islamic law.

The early Roman will differed from the modern will in important respects. It was effectual during the lifetime of the person who made it; it was made in public, all knew of the legator's intentions; and it could not be changed. The objective, as in adoption, was to secure the perpetuation of the family. This was done by securing the due vesting of the breed in a person who could be relied upon to keep up the family rites. There is much probability in the conjecture that a will was only allowed to be made when the testator had no known gentile relatives, uless they had waived their rights.

It is certain from the text of Gaius that the earliest forms of will were those made in the comitia calata and those made in procinctu, or on the eve of battle. The former were published before the comitia, as representative of the patrician genies, and were originally a legislative act. These wills were the peculiar privilege of patricians. At a later time the form of plebeian will developed (irs/amentum per aes ci libram), and the law of succession under testament was further modified by the influence of tile practor, especially in the direction of recognition of fideicommissa similar in some respects to testamentary trusts. Codicilli or informal wills, also came into use, and were sufficient for almost every purpose but the appointment of an heir.

In the time of Justinian a will founded partly on the jus civile, partly on the edict of the praetor, partly on imperial constitutions and so called testamentum tripertitum, was generally in use. The main points essential to its validity were that the testator should possess testamentary capacity, and that the will should be signed or acknowledged by the testator in the presence of seven witnesses, or published orally in open court. The witnesses must be idonci, or free from legal disability. For instance, women and slaves were not good witnesses.

The whole property of the testator could not be alienated. The rights of heirs and descendants were protected by enactments which secured to them a legal minimum, the querela inofficiosi testamenhi being the remedy of those passed over. The age at which testamentary capacity began was fourteen in the case of males, twelve in the case of females. Up to 439 A.D. a will must have been in Latin; after that date Greek was allowed.

Certain persons, especially soldiers, were privileged from observing the ordinary forms. The liability of the heir to the debts of the testator varied during different periods. At first it was practically unlimited. The law was then gradually modified in favour of the heir, until in the time of Justinian the heir who duly made an inventory of the property of the deceased was liable only for the assets to which he had succeeded. This limitation of liability is generally termed by the civilians beneficium inventarii.

Something like the English probate is to be found in the rules for breaking the seals of a will in presence of the praetor. Closely connected with the will was the donatio mortis causa, the rules of which have been as a whole adopted in England (see below). An immense space in the Corpus juris is occupied with testamentary law. The whole of part v. of the Digest (books xxviii.-xxxvi.) deals with the subject, and so do a large number of constitutions in the Code and Novels.

The effect of Christianity upon the will was very marked. For instance, the duty of bequeathing to the Church was inculcated as early as Constantine, and heretics and monks were placed under a disability to make a will or take gifts left by will. A will was often deposited in a church. The canon law follows the Roman law with a still greater leaning to the advantage of the Church. No Church property could be bequeathed. Manifest usurers were added to the list of those under disability. For the validity of a will it was generally necessary that it should be made in the presence of a priest and two witnesses, unless where it was made in pias causes. The witnesses, as in Roman law, must be done. Gifts to the Church were not subject to the deductions in favour of the heir and the children necessary in ordinary cases. In England, the Church succeeded in holding in its own hands for centuries jurisdiction in testamentary matters.

This is practically in accordance with the definition of Modestinus in Digest xxviu. I, 1, voluntatis nostrae justa sententia de eo quod quis post mortem suam fieri velit. Ancient Law, chap. vi. dii. ioi.

The Roman law of wills has had considerable effect upon English law. In the words of Sir H. Maine, "The English law of testamentary succession to personalty has become a modified English form of the dispensation under which the inheritances of law. Ronian citizens were administered." At the same time there are some broad and striking differences which should be borne in mind. The following among others may be noticed:

1. A Roman testator could not, unless a soldier, die partly testate, and partly intestate. The will must stand or fall as a whole. This is not the case in England.
2. There is no one in English law to whom the unirersitasfuris of the testator descends as it did to the Roman heres, whose appointment was essential to the validity of a formal will, and who partook of the nature of the English heir, executor, administrator, devisee and legatee.
3. The disabilities of testators differed in the two systems. The disability of a slave or a heretic is peculiar to Roman law, of a youth between fourteen and twenty-one to English law.
4. The whole property may he disposed of in England; but it was not so at Rome, where, except by the wills of soldiers, children could not be disinherited unless for specified acts of misconduct. During the greater part of the period of Roman law the heir must also have had his Falcidian fourth in order to induce him to accept the inheritance.
5. In English law all wills must conform to certain statutory requirements; the Romans recognized from the time of Augustus an informal will called codicilli. The English codicil has little in common with this but the name, It is not an informal will, but an addition to a will, read as a part of it, and needing the same fornialities of execution.
6. The Roman tegatum applied to both movables and immovables; in England a legacy or bequest is a gift of personalty only, a gift of real estate being called a devise.
7. The Roman will spoke from the time of making; the English speaks from the time of death. This difference becomes very important in case of alteration in the position of the testator between the making of the will and his death, As a rule the Roman will could not, the English can, pass after-acquired property.

Liberty of alienation by will is found at an early period in England. To judge from the words of a law of Canute, intestacy appears to have been the exception at that time. How far the liberty extended is uncertain; it is the opinion of some atithorities that complete disposition of land and goods was allowed, of others that limited rights of wife and children were recognized. However this may be, after the Conquest a distinction, the result of feudalism, to use a convenient if inaccurate term, arose between real and personal property. It will be convenient to treat the history of the two kinds of will separately.

It became the law after the Conquest, according to Sir E Coke, that an estate greater than for a term of years could be disposed of by will, tinless in Kent, where the custom of gavelkind Real prevailed, and in some manors and boroughs (especially property, the City of London), where the pre-Conquest law was preserved by special indulgence. The reason why devise of land was not acknowledged by law was, no doubt, partly to discourage deathbed gifts in mortmain, a view supported by Glanvill, partly because the testator could not give the devisee that seisin which was the principal element in a feudal conveyance. By means of the doctrine to uses, however, the devise of land was secured by a circuitous method, generally by conveyance to feoffees to uses in the lifetime of he (cuff or to such uses as he should appoint by his will. Up to comparatively recent times a will of lands still bore traces of its origin in the conveyance to uses inter vivos. On the passing of the statute of Uses lands again became non-devisable, with a saving in the statute for the validity of wills made before May 1 1536. The inconvenience of this state of things soon began to be felt, and was probably aggravated by the large amount of land thrown into the market after the dissolution of the monasteries. As a remedy an act was passed in 1540, and a further explanatory act in 1542-1543.

The effect of these acts was to make lands held in fee simple devisable by will in writing, to the extent of two-thirds where the tenure was by knight service, and the whole where it was in socage. Corporations were incapacitated to receive, and married women, infants, idiots and lunatics to devise. An act of 1660, by abolishing tedure by knight service, made all lands devisable, In the same reign the Statute of Frauds (1677) dealt with the formalities of execution. Up to this time simple notes, even in the handwriting of another person, constituted a sufficient will, if published by the testator as such. The Statute of Frauds renuired, inter alia, that all devises should be in writing, signed by the testator or by some person for him in his presence and by his direction, and should also be subscribed by three or four credible witnesses. The strict interpretation by the courts of the credibility of witnesses led to the passing of an act in 1751-1752, making interested witnesses sufficient for the due execution of the will, but declaring gifts to them void. The will of a man was revoked by marriage and the birth of a child, of a woman by marriage only. A will was also revoked by an alteration in circumstances, and even by a void conveyance inter aims of land devised by the will made subsequently to the tiate of tile will, which was presumed to be an attempt by the grantor to give legal effect to a change of intention. As in Roman law, a will spoke froni the time of the making, so that it could not avail to pass after-acquired property without republication, which was equivalent to making a new will, Copyholds were not devisable before 1815, but were usually surrendered to the,use of the will of the copyhold tenant; an act of 1815 made them devisable simply. Devises of lands have gradually been made liable to the claims of creditors by a series of statutes beginning with the year 1691.

The history of wills of personalty was considerably different, but to some extent followed parallel lines. In both cases partial preceded complete power of disposition. The general opinion of the best authorities is that by the common law Personal of England a man could only dispose of his whole personal property. property if he left no wife or children; if he left either wife or children he could only dispose of one-half, and one-third if he left both wife and children. The shares of wife and children were called their pars rationabilis. This pars rationabilis is expressly recognized in Magna Carta and was sued for by the writ de rationabili parte. At what period the right of disposition of the whole personalty superseded the old law is uncertain. That it did so is certain, and the places where the old rule still existed--the province of York, Wales and the City of London--were regarded as exceptions. The right of bequest in these places was not assimilated to the general law until comparatively recent times by acts passed between 1693 and 1726. A will of personalty could be made by a male at fourteen, by a female at twelve. The formalities in the case of wills of personalty were not as numerous as in the case of wills of land. Up to 1838 a nuncupative or oral will was sufficient, subject, where the gift was of 30 or more, to the restrictions contained in the Statute of Frauds. The witnesses to a written will need not be "credible," and it was specially enacted by an act of 1705 that any one who could give evidence in a court of law was a good witness to a will of personalty. A will entirely in tile testator's handwriting, called a holograph will, was valid without signature. At one time the executor was entitled to the residue in default of a residuary legatee. But the Executors Act 1830 made him in such an event trustee for the next of kin.

