l ITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1286 J Ldited hy E. Haldeman-Julius...

l J ITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1286Ldi ted hy E. Haldeman-Julius _

Do Human BeingHave Free Wil

A DebateAffirmative:

Professor George Burman FosterNegative:

Clarence Darrow

LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1286Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius

Do Human BeingsHave Free Will?

A DebateAffirmative:

Professor George Burman FosterNegative:

Clarence Darrow

HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONSGIRARD. KANSAS

Copyright.Haldeman-Julius Company

PRINTED IN THI!I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WIlL?

DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WILL?

PROFESSOR GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER'SFIRST SPEECH

PROFESSOR FOSTER: This is indeed an oldsubject. Many have thought all the juice hasbeen squeezed out of it and that there is nomore blood in this turnip. I think there isblood in it-lots of it. I am going to presentthe turnip and I am going to let Mr. Darrowsqueeze the blood out of it.

It is also thought that it is an unimportantsubject. There is one reason why that mightbe true. It is that whether you are determinists or libertarians all of you act pretty muchthe same way. And you forget about it. Youeat and drink and sleep and work and love andget mad and get glad, no matter which way thisthing ie: So, that being the case, it might seemto be unimportant, butefor all that the problemhas persisted through the centuries and it mustbe fundamental; like Banquo's ghost, "It willnot down." The statement of it changes, thesolution of it changes, but the problem abides.And it is perhaps to the fore today in an unusual degree of acuteness.

6 DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WILL?_

After all, we are not to be distressed becauseno problem stays solved for the reason thatwe do not live simply by solutions, we live byproblems; we do not live simply by answers,we live by questions as well; we do not simplylive by faith, we live- by doubt also, and it mus~be therefore that the existence of problemswhich are either insoluble or do not stay solvedis functionally important in maturing thehuman spirit. If that be true-we should be willing-to accept the situation in the particular towhich I have referred. So Mr. Darrow and Lare here again today to break our teeth upon ,this old file-or, if Mr. Darrow's teeth arestrong enough, he might break the file on histeeth. I do not quite feel that I can do it myself. The most that I can do in the time at mydisposal, is to point out the means and importo~ this great controversy. _

What do we mean by freedom of the will? .Is the freedom of the will a reatity or an il·lusion? I am concerned just now with thinkingwith you a little about these two points. Atthe outset, I wish to put in my demurreragainst the way the question is worded. I accepted that wording of the question becauseothers said that it was the way to word it for~2_

popular consumption. And so I am going to·MnlJ..1.

DO HVMA~ BEINGS HAVE FREE WILL? 7--. state this problem the way it ought to be

stated.

It is not-John Locke pointed this out 250years ago-it is not properly a question, "IstQ.e Will Free?" for you can not split up maninto pieces this way and isolate a detachabiebit like the will and say whether it IS free ornot. There is no sense in that. Moreover, itsupposes that the will is a kind of independentsubstance or entity that gets on of itself, asidefrom any relationships. But there is no substance or entity as that anywhere, and ofcourse the will is not one either.

Besides, if there be freedom it is not aproperty which inheres in the will, as, for example, heat inheres in a coal of fire. There

.is no such thing as that. As a matter of fact,freedom and will in any true sense of the wort-will-are the same thing, I am not aware ofanybody denying· the freedom of the will whodoes not do so at the expense of the existenceof the will itself.

I am very much interested to find out howmy friend Darrow is going to do it, since, as Isay. everybody else that I have known anythingof has always succeeded in denying the existence .of the will when he denies its freedom.And I can understand why, because there is no

8 DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WILL?

difference between the two things if you takeout the psychology of the matter. So I understand by this problem, -not Will as an isolatedatom, but mind-Is the Mind Free ?-and thewill is simply the mind as active. That is allthat we have to mean by that expression.

To be sure, I know there is a difficulty, forlong ago psychology lost its soul and I heal"up and down the earth now that it is aboutto lose its mind. So that is part of the difficulty which I have to face. Darrow cannotescape it either. But the, upshot is that ourdebate is concerned not with the question, Isthe Will Free, but, Is Man Free? Is the SelfFree?-or, if you will allow a word, characterized by mystery and depth, Is Personality Free?I am practically and theoretically interested in ,such a question as that. It is rather interestingthat today we shoUld debate a question of freedom in a world where only yesterday the earthwas drenched with blood and the sky chokedwith storm, in what many called an effort toachieve freedom. For, if man is not free, whatworth is it to have society free, or governmentfree, or a race free, or an earth free? This.points to another item that I wish to be particularly understood-inasmuch as I am urgingthat freedom is not a property of the will,

DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WILL? 9

something already there, as extension or someproperty of matter.

I have to indicate to you why this is so. Thereason is that freedom-if I make out a casefor its existence-is not an endowment; it is anachievement. It is not a donation to man; it isa creation by man. Instead of its being something with which we started, it is the humantask-it is man's deepest, most important taskin the midst of- the world and the social structure 'in which he is implicated, to achieve, forhimself, his self-dependence, his self-directionand his self-guidance.

Now, freedom, as I am presenting the matter,Jl1ay be one of two things, conceivably. Itmeans only one in fact. There are those, andthey have stretched through history, who holdto what the old theologians-and' my friendDarrow knows all about this-what the oldtheologians called liberum arbitrium indifferentiae, the freedom of indifference. Freedomthus means that an act to be free must beuncaused. He~e, then, in order for freedom,your act must be causeless, relationless, motiveless, something that just is, out of the blue, akind of creation out of nothing, like-if I couldimagine such a thing-an atom cut' loose fromthe entire universe and bent, Heaven knows


which way, its freedom· being that it does notknow which way it is going either.

Now, of course, such an act is characterlessas well. And the reason the old theologiansexcogitated such an idea is that they wantedman to be the kind of person that could repentvery easily, hence there must not be anythingin the way of his changing. If his conduct wasdetermined by his character and if his character was in some degree substantial and fixed,he would have a hard job to repent. Theywanted to make it easy for him. But if hisconduct was characterless, if no act of hismade for a deposit of character, then there wasno predetermination, but only indetermination.

From such a point of view mail was everlast-'ingly on the balance and it was up to him,without any antecedents, to flop either way,any time, that suited his caprice. Of course,there is no such thing in the universe as that,and there is not a man born now, so far as Iknow, who defines freedom that way. Perhaps,however, I go a little too far in saying that,for what has passed away from t1).e thinkersand from the authorities enjoys a vagrant lifein the street, and in debates like this. Nevertheless, I insist that so far as I am concerned,it has no place in my thinking whatever.


Now, there is a second kind of freedom, andit is that for which I stand I am doing this, Ivery sincerely tell you, not as a possibi¥ty ofwinning the debate. Darrow would like tohave me win this debate-he always feels thatway about me. But I thank him just the same.I am not interested in it from that point ofview. I am interested in getting the thingbefore you as I see it, on the basis of the truthof it.

So interested, what do I mean by freedom?It is action which is determined not simply byenvironment, heredity and character arid byimpulses, but action determined by reason andconscience. I am free when I exercise theresident powers in me under the guidance ofinner intelligence. I am free when I, in myact, am determined not by the past but by thefuture. I put it in a single phrase-when myaction is on the basis of self-determination, selfguidance, self-direction, as against alien determination, alien gUidance, alien direction, allon occasion of at least dual possibilities.

