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

THE PROBLEM OF FREE WILL 271
to say, that it is, on occasion, my perception of the lightness
or reasonableness of a certain course of action which
determines me to move a piece at chess, to choose one fork
of a road rather than another, or to select an investment.
The philosophers, on the whole, have agreed with Sidgwick.
"An affection or inclination to rectitude cannot,"
says the eighteenth-century moralist, Price (1723-1791),
"be separated from the view of it"; while T. H. Green,
whose general attitude to the question under discussion
is,
1 as I have already hinted, far from clear, denies that
"those desired objects which are of most concern in the
moral life of the civilized and educated man are directly
dependent on animal susceptibilities at all". If Green is
right in thinking that it is not our animal susceptibilities
that cause us to do our duty, or to hunger and thirst after
righteousness, then, presumably, it is the rational element
in our natures. The philosophers Reid (1710-1796) and
Kant similarly agreed that men do habitually prefer to do
what is right and reasonable, unless they have an induce*
ment to do otherwise; that man has, in fact, just because
he is a rational animal, a standing bias, other things being
equal, to do what he conceives to be the right and reason*
able thing, and that he has this bias independently of all
personal likes and dislikes.
Summary of Foregoing. I have fined down the issue
of this discussion to a question which, in the last resort, the
reader must answer for himself. In considering what his
answer shbuld be, I would suggest that he bear in mind the
two positions which, in the preceding discussion, I have
tried to establish.
(x) It is sometimes possible to eliminate the influence
of past factors which have made us what we are. There
are, in other words, occasions on which the judgment
with which I judge and the will with which I will are not
wholly to be explained as the necessary consequences of
past acts and influences.
1 Sec p. 941 above.