FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10856, 25 August 1913, Page 3

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

LECTURE BY MR W. W. COLLINS. Lecturing in the Caledonian Hall last night, Mr W. W. Collins dealt exhaustively with the subject of "Free Will and Determination, with a viewto showing that so far as man was concerned modern science had shown him to be, physically, intellectually and morally, subject to tho universal law of causation. Tho free will controversy, he said, was an extremely old one, but to-day tho principle of determinism, or tho necessary connection between motive and action, could hardly be successfully attacked. The strange thing was that some ministers, and apparently some college professors, failed to see'that a consistent theism was impossible unless determinism wero granted, and philosophical theists had seen that "either tho idea of ' cause ' must be wholly abandoned or else wo must rest on'some one ultimate cause, which is tho only true cause, and this ultimate cause of all things is God." That Avas tho position of the philosophical theist, and if theism were true it was tho only position consistently possible. Quito recently, said the lecturer, the subject of sin and its relation to "-free will had been discussed at one of the local churches, and the Rev J. J. North, who, in his address on " Creation " had declared that religion asserted " a God who created and guided the'issue of all things," took for his subject "The World in a Mess," and went on to declaro that either God made the world so badly that chaos loomed up, or man had been developing along tho wrong lines. Tho churches, Mr North declared, took the latter view. Religion taught that man had the choice and the power to choose.- He had presented to him the higher and the lower course. He could follow the former if ho chose, and refuse to follow the latter to some extent.

Such a statement, said Mr Collins, completely ignored the fact that, man was in no sense responsible for the lines along which he had developed, that man was the product of evolution, and that the brutal characteristics of his animal ancestors were largely potted in him. Man's conscience was a purely social I product, developed as the natural rej suit of man's contact with his fellows | through countless ages. Thus a know- | ledge of right and wrong and a power to distinguish the one from the other would have been impossible but for the fact that for centuries man-had been learning in the school of social experience. It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of that experience on human conduct, but to admit it was to admit that motives and acts were | determined" by it, an admission absolutely fatal to the theory of a free will. The speaker said that Mr North appeared to think that the power of choice was itself a confirmation of such j freedom, and instanced the somewhat remarkable illustration submitted by a Wellington professor who took two pieces of paper or identical size, held equi-distant from his face, the problem being to place a piece of pencil on one or the other of the pieces of paper. Having placed it on one piece of paper, lie was quite sure he could equally well have placed it on the other, and no argument could displace from hia mind the conviction that he had real option. The illustration, Mr Collins declared, was so childish that he could scarcely understand a professor presenting it or a preacher using it. No determinist questions a man's power to place a pencil on one or the other of two pieces of paper. .But in such a case as that there was neither motive nor choice. The world was not made up of things, as like one another as two identical pieces of paper. It was a world of infinite variety and dissimilarity, and the preference for one thing rather than another was clearly determined by one's knowledge of the things themselves and the probability of their administering to one's physical, mental or moral well-being. Professor Salmond, who had been appealed to by Mr North, had denned man as "a creature of purpose ruled by motion," a statement which might be made by any determinist. But when he went on to say "when he decides between two courses of action he himself makes the motive," he was assuredly guilty of saying more than he could prove. If this wore true, what would bo the use of churches, of schools, or even j of men's meetings for the discussion of grave problems? Surely all these were but agencies for determining what motives should prevail. The determinist was no fatalist, nor did he deny responsibility. The people had learned that both the evil and the good men do live after them, but. they were making for the present and also for the future either a better or a worse world for men to live in. And that knowledge supplied the motives which governed the conduct of every right thinking man and woman.