P.erhaps that expressed it as clearly and asbriefly as I can-for how quickly my time isgoing-and how I might illustrate it for thisaudience here today: Here you are! Howdoes it come you are here? Was your coming


here something that you did or was it something that was done to you? Now, that is notall olr\.the question, so I go a little further.When you came here-when you made yourchoice to come here-could you have chosennot to do so? And in particular how are yougoing to know whether yDU could or not? Iam getting at the root of Uris matter just there,with this audience, and so I state the matter ina large and specific way: Freedom is the assertion that possibility is in excess of actuality,in the life of the human spirit. That is the gistof this debate, my friends.

Now take your own case. You came heretoday. Could you have gone to the park?Could you have gone to sleep? Were therealternate possibilities? In other words, freedomis faith in ambiguous futures. Freedom is theconviction that there are possibilities withwhich you start and that by your action you canreduce at least a dual possibility into a singleactual result.

Is there such a thing as that? Now I mustnot talk any longer this time for I have statedthe case to you and I am to stand for thisproposition that possibility is in excess of actuality.

Of what kind of proof does this subject ad-.


mit? You have this situation: Mr. Darrow,you anJ I and all men, have, at times, animmediate consciousness that they are free. Indeliberate action yoU feel free at times. Thatis the point on which we all agree. Now, thereare two things to be done. I have to justifythat feeling of freedom of yours. Mr. Darrowhas to explain on the other hand that althoughI have that feeling of freedom, it is a humbug,it is not true. He has to show, if I understandthe situation, that my idea that I am feelingthat I am free--my idea that I am free--isnot so, but is an illusion. To be sure, in theface of the fact of the universality of this feeling of freedom, the question might readily beraised whether or not my idea that I am freeis an illusion or whether his idea that my idea.that I am free is the illusion.


MR. CLARENCE DARROW'S FIRST SPEECH. ...

MR. DARROW; The professor always savesme some time and trouble in these discussions.He is so honest that he generally puts my sideof it about as well as he does ,his own, and Ithink a little better. Now, I am at a loss toknow whether he believes in free will or not.Of course he and I could discuss with you fora long while the question of what is the Willand what is Freedom. It would take severaldebates to settle that before we got started onthe main question.

I quite agree with him that perhaps the statement of the question is not what is should be.lt ought to be, Is Man Free? I am willing toaccept that statement, too. So far as the willgoes, all you can say for it is that man's willis his state of mind before action; how he feelsbefore he does something. The question is notso much whether he is free to do as he wills,but is he free to will as he will? If the will isfree, man thinks before he feels and acts. Theaction is settled. The will is only a question othow he feels before he dives in. that is all.If you can call the will force, as so many phil·


osophers do, then I cannot see that it meansanything much as applied to this subject. Theprofessor is a theologian, or was, and I practicelaw.

To us it has some practical meaning. To thetheologian it means that a man is going to hellbecause he purposely chooses to do the evilwhen he could just as well have done the right.That is out of his free choice, as an independenthuman being, he knew what was good andchose to do what was' bad. That justifies Godin damning man, as Nietzsche says. To thelawyer,it means that a man knows right fromwrong, and purposely, chooses to do the wrongand society sends him to jail to punish him be,cause he purposely chose to do wrong whenhe could have done right. It means, to make itmore specific, that a man may choose whetherhe will go to New York or Denver, or stay athome; that he may choose whether he will goto sleep at home this afternoon, as the Professor says, or come here and go to sleep.

I know we all have an illusion of freejlom.That is not the only illusion we have. Weare filled with them, most of which never materialize and never could materialize. We havea feeling of freedom, a feeling of choice, but itis simply one of those illusions-one of the

16 DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WIr.L?

countless illusions that rule life, that governus, keep us alive without which we would dieand get through with it, for there would benothing to live for. But the question of whethera man is free may be put in a practical way.Can you sit down if you are standing just because you think you want to sit down? Canyou get up if you are sitting down of your ownfree will, if there is such a thing? You cannot sit in a chair and rise from it through anyintellectual process. You might do it on account of a pin or a tack. It takes some impulse that comes from outside of you and thenyou act, not through any intellectual processof any sort. You cannot have an intellectualprocess without impulse. It comes from somewhere.

The Professor's definition does not help usto any· great extent that I can see. Of course,he admits that there is no such thing as freewill in the universe, in the sense that we understand free will, in the sense of such eminenttheologians as John Calvin and Martin Lutherand' Billy Sunday. Or in the sense of the judgeswho send men to jail because they wilfullydo wrong, and they are justified in doing itbecause judges wilfully do right. He practically admits there is no such free will as that,


but he says it is action determined by reasonand conscience.

Well, now, what about that? What action isdetermined by reason and conscience? Beforeyou can decide that a man is free, if he actson his reason and conscience you have firstto ask where his reason came from and wherehe got his conscience. I settle most of thethings that I do where I deliberate by my reaBon, and sometimes by some remnants of myconscience that I have not yet got rid of. But,where did I get my reason, and what is it?It is not, of course, a separate faculty. It isnot something tangible, like an arm or leg.It is not the mind, if we know what that is.All we know about the reason is that its sea:tis memory, and. from memory we have reflection. It has some relation to brain. The sizeof it; the fineness of it; the character of it.One man may reason one way and anotherman may reason another. The question is,"What kind of a brain has he?" He did notmake his brain; he had nothing to do with it.That came long before he had any consciousness; that is a matter which is born withouthis consciousness, and it will die and dissolvewhen it gets ready independent of what hethinks or what he wants. What one arrives


at from his reason depends upon his brain, upon ~

its size and its quality-~ainlYupon its qualityand next upon the impressions he has. Somepeople may reason from a few facts, and somemay reason from a. great many facts, dependingupon how many facts they have, or, some mayreason from errors instead of facts, and reachdifferent conclusions. No two brains reasonalike because they are not made alike and theyhave not the same things to reason about. Itis out of the question to determine it in an~

such way.

As to conscience: That is the unsafest guideany theologian ever talked about. The theologian's conscience may be one thing and alawyer's an·other! A man's conscience dependsentirely upon where he was .born, almost entirely. If a woman was born in the far east,her conscience would not permit her to go onthe street without a veil, but she could gobarefoot; if she was born in the west her conscience WOUld let her go out without a veil, butuntil recently, she had to wear a long dress.at one period of her education, and at anotherone she might wear a short one. She did notmake her conscience; it was made for her.Some people's consciences at some times willpermit them to do one thing and sometimes


anothl'r. Some people's consciences forbid themlying under some circumstances; not under all.Everybody's conscience permits them to liewhen it is necessary. There is no single actof man' that can be determined by his conscience or that any two consciences will passon alike. Man has inherited and acquired itjust as he has inherited his arms and acquiredhis tastes.

This whole problem comes from the fact thatman takes himself too seriously. ProfessorFoster, if he really believed in free will, wouldflyaway before this debate was over. Whynot? Why shouldn't he go and visit Mars ifhe wanted to? Why should he be bound by anyof the things that hamper man in this world?If a man -is free he can do as he will. Literature has furnished us with a fair example ofwhat freedom is. 1 heard the Professor, in aformer debate, quote: "1 am the captain of mysouL" Well, that means something. That meansyou can guide your soul around where you will,and do with it as you will. "Every man is thearchitect of his own fortune," says the copybook and the capitalist, but, has he anything todo with his fortune? Or, with his misfortune?Does man move around because he wishes tomove around and go here and there as he sees


fit? Or, is he a slave of law, without the, powerto move of his own volition?

