《War And Peace》 Epilogue2 CHAPTER IX
by Leo Tolstoy
THE QUESTION of free will and necessity holds a position in history different
from its place in other branches of knowledge, because in history, the question
relates, not to the essential nature of the will of man, but to the
representation of the manifestations of that will in the past and under certain
conditions.
History, in regard to the solution of this question, stands to the other
sciences in the position of an experimental science to speculative
sciences.
The subject of history is not the will of man, but our representation of its
action.
And so the insoluble mystery of the union of the two antinomies of freedom
and necessity does not exist for history as it does for theology, ethics, and
philosophy. History deals with the representation of the life of man, in which
the union of those two antinomies is accomplished.
In actual life every historical event, every human action, is quite clearly
and definitely understood, without a sense of the slightest contradiction in it,
although every event is conceived of partly as free, and partly as
necessary.
To solve the problem of combining freedom and necessity and the question what
constitutes the essence of those two conceptions, the philosophy of history can
and ought to go to work in a direction opposite to that taken by the other
sciences. Instead of first defining the ideas of freedom and necessity in
themselves, and then ranging the phenomena of life under those definitions,
history must form the definition of the ideas of free will and necessity from
the immense multitude of phenomena in her domain that are always dependent on
those two elements.
Whatever presentation of the activity of one man or of several persons we
examine, we always regard it as the product partly of that man or men's free
will, partly of the laws of necessity.
Whether we are discussing the migrations of peoples and the inroads of
barbarians, or the government of Napoleon III., or the action of some man an
hour ago in selecting one direction for his walk out of several, we see nothing
contradictory in it. The proportion of freedom and necessity guiding the actions
of those men is clearly defined for us.
Very often our conception of a greater or less degree of freedom differs
according to the different points of view from which we regard the
phenomenon.
But every human action is always alike conceived by us as a certain
combination of free will and necessity.
In every action we investigate, we see a certain proportion of freedom and a
certain proportion of necessity. And whatever action we investigate, the more
necessity we see, the less freedom, and the more freedom, the less
necessity.
The proportion of freedom to necessity is decreased or increased, according
to the point of view from which the act is regarded; but there always remains an
inverse ratio between them.
A drowning man clutching at another and drowning him, or a hungry mother
starved by suckling her baby and stealing food, or a man trained to discipline
who at the word of command kills a defenceless man, all seem less guilty—that
is, less free and more subject to the law of necessity to one who knows the
circumstances in which they are placed, and more free to one who did not know
that the man was himself drowning, that the mother was starving, that the
soldier was on duty, and so on. In the same way a man who has twenty years ago
committed a murder and afterwards has gone on living calmly and innocently in
society seems less guilty, and his acts seem more subject to the law of
necessity, to one who looks at his act after the lapse of twenty years than to
one looking at the same act the day after it was perpetrated. And just in the
same way the act of a madman, a drunkard, or a man labouring under violent
excitement seems less free and more inevitable to one who knows the mental
condition of the man who performed the action, and more free and less inevitable
to one who does not know it. In all such cases the conception of freedom is
increased or diminished, and that of necessity correspondingly diminished or
increased, according to the point of view from which the action is regarded. So
that the more necessity is seen in it the less freedom. And vice versa.
Religion, the common-sense of humanity, the science of law, and history
itself understand this relation between necessity and free will.
All cases, without exception, in which our conception of free will and
necessity varies depend on three considerations:
1. The relation of the man committing the act to the external world.
2. His relation to time.
3. His relation to the causes leading to the act.
In the first case the variation depends on the degree to which we see the
man's relation to the external world, on the more or less clear idea we form of
the definite position occupied by the man in relation to everything co-existing
with him. It is this class of considerations that makes it obvious to us that
the drowning man is less free and more subject to necessity than a man standing
on dry ground; and that makes the actions of a man living in close connection
with other people in a thickly populated district, bound by ties of family,
official duties, or business undertaking, seem undoubtedly less free than those
of a man living in solitude and seclusion.
If we examine a man alone, apart from his relations to everything around him,
every action of his seems free to us. But if we see any relation of his to
anything surrounding, if we perceive any connection between him and anything
else, a man speaking to him, a book read by him, the work he is employed in,
even the air he breathes, or the light that falls on the objects around him, we
perceive that every one of those circumstances has its influence on him, and
controls at least one side of his activity. And the more we perceive of those
influences, the smaller the idea we form of his freedom, and the greater our
conception of the necessity to which he is subject.
