Messrs. Fullerton
and McTaggart have recently laid about them doughtily with this
argument.
It may be good ad hominem, but otherwise it is pitiful. For I ask
you, quite apart from other reasons, whether any man, woman or
child, with a sense for realities, ought not to be ashamed to plead
such principles as either dignity or imputability. Instinct and
utility between them can safely be trusted to carry on the social
business of punishment and praise. If a man does good acts we shall
praise him, if he does bad acts we shall punish him--anyhow, and
quite apart from theories as to whether the acts result from what
was previous in him or are novelties in a strict sense. To make our
human ethics revolve about the question of 'merit' is a piteous
unreality--God alone can know our merits, if we have any. The real
ground for supposing free-will is indeed pragmatic, but it has
nothing to do with this contemptible right to punish which had made
such a noise in past discussions of the subject.
Free-will pragmatically means NOVELTIES IN THE WORLD, the right to
expect that in its deepest elements as well as in its surface
phenomena, the future may not identically repeat and imitate the
past. That imitation en masse is there, who can deny? The general
'uniformity of nature' is presupposed by every lesser law.
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