Now, I am firmly convinced that a man hasno more to do with his own conduct than awooden Indian, A wooden Indian has a littleadvantage for he does not even think he is free.Everybody's life and position are cut out forthem. While one person may possibly influencethe life of somebody else, they have nothing tosay about their own. That is the position thatI hold upon this question, which is fairly practical, if not philosophical. And that, it seemsto me, must be settled by some propositionsthat are very plain. First, man is a part ofthe universe. Not a very. important part, excepting to himself-as important as the treesand grass and fishes-as much the creature oflaw as any of the rest of theIll4 He is. bornwithout his own volition and he generally diesbefore he gets ready. He has no faculty ofsaying, no chance to say whether he will beborn or not, or whether he will die or not.

The great events of life are absolutely beyondhis control. He has not even much to say aboutgetting married. Man-I am speaking of. Ifman is like the rest of the universe, I supposethere can be little question about this. It isonly when the theologian comes along and

Itf&

iii

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endows man with a soul that lives forever andhas no relation to anything (lIse but God andthe Devil, as the case may be, then is the only.time we get into trouble over this question. Ifman is like all the rest of the universe, andcontrolled by the same laws and' causes, I failto see how there could be any question if thereis free will in the universe. Why does not theearth make up its mind it will quit its foolishgoing around the sun every year? Why nottry something new? It knows the old path allright. If it had any sense of freedom and liberty, it would start for the Dog Star and goaround that for a while. Why not? It cannotgo for the Dog Star; it is fixed by law; it hasto go over the same old foolishness year afteryear when there is no reason for it any longer.If there is any such thing as free will whenthe farmer plants the corn in the spring whydoesn't the corn take a notion to go to Chinainstead of coming up the shortest way? Whydoes every man know it will come up and notgrow down? If it had any free will therewould be some diversity about it. It wouldnot all grow the same way, anyhow. But, itall comes up unless there is a stone or something in its way, and then it goes around it.If there is any such thing as free will in, the

22 DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WIJ,L?

universe, why don't the fishes fly? And whydon't the birds dive in the water and take theplace of the fish~s once in a while? You wouldthink the fishes would get tired of swimmingin the same old pool and would want to seesomething of the world. But, they do not.They stay right where they are put. If thereis any such thing as free will they would do itand the birds would. Why do the geese-Idon't mean people-I mean the others-,why dothey fly north in the summer time and gosouth in the winter? I suppose those geese,just like the rest of us, think they do it because they want to. But they do not. Theycan not help it. If they could, some geesewould fly north in the winter time, althoughnobody knows how they find out they oughtto' fly north in the summer time. And they flysouth in the winter time in accordance with afixed, immutable law that even geese cannotcontrol. Why doesn't the deer fight insteadof run? You would think he would fight oncein a while. And why. doesn't the bull dog runinstead of hold on? He does not know. Hejust does it, that is all. The law of one beingis different from the law of another's and eachhad nothing to say about his make; he hadnothing to say about the forces that are controqing him and that are mixed to make him.


Is the human being any different? Is thereanybody who believes that inanimate thingshal'e a choice; that the soil or rocks have freewill? That the sap in the tree goes up whenIt wants to and goes down when it wants to?Is there anybody who thinks that the graincould do anything else but grow up in thespring and ripen through the summer and thefall? Is there anyone, who thinks that thedeer can do anything but run away from its

/ enemy? Or that some other animal can doanything but fight? That the liv!ls of animalsare not controlled by the food supply? Thatthe fishes of the sea do not swim here andthere according to the food supply withoutknowledge or volition of their own? Is thereanybody who thinks that any of these thingshave the slightest will or power to choose theirown destinies or fix their: own lives?

People used to think that. I have an oldbook at home which gives detailed accounts ofhow judges and juries used to try animals forcrime. I was reading the other night the caseof an old sow that was tried and convicted forkilling eleven of her pigs by lying on them!These were human beings who tried the sows.Human' beings governed by reason and con·science. .A lot of them. And at that, they


were just as wise as our lawyers and our judges,Just as wise because the same law that governsthe one, governs the other.

Is man any different? I probably would notneed to argue with the Professor on the freewill of animals and plants. Of course, the plantthat finds itself in a soil that is not good andwants to help its growth cannot pick itself upand live somewhere else. It is fixed. That wasall done for it. The animal follows his instincts, his nature, and his life, and he cannotavoid it. What about man? Is he a differentcreation? Of course, this comes down in theend to a theological discussion, where the Professor and I always shine. If man is any different, why? That involves us with God. Wehave not time to settle that this afternoon. Itinvolves us in a belief that outside of all of thisis some creator, conscious, who rules the universe and who has fixed these things to suithimself. And even then there would be no freewill because it would be God's will instead ofthe individual's will. It involves the proposition that God made man; that he made himdifferent from plants and different from animals, and endowed him with something thatanimals have not-gave him this divine reasonthe Professor talks about, which leads no two

... 'J


men in the same direction because no twobrains.{)r lives are the same-but has endowedhim with this and an immor.tal soul, and that hestands alone in the universe and has no rela.tion to anything else. Can this be true?

What does :!iiology say. about it? The originof all life is alike. All animal life is born froma single cell; one cell is built upon another, according to the pattern of the cell, not according to the will of the individual animal. If itwas built according to the patte~n of the individual animal, a great many of us would lookdifferent from the way we do.

lt is all built from the original pattern. Thelife of man is no different from any other animal except perhaps a little more complex, possibly a little higher developed. We say higherbecause we make the rule. The animals perhaps think it lower, and perhaps it is.

Can a man change his life? Let 'us take afew simple things. Is any man the master ofhis fate? Can he change his own life? If aman is born white can he be black? If he isborn black can he be white? If you are born awoman, can you be a man? No; you mightvote, but tou cannot be a man. If you are borna man, can you be a woman? No; you mightlearn to knit, but you cannot be a woman.


Can you change your sex? Can you be ~ll,

or short, as you will? ,Can you change yourc()lor? Can you cho.ose your parents? Can yeuchoose your environment? Can you do anyoneof thousands of things that enter into your life,and make you exactly what you're?

All this is cut out for you. It is cut out withno chance or power to change it. Can you makea philosopher out of a preacher unless he givesup theology? Can you make a poet from aditch-digger? He might dig a ditch that wouldbe something like poetry, but he cannot stringwords together like poetry. Can you make anartist from the germ for a blacksmith?

All these things are born first of all; theyare not made. All of it is back in the originalegg, from which the life came, and all the lifedeveloped according to the pattern and there isno power to change it. It is perfectly plain toeveryone that no man has anything whatever todo with his origin. It is perfectly plain thatin the big thin~s of life he has nothing to say.Where he was born, what determines his religion, his social caste, his degree of intelli·gence, that is all far, far beyond him.

As to the power of the brain, man has nothing to do. Can a foolish man make himselfwise and unhappy just by willing it? Or can a


wise 'man make himself silly and an optimistjust because he wants to? That has all beendone for him, away in advance, and you cannothelp it. I cannot help being wise. The Lordknows, I wish I could. For it is great to becrazy.