Jurisdiction over wills of personalty was till 1858 in the ecclesiastical courts, probate being granted by the diocesan court if the goods of the deceased lay in the same diocese, in the provincial court of Canterbury (the prerogative court) or York (the chancery court) if the deceased had bone notabilia, that is, goods to the value of £5 in two dioceses. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction was of a very ancient origin. It was fully established under Henry II, as it is mentioned by Glanvill. In the city of London wills were enrolled in the Court of Hustings from 1258 to 1688 after having been proved before the ordinary. Contested cases before 1858 were tried in the provincial court with an appeal originally to the Court of Delegates, later to the judicial committee of the privy council, There were also a few special local jurisdictions, courts baron, the university coufts, and others, probably for the most part survivals of the pre-Conquest period, when wills seem to have been published in the county court. The ecclesiastical courts had no jurisdiction over wills of land, and the common law courts were careful to keep the ecclesiastical courts within their limits by means of prohibition. No probate of a will of land was necessary, and title to real estate by will might be made by production of the will as a document of title. The liability of the execrator and legatee for the debts of the testator has been gradually established by legislation. In general it is limited to the amount of the succession. Personal liability of the executor beyond this can by the Statute of Frauds only be established by contract in writing.

Nineteenth Century English Law

Such were the principal stages in the history of the law as it affected wills made before 1838 or proved before 1858. The principal acts now in force are the Wills Act 1837, the amending act of 1852, the Court of Probate Act 1857, the Judicature Acts 1873 and 1875 and the Land Transfer Act 1897. All but theacts of 2837 and 1852 deal mainly with what happens to the will after death, whether under the voluntary or contentious jurisdiction of the Probate Division. Some of the earlier acts are still law, though of little importance since the more modern and comprehensive enactments.

The testamentary jurisdiction of the archdeacon's court is alluded to by Chaucer in the "Friar's Tale," but it was afterwards completely superseded by the bishop's court.

The earliest on the statute roll is an act of Henry III (1236), enabling a widow to bequeath the crops of her lands. Before the Wills Act uniformity in the law had been urgently recommended by the Real Property Commissioners in 1833. It appears from their report that at the time of its appearance there were ten different ways in which a will might be made under different circumstances.

The act of 1837 affected both the making and the interpretation of wills. Excluding the latter for the present, its main provisions were these. All property, real and personal, and of whatever tenure, may be disposed of by will. If customary freeholds or copyholds be devised, the will must be entered on the court rolls. No will made by any person under the age of twenty-one is valid. Every will is to be in writing, signed at the foot or end thereof by the testator or by some person in his presence and by his direction, and such signature is to be made or acknowledged by the testator in the presence of two or more witnesses present at the same time, who are to subscribe the will in the presence of the testator. It is usual for the testator and the witnesses to sign every sheet. Publication is not necessary. A will is not void on account of the incompetency of a witness. Gifts to a witness or the husband or wife of a witness are void. A creditor or executor may attest. A will is revoked (except where made in exercise of a power of appointment of a certain kind) by a later will. or by destruction with the intention of revoking, but not by presumption arising from an alteration in circumstances. Alterations in a will must be executed and attested as a will. A will speaks from the death of the testator, unless a contrary intention appear. An unattested document may be, if properly identified, incorporated in a will, but such a document, if executed subsequently to the will, is inoperative.

Rules of interpretation or construction depend chiefly on decisions of the courts, to a smaller extent on statutory enactment. The law was gradually brought into its present condition through precedents extending back for centuries, especially decisions of the court of chancery, the court par excellence of construction, as distinguished from the court of probate. The court of probate did not deal unless incidentally with the meaning of the will; its jurisdiction was confined to seeing that it was duly executed. The present state of the law of interpretation is highly technical. Some phrases have obtained a conventional meaning which the testaters who used them probably did not dream of. Many of the judicial doctrines which had gradually become established were altered by the Wills Act.

These provisions of the act have since that time themselves become the subject of judicial decision. Among other provisions are these, most of them to take effect only in the absence of a contrary intention. A residuary devise is to include estates coitiprised in lapsed and void devises. A general gift of the testator's lands is to include copyholds and leaseholds. A general gift of real or personal estate is to include real or personal estate over which the testator had a general power of appointment. A devise without words of limitation is to pass the fee simple. The words "die without issue," or similar words, are to mean die without issue living at the time of the death of the person whose issue was named, not as before the act, an indefinite failure of issue, an estate tail being thus created. Trustees under an unlimited devise are to take the fee simple. Devises of estates tail are not to lapse if the devisce, though he predeceased the testator. left issue inheritable under the entail. Gifts to children or other issue leaving issue living at the testator's death are not to lapse. Rules of interpretation founded on principles of equity independent of statute are very numerous, and for them the works devoted to the suoject must be consulted. Some of the more important, stated in as general a form as possible, are these. The intention of the testator is to be observed. This rule is called by Sir E Coke the pole star to guide the judges. There is a presumption against intestacy, against, double portions, against constructing merely precatory words to import a trust, etc. One part of the will is to he expounded by another. Interlineations and alterations are presumed to have been made after, not as in deeds before, execution. Words are supposed to be used in their strict and primary sense. Many words and phrases, however, such as "money," "residue" and "issue" and other words of relationship, have become invested with a technical meaning, but there has been a recent tendency to include illegitimate children in a gift to "children." Evidence is admissible in certain cases to explain latent ambiguity, and parol evidence of the terms of a lost will may be given as in the famous case of Sugden v. Lord St Leonards (1876), 1 Prob. Div. 154.

A will may be void, in whole or in part, for many reasons, which may be divided into two great classes, those arising from external circumstances and those arising from the will itself. The main examples of the former class are revocation by burning, tearing, etc., by a later will, or by marriage of the testator (except as below), incapacity of the testator from insanity, infancy or legal disability (such as being a convict), undue influence and fraud, any one of which is ground for the court to refuse or revoke probate of a will, A will being ambulatory is always revocable, unless in one or two exceptional instances. Undue influence is a ground upon which frequent attempts are made to set aside wills. Its nature is well explained in a judgment of Lord Penzance's: "Pressure of whatever character, whether acting on the fears or the hopes, if so exerted as to overpower the volition without convincing the judgment, is a species of restraint under which no valid will can be made. There is nothing corresponding to the querela inofficiosi testamenti, but unnatural provisions may be evidence of mental defect. The circumstances appearing on the face of the will which make it open to objection may either avoid it altogether or create a partial intestacy, the will remaining good as a whole. Where the will is not duly executed, e.g. if it is a forgery or if it is not signed by the testator or the proper number of witnesses, the will is not admitted to probate at all. Where it contains devises or bequests bad in law, as in general restraint of marriage, or tending to create perpetuities, or contrary to public policy, or to some particular enactment, only the illegal part is void. A remarkable instance is a well-known case in which a condition subsequent in a devise was held void as against public policy, being a gift over of the estate devised in case the first devisee, the eldest son of an earl, did not before his death obtain the lapsed title of duke of Bridgewater.

There are some wills of an exceptional kind which demand special notice. The King. It was resolved in parliament in Richard II's reign (1392) that the king, his heirs and successors, might lawfully make their testaments.i in some later cases parliamentary authority has been given to royal wills, in others not. The executors of Henry IV were confirmed in their office by letters patent of Henry V, those of Henry V by parliament. The largest testamentary powers ever conferred on an English king were given to Henry VIII by an act of 1533-1534, empowering him to limit and appoint the succession to the crown by will, in default of children by Jane Seymour or any future wife. By 39 & 40 Geo. III c. 88 the king and his successor may devise or bequeath their private property. No court, however, has jurisdiction to grant probate of the will of a king.

Guardianship

As a general rule wills deal with property, but even at common law a will simply appointing a guardian was good. The common law was superseded by an act of 1660, under which a father may dispose of the custody of his unmarried infant children by will. The Guardianship of Infants Act 1886 extended such powers in certain cases to the mother.

Married Woman

At British common law a married woman could not (with a few exceptions) make a will without her husband's licence and consent, and this disability was specially preserved by the Wills Acts of Henry VIII and of 1837. A common mode of avoiding this difficulty was for the husband to contract before marriage to permit the wife to make an appointment disposing of personalty to a certain value. Courts of equity from an early time allowed her, under certain restrictions, to make a will of property held for her separate use. In some cases her husband could dispose of her property by will, in others not. The law as it existed previously to 1883 is now practically obsolete, the Married Women's Property Act 1882 enabling a married woman to dispose by will of any real or personal property as her separate property as a feme sole without the intervention of any trustee. The act also enables a married woman who is executrix of a will to act as if she were a feine sole. The Married Women's Property Act 1893 extended the act of 1382 by making it unnecessary for the will of a married woman to be reexecuted or republished after the death of her husband.

