GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE PROBLEM OF FREE WILL 243
is reached, axe strongly reminiscent of the attitude to the
will which characterizes the writings of psycho-analysts. 1
Bearing of Foregoing on the Freedom of the Moral
Judgment and the Moral Will. The effect of all these
views is broadly the same. All concur in holding that
my personal judgment that this thing or that is the right
thing to do is the necessary consequence of past acts and
past events. These past acts and past events have, between
them, formed my present psychological disposition as
the various
completely as the taste of a stew is formed by
elements which have gone to its making. If, then, I now
judge X to be good, or to be seemly, or fitting, or the right
thing to do, it is not because I have made an impartial
and disinterested choice between X and the alternative
courses which are open to me, but because I have judged
Xi, Xa, and so on to be good, or to be the right things to
do in the past. To quote Professor A. E. Taylor, my act
of choice is, on these views, " no more the expression of a
dutiful spirit than the utterances of a man 'possessed 1
are the expressions of his own thought". "Hopeless slavery
to the past," Professor Taylor continues, "docs not cease
to be slavery because the past is to some extent of my
own making." For what, after all, do these views imply?
That the way in which I act always exhibits conformity
to a certain rule. This rule is the rule ofmy own character,
as the result of the
a character which has been built up
reaction of the initial psychological equipment which con*
stituted my personality at birth to the environments in
which it has successively been placed. Admittedly, the
rule is not completely known either by me or by anybody
else; admittedly, the elements which have gone to its
making are exceedingly complex. Nevertheless, it exists,
and my actions illustrate it, just as the behaviour ofchemicals
in compounds and solutions illustrates the rule of their
composition. To quote Professor Taylor again, the selfdeterministic
views which I have been engaged in summaris-
*Sce Chapter IV, pp. 114-116.