And what are you going to do about it if you.are born that way? About the big things oflife nobody can argue that we have anything tosay. If it is written down that the egg shalldevelop into a dog, you cannot make a horseout of it. If it is to develop into a woman, itcannot be made a man. It is probably lucky,because there probably wouldn't be any womenif they could choose the egg. Anyway, it cannot be, so we do not have to discuss that. Ifthe cell is to be a Hindoo it cannot be an American; it is out of the question. The cast hasbeen fixed for all the ages and will corne down.All the possibility is in the beginning, and whenthe egg is fertilized, the job is finished.

Of course, there are some things that affectthe weight and the strength and the tendencyof individuals after that time comes. But whatare those things?

Man is made up of only two things, heredityand environment. And all he is and all he hasis the product of these two. As to his heredity

..28 DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WILL?

-no one is insane enough to think that a manhas anything to do with that and yet we sendpeople to jail and hang them every day on account of their heredity and environment.

When you turn to his environment what thenhas he to say? An acorn will grow into an oaktree; it may be bigger in a fertile soil and asheltered place; it may be stunted in a poorsoil, but it will be an oak. The environmentmay possibly add something to its strength. Butin can in no way change its pattern; that isthere. And it is the same person that crawlsinto the grave that was laid in the cradle-thepattern is alike.

It must be admitted that man has nothing todo with his heredity. What has he then to dowith his environment? For the first eight orten years of his life, at least, when all of hismost lasting impressions are formed, it is perfectly plain that. he has nothing to do with thisenvironment, no more than with his heredity.He had no chance to choose his parents. Hehad no chance to choose his early nurturing. Hehad no chance to place himself in an environment that was easy, where he could developwhat was in him. He was cast in a certainenvironment and placed in that ·environmentand slowly changes-and what the Professor

•DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WILL? 29

calls his character, forms from the environment. Later in life there is a more apparentfreedom of action. But is there? After ten ortwelve years of life with the heredity whichnature gave him, with all of the environmentadded to it, an environment that he had nothing whatever to do with, and with this equipment he goes out into the world to use hisreason and' his conscience.

His conscience which came to him as his reason, which perhaps he has not. And if he isentirely the creature of his heredity and of hisenvironment, supposing that man can thinkfor a moment that he acts according to hisreason, then what is meant? Then at the besthis mind is a set of weighing scales where hedumps on this side the reasons for doing a certain thing and on that side the reasons for notdoing it. And which side is heavier dependsupon a lot of things.

First on the scales, which he did not make,and nature or law provides no way for testingthese scales so he will know whether they arecorrect. All we know is that they are not correct, that no two weigh alike. He uses theseimperfect seales which came to him-nobodyknows how, excepting that he did not makethem-that come to him from all of the dead

30 DO HUMAN BEINGS HAyE FREE WILL?

that are gone, and are fixed. Then he dumpsinto' these scales the different reasons for thisand for that.

And the ,reasons depend upon what? Uponthe extent of his experience in life. Upon thecharacter and the nature of the brain. According to the way the individual man determinesthe relative weight of this and that. No twomen can determine it the same, because thl:>scales are different and the life experience isdifferent. Man can only act according to whatseems to him to preserve life, and to bringhappiness. In other words, man is purely a'selfish creature. Everything comes into hisscales, and he weighs it to see which will givethe greatest satisfaction. The scales may bedifferent and the vision may be different.

Take a simple question. Two men go downthe street. They both see a blind man begging.One person gives him money, the other passeshim by. Is one a selfish man and the other anunselfish man? Nothing of the sort. Eachacts from the same motive. Each acted to satisfy himself. Each acted to ease himself. Ifthe man who gave money could have felt better had he kept it, he would have kept it. Themah who gave the money was probably cursedwith an imagination and he thought how it

DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE vnLL? 3~

would be if he were blind, and in giving herelieved himself. And the man who kept hismoney had less imagination, and it did notbother him, and so he found his highest pleasure in keeping his money. But both of themacted from the same motive, in accordance withthe same law, which is self-preservation. Or,you might carry it a step further. Seeking yourown happiness; seeking your own good. Andnobody can act from any other.

We all find comfort in our various philosophies of life, and our various religions. Someget it by being Catholics and some Methodists;some by being Christian Scientists; while semedo not get it. But, all of us act along the ~MJl6

lines.' We cannot help it. Let me put anotherthought to you.

There is nobody who believ~ in free will.Even the ignorant people do not believe in it,let alone a wise man like the professor. Allsociety and all life is formed on a consciousness that there is no such thing as free will inthe universe. Man is a creature entirely ofheredity and environment, who has nothing todo with his own life and with his own destiny.

Let us see about it. Why it is that we haveschools? Why should a child be educated? Whyteach him the difference between right and


wrong, which we always teach although we donot know ourselves. Why point to the endlesspunishments that follow wrong and the never·ending delights that follow righteousness? Wedo it simply because we know that the childwill be influenced by the people that he meetsin life, and we try to make the foundations ofhis character deep, so that when he is calledupon to choose, he will choose rightly. We teachhim right and wrong, and the rewards and penalties that follow, so that when these thingsconfront the child in later life, he will actrightly. If his teaching meant nothing to him,and he had free will, he would be just as aptto do wrong no matter how much we taughthim. Every school in the world is foundedupon the idea that as the child is born and asthe child is reared, he will most likely act.

If there is free will, there can be nothingfixed and certain and definite in life, and noman could tell from another's thought or teaching;s how he would act, and no man could besure if he sowed wheat in the spring that hewould get a harvest in the fall.

DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WIlL? 33

PROFESSOR FOSTER'S SECOND SPEECH

PROFESSOR FOSTER: My friend, Mr. Darrow.is certainly a hard man to manage. Not because what he says is true, or because it isnot true, but only seems to be and nonsense hasone advantage over sense, you can't refute it.Also because it is suffused with such a delightful humor with which he sugar coats this ungodly pill that he insinuates down our all-toogullible throats. The humor is something tobe enjoyed, but not refuted.

The second point that makes it difficult ishis charming aggregation of such a melange ofheterogeneous and irrelevant facts that it is impossible for his opponent to pick them all upand appraise them. It would take a long timeto do that, even if I could remember them, andI cannot. I enjoyed them so much I did notthink it worth while to interrupt my enjoyment by jotting them down as he went along.

However, perhaps I can improvise a classification of all these facts and treat the classesinstead of his particular instances, and in doingso meet the issue.

But before doing so, I want you to see the


series of thoughts or conceptions into whichall this anti-freedom talk articulates. Mr. Darrow, like myself, has rather a consistent theory

,I of the world. To be sure, liker myself, he doesnot practice his theories. He could not; hewould not be here today if he did; 'he would bein the lake. But what is the string of thingsthat should go together as he thinks, and \thatis that other string of things that should gotogether as I think?

Well, you are more interested in him, so Iwill give you his. This is the way the thingruns on.

Monism, by which is meant there is only onething in the universe, only one kind of thing,and that this was always there, that what wasnot always there, was never there but onlYseems to be-eternalism to the negation oftemporalism.

Then follows determinism, about which Iwill say a word of explanation. We used tospeak of necessitarianism. It is of two kinds,Fore-ordination, if you think that God fixedwhat was to. be, or Fate, if you think thafna~ture or circumstances fixed what is to be.

Mr. Darrow has tried to 'make out a case forboth Fore-ordination and Fate this afternoon,the two together fixing things and so they arepretty well fixed!

DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WILL? 3&

Now, under the promptings of Hume anElJonathan Edwards, John Stuart Mill changedthe terminology from Necessitarianism to Determinism, which is better. And WilliamJames pointed out that Determinism is of twokinds: Hard Determinism and Soft Determinism.

Determinism is hard if you hold that it iscircumstances or, as Mr. Darrow would say,environment, that determines you. Determinism is soft if you hold that it is your character which is so fixed that it determines you.Thus you see from Monism consistently comesDeterminism. What is, is, by virtue of theantecedent and not at all by virtue of the influence of anticipated lO:onsequences. What is,is, by impact of some past, and not by theinducement of some future.

Now, Determinism eventlflltes in Pessimism,,And you observe in Mr. Darrow's discussionthat he, himself, passed from the problem or'freedom to the problem of pessimism. He isnot to be criticized for that, he could not helphimself, he had to do it that way. But, singularly enough, when you pass into the worldof morals, Monism, Determinism and Pessimism carry with them what such a man as Mr.Darrow would call Hedonism i. Ethics. That

36 DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WILLt

is, that the causes and motives of our actionsis pleasure, and that man lives for pleasure.

As against one of our own poets who said:

Not enjoyment and not sorrow is our destined ~nd

and way.But to live that each tomorrow finds us further

than today.

As against all this, I am rather inclined topluralism. I hold that plurality, diversity,multiplicity, are as original in this universeas unity is. There would not be any unityif there was not something to unify. And, ifI am to make a choice, choose the concreteparticularities, diversities, multiplicities, asthe real, rather than the unity. 1 am remindedof a story that I now and then tell my classof an old monk. I will tell it to you.

There was a time in the Middle Ages, whenthere was a controversy between nominalismand realism, and ftle question was, which wasthe real, the universal or the partiCUlar. Themonk was so enamored with the universal, itfits his church you see, that he said that theuniversal was the only real, and that he wasgoing to practice what he preached about thematter; hereafter he was not going to eatapples and peaches and pears, he was goingto eat just fruit. You see, I eat apples, peachesand pears, and Darrow eats fruit!

DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WILL? 3T

Then, I pass from plurali'Sm to freedom asDarrow passes from monism to determinism.For, I affirm a relative independence to thes&separate existences. They are not fated byantecedent unity that forces them to be as theyare. They are just as original as the unity is.I do not deny unity, but unity is an achievement. I do not deny continuity, I affirm discontinuity, I mean creativity, novelty. uniqueness.

The question is not whether we are' determined at all or not. We are. And we areexternally determiI\.ed in part. The question iswhether we are inwardly determined or not.The question is whether we are determined notby a past and a force in the past simply, orare we determined by a future and its temptation upon us because of an achievement that weare competent of making in regard to that future,

Then, along with freedom comes, not Hedonism ill. Ethics, but idealism. According to thisa man does not always act from the pleasurepain motive. A man does not always act thathe may avoid pain and' have pleasure. A mandoes not always choose to do what from thepoint of view of any proper use of the wordis a selfish thing. But there is an altruistic


instinct. _,The very issue before this planet today is whether there is only a brute upthrustin evolution, whether brute force and selfish·ness shall alone determine the destiny of manand the fate of the earth, or whether to thisis added an ethical process (If which love isthe inner force. That is the ultimate, moralissue today. And up and down the earth thereare men who are saying: "I know it will cause]Jain and worse than pain, but I am determinednot simply by the pleasure-pain thought of ahedonistic world; I am determined by the notion of duty! And let no m~n mutilate and dishonor the sacred word duty and ought and con·science.

Take an illustration. By the blood and treasure of your fathers and mine, this countryis enjoying the priceless boon of' freedom today. 'We were in a great struggle, where it·was to be decided once again whether If' nation so conceived shall survive or not; we werein a struggle which called us to declare whetherwe will be influenced by our own ease andcomfort and pleasure and let the blood-bouglittreasure of freedom perish from our hands, or

, whether by our own treasure and blood and2acrifice, we shall, at any cost, pass on to the


future the treasure of freedom which has beenpurchased us by the fathers that are gone.That was our issue. So that as a fact, unlesswe abuse the words conscience and duty· andaltruism and make them mean what they donot mean, we are bound to admit that the real,inner, spiritual dynamic of this great strugglewas as to whether there shall be some placefor the altruistic impulses and ideals of humanity to exercise themselves in the world. Asman struggles on into the region of the spiritand of will, he may leave behind him the agonyof the past, and mount through a clearer airinto a wider world beneath serener skies. Thisshall be not a monistic tyrannical universe, buta pluralistic democratic universe!

So, you see, another kind of man from Mr.Darrow will stand for pluralism, freedom,moral idealism, activism, instead of that formerstring of things. Now, I sta"nd for the lattersort of thing. We cannot give up one thoughtwithout giving up all" And it is the same sortof thing in the other series of beliefs. Weare isolating today just one of these items towhich we are drawing special attention. Thatis the idea of freedom. In every debate, thereshould be some point, some starting point, upon which both the deb!tters stand. There is


such in this debate. IT is the fact of the consciousness of freedom. I feel free in some otmy actions. Others I do not, and so I insistupon this important matter. I am not concerned with the extent of our freedom in thisdebate; just how extensive it is, I do notknow. It ~s of no extent unless we achieve it.

Can we achieve it? is the question. I amnot concerned with the extent of freedom. Iam concerned with the existence of it. Hasthere ever been in the history of the humanrace an act of freedom? Are there acts offreedom on the part of any of us? That isthe question. Were it a question of the extent(If freedom, Mr. Darrow could say that I belongto a world without my choice, and a race with(lut my choice, and parents without my choice,and so on. He could say that, as he does practically say, I am pushed into the world, pushedthrough it and pushed out of it, and that is allthere is to it. As against all that pushing, Iwant to know if there is something I do with·out being pushed. Well, I feel that there is.I feel that I do some things when I could havedone something else. And it is on this accountthat I blame myself and at times respect myself. It is on this account that I have a goodconscience and a bad conscience, that I have' a ,


sense of guilt and a sense of innocence. It ison this account that through our whole life,throughout all our living socially, we are tiedup and involved in praise and blame, in approval and disapproval, in esteem and contempt, in admiration and in disgrace.

So, I start with a universal conviction. Now,inasmuch as this is a universal conviction, inasmuch as this feeling is an admitted fact, why,according to any proper idea of a debate uponthis question, the burden of proof .rests withmy opponent, not with myself. It is not incumbent upon me to prove the validity of thisfeeling in the face of its universality. It isfirst incumbent upon Mr. Darrow to disproveit, and upon me to refute his proofs. Which Iwill now do.

I said I thought his pell-mell of stuff withwhich he pummeled us could be classified. Hisfirst point is the triviality of man. Much thathe said can come under that head-the triviality and transitoriness of man. I have got aninstinctive and inveterate aversion to thatproposition. I am rather glad to say so. Howdoes he prove the triviality of man? He doesit in two ways. The first way he classifiesman with the animals-says he is just an ani·mal. Well, I admit that. But, there are ani·

42 DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREEWILL?.'

mals and animals! A man is different fromthem all. We are told that you can train animals to count. You cannot do any such thing.They do not inwardly and actively and planfully count. They imitate your count. That"is all they can do, So, you cannot make outa case for the animal quality of man by show~

ing the man quality of animals, that way.Moreover, you have got men organizing themselves into societies to teach hogs to count andhorses to figure things, and all that. But didyou ever know of a lot of animals organizinga society to make men do stunts? Did youever? So, there is a difference, a great difference. It is an old trick to lower the dignity ofman by exalting the dignity of animals. Thatis Darrow's trick.