Alien

Before 1870 an alien enemy resident in England could only dispose of property by will with the king's licence. The Naturalization Act 1870 enables him to do so as fully as a natural-born British subject. But if he be an alien domiciled abroad he cannet avail himself of Lord Kingsdown's Act (see below). Soldier and Sailor-Wills of soldiers in actual military service, and of sailors, are subject to special legislation, and are excepted from the operation of the Wills Act. The privilege only applies to wills of personal estate. Such wills may usually be made when the testator has attained the age of fourteen, and are not revoked by marriage only but by marriage and the birth of a child. Wills of soldiers on an expedition may be made by unattested writing or by nuncupative testament before two witnesses. Wills of petty officers and seamen in the navy, and of marines, as far as relates to their pay or prize-money, mtist be attested by an officer, and wills made by a seaman in the merchant service must, if made at sea, be attested by the master or mate, if made on land by a superintendent of a mercantile marine office, a minister of religion, justice of the peace, or consular or customs officer. See the Merchant Shipping Act 2894, 5. 177. The wills of prisoners of war are subject to special regulations, and the Admiralty may at its discretion waive the due execution of wills in other instances. The effects of seamen, marines and soldiers, killed or dying in the service, are exempt from duty. Pay, wages, prize money and pensions due to persons employed in the navy may be paid out without probate where the whole assets do not exceed £32. The Board of Trade may at its discretion dispense with probate of the will of a merchant seaman whose effects do not exceed £50 in value. By an act passed in 1868 the existing exemptions are extended to the sum of £100 in the case of civil service pay or annuities, of civil or military allowances chargeable to the army votes, and of army prize money.

Will made under power

A will made under a power of appointment is not revoked by marriage when the real or personal estate thereby appointed would not in default of appointment pass to the testator's executor or administrator or to the next of kin. Before the Wills Act a will exercising a power of appointment had to conform to any special requisitions in the power, but since the act the power is duly exercised if executed and attested like an ordinary will.

Registration

In the register counties memorials of wills affecting lands in those counties must be registered. Member of friendly society, etc. Members of friendly, industrial and provident societies, depositors in savings banks, and servants in certain public offices, may under the pro visions of numerous acts make a nomination to an amount not exceeding £100. Such nomination is practically equivalent to a will, and may be made at the age of sixteen.

At common law there could be no larceny of a will of lands. But now by the Larceny Act of 1861 stealing, injuring or concealing a will, whether of real or personal estate, is punishable with penal servitude for life. Forgery of a will (at one time a capital crime) renders the offender liable to the same penalty. Fraudulent concealment of a will material to the title by a vendor or mortgagor of land or chattels is, by the Law of Property Amendment Act 1859, a misdemeanour punishable by fine or imprisonment or both. It should be noticed that a. contract to make a will containing provisions in favour of a certain person or certain persons is valid if it fulfil the requirements of the law regulating contract. A good example is Synge v. Synge (1894) I K.B. 466.

The principal authorities for the English law are, for the formalities, Sir EV Williams, Executors; Holdsworth and Vickers, Law of Succession; J Williams, Wills and Succession; for the construction, the works of Sir James Wigram and of Messrs Jarman, FV Hawkins and Theobald. Precedents will be found in Hayes and Jarman's Concise forms of Wills, and in ordinary collections of precedents in conveyancing. For comparative law see E Lambert, Le Regime successoral (Paris, 1903).

The act of 1837 applied to Ireland. The main difference between the law of the two countries is that in Ireland a bequest for masses land for the repose of the testator's soul is valid, provided that re a" ' the masses be public, in England such a bequest is void as tending to superstitious uses.

Up to 1868 wills of immovables were not allowed in Scotland. The usual means of obtaining disposition of heritage after death was a trust disposition and settlement by deed depraesenti, under which the truster disponed the property to trustees according to the trusts of the settlement, reserving a life interest. Thus something very similar to a testamentary disposition was secured by means resembling those employed in England before the Wills Act of Henry VIII. The main disadvantage of the trust disposition was that it was liable to be overthrown by the heir, who could reduce ex capite lecti all voluntary deeds made to his prejudice within sixty days of the death of his ancestor. In 1868 the Titles to Land Consolidation Act made it competent to any owner of lands to settle the succession to the same in the event of death by testamentary or mortis causa deeds or writings. In 1871 reduction ex capite lecti was abolished. A will of immovables must be executed with the formalities of a deed and registered to give title. The disability of a woman as a witness was removed by the Titles to Land Consolidation Act. As to wills of movables, there arc several important points in which they differ from corresponding wills in England, the influence of Roman law being more marked. Males may make a will at fourteen, females at twelve. A nuncupative legacy is good to the amount of £100 Scots (£8, 6s. 8d.), and a holograph testament is good without witnesses, but it must be signed by the testator, differing in this from the old English holograph. By the Conveyancing Act 1874 such a will is presumed to have been executed on the date which it bears. Not all movables can be left, as in England. The movable property of the deceased is subject to jus relictae and legitim. See McLaren, Wills and Succession, for the law, and Judicial Styles for styles.

United States

By the constitutions of many states laws giving effect to informal or invalid wills are forbidden. The age of testamentary capacity varies very much. Eighteen is a common one. Full liberty of disposition is not universal. Homesteads generally, and dower estates frequently, are not devisable. In some states only a disposable portion of the property can be left, so that children cannot be disinherited without good cause, and in some children omitted in a will may still take their share. It is frequently provided that a certain amount must be left to the widow. Louisiana followed French law, by which the testator can under no circumstances alienate by will more than half his property if he leave issue or ascendants. In dome states a married woman may not leave more than half her property away from her husband. Some require the husband's consent and subscription to make the will of a married woman valid. Nuncupative and holograph wills are in use. The former are confined to personalty and must generally be reduced to writing within a short time after the words are spoken. In Louisiana the mystic or sealed will still exists. The number of witnesses necessary for the validity of a will of any kind is usually two, sometimes three. Wills of soldiers and sailors are privileged, as in England. There are several decisions of state courts that belief in spiritualism does not of itself constitute testamentary incapacity.

See Jarman, American edition by Randolph and Talcott.

France

The law is mainly contained in ss. 967-1074 of the Code Napoleon. Wills in France may be of three kinds:

1. holograph, which must be wholly written, dated and signed by the testator;
2. made as a public instrument, i.e. received by two notaries before two witnesses or by one notary before four witnesses; this form of will must be dictated by the testator and written by the notary, must be read over to the testator in the presence of the witnesses and must be signed by testator and witnesses;
3. mystic, which are signed by the testator, then closed and sealed and delivered by him to a notary before six witnesses; the notary then draws up an account of the proceedings on the instrument which is signed by the testator, notary and witnesses.

Legatees and their blood relations to the fourth degree may not be witnesses. Nuncupative wills are not recognized. Soldiers' and sailors' wills are subject to special rules as in most other countries. Full liberty of disposition only exists where the testator has no ascendants or descendants, in other cases his quantile disponible is subject to reserve; if the testator has one child he may only dispose of half his estate, if two only one-third, if three or more only one-fourth; if he has no descendants but ascendants in both lines he may dispose of half, if ascendants in one line only he may dispose of three-fourths. The full age of testamentary capacity is twenty-one years, but minors over the age of sixteen may dispose by will of half of the estate of which they could dispose had they been of full age. There is no restriction against married women making wills. A contract to dispose of the succession is invalid, s. 791.

The civil codes of southern Continental Europe are in general accordance with the French law.

Germany

Most of the law will be found in the Bürgsrliches Gesetzbuck, ss. 2064-2273. A holograph will, either single or joint, is allowed. Other wills must be declared before a judge or notary or (outside Germany) a consul. Two witnesses are required, unless the witness be a notary or the registrar of the court, who is sufficient alone. The formalities may be relaxed in certain cases, such as imminent death, a state of siege, a prevailing epidemic, etc. Descendants, ascendants and the husband and wife, are entitled to compulsory portions (pflicht-teilsberechligt). But those prima facie entitled may be deprived of their share for certain specified kinds of misconduct. A contract to make any specified testamentary disposition is inoperative. But a contract of inheritance (Erbvertrag) made inter mvos by direct disposition is valid in certain cases and will operate on the death of the contractor. The modes of revocation are much the same as in England (except marriage). But there is one peculiar to Germany, the inconsistency of a will with an Erbvertrag; in such an event the will is wholly or pro tanto revoked.

International Law

There are three main directions which the opinion of jurists and the practice of courts have taken:

1. The whole property of the testator may be subjected to the law of his domicil. To this effect is the opinion of Savigny and the German practice. Certain modifications have been made by modern law, especially by the Einführungsgesetz of 1896.
2. The property may be subjected to the law of the place where it happens to be at the time of the testator's death.
3. The movable property may be subjected to the law of the domicil. The immovable (including leaseholds) to the law of the place where it is situate, the lex loci rei sitae. England and the United States follow this rule.

