War And Peace

When we simply do not know the cause of an action – a crime, a good deed or something that has nothing to do with right and wrong – we put it down to maximum free will. In the case of a crime we particularly demand that it be punished; in the case of a good deed, we are especially appreciative of what was done. And when the action has nothing to do with right and wrong we think of it in terms of maximum individuality, originality and independence. But if a single one of the innumerable causes of the action is known to us, we allow for a certain element of necessity, we are less keen on retribution for a crime, less appreciative of merit in a good deed, less ready to acknowledge free will in relation to an action of ostensible originality. The fact that a criminal was brought up among villains mitigates his guilt. The self-sacrifice of a father, or a mother, or self-sacrifice with a view to possible reward is more comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore appears less deserving of sympathy and less the product of free will. The founder of a sect, or a party, or an inventor, appears less impressive once we understand the ins and outs of all the preparatory work that preceded his activity. If we conduct a whole series of experiments, and if our observation is constantly focused on a search for correspondence between the causes and effects of men’s actions, the actions themselves will appear to be more determined by necessity and less by free will, the better we succeed in the linking of cause and effect. If the actions examined are simple ones, and we have a vast number of such actions available for study, our impression of their inevitability will be all the more completely confirmed. A dishonest deed by the son of a dishonest father, the bad behaviour of a woman who has drifted into certain company, the recidivism of a reformed drunkard, and so on – these are all actions which appear to be less freely determined the better we understand the reason behind them. And if the man whose behaviour we are studying happens to be someone at the lowest level of mental development, like a child, a madman or a simpleton, then, fully apprised of the reasons behind his actions and his simplicity of character and intelligence, we observe in all of this such a huge amount of necessity and so little free will that once we know the cause the action becomes predictable.

These three variable entities alone account for the concept of unfitness to plead, which exists in all legislative codes, and the idea of extenuating circumstances. The degree of accountability will be considered greater or lesser according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances experienced by the man under judgement, the greater or lesser time-lapse between his committing the crime and being brought to justice, and our greater or lesser understanding of the causes behind the action.

CHAPTER 10

Thus our sensation of free will and necessity gradually contracts or expands according to the greater or lesser degree of association with the external world, the greater or lesser degree of remoteness in time, and the greater or lesser degree of dependence on the causes through which we examine the phenomenon of a human life.

It follows that if we consider the situation of a man with maximum known association with the external world, a maximum time-lapse between his action and any judgement of it and maximum access to the causes behind his action, we get an impression of maximum necessity and minimal free will. Whereas if we consider a man with minimal dependence on external circumstances, whose action has been committed at the nearest possible moment to the present, and for reasons beyond our ken, then we get an impression of minimal necessity and maximum freedom of action.

But in neither case, however much we vary our standpoint, however much we clarify the man’s association with the external world, however accessible we think this is, however much we lengthen or shorten the time-lapse, however understandable or opaque the reasons behind his action may appear to be, can we ever have any concept of absolute freedom of action or absolute necessity.