Then, secondly, he proceeds further, and heputs men and animals into the class of things,of nature. Man is like a wooden Indian, Darrow said. As a question of fact, is he? TheIndian does not debate with me, and Darro·wdoes! The wooden Indian does not smoke, Ido. The wooden Indian does not enter into thewet and dry controversy. I do. There is adifference. So, he goes on and. lowers manstill further and makes him all the more trivialby putting him in along with nature. Now, a


tree cannot go from Hyde Park to WashingtonPark. I can. An animal cannot read TheCritique of Pure Reason. I can. You scatteran alphabet out-doors here along the street.Nature cannot pick them up and put themtogether into Homer's Illiad. Homer could.There is' a difference. I protest against thisefforJ to strip man of his dignity by suchsophistries as that. I am told' he is such alittle thing. Man is such a little thing-a grainof sand upon the shore of the universe.. So,he says. But man's triviality or dignity is notdetermined by bigness but by fitness and byan estimate' of values. Gettysburg was notknown to the peoples of the earth until thebattle was fought there in which rebellion andslavery were shot to death by the million gunsof the republic. Is there any triviality in manbecause of the smallness of the field of Gettysburg? Qh, I am told that man is trivial alsobecause he is a small atom in a vast universethat itself will perish. Who knows that theuniverse is going to perish? Maybe it is characterized not simply by death but by life; notsimply by decay, but by rejuvenescence; maybethere is not simply a Calvary, or a Cross forthe cosmos but that there is an Easter Day forthe Cosmos itself-an everlasting recurrence


of a cosmic Easter Sunday as well as a cosmicGood Friday.

Who knows to the contrary? Think howmuch I would have to know, to know the contrary! So, I do not accept his argument ontrivialities. There is another possibility.

But then Darrow has another point, namely,the old argument from causation. That is.. the'universality and inviolability of cause. Manis an effect of causes, he says. I wonder if henever goes on and asks the question whetherthat is a half-truth and whether or not man,of all the realities of the universe, is the onlybeing that lacks, on his own account, causal efficiency? Maybe, however, man in turn is acause of effect? That he is not simply a beingto whom things are done, but that he is a being who does things in return. That is whatfreedom is. Freedom is just adding the otherhalf to his Determinism. Not merely that he jsan effect of causes, but that, in turn, he is acause of effects.

But then the objection to that is that man'svery being a cause of effects is itself caused,and caused not by himself. To which I replya thing is not what it comes from; a thingis what it is. A thing is not what is done toit; a thing is also what it does. Suppose it be


true, that man comes from a number of blindatoms; he is not blind atoms on that account!Suppose it be true, as it is popularly stated,that human consciousness springs {rom amonkey-consciousness_ Suppose that is true. Itdoes not follow that human consciousness is amonkey consciousness. You will observe athing is not what it comes from; it is what it isand what it can do, and what it is to be inthe untrodden years of its future existence.

So, the half-truth of Darrow's Determinismmust allow this other truth on account of whichthe proposition seems to be indeed a half-truth.

The question of causation is an interestingone. I .want to say two or three things aboutit. The real problem of freedom. you understand, is whether there is an excess of possi·bilities over actualities, or whether along withthe actuality-world there· is also a possibilityworld. It is a question between the possibilityman and the anti-possfbility man, just exactlythat. Now, according to the Determinist whathas actually happened is all that could possiblyhave happened. And what shall happen in thefuture shall happen solely because of what actually already is, since what is fatally forefixes what is to be, so that there is no alternative Ilossibility. Now, I grant that this may be

•


so. But I deny that it is known to be so.Think how much you would have to know. toknow this. I wish to point out to you, and Iask your particular attention for a moment,that the determinist's assertion transcends thecompetency of science. All that science can dois to deal with matters of fact. All that sciencecan do ill to pallll from fact to fact; with fact ii,determine what other facts exist. It is notwithin the competency of science 'to pallll fromactuality to possibility. from facts to non-facts-from matters of fact to fact-lessnells. Sciencesimply deals with the actuality-world and itneither affirms nor denies the existence of thepoasibility-world.

But, therefore, if there are other considerations which warrant mention to assert the possibility-world, science allows me to do so. Thecontention of the man who, like myself, hasfaith in freedom is that there are other considerations. I have alteady referred to someof them, namely, the universality and the dignity and the importance of our judgment, otregard and approval of censure and condemnation, of right and wrong, and the like. Ourliving requires the assumption of a possibilityworld. Science does not exclude the postulatethat there may be such a world. Science Is


the "explanation, explicit and demonstrated, ofall facts that are non-values. The opposites ofscience are two things, one is faith and theother is an estimate of values. Faith is an explicit disobedieBce of the maxim,-I put itgravelY,-that whatever is asserted as truesho.uld be perceived or demonstrated. To havefaith is to assert what lacks proof. Faith isthe assertion of an unfounded conviction. Iput it briefly, but truly, to you. I repeat, faithis the assertion of an unfounded conviction forno other reason than the value of that conviction in the high and holy business of humanliving. But neither does science assert values.as our moral and esthetic convictions do.

There are two sets of judgments. Two plustwo is four. Water comes from hydrogen andoxygen. It is a mile from here to the Coliseum. Those are science judgments. Thoseare judgments of fact. Now, there is anotherkind of judgment. He ought to be a betterman. He could be a better man. The sunset ~beautiful. His cause is noble. Truth is betterthan lying. Courage is better than cowardice.God is holy and ought to be worshiped.

That is another set of propositions. Thoseare propositions of life. Those are judgmentsof faith and estimates of values. You cannot

48 DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREEWILL?

establish by coercive demonstration a single oneof them. And yet our daily life is lived uponthe basis of unfounded convictions in this way.

There is not anything done in the dailyround by any of us; that has not been done uponthe basis of convictions that are undemonstrable from the point of view of coercive proof.Freedom belongs to this class. Freedom isunprovable, but indispensable. Paradoxicalas it may seem, the proof of freedom could onlybe made on a basis which would exclude freedom. The rational justification of your faithin freedom is that you cannot live without it.Freedom is simply my act on a basis of an estimate of value saying that this thing is good,that thing is not good; I will do the one, notdo the other. And I repeat that science leavesroom for the assertion of faith and for theestimate of value and it is in that region, thepossibility-world, where freedom belongs.

Mr. Darrow's appeal to cause and law asnegations of freedom is naive. I meet it withtwo considerations. Cause means more thanphysical, mechanical, inert causation. That iscause from out the past. But there is also personal, moral, purposive causation. This comesout of the future. Ability to lay hold of thefuture and make it a factor in shaping the pres-


ent is human freedom. Acts induced bya future possibility, not coerced by a past actuality,this is another way of saying what we meanby freedom. The dignity of man is just measured by the degree in which he is determinedby an idea of an end instead of by an impactfrom a force out of the past. In a word, mechanical causation does not exhaust the hUmannotion of causation.