Testamentary capacity is generally governed by the law of the testator's domicil at the time of his death, the form of the instrument in most countries either by the law of his domicil or the law of the place where the will was made, at his option. The old rule of English law was to allow the former alternative only. The law was altered for the United Kingdom in 1861 by the Wills Act 1861 (known as Lord Kingsdown's Act), by which a will made out of the United Kingdom by a British subject is, as far as regards personal estate, good if made according to the forms required by the law of the place where it was made, or by the law of the testator's domicil at the time of making it, or by the law of the place of his domicil of origin. Subsequent change of domicil does not avoid such a will. Another act passed on the same day, the Domicile Act 1861, enacted that by convention with any foreign government foreign domicil with regard to wills could not be acquired by a testator without a year's residence and a written declaration of intention to become domiciled. By the same act foreign consuls may by convention have certain authority over the wills and property of subjects of foreign states dying in England.

In the United States some states have adopted the narrow_ policy of enacting by statute the old common law rule, and providing that no will is valid unless made in the form required by the law of the state of the testator's domicil. The capacity of the testator, revocation and construction of a will, are governed by the law of the domicil of the testator at the time of his death-except in cases affected by Lord Kingsdown's Act, as he must be supposed to have used language in consonance with that law, unless indeed he express himself in technical language of another country. A good instance is Groos' Case (1904), Prob. 269, where it was held that the will of a Dutch woman (at the time of her death domiciled in England) duly made in Holland was not revoked by her marriage, that being no ground of revocation by the law of Holland.

The persons who are to take under a will are decided by different rules according as the property is movable or immovable, the former being governed by the law of the domicil, the latter by the Lex loci rei sitae. It was held, however, in 1881 by the court of appeal in England that, under the will of an Englishman domiciled in Holland, leaving personal property to children, children legitimated per subsegitens matrimonium could take, as they were legitimate by the law of Holland, though not by the law of England (re Goodman's Trusts, 17 Ch. D. 266). This principle was carried further in re Grey's Trusts (1892), 3 Ch. 88, where it was held that a legitimated child was entitled to share in a devise of English realty. But it is to be noted that a person born out of lawful wedlock, though legitimated, cannot succeed as heir to real estate in England (Birtwhistle v. Vardill, 2 Cl. and F. 895). A will duly executed abroad is generally required to be clothed with the authority of a court of the country where any property affected by the will is situate.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Will (law)."

Top     

Will (philosophy)

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Will in philosophy refers to the quality that produces conscious and intended actions. It is an important idea in the philosophy of Nietzsche.

• See: Will (law)
• See also: free will

1911 Britannica (copyediting in progress)

The "problem of freedom" provides in reality a common title under which are grouped difficulties and questions of varying and divergent interest and character.

These difficulties arise quite naturally from the obligation, which metaphysicians, theologians, moral philosophers, men of science, and psychologists alike recognize, to give an account, consistent with their theories, of the relation of man's power of deliberate and purposive activity to the rest of the universe.

In the main, no doubt, the problem is a metaphysical problem, and has its origin in the effort to reconcile that belief in man's freedom which is regarded by the unsophisticated moral consciousness as indisputable, with a belief in a universe governed by rational and necessary laws. But the historical origin of the questions at issue is to be sought rather in theology than in metaphysics, while the discovery made from time to time by men of science of the inapplicability of physical laws or modes of operation (which they have been accustomed to regard as of universal range and necessity) to the facts or assumed facts of human activity, is a constant source of fresh discussions of the problem.

Similarly the modern attempt upon the part of psychology to analyse (under whatever limitations and with whatever object of inquiry) all the forms and processes of human consciousness has inevitably led to an examination of the consciousness of human freedom: while the postulate of most modern psychologists that conscious processes are not to be considered as removed from the sphere of those necessary causal sequences with which science deals, produces, if the consciousness of freedom be admitted as a fact of mental history, the old metaphysical difficulty in a new and highly specialized form.

Nevertheless, there is some ground for maintaining, contrary to much modern opinion, that the controversy is fundamentally and in the main a moral controversy. It is true that the precise relation between the activities of human wills and other forms of activity in the natural world is a highly speculative problem and one with which the ordinary man is not immediately concerned. It is true also that the ordinary moral consciousness accepts without hesitation the postulate of freedom, and is unaware of, or imperfectly acquainted with, the speculative difficulties that surround its possibility. Moreover, much work of the highest importance in ethics in modern as well as ancient times has been completed with but scanty, if any, reference to the subject of the freedom of the will, or upon a metaphysical basis compatible with most of the doctrines of both the rival theories.

The determinist equally with the libertarian moral philosopher can give an account of morality possessing internal coherence and a certain degree of verisimilitude. Yet it may be doubted (1) whether the problem would ever have arisen at all except for the necessity of reconciling the theological and metaphysical hypotheses of the omniscience and omnipotence of God with the needs of a moral universe; and (2) whether it would retain its perennial interest if the incursions of modern scientific and psychological inquiry into the domain of human consciousness did not appear to come into conflict from time to time with the presuppositions of morality.

The arguments proceeding from either of the disputants by means of which the controversy is debated may be largely or almost wholly speculative and philosophical. But that which produces the rival arguments is primarily a moral need. And there are not wanting signs of a revival in recent years of the earlier tendency of philosophical speculation to subordinate the necessities of metaphysical, scientific and even psychological inquiries to the prima facie demands of the moral consciousness.

There is no trace of the emergence of the problem of freedom in any intelligible or distinct form in the minds of early Greek physicists or philosophers. Their doctrines were mainly based upon a belief in the government of the universe by some form of physical necessity, and though different opinions might prevail as to the mode of operation of the various forms of physical necessity, the occasional recognition of non-material contributory causes never amounted to a recognition of the independence of human volition or intelligence. Nor can it be seriously maintained that the problem of freedom in the form in which it is presented to the modern mind ever became the subject of debate in the philosophy of Socrates, Plato or Aristotle.

It is true that Socrates brought into prominence the moral importance of rational and intelligent conduct as opposed to action which is the result of unintelligent caprice. Moral conduct was, according to Socrates, the result of knowledge while it is strictly impossible to do wrong knowingly. Vice, therefore, is the result of ignorance and to this extent Socrates is a determinist. But the subsequent speculations of Aristotle upon the extent to which ignorance invalidates responsibility, though they seem to assume man?s immediate consciousness of freedom, do not in reality amount to very much more than an analysis of the conditions ordinarily held sufficient to constitute voluntary or involuntary action.

The further question whether the voluntary acts for which a man is ordinarily held responsible are really the outcome of his freedom of choice, is barely touched upon, and most of the problems which surround the attempt to distinguish human agency from natural and necessary causation and caprice or chance are left unsolved. Aristotle remained content with a successful demonstration of the dependence of "voluntariness" as an attribute of conduct upon knowledge and human personality. And though ultimately the attribution of responsibility for conduct is further limited to actions which are the result of purposive choice (irpoaipeotr), Aristotle appears to waver between a view which regards irpoaipecns as involving an ultimate choice between divergent ends of moral action and one which would make it consist in the choice of means to an end already determined.

A similar absence of discussion of the main problem at issue is noticeable in Plato. It is true that in a famous passage in the tenth book of the Republic (x. 617 if.) he seems to make human souls responsible through their power of choice for the destinies which they meet with during their respective lives. But, as with Socrates, their power of making a right choice is limited by their degree of knowledge or of ignorance, and the vexed question of the relation of this determining intelligence to the human will is left unsolved. With the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies the problem as it shapes itself for the consideration of the modern world begins to appear in clearer outlines. Stoic loyalty to a belief in responsibility based on freedom of choice appeared difficult to reconcile with a belief in an all-pervading Anima Mundi, a world power directing and controlling actions of every kind. And though the Stoic doctrine of determinism did not, when applied to moral problems, advance much beyond the reiteration of arguments derived from the universal validity of the principles of causality, nor the Epicurean counter-assertion of freedom avoid the error of regarding chance as a real cause and universal contingency as an explanation of the universe, it was nevertheless a real step forward to perceive the existence of the problem. Moreover, the argument by means of which Chrysippus endeavoured to prove the compatibility of determinism with ethical responsibility is in some respects an anticipation of modern views. For the distinction between main and contributory causes of conduct (causae adjuvantes and causae principales-the airwv and Ei-wairwv of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy) preserved the possibility of regarding character, the main cause, as the responsible and accountable element in morality. And there is much that is anticipatory of modern libertarian views in the psychological argument by which Carneades attempted at once to avoid the Epicurean identification of will with chance, and to prove the rationality of choice, undetermined by any external or antecedent necessity, as an explanation of human actions. (Cf. Janet and Séailles, History of Problems of Philosophy-Psychology, p. 324.) (unreviewed portion of article)

