CHAPTER III

ON LIBERTY, FATE, AND DIVINATION

The discussion on Liberty, Fate, and Divination forms a metaphysic of Ethic in so far as Gassendi recognises the necessity of supplying an argument for the possibility of morality. Ethically, freedom must be taken to mean responsibility on which depend praise and blame. The common phrase refers freedom to the will; but the will follows the judgment, and it is therefore more accurate to refer freedom to the reason. The real crisis of choice as a psychological act comes when we have the alternatives before us, and then it is upon the attention that the strain falls: we feel that strain and recognise that the effort thus made seals the action as ours.

We must admit then a ratio libera in the sense of a power to choose under given circumstances one out of the many possibilities. The further question as to whether we should have preferred other circumstances and other alternatives is postponed. The essence of liberty is indifference: some have said complete determination is the highest freedom; but this Gassendi calls spontaneity or actio e natura, such as is exemplified in cases of gravitation. There is however a correct use of the term referring not to natura ipsa but natura informata, the ‘second nature.’ If the will for the good is such that evil is not possible we may say voluntas sponte agit. As freedom has been assigned to ratio rather than voluntas the use of voluntas here should be noticed. The spontaneity of will is a formed habit which has reference only to some limited sphere: it leaves the reason unfettered, and the whole man is not completely determined. If we extend spontaneity so as to make all action so completely determined that only one course is possible, we get the concept of the Beatus Homo, who, like Aristotle’s perfect man, is not on the moral scale at all. Freedom to be intelligible at all must be confined to the region of those that struggle and can err.

Gassendi uses ‘indifference’ in two senses. When we used it above, it meant freedom from prior determination or from a bias. We may take the example of the balance: the scales must be equal in weight themselves if they are to act truly: they must be ‘indifferent’ before receiving any weights. They may become ‘indifferent’ again, namely when equally weighted. So the will may be indifferent when the reason has equal arguments on both sides. Here then the will is indifferent not _to_ but _with_ the arguments, and the indifference belongs properly to the reason. Apparently will is to be regarded as suffused by intellect, not intellect by will; and as we are told that Practical Reason and Appetite are as inseparable as body and shadow, we seem committed to an intellectualism which entirely overlooks the irrational elements in human conduct. Here as everywhere we find the concept of the man who deliberately chooses evil has not yet made a place for itself: consequently an ethical theory never gets a broader view than that which an analysis of the typical good man can give. In accordance with this we get the feeble compromises common to all philosophy of this type: evil is chosen only sub specie boni: the will is moved by the veri species which may be germana or fucata. It is interesting to note that Gassendi seems to throw the blame for wrong judgments not on the mind but on the species. Human experience goes astray, but there is a lumen supernaturale, and knowledge of absolute good is absolute knowledge, which falls outside our sphere.

Having thus defined the nature and sphere of liberty and so dismissed some errors which were really due to illegitimate use of the term, we may revert to an ulterior question raised above. I may be free to choose whether I shall stay on the burning ship or be thrown overboard, but what if I say I did not choose the situation, and therefore my freedom is a mockery? That question raises the general problem as to whether all things are not determined from the beginning of creation, my circumstances and my choice among them: whether, in short, physical causation has not already swallowed up liberty. This universal causation is called Fate or Fortune, and these terms must now be discussed.

The question whether liberty is not precluded by causation takes two forms according as the causation is purely physical or regarded as divine: according, that is, as we make it a question of Fate or predestination. The former is the tenet of the atomic school, as we have already seen, and Gassendi’s reply is identical in spirit with that which we have already had from Lucretius: he relies on the immediate testimony of the moment of conscious choice:[110] whether this is a consciousness of freedom or only failure to detect determination we are not told, but probably Gassendi meant more by it than Lucretius did. We have seen already that Gassendi gives us a clear and accurate account of the act of choice so far as the psychology is concerned; and his idea of the difference between the freedom of the will and the freedom of the reason justifies us in saying that he realised the fact that our mental processes do not unwind themselves before the reason but are definitely presented to and sanctioned or inhibited by the reason. There is no trace of the ‘declination’ theory of Gassendi’s predecessors, which seems to indicate that Gassendi abandons entirely the attempt to make freedom consist in irregularity of action, which is all that the bare assumption of declination could give us.[111] The close union between thought and movement which Gassendi assumes throughout saves him the trouble of connecting the freedom of the will with freedom of action: they are assumed to be the same; but the difficulty of resolves which never result in action would have been shelved by Gassendi by referring them to the reason and not the will.

The second aspect of the question is due to theological influences. The problem is simple, but it may be doubted whether it seemed so simple in those days as it does now to more rationalistic minds. If, they said, God foresees action, how can it be free? In order to understand the problem we must connect it with the older form of the Peripatetics. For the Peripatetic had already asked whether the truth of the disjunctive judgment did not prove that freedom was impossible. If it is true that to-morrow it either rains or it does not, and the one excludes the other, it follows that the weather for to-morrow is fore-ordained, determined or necessary, and freedom is illusion. To this the answer was easy: thought does not determine existence and the necessity of the disjunctive judgment is not a determination of ‘reality,’ as then conceived.[112] But if we suppose the mind that judges to be the mind of the Almighty, the question begins to look serious. To say that God can consider two alternatives without the slightest idea which will be realised is pure trifling: when the Thought in question is creative, it seems as though the thought of the future must be the creation of the future, which therefore would only await development in time. To this Gassendi’s answer is that as God foresees the choice so He also foresees the freedom, a rather subtle turn of dialectic which certainly seems calculated to throw the ordinary opponent. It is to be assumed that God foresees that there will be a necessity for choice, and also that choice will be in accordance with the man’s nature: God’s omniscience therefore enables him to foresee what the result will be, but that result is left entirely dependent on the nature of the individual as a free agent. This sort of argument is none too profitable, and there seems no need to pursue it further. It might however be noticed that the argument seems to assume that there is a distinction between the thought of God as knowing and as creative, possibly due to the distinction in the case of man between reason and will; and also that it puts indirectly but all the more effectively the most complete bar to Pantheism that can be imagined in thus severing the will of man from the will of God.