But the other consideration is the wrongvaluation which the Determinist puts uponcause, law, science. All this rigid mechanicaldet~rmination is not actual fact, but a merepostulate of the physical sciences. Law? Lawis not an ontological dogma, 'it is a symbolicformula of explanation. Science? Science isbut our intellectual technique of purposive action. All these are but tools of man's toil.They are servants of man, by man, for man;not hhl master. They are not a refutation buta proof of man's freedom-not a menace butmanifestation of human freedom. All this talkof law as if it were a substance, or property ofa substance, or cause on its own account, iscrude and naive, and should never be tteatedas a bug·a-boo to frighten us .out of our freedom. Mr. Darrow's whole argument on thebasis of mechanism amounts to saying that be-

60 DO HuMAN BEINGS HAVE FRJJJE WILL?

cause a piece of pie is triangular, there is nothing to pie but triangularity!

Rut many of the cases which he cites comesunder the old head that we are not free because choice is determined by the strongest motive. The chooser does not determine his choice,the motive determines his choice? But whatdetermines the motive? What makes this motive strong and that weak? Why, the chooserof course. There is no motive-in-itself. Thereis only motive-for-me. But motive-for-me iswhat it is because I make it so. Instead of a

, ~

motive, as something independent, determiningme, .I determine it, for in a very real sense Iam the motive. And ff you take away from memy motive-making capacity, you mutilate me,another instance of what I said, that an antifreedom man can make out his case only bymutilating and decimating human nature itself.As a matter of fact this argument from --thestrongest motive has been dropped by thinkersand now leads a vagrant, mendicant life aboutthe streets. How do we know a motive to bethe liltrOngest? By seeing action ensue. Havewe any independent means of testing itsstrength? None. Then in saying that the wi~l

follows the strongest motive we have merelydeclared that whatever precedes precedes.


But I must not let myself grow abstruse.Take an illustration. There is a ripe appleover there on my neighbor's tree. I mightgo along there and I would not take the ap·pIe. Even Darrow woulod not. A boy goesalong. What will he do? Climb the fenceand get the apple or not ?But the apple is therefor all three of us, so the motive is not in theapple but in the DIan. So to be determinedby the strongest motive is still to be self determined, which is freedom.

Well. I can't follow Darrow in all his rambliRgs. Heredity makes me, he says. Why.heredity just gives me my job. Whether goodor bad, it is but the raw material out of whichI achieve character. I master it, not it me.or I feel I am not the man I ought to be. Environment makes me. Darrow's dirge. Why.the very dignity of man is not in his lIubjection and submission to environment; it is in hisconquest over environment, in his making en·vironment a servant of hiII\self, and not him·self a slave of environment.

Well, that is almost enough. We live not ina block universe. We live in a universe thatis open, plastic, malleable. ,We live in a uni·verse to which we bring some new force andworth by the ideals we construct and honor.


Hence we do not live in vain. We can transform the world and make it more congenial tothe heart and hope of man. Life can be buoyant. Moral tasks can be carried on and futfilled with zest and exhilaration. Man is not afool when he has faith in the final balance ofthe best. The world is such that man can bendit to beat the worst and serve the best. Butif, as Mr. Darrow seems to think, this worldis only a machine, mindless and merciless, thenthe life of instinct would be aJl, then the en·thusiast for a far-off hope, for an endlesslyprogressive humanity, for a profound and logical love of life, would be cast off from theland of the living; then- the martyr plays thefool; then it is to saints and sages that theworld has lied.


MR. DARROW'S SECOND SPEECH

MR. DARROW: Professor Foster would be byall odds the greatest philosopher that I knowanything about, if he had not been first educated in a theological cemetery. He is alwayslapsing, and when he lapses, why, he lapses.

Now, let us see. I did not claim for a minutethat science is sure; that it has found the ultimate. It has not. Because science furnishes noproof is no re~son why a thing should be accepted as true.

PROF. FOSTER: It is.MR. DAIUlOW: The Professor says "It is."Then of course, any man may believe any-

thing that will help him.PROF. FOSTER: Surely.MR. DARROW: It would help me to believe

that I had a million dollars in the bank. ButI cannot. I am not fool enough. It mighthelp the Professor to believe that he is to betransported in a chariot of fire to a place wherehe can sit on a damp cloud through all eternityand play a harp.

PROF. FOSTER: Not that bad; I don't fancy;that job.


MR. DARROW: But, canhe believe it? If he isfoolish enough to believe it, all right, I do notfind any faalt with him. I do not know whatit is to have faith without some foundationof fact. I think nobodY else knows even theperson who believes that he is going to betransported immediately to Heaven when he isdead. He has a foundation of fact, his grand·mother told him so, and the preacher told himso. He is not believing without evidence, it ismighty poor evidence, but it is evidence.

The human mind cannot believe anythingwithout evidence. .Even if you gay you believeit because you need to, that is something; itisn't much. You may be like the osfrich, putyour head into the sand, to get rid of unpleas·ant facts, and think you are safe. The ostrichis the original Christian Scientist-he gets ridof fear by denying unpfeasant thoughts.

The Professor surely. does not mean all hesaid. The difference between him and me i~ hedoesn'f mean all he said and I mean more. Thatwas some panegyric that he uttered on duty.But it does not do for people who want to beintelligent to just shut their eyes. What isduty, anyway? Is there any reason why youshould not ask yourself a simple question likethat? '

"DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WILL? 55

Some people think it is their duty to go to,mass. Some think it is their duty to stay away.

Some think it fs their duty not to eat meat onFriday and some not to eat it on any day. Somethink it is their duty to believe in Mohammed'and some think it is their duty to practicesnake worship. Some think it is their duty totake care of their grandmother. Where do theyget the idea? Why, we catch it Nst like themeasles; that is all. For the most part it is aterrible hobgoblin.

A great many people have had their livesruined by a fool sense of duty. No doubt thereare a great many places where duty serves apurpose. But to govern life by duty is simplycrawling out of one hole into another. Itdoesn't mean anything at all.

The professor does not believe what he saidabout conscience; I know he does not. Because,in spite of what he says he is an intelligentman and I know it. He knows just as wellas I do that conscience is purely a question ofheredity and environment. A man's consciencedepends upon where he is raised; that is all.Of all the uncertain things to guide the cqn·duct of man, conscience is most unreliable.What are you goin.g to test it by? I supposeyOU could test conscience by duty and dutyby conscience, then you would get it.


A man's conscience, if it is strong enough.does not permit him to do the things that hehas been in the habit of thinking are wrong.That, of course, means that the person is governed by the past. The rrofessor is going toadd to the horror of that and say we shouldbe governed by the future. As far as I can Iwant to get out of both of them, and if I werefree, I would.

Now, absolutely, there is no question aboutthis. I do not need to make an argument aboutit. All you need to do is to, think about it justa little. The professor knows better. He didnot think what he was sayil'lg. I know how aman's mind goes. He set his in motion, revolving, philosophically and wisely, and all ofa sudden a cog slips and he ran into one ofhis old sermons. I think by the Professor'ssilence he has admitted that animals have nofree will, or not much to speak of.

PROF. FOSTER: That is true.

MR. DARROW: But he objects to my comparinghuman beings with animals. Well, as long asthe animals don't object, I can't see why heshould. They cannot object, because he sayswe control anima1s. We cannot conceive of animals that control us-well, we might-howabout the alligator, the tiger, or something or


other? But if animals do not try to control us,we try to control them. Why, in one sense thatshows the superiority of the animals, does itnot? 0

We have a right to use such scientific knowledge as we have. Is not man an animal? Hesays, yes. But then he says something thatcertainly science will not bear out, that man isa different animal from any other, that he isendowed with reason, I suppose nobility ofcharacter, although we are not working at itvery hard, and a few other things. So far asnobility of character is concerned-if you callduty noble-which I would not, exactly, theanimal has got it all over us.