It was not until the rise of Christianity as an historical religion that the difficulty of reconciling a belief in human freedom with a belief in the Divine government of the world became apparent to its fullest extent. The Christian doctrine ChrI.cti of the Creation at once challenged the pantheistic eLI! y. presuppositions of Hellenic thought and reinforced the belief already existing in will as a real cause. At the same time the dualism involved in the simultaneous acceptance of an optimistic account of the origin and nature of the universe (such as is implied in Christian theology) and a belief in the reality of moral evil witnessed to by the Christian doctrine of Redemption, intensified the difficulties already felt concerning man?s responsibility and God?s omnipotence. Neoplatonic philosophy had been in the main content either to formulate the contradiction or to deny the reality of one of the opposing terms. And traces of Neoplatonic influence, more especially as regards their doctrine of the unreality of the material and sensible world, are to be found everywhere in the Christian philosophers of Alexandria, preventing or impeding their formulation of the problem of freedom in its full scope and urgency. St Augustine was, perhaps, the first thinker to face, though not to solve, the true theological and moral difficulty inherent in Christian thought. Two lines of thought are to be traced in the most implacable hostility and contradiction throughout his system. On the one hand no thinker reiterates or emphasizes more cogently the reality of individual responsibility and of will. He affirms the priority of will to knowledge and the dependence of consciousness upon physical attention. He asserts also the fact that our human power of receiving divine illumination (i.e. a capacity of spiritual insight in no sense dependent upon the creative activity of the intellect) is conditioned by our spontaneous acts of faith. And he finds in the existence of divine foreknowledge no argument for the impotence or determined character of human acts of will. The timeless foreknowledge of the Deity foresees human actions as contingent, not as causally determined. But when Augustine? is concerned to reconcile the reality of individual freedom with humanity?s universal need of redemption and with the absolute voluntariness of Divine Grace, he is constrained to contradict most of those postulates of which in his advocacy of libertarianism he was an. eager champion. He limits the possession of freedom to Adam, the first man, who, by abusing his prerogative, has corrupted the human race. Man as he now is caiinot do otherwise than evil. Inherited incapacity for the choice of good is the punishment for Adam?s misuse of freedom. The possibility of redemption depends upon the bestowal of Divine Grace, which, because it is in no instance deserved, can be awarded or uithdrawn without injustice. And because Adam?s choice necessitates punishment it follows that in some instances Divine Grace can never be bestowed. Hence arises in Augustine?s system the doctrine of Predestination (q.v.). From the theological standpoint every individual is predestined either by his natural birthright to evil or by Divine Grace to good, and the absolute foreknowledge and omnipotence of God excludes even the possibility of any initiative on the part of the individual by means of which he might influence God?s timeless choice.

The medieval treatment of the problem follows in the main Augustinian or Aristotelian traditional lines of thought, though successive thinkers arrive at very diverse conclt*ions. Thomas Aquinas, for example, develops the Platonic argument which proves the dependence of the will s~~* upon the intellect and makes the identification. of morality with knowledge. Freedom exists for Thomas, if it exists at all, only as the power of choosing what is necessarily determined by the intellect to be choiceworthy, the various possibilities of choice being themselves presented by the understanding to the will. And though in a certain sense Divine foreknowledge is compatible upon his view with human freedom, the freedom with which men act is itself the product of Divine determination. Man is predetermined to act freely, and Divine foreknowledge foresees human actions as contingent. Duns Scotus on the other hand is the great champion of indeterminism. Upon his view the intellect must always be subordinate to the will, and to the will belongs the power of complete self-determination. Morality in effect-to such an extreme position is he driven in his opposition to the Thomists-becomes the arbitrary creation of the Divine Will and in no sense depends for its authority upon rational principles or is a form of knowledge.

The modern treatment of the problem from Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza and Leibniz down to Kant is too much inwoven into the metaphysical systems of individual great philosoflobbes phers to afford the possibility of detailed treatment ~scartes. in the present article. Reference should be made either to the individual philosophers themselves or to articles on metaphysics or on ethics. Hobbes is the great exponent of materialistic determinism. Ideals and volitions are upon his view ultimately movements of the brain. Will is identified with appetite or fear, the causes of which are to be found only in the external world. Descartes advocates a kind of freedom which is apparently consistent with forms both of determinism and indeterminism. He explains the possibility of error on the ground that the mind possesses the liberum arbitri urn indifferen~iae and can always refuse to affirm the truth of a conclusion drawn from premises which are not selfevident. And even when the presentations before the mind are so clear that assent to their truth cannot be refused, the possibility of assenting still rests with the will, which can refuse to attend to any presentation, or can refuse assent with the sole motive of proving its freedom. Spinoza is a convinced determinist regarding the will as necessarily determined by ideas.

Extension, i.e. the spatial world, and the world of Sphioza consciousness are alike attributes of the one subre~nitz. stance which can only be called free in the sense of being determined by nothing but itself. Freedom in the moral sphere consists simply in the control of the passions by reason. Leibniz retains this attenuated belief in moral freedom and combines with it a belief in the spontaneity of moral agents in the sense that they possess the power of acting and need no other principle of action save the laws of their own natures. But inasmuch as the agreement between the acts of Leibniz's monads is due to a divine pre-established harmony, and the theoretical contingency which in the abstract, i.e. as Jogically possible, can. be predicated of their acts, is in practice aon-existent, Leibniz is in effect a determinist.

Locke?s treatment of the problem is in. some respects more interesting than the theories of other English philosophers of his school. Freedom, according to Locke, belongs Locke and to the man not to the will. If we will at all we are to that extent free, i.e. our actions express our purposes. If, on the other hand, we press Leibniz's objection, i.e. that such an argument is no answer to the question whether an act of will can be free in the sense that it is not determined by reasons presented by the understanding, Locke replies that the will is in effect determined by the uneasiness of desire, ie. by the desire to avoid pain. Hume?s doctrine follows logically from his theory as to the nature of causality. If our belief in necessary connexion in the physical world is in reality an illusion, it follows that the opposition between freedom and necessity will be illusory also. On the other hand if our belief in the necessity of causal connexion is the result of custom, to custom will be due also the belief in a necessity governing human actions observable everywhere in men?s ordinary opinions and practice. Contrasted with this belief in necessity the supposition we have of freedom is illusory, and, if extended so as to involve a belief that men?s actions do not proceed from character or habitual disposition, immoral.

Kant?s theory of freedom is, perhaps, the most characteristic doctrine of his system of ethics. Distinguishing between two Kant, worlds, the sensuous and the intelligible, the phenomenal and the noumenal, Kant allows no freedom to the natural will determined by the succession of motives, desires and appetites which form the empirical and sensuous self. But in contrast with the phenomenal world go~rern~d by empirical laws Kant sets the noumenal and intelligible world in which by a timeless act of will man is free to accept the moral command of an unconditional imperative for no reason other than its own rational necessity as the deliverance of his highest nature. The difficulties of the Kantian system are mainly to be looked for in his account of the relation between the phenomenal and noumenal world.

In more recent times the controversy has been concerned either with the attempted proof of determinism by the advocates of psychological Hedonism, an attempt which at the present time is generally admitted to have Modern material-

failed; or with the new biological knowledge con- Ism. cerning the influence of heredity and environment in its bearing upon the development of character and the possibility of freedom. The great advance of biological knowledge in recent times though it has in no sense created a new problem (men have always been aware of the importance of racial or hereditary physical qualities in their influence upon human conduct) has certainly rendered the existence of complete individual freedom (in the sense in which it was advocated by older libertarians) in the highest degree unlikely. The ad. vocates of freedom are content in the present day to postulate a relative power of influencing conduct, e.g. a power of controlling inherited temperament or subduing natural passion. Such a relative freedom, indeed, taking into account the admitted inviolability of natural laws, was from the very beginning all that they could claim.

But it was inevitable that the enormous advances made by the physical and other sciences in modern times should bring with them a reasoned attempt to bring the phenomena of consciousness within the sphere controlled by physical laws and natural necessity. There will never perhaps in any period of the world?s history be wanting advocates of materialism, who find in the sensible the only reality. But the materialism of modern times is more subtle than that of Hobbes. And the determinism of modern science no longer consists in a crude? denial of the reality of conscious processes, or an. attempt to explain them as only a sublimated form of matter and its movements; it is content to admit the relative independence of the world of consciousness, while it maintains that laws and hypotheses sufficient to explain material processes may be extended to and will be discovered to be valid of the changing sequences of conscious states of mind. Moreover, much of the apparent cogency of modern scientific determinist arguments has been derived from the unguarded admissions or timorous acquiescence of their opponents. It is not enough merely to repel the incursions of physiological science, armed with hypotheses and theories valid enough in their own sphere, upon the domain of consciousness. If the attack is to be finally repulsed it will be imperatively necessary for the libertarian to maintain that no full explanation of the physical universe can ever gain assent which does not take account of the reality and influence within the material world of human power of initiative and freedom. Of this necessity there is a growing consciousness in recent years, and no more notable exposition of it has been published than is contained in James Ward?s Naturalism and Agnosticism. Nor is there any lack of evidence of a growing dissatisfaction on the part of many physiologists with the complacent assumption that the methods of physical science, and particularly the conception of causal activity common to the sciences which study inorganic nature, can be transferred without further criticism to the examination of life and mind. Meanwhile the scientific onslaught upon the libertarian position has been directed from two chief quarters It has been maintained, on the one hand, that any theory which presupposes a direct correspondence between the molecular movements of the brain, and the states of consciousness which accompany them must make the freedom of the will impossible. On the other hand it is asserted that? quite apart from any particular view as to the relation between mind and body the existence of the freedom of the will is necessarily incompatible with the principle of the conservation of energy and is therefore in direct contradiction to many if not most of the assured conclusions of the physical sciences.

