SECOND EPILOGUE
9. CHAPTER IX
(continued)
Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies according to
differences in the point of view from which we regard the event, but
every human action appears to us as a certain combination of freedom
and inevitability. In every action we examine we see a certain measure
of freedom and a certain measure of inevitability. And always the more
freedom we see in any action the less inevitability do we perceive,
and the more inevitability the less freedom.
The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases
according to the point of view from which the action is regarded,
but their relation is always one of inverse proportion.
A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry
mother exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man
trained to discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a
defenseless man- seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject
to the law of necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which
these people were placed, and more free to one who does not know
that the man was himself drowning, that the mother was hungry, that
the soldier was in the ranks, and so on. Similarly a man who committed
a murder twenty years ago and has since lived peaceably and harmlessly
in society seems less guilty and his action more due to the law of
inevitability, to someone who considers his action after twenty
years have elapsed than to one who examined it the day after it was
committed. And in the same way every action of an insane, intoxicated,
or highly excited man appears less free and more inevitable to one who
knows the mental condition of him who committed the action, and
seems more free and less inevitable to one who does not know it. In
all these cases the conception of freedom is increased or diminished
and the conception of compulsion is correspondingly decreased or
increased, according to the point of view from which the action is
regarded. So that the greater the conception of necessity the
smaller the conception of freedom and vice versa.
Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of jurisprudence,
and history itself understand alike this relation between necessity
and freedom.
All cases without exception in which our conception of freedom and
necessity is increased and diminished depend on three considerations:
|