If you count gratitude and fidelity, why, thedog has got us beaten to death! In fidelityand gratitude, we do not compare with them.But, of course, that question is not a matterof discussion. Even an angleworm has a brain.It is very weak and inferior, of course, but itis there-a "little flat thing at the end of theangleworm, is the rudiment of the brain. Ofcourse, I presume there are probably no people who have not a better brain than an angleworm, though a good many of them have nobetter backbone.

From there up to the ape. An ape has a brain


half as big as a man's, with the same weightof body. ' Of course, a man does not act likehe had twice ll.II much, but he has twice aslarge a brain, anyway. And that'an ape uses it,cannot be questioned.

Every faculty of man is in the other animals:They can learn. But, they cannot learn asmuch. Of course, they could not read Kant'sCritique of Pure Reason. Thank God! Norcould they understand Butler's "Analogy." Nobody .else does! But, they can reason. Theycan reason imperfectly. So does the professor.Their brain is not as big; it is not as welldeveloped; it is not as usefuL But it is there.And there is no faculty, physical or mental,that belongs to man that does not belong taany animaL And I still think that it is impossible to say that there can be any general lawthat does not control them both alike. Eachone acts from motives. The' professor deniesit. Did any of you ever do anytl1ing withouta motive? How can you? Can any humanmind imagine an effect without a cause? Aneffect !Standing up in the universe without having been caused by anything? That is beyondthe realm' of reason; that is in the realm offaith, and he has got me when he comes tofaith-I cannot follow him. Do not cause and


effect go hand in hand through everything inNature? And through every act of life? Thereare many things that we do not understand, ofcourse, but that is no reason why we shouldclose our eyes to the things we do understand.It will not do to say that the patient labor ofscientists to arrive at facts that can be provenover and over and over again in a thousanddifferent ways, upon which all the world acts,must go for naught, and that we should acceptblind faith in place of them. Nobody couldcompound a dose of medicine without the useof facts. It is known how the chemicals willact upon each other. It is known as far as wehave knowledge, and we can only reason fromsuch knowledge as we have.

I am not exactly sure that my theory of reward-of pleasant sensations or painful ones,is absolutely true. I have thought a good dealabout that question. I think I am fairly sure ofsome parts of it, but, to be sure of these thingsis-well, you have. to be pretty wise or prettyfoolish, and I am far too intelligent to be sureand not wise enough nor silly enough to besure.

As a matter of fact, the will to live permeatesthe whole universe. We struggle for life. And,pleasure is part of life. It is a life-giving thing.

iiO DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREE WILL?

Pain brings death. And the struggle for pleasure is almost instinctive and probably is instinctive.

The professor says we often choose the hardthings. True, we do. I have been to a dentistto have my tooth pulled, and it is painful.Why did I do it? Because I would get morepain if I did not have it pulled. That is all.We have to undergo the hard thing if it relieves or will prevent suffering or give futurepleasure. We do it instinctively, we act frominstinct and feeling. These things preserve life.And what we call duty,· and what we call conscience, often lead us to do the things whichseem the hardest, but are not the hardest.Take the example of a ship burning at sea.Under the rule of life, as it prevails on the seas,it is the duty of men to get out of the way, burnwith the ship and let the women escape. I suppose that is because women are-well, nevermind that. That is the rule, anyway. Then, Iassume that the professor and I, and almost allmen, would do that. Why? Because we couldnot think of living in the world if we didn'tdo it, that is all. Because the code is so strongand the demand is so universal that a man cannot live on the earth who does not do it. Suppose he could. Suppose he thought that he

DO HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FR~E WILL? 61

would be happier to save himself and let thewomen take his place. Do you suppose the women would get their lives saved? Not at all.The men would save their own. Those areclearly established lines which men act onautomatically; that is all there is to it.

It may appear sometimes that we do thething that causes pain, but to my mind it issimply an impossibility. We feel the thing thatreaches us, and until it reaches us we do notfeel it. The professor says the pain and pleasure theory. will not work. I am not quite sureabout it. To my mind it is the most reasonable of all of them. But, he says-he quotes alittle piece of a' poem-what was that? "Notenjoyment and not pleasure, is 'our.pestined"so on and so on. "But to act that each tomorrow finds him further than today." That isLongfellow. He was not much of a philosopher, nor much of a poet, either. Is there anyphilosophy in that? But to act that each tomorrow finds him further than today! What doyou want to go so "fur" for? You might get so"fur" you would have to come back! But, isthere anything in going further? If you assume there is, then you have to settle firstwhich way is further. Further may not be sotar. It does not mean anything. I would rather


call his at~entio!l:to that other poem of Longfellow-"Mary had a little lamb, its fleece waswhite as snow," it means just exactly as much. It means nothing, so far as this question goes.

Now, everybody can settle this question forhimself if he wants to. Pick out any actin your life-the most important-and traceout the chain of causes that led you to it. Findout if you had anything to do with it yourselfexcepting you may count that you had a wonderful brain that helped you along. But yousurely did not have anything to do with yourbrain. You can take the most important matter in your life, after getting born and beforedying. Pick out any of them-getting' married. How did that happen? Well, you probably hal)pened to go to a party, or maybe tochurch-and that accident got you into all thetrouble""='a bare accident. Take the professoror myself. How much had we to do with ourselves? How many accidents are there betweenAdam and our parents? How many tens ofthousands of people happen to be thrown together in the universe-happen to be! Tensof thousands of them. That we were born, musthave been a terrible accident, or else God waslooking out for us. And now we say we did itand that what we do-'-so large a number of

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accidents that a man cannot even consider them--that we do it of our own free will! it is theresult of all the past. All of Nature has had ashare. Aren't we small? What is man, anyhow? What part of the universe? What partof earth, let alone the universe? But, what partof the universe is his brief span-of years, measured by eternity?

That is the reason the people who have faithto believe what they want to believe, have Invented heaven, because the whole thing is notworth anything without it. Heaven is a kindof faith bank-a bank you can draw on without putting in a deposit. I have talked to many'people. I have seen too many people in trouble, who would tell me--because they would tellme the truth-exactly how it happened; whowould show to me conclusively that they couldnot have done anything excepting what theydid. The professor says a thing might happenin some other way than the way it did happen.Well, how? If it could happen some other way,why didn't it happen some other way? Thefact that it happened this way shows that Itcould not have happened any other way!

This world and all life is a chain of causeand effect, the effect perhaps in turn becominganother cause. No man can go back into his

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own life; no man can imagine anything in hisown life or in any other persons that came therewithout a cause. We are mixed with the universe;. we are a part of all that is, and to saythat there is any free will for any portion ofmatter in the universe is to deny laws andwould set us afloat in a realm of speculationand chance where no one could count upon anyfuture act in any way.

In a world of fre.e will there could be noguide and no compass and no law and no certainty, but only lost souls, as the professorwould call them, wandering aimlessly in the'night.

l ITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1286 J Ldited hy E. Haldeman-Julius...

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Transcript of l ITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1286 J Ldited hy E. Haldeman-Julius...