As regards the first of these two main contentions, it must suffice here to point out the main difficulties in which a determinist and especially materialist account of Objections the relation between consciousness and the organic to material.

iso, processes which accompany it appears to be involved.

The arguments of thorough-going materialism can in most cases be met with a direct negative. No kind of evidence can be adduced sufficient to prove that consciousness is a secretion of the brain, an effect or even a consequent of material processes or modes of motion. No direct causal relationship between a molecular movement and a state of consciousness has ever been established. No physiologist has ever claimed the power to prophesy with any approach to accuracy the future mental states of any individual from an examination of his brain. And, though some kind of correspondence between the physical and conscious series of states has been observed and is commonly taken for granted in a number of instances, proof:

that entire correspondence exists is still wanting, and the precise kind of correspondence is left undetermined. Nevertheless, the belief that material processes must be held sufficient to account for material changes in the human organism as in all other regions of the material world, can be held quite independently of any particular theory as to the relation between mind and body, and in many of its forms is equally destructive of a belief in the freedom of the will. It is a belief, too, which is increasingly prevalent in modern science. The theory of psychophysical parallelism involves no doubt in the minds of the majority of its upholders the further assumption of some unity underlying both the physical and psychical series which may one day be discovered to be susceptible of scientific expression and interpretation Certainly without some such assumption the hypothesis of an exact correspondence between the series described as parallel becomes, as Professor Ward has shown, unmeaning. And many scientific thinkers, while professing allegiance to a theory which insists upon the independence of each parallel series, in reality tacitly assume the superior importance if not the controlling force of the physical over the psychical terms. But a mere insistence upon the complete independence of the physical series coupled with the belief that its changes are wholly explicable as modes of motion, i.e. that the study of molecular physics is competent to explain all the phenomena of life and organic movements, is sufficient to eliminate the possibility of spontaneity and free origination from the universe. For if consciousness be looked upon as simply an epiphenomenon, an unaccountable appearance accompanying the succession of material changes, the possibility either of active interference by human volition at any point within the physical series or of any controlling or directing efficacy of consciousness over the whole set of material changes which accompany its activity becomes unthinkable. There are, nevertheless, serious difficulties involved in -the supposition that the changes in the brain with which physiology and the biological sciences deal can be satisfactorily explained by the mechanical and mathematical conceptions common to all these sciences, or, indeed, that any of these organic changes is susceptible in the last resort of explanation derived from purely material premises. The phenomena of life and growth and assimilation have not been satisfactorily explained as mechanical modes of motion, and the fact that identical cerebral movements have not been disco~?e~ed to recur makes scientific and accurate prediction of future cerebral changes an impossibility. But more convincing than most of the philosophical arguments by which the theories of psychophysical parallelism have been assailed is the fact that it runs counter to the plain evidence of the ordinary consciousness. No matter to what extent the unphilosophical thinker may he under the influence of materialistic presuppositions, he always recoils from the conclusion that the facts of his mental life have no influence upon his physical movements. Meaning, design and purpose are to him terms far more explanatory of his movements in the outer world than the mechanical and mathematical equivalents to which his actions will ultimately be reduced if the sciences should, achieve their avowed purpose. To regard himself as a conscious automaton he can never be persuaded. Further, he finds in the series of antecedents and consequents capable of mathematical and spatial determination, which certain men of science present to him as their final account of his physical and psychical history, no real explanation of the facts: he is far more inclined to look for an explanation of the efficacy of causal changes in the categories of will and purpose for which they are a substitution.

Nor, finally, is the last defensive position of scientific determinism-the theory, namely, that the freedom of the will is incompatible with the doctrine of the conservation of energy- to be accepted without question. That doctrine, if it is to possess cogency as a proof of the impossibility of the libertarian position, must assume that the amount of energy sufficient to account for physical and psychical changes is constant and invariable in quantity, an assumption which no scientific investigator is competent to prove. A regulative principle which may possess great value when applied and confined to the comparatively abstract material of the mathematical and quasimathematical sciences is highly dangerous if extended to the investigation of living bodies. " In its present form, and since the development of the mechanical theory of heat, the principle of the conservation of energy certainly seems to apply to the whole range of physico-chemical phenomena. But no one can tell whether the study of physiological phenomena in general, and of nervous phenomena in particular, will not reveal to us, besides the vis viva or kinetic energy of which Leibniz spoke, and the potential energy which was a later and necessary adjunct, some new kind of energy which may differ from the other two by rebelling against calculation? (Bergson, Time and Free Will, Eng. trans. by F. L. Pogson, pp. 151, 152).

It is, however, from the development of the scientific study of psychology more than from any other region of thought that light has been thrown upon the problem of freedom. The determinist presuppositions of psychology (determinist because they involve the application of the causal conceptions of modern science to mental phenomena) have in many instances in no way retarded the utilization of new information concerning mental processes in order to prove the reality of freedom. Bergson is perhaps the most notable instance of a philosopher fully conversant with psychological studies and methods who remains a convinced libertarian. But the contribution made by psychology to the solution. of the problem has taken the form not so much of a direct reinforcement of the arguments of either of the opponent systems, as of a searching criticism of the false assumptions concerning conative processes and the phenomena of choice common alike to determinists and libertarians. It has already been pointed out that the problem as it presented itself to utilitarian philosophers could lead only to a false solution, depending as it did upon a wholly fictitious theory as to the nature of desire. There are still many traces to be found in modern psychology of a similar unreal identification of desire with will. But, nevertheless, the new light thrown upon the unity of the self and the more careful and accurate scrutiny made by recent psychologists of the phenomena of decision have rendered it no longer possible either for determinists to deny the fact of choice (whatever be their theory as to its nature) or for libertarians to regard the self or the will as isolated froni and unaffected by other mental constituents and antecedents, and hence, by an appeal to wholly fictitious entities, to prove the truth of freedom. The self or the will can no longer be looked upon as possessing a kind of imperiurn in imperio, "this way and that dividing the swift mind.? And if freedom of choice be a possibility at all, it must in future be regarded as the prerogative of a man?s whole personality, exhibited continuously throughout the development of his character, displayed to same extent in all conscious conative processes, though especially apparent in crises necessitating deliberate and serious purpose. The mistake of earlier advocates of determinism lay in the supposition that self-conscious moral action could be explained by the use of the same categories and upon the same hypotheses usually considered sufficient to explain the causal sequences observable in the physical world. Conduct was regarded as the result of interaction between character and environment; or it was asserted to be the resultant effect of a struggle between motives in which the strongest prevailed. And the libertarian critic had before him a comparatively easy task when he exhibited the complete interdependence of character and environment, or rather the impossibility of treating either as definite and fixed factors in a process explicable by the use of ordinary scientific categories.

It was not difficult to show that motives have meaning only with reference to a self, and that it is the self which alone has power to erect a desire into a motive, or that the attraction of an object of appetite derives much of its power from the character of the self to which it makes its appeal. What is possibly not so obvious is the extent to which libertarians have themselves been guilty of a similar fallacy. It is comparatively unimportant to the determinist whether the cause to which he attributes conduct be the self, or the will, or character, or the strongest motive, provided that each of these causes be regarded as definitely ascertainable and that its effects in sufficiently known circumstances be calculable. It is possible to treat will as a permanent cause manifesting itself through a series of sequent changes, and obedient to the laws which govern the development of the personality of the single individual. -

And the libertarian, by his arguments showing that appeal must be made to an act of will or of the self in the explanation of the phenomena of choice, does nothing directly ObJections to disprove the truth of such a contention. If how-

to ilbertar- , . . -

janism. ever, it be argued by libertarians that no explanation is possible of the manner in which the self or the will makes its decisions and inclines to this motive or to that, while they still assert the independent existence of the self or will, then they are undoubtedly open to the retort of their opponents that upon such a theory no rational explanation of conduct will be possible. For to regard a particular decision as the effect of the "fiat? of a self or will unmotived and uninfluenced by the idea of a future object of attainment seems to be equivalent to the simple statement that the choice was made or the decision taken. Such a theory can prove nothing either for or against the possibility of freedom.

Moreover, many of the arguments by which the position of rigid libertarians of the older school has been proved untenable idealism have been advanced by moral philosophers, and by thinkers not always inclined to regard psychology with complete sympathy. The doctrine of self-determination, advocated by T. H. Green and idealist writers of his school, has little or nothing in common with the doctrine that the self manifests its freedom in unmotived acts of will. The advocates of self-determination maintain that conduct is never determined, in the sense in which, e.g. movements in the physical world are determined, because man in virtue of his self-consciousness has a power of distinguishing himself from, even while he identifies himself with, a purely natural object of desire; and this must always make it impossible to regard him as an object governed by purely natural forces. Consciousness and especially self-consciousness, can never be explained upon hypotheses adequate only to explain the blind working of the unconscious world. But the insistence of idealist writers upon the relation of the world of nature to conscious intelligence, and especially to a universal consciousness realizing itself throughout the history of individuals, rendered it alike impossible to deny altogether some influence of environment upon character, and to regard the history of individual willing selves as consisting in isolated and unconnected acts of choice. Self-consciousness, if it be conceived as distinguishing itself from its past history or from the natural world, must be conceived also as in some sense related to the empirical self which has a history in time and to the natural organism in which it finds a home. It is the precise mode of this relation which idealist philosophers leave obscure.