2. The second cause of variation is due to the degree of distinctness with
which the man's position in time is perceived, the clearness of the notion
formed by us of the place the man's action fills in time. It is owing to this
class of considerations that the fall of the first man, leading to the origin of
the human race, seems to us obviously less free than the marriage of any one of
our contemporaries. It is owing to this class of considerations that the life
and acts of men who lived years ago cannot seem to me as free as the life of my
contemporaries, the consequences of whose acts are still unknown to me.
The variation in our conception of free will in this connection depends on
the interval of time that has elapsed between the action and our criticism of
it.
If I examine an act I have committed a moment ago in approximately the same
circumstances as I am placed in now, my act appears to me indubitably free. But
if I examine an act I have committed a month ago, then being placed in other
circumstances, I cannot help recognising that had not that act been committed,
much that is good and agreeable, and even inevitable, resulting from that act,
could not have taken place. If I reflect on a still more remote action,
performed ten years or more ago, the consequences of my act are even plainer to
me, and it will be difficult for me to conceive what would have happened if that
action had not taken place. The further back I go in my reminiscences, or what
is the same thing, the further forward in my criticism of them, the more
doubtful becomes my view of the freedom of my action.
We find precisely the same ratio of variation in our views of the element of
free will in the general affairs of men in history. A contemporary event we
conceive of as undoubtedly the doing of all the men we know of concerned in it.
But with a more remote event, we see its inevitable consequences, which prevent
our conceiving of anything else as possible. And the further back we go in the
examination of events, the less arbitrary they seem to us.
The Austro-Prussian war appears to us to be undoubtedly the result of the
crafty acts of Bismarck and so on.
The Napoleonic wars, though more doubtful, appear to us the effect of the
free will of the leading heroes of those wars. But in the Crusades we see an
event, filling its definite place in history, without which the modern history
of Europe is inconceivable, although to the chroniclers of the Crusades, those
events appeared simply due to the will of a few persons. In the migrations of
peoples it never occurs to any one now that the renewal of the European world
depended on a caprice of Attila's. The more remote in history the subject of our
observations, the more doubtful we feel of the free will of the persons
concerned in the event, and the more obvious is the law of necessity in
it.
3. The third element influencing our judgment is the degree to which we can
apprehend that endless chain of causation demanded by the reason, in which every
phenomenon comprehended, and so every act of man, must have its definite place,
as a result of past and a cause of future acts.
This is the element that causes our acts and those of others to appear to us
on one side more free the less we know of the physiological, psychological, and
historical laws deduced from observation, and the less thoroughly the
physiological, psychological, or historical cause of the act has been
investigated by us, and on the other hand the less simple the act observed and
the less complex the character and mind of the man whose action we are
examining.
When we have absolutely no understanding of the causes of an action—whether
vicious or virtuous or simply non-moral—we ascribe a greater element of free
will to it. In the case of a crime, we are more urgent in demanding punishment
for the act; in the case of a virtuous act, we are warmer in our appreciation of
its merits. In cases of no moral bearing, we recognise more individuality,
originality, and independence in it. But if only one of the innumerable causes
of the act is known to us, we recognise a certain element of necessity, and are
less ready to exact punishment for the crime, to acknowledge merit in the
virtuous act, or freedom in the apparent originality. The fact that the criminal
was reared in vicious surroundings softens his fault in our eyes. The
self-sacrifice of a father, of a mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility
of reward is more comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and so is
regarded by us as less deserving of sympathy and less the work of free will. The
founder of a sect, of a party, or the inventor impresses us less when we
understand how and by what the way was paved for his activity. If we have a
large range of experiments, if our observation is continually directed to
seeking correlations in men's actions between causes and effects, their actions
will seem to us more necessary and less free, the more accurately we connect
causes and effects. If the actions investigated are simple, and we have had a
vast number of such actions under observation, our conception of their
inevitability will be even more complete. The dishonest conduct of the son of a
dishonest father, the misbehaviour of women, who have been led into certain
surroundings, the relapse of the reformed drunkard into drunkenness, and so on,
are instances of conduct which seem to us to be less free the better we
understand their cause. If the man himself whose conduct we are examining is on
the lowest stage of mental development, like a child, a mad-man, or a simpleton,
then when we know the causes of the act and the simplicity of the character and
intelligence, we see so great an element of necessity, and so little free will,
that we can foretell the act that will follow, as soon as we know the cause
bound to bring it forth.
In all legislative codes the exoneration of crime or admission of mitigating
circumstances rests only on those three classes of consideration. The guilt is
conceived as greater or less according to the greater or lesser knowledge of the
conditions in which the man judged is placed, the greater or less interval of
time between the perpetration of the crime and the judgment of it, and the
greater or less comprehension of the causes that led to the act.
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