Nor is that obscurity to any appreciable degree illuminated by the tendency also noticeable in idealist writers to find the true possession of freedom only in a self emancipated from the influence of irrational passion, and liberated by knowledge from the dominion of chance or the despotism of unknown natural forces. Here also psychology, by its elucidation of the important part which instinctive appetites and animal impulses play in the development of intelligence, still more perhaps by arguments (based largely upon the examination of hypnotic subjects or the, phenomena of fixed ideas) which show the permanent influence of irrational or semi-rational suggestions or habits upon human conduct, has done much to aid and abet idealists in their contentions. It cannot in fact be denied that from one point of view human. freedom is strictly relative, a possession to be won only after painful effort, exhibiting itself in its entirety only in supreme moments when the self is unswayed by habit, and out of full knowledge makes an individual and personal choice. Ideal freedom will be the supreme achievement of a self completely moralized. But the process by which such freedom is eventually to be gained must, if the prize is to be worth the having, itself exhibit the gradual development of a self which, under whatever limitations, possesses the same liberty of choice in its early stages as in its latest. And no theory which limits the exercise of freedom to the choice only of what is strictly good or rational can avoid the imputation of destroying man?s responsibility for the choice of evil.

But the most important point at issue between the opposing theories has remained throughout the history of the controversy, the morality or immorality of their respective solutions Tb thkal of the problem. The advocates of either theory must pr~~?b~em.

in the last resort appeal to the direct evidence of the moral consciousness. It remains to give a brief sketch of the arguments advanced on either side.

It has always been maintained by convinced libertarians that without a belief in the freedom of the will morality becomes unmeaning (see DETERMINISM). Moreover, without a belief in the freedom of the will the conception of moral obligation upon which the existence of morality depends and from which all other moral terms derive their meaning loses its chief significance. What is opposed to obligation, or at least always distinguished from it, is that very domain of necessity within which determinists would bring the will. For even when the felt obligation is absolute, where the will is completely moralized, where it is inconceivable in the case of a good man that the act which he performs should be other than it is, there the obligation which he recognizes is an obligation to choose autonomously, and as such is distinguished from desire or appetite or any of the other alleged determinants of action. If the question be asked? Where is the evidence for this alleged freedom to choose between alternatives?? the appeal is always made to the witness of the moral consciousness itself. No one, it is said, who ever feels remorse for the committal of a wrong act can honestly avoid the admission that at the moment when the act was committed he could have acted otherwise. No one at the moment of action is ever aware that his will is being necessitated. What he is clearly conscious of is the power to choose. Any proof, in the scientific sense, that a man?s acts are due to his power of free initiative would be from the nature of the case impossible. For, inasmuch as scientific proof depends upon the evidence of causality, such efforts after scientific demonstration would end only by bringing either the man?s whole personality or some element in it within the sequence of the chain of natural causes and effects, under the domination of that natural necessity from which as a conscious being he is free. The science of morality must be content in its search for causes to recognize the rationality of choice as a real determining agent in human affairs. And no account of the psychology of human action which regards conduct as due to self-determination, but leaves open the question whether the self is free to choose is, so it is argued, capable of providing an adequate theory of the admitted facts of moral consciousness. . .

We must now consider the arguments by which determinists attack the position of their opponents and the evidence which they adduce to show that the freedom of the will is no necessary postulate for moral action. For thorough-going determinism of the older type the dependence of morality ethics, upon freedom did not of necessity prove an obstacle. Hedonistic psychology denied the libertarian hypothesis, but it denied also the absoluteness and intuitive character of moral obligation, and attached no validity to the ordinary interpretation of terms like "ought? and duty. Modern determinists differ from the earlier advocatcs of their theory in their endeavour to exhibit at least the compatibility of morality with the absence of freedom, if not the enhancement of moral values which, according to some of its advocates, follows upon. the acceptance of the deterministic account of conduct.

If a coherent theory capable of giving an explanation of the ordinary facts of morality and not involving too violent a breacH

Pu I h with the meaning of moral terms in their accepted usage were all that need be required of determinists in order to men, reconcile the defenders of the moral consciousness to the loss of their belief in the will?s freedom, it would follow without question that the determinists have proved their case. Neither the deterrent nor the reformatory theories of punishment (q.v.) necessarily depend upon or carry with them a belief in the freedom of the will. On the contrary, a belief that conduct necessarily results upon the presence of certain motives, and that upon the application of certain incentives, whether of pain or pleasure, upon the presence of certain stimuli whether in the shape of rewards or punishments, actions of a certain character will necessarily ensue, would seem to vindicate the rationality of ordinary penal legislation, if its aim be deterrent or reformatory, to a far greater extent than is possible upon the libertarian hypothesis. Flumanitarian moralists, who hesitate to believe in the retributive theory of punishment because, as they think, its aim is not the criminal?s future well-being but merely the vindication through pain of an outrage upon the moral law which the criminal need never have committed, might welcome a theory which urges that the sole aim of punishment should be the exercise of an influence determining the criminal?s future conduct for his own or the social good.

Moreover, the belief that the justice of punishment depends upon the responsibility of the criminal for his past offences and the admission of the moral consciousness that his previous wrong-doing was freely chosen carries with it, so it is argued, consequences which the libertarian moralist might be willing to accept with reluctance. For whatever may have been the character of the individual in the past, it is possible upon the libertarian view that by the exercise of his freedom he has brought about in himself a complete change of character: he may be now the exact opposite in character of what he was then. Upon what grounds, therefore, shall we discriminate between the justice of punishing him for what he was at a previous period in his life and the injustice of forgiving him because of what he is in the present? While if the deterrent and reformatory theories alone provide a rational end for punishment to aim at then the libertarian hypothesis pushed to its extreme conclusion must make all punishments equally useless. For no punishments can prevent the individual from becoming a person of whatsoever character he choo~es or from committing acts of whatsoever moral quality he determines to prefer. A similar line of argument would lead to the conclu~ion that the conception of the state as an educating, controlling and civilizing agency involves the belief that individual citizens can be influenced and directed by motives which have their origin in external suggestion, i.e. that the determinist theory alone provides a rational basis for state activity of whatever kind.

It might, however, be thought that whatever be the compatibility of theories of punishment or of the activity of the state as a Remorse moralizing agency with determinism, to reconcile the denial of freedom with a belief in the reality of remorse or penitence will be plainly impossible. Nevertheless there is no tendency on the part of modern determinists to evade the difficulty. They argue with considerable cogency that determinism is very far from affording any ground for believing in the impotence of will. The belief that our actions have been determined in the past carries with It nO argument that they will be of a like character in the future. Though in the future as in the past they must be equally determined, yet the forces that will determine their character in the future may be as yet unanalysed and unapparent. No man can exhaust by introspective analysis the hidden elements in his personality. The existence of feelings of remorse and penitence testify to the presence in the individual of motives to good conduct which, if acted upon and allowed full scope and development, may produce a complete change of character. Determinism is not necessarily the logic of despair. Moreover, in a certain sense the very feelings of remorse and penitence which are the chief weapons in the libertarians? armoury testify to the truth of the determinists? contention. For they are the natural and logical consequence of the acts which the penitent deplores. Such feelings follow the committal of acts of a certain character in a consciousness sufficiently moralized as inevitably as pain in the natural world follows upon the violation of one of nature?s laws. And they would lose a great part of their significance if they did not testify to the continued existence in a man?s personality of motives and tendencies likely to influence his conduct in the future as they have already influenced it in the past. Nor is it possible to give any rational explanation of the idea of responsibility itself upon indeterminist assumptions. For to hold a person to be a responsible agent is to believe that he possesses a certain fixity and stability of character. Freedom in the sense of complete liberty of choice would seem to lead to the conclusion that free agents are irresponsible, unaccountable. The truth seems to be that throughout the history of the controversy the chief arguments for either side have been provided by the extreme and exaggerated statements to which their opponents have been driven in the presentation of their case. So long as libertarians contend that what alone possesses moral value is unmotived choice, acts of will of which no explanation can he given save the arbitrary hat of individual selves at the moment of decision, it is not difficult for determinists to exhibit the absurdities to which their arguments lead. It can easily be shown that men do as a matter of fact attach moral adjectives to environment, temperamental tendencies, natural endowments, instinctive desires, in a word to all or most of those forces moulding character, from which, according to libertarians, the individual?s freedom of choice should be clearly distinguished and separated, and to which it can be and is frequently opposed. While it is not easy to avoid the suspicion that a choice of which nothing can be predicated, which is guided by no motive, influenced by no desire, which is due neither to the natural display of character nor to the influence of environment, is either merely fortuitous or the product of a philosophical theory.

But, as has been already suggested, the libertarian argument by no means necessarily leads to such extreme conclusions. The libertarian is not pledged to the belief that acts which alone exhibit real freedom are isolated acts which depend upon a complete change of character, a change which is in no sense continuous with, and is in no kind of relation to, the series of successive changes ~hich make up an individual?s mental and moral history. It is true that a consistent advocate of indeterniinism must deny that the will is determined by motives, and must admit that no reason can finally be given for the individual?s choice beyond the act of choice itself. For to give a reason for choosing (where "reason " is not merely equivalent to the determinists? " cause " or " necessary antecedent ") would simply be to find the explanation of the individual?s choice in,some previous decision. Moral conduct is conduct which follows upon the choice of ends, and to give a reason for the choice of an end in any particular ?instance is either to explain the nature of the end chosen and thus to describe the choice (a process which can in no sense show that the act of choice was itself necessitated), or it is to find the ground of the particular decision in its felation to an end already chosen. But whatever be the nature of the end chosen the libertarian is not concerned to deny that it must possess a fixed determinate character. If duty be chosen as opposed to pleasure the opposition between duty and pleasure is a necessary one. The recognition of such a necessary opposition is involved in the determinate act of choice. But the choice itself is neither necessary nor determined. The belief that libertarianism denies the binding force of habit or the gradual development of unchecked tendencies in character depends upon a similar misconception. The continuity of a man?s life and purposes would be equally apparent whether he habitually performed the same acts and nsade the same decisions in virtue of his freedom of choice or as the product of necessary forces moulding his character in accordance with fixed laws. Just as the phenomena of sudden conversion, complete revolutions of character occurring to outward appearance in a momentary space of time, are no valid argument against determinism-they may be due to the sudden emergence of elements in life and character long concealed-so what looks like the orderly and necessary development of a character growing and exhibiting its activity in accordance with fixed laws may in reality be due to innumerable secret struggles and momentous decisions, acts of choice of which only the results are outwardly apparent. The ends which at any moment the individual is free to choose or reject possess a determinate character: their existence or non-existence as possibilities is also to a very large extent determined for him. No man can choose to become whatsoever he will, for the ends which he can accomplish are restricted in number as well as definite in quality. But the real strength of the libertarian position is to be found in the fact that consciousness is capable of distinguishing ends at all. Whenever, fur example, there is an admission on the part of any individual that in any previous act he made the attainment of pleasure his end rather than the performance of duty, there is also a tacit admission that he mighthave acted otherwise. And the existence of penitence and remorse is not merely a sign of the emergence in consciousness of elements in character nobler than and opposed to those tendencies which once held sway. They are feelings which are incapable of coming into being at all save when coupled with the judgment, " I ought to have acted otherwise because I possessed the power. " The same argument holds good concerning otir feelings with regard to the justice or injustice of ptinishing a criminal if we believe that his will was determined. It may be politic or expedient to inflict pain upon a criminal in order either to effect an alteration in his character or to deter him or others from futtire performance of acts of a certain character. But even with regard to the expediency of such punishments we may have doubts. For the very argument from the undeveloped possibilities of each man?s character by which the determinist proves the compatibility of his theory with the phenomenon of sudden conversion and the like is sufficient also to prove that the state can never lie sure that the punishments which it inflicts upon the individual will have the effect upon his character and conduct which it desires. It may be replied that experience makes it reasonably certain that the infliction of Certain penalties will produce acts of a certain character and that the influence of certain incentives upon conduct may be established as reasonably probable by induction. But when the data are admittedly so uncertain is a valid inductive argument of such a character possible? And even if it were what would be its bearing upon the justice or injustice of inflicting punishments at all? The unsophisticated moral consciousness will still consider it unjust to punish a man for deeds of which he could not avoid the performance, and regard the alleged desire to produce in his future life consequences favourable to himself or society as beside the mark and irrelevant to the question at issue.

At the moment of action the individual invariably regards himself as free to choose between alternatives. This immediate consciousness of freedom persists upon another

fre:.wil occasion even though subsequent reflection upon poss~aon. conduct should lead the individual to regard himself as determined at the very moment when he was aware of himself as free. It is this immediate consciousness of the power of choosing between alternatives which the determinist finds so difficult to explain. He may regard it as an illusion, and attempt to prove the incompatibility of our consciousness of freedom w-ith the facts of existence and the nature of the world. But, in ordinary cases of illusion, once let the reason for the illusion be discovered, and there is no longer the possibility of our being longer deceived. The phenomena which deceived us may continue to persist, but they no longer persist as illusory:

the appearance which deceived us is seen in its true nature, even though it should still retain those characteristic marks or signs of reality which hitherto we regarded as significant of a nature which we now no longer believe it to possess. But can it be maintained that the same truth holds good of our consciousness of freedom? Is it possible to hold that determinist arguments are of so convincing a character as to enable us to perceive at the moment of action the untrustworthy? nature of our consciousness that we are free to choose between alternatives and to grasp beneath the appearance the underlying necessity which rules our wills? Our actual consciousness of freedom is not seriously disputed. And though reflection upon conduct may lead us to suppose that our past acts were determined, that desire of pleasure or the wish to avoid pain controlled our wills, the unphilosophical observer interprets, in offenders against morality, such arguments as a mere excuse. Moreover, remorse and penitence are witnesses in the wrongdoer to the truth of the interpretation. On the other hand we have no such immediate consciousness of the necessity which is said to control our wills. We sharply distinguish that freedom which is the prerogative of human action from the necessary causation discoverable in nature. Withifi the domain of consciousness introspective analysis is unable to discover those chains of necessary sequences which it is the province of science to investigate in the physical world. And until the determinist can successfully explain to us how in a world obeying throughout its history necessary laws and limited in its nature to the exhibition of causal sequences the consciousness of freedom could ever have arisen, we may be content to trust the immediate affirmation of our moral selves.

For modern discussions of the problem consult Lotze, Microcosmus, i. 256 seq., English trans. Martineau; Study of Religion, vol. ii. hk. iii. chap. 2; Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism; Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, vol. ii. bk. iii.; Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, bk. iv. chap. 4; McTaggart, Some Dogmas of Religion, V.; Shadworth Hodg?son, The Philosophy of Experience, iv. 1 i8 seq.; Galloway, Studies in the Philosophy of Religi on; Bergson, Essai sue les données immédiates de Ia conscience; James, The Will to Believe; Fonsegrive, Essai sur Ic libre arbiter; Renouviei-, Les Dilemmes de Ia mita physique pure; Boutroux, La contingence des lois de Ia natssre; Noel, La Conscience du libre arbiter; Boyce Gibson, Essay in Personal Idealism on "The I?roblem of Freedom.

(H. H. W.)

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Will (philosophy)."

Top     

Will County, Illinois

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Will County is a county located in the northern part of the U.S. State of Illinois. This county is part of Chicagoland. As of 2000, the population is 502,266. It was named after Dr. Conrad Will, a businessman and politician who used slaves in his southern Illinois salt production. A law allowed slaves to be leased from other states and used in the free state of Illinois only for salt production.

The county seat of Will County is Joliet. The towns in the northern part of the county form the southern suburbs of Chicago while the southern part of the county contains small towns and farmland.

The Illinois and Michigan Canal runs through Will County.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 2,200 km² (849 mi²). 2,168 km² (837 mi²) of it is land and 32 km² (12 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 1.47% water.

Demographics

As of the census² of 2000, there are 502,266 people, 167,542 households, and 131,017 families residing in the county. The population density is 232/km² (600/mi²). There are 175,524 housing units at an average density of 81/km² (210/mi²). The racial makeup of the county is 81.83% White, 10.45% Black or African American, 0.21% Native American, 2.21% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 3.63% from other races, and 1.63% from two or more races. 8.71% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There are 167,542 households out of which 42.70% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 64.80% are married couples living together, 9.60% have a female householder with no husband present, and 21.80% are non-families. 17.80% of all households are made up of individuals and 6.00% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.94 and the average family size is 3.36.

In the county the population is spread out with 30.00% under the age of 18, 8.10% from 18 to 24, 32.90% from 25 to 44, 20.60% from 45 to 64, and 8.30% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 33 years. For every 100 females there are 99.80 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 97.40 males.

The median income for a household in the county is $62,238, and the median income for a family is $69,608. Males have a median income of $50,152 versus $31,345 for females. The per capita income for the county is $24,613. 4.90% of the population and 3.40% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total people living in poverty, 5.60% are under the age of 18 and 5.50% are 65 or older.

Cities and towns

• Beecher
• Braidwood
• Crest Hill
• Crete
• Crystal Lawns
• Elwood
• Fairmont
• Frankfort Square
• Goodings Grove
• Ingalls Park
• Joliet
• Lakewood Shores
• Lockport
• Manhattan
• Mokena
• Monee
• New Lenox
• Peotone
• Plainfield
• Preston Heights
• Rockdale
• Romeoville
• Shorewood
• Symerton
• Willowbrook
• Wilmington

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Will County, Illinois."

Top     

Abbreviations & Acronyms: Will

Top     

Top     

Synonyms within Context: Will