VOLUNTARY
506
VOLUNTARY
P. L., XXXII, 1243-63; "Confess.", VII, c. 10,
n. 16; P. L., XXXII, 742; "Soliloq.", I, i, n. 2;
P. L., XXXII, 870; cf. "De civ. Dei", VIII, iv;
P. L., XLI, 228, 229). In God Augustine places
"the intelligible world" of the Platonists, and the
Divine concursu-s is in a special way required by human
thought. God is "the sun of the soul" ("Gen. ad
Ut." XII, xxxi, n. 59; P. L., XXXIV, 479; "De
pecc. mer.", I, 25, n. 38; P. L., XLIV, 130; cf.
"Soliloq.", I, 8; P. L., XXXII, 877), Himself per-
forming the functions which Scholastics ascribe to the
intellectus agens. Faith, too, with Augustine as with
Anselm, involves intelligence. For both the principle
intelligo ut credam is no less true than the principle
credo ut inlelligam. ("In Ps. cxviii", serm. xviii, n. 3;
P. L., XXXVII, 1552; serm. xliii, c. vii, n. 9; P.
L., XXXVIII, 258.)
The philosophy of Scotus is more distinctly volun- taristic. On the freedom of the will he is particularly clear and emphatic. He insists that the will itself, and nothing but the will, is the total cause of its voli- tions. It is not determined by another, but deter- mines itself conlingenter, not inevitabilUer, to one of the alternatives that are before it (II Sent., dist. xxy; see also "ult comm.", ibid). This is freedom, an attri- bute which is essential to all higher forms of will, and consequently is not suspended or annulled in the beatific vision (iV Sent., dist. xlix, Q. 4). Because the will holds sway over aU other faculties and again be- cause to it pertains that charity which is the greatest of the virtues, will is a more noble attribute of man than is intelligence. Will supposes inteUigence, is posterior generatione, and therefore more perfect (IV Sent., dist. xlix, 4 "quaestio laterahs").
Kant's "practical reason", in that it passes be- yond the phenomenal world to which "pure reason" is confined, is superior to the latter. Practical rea- son, however, is not will: rather it is an intelligence which is moved by wiU; and in any case it is a human faculty, not a faculty of the absolute. Fichte is the first to conceive will or deed-action {That- handlung) as the ultimate and incomprehensible source of all being. He is followed by Schelling, who says that will is Ursein: there is no other being than it, and of it alone are predicable the attributes usually predicated of God. Schopenhauer holds will to be prior to intclhgence both in the metaphysical and the physical order. It appears in nature first as a vague self-consciousness mingled with sympathy. Ideas come later, as differences are emphasized and organi- zation developed. But throughout the will holds sway, and in its repose Schopenhauer places his ideal. Nietzsche transforms "the will to live" into "the will to power". His philosophy breathes at once tyranny and revolt: tjTanny against the weak in body and in mind; revolt against the supremacy of the State, of the Church, and of convention.
Pragmatism (q. v.) is an extreme form of psycho- logical Voluntarism; and with it is closely connected Humanism — a wider theory, in which the function of the will in the "making of truth" is extended to the making of reahty. The Voluntarism of Absolutists, such as Fichte, Schelling, and Schopenhauer, confuses the abstract concept of being, as activity in general, with the more determinate, psychological concept of will, as rational self-determination. The Prag- matist identifies intelligence and will with action.
St. Augustine, loc. rit. supra; Caldwell, Schopenhauer^ s Sys- tem in its philosophical significance (London. 1895) ; James, Will to Believe (New York, 1897); Ladd, A TheoTn of Reality (New York. 1899); Idem in Philos. Review, VIII (1899), fi27-32; MOnster- BERQ, Philosophy and Life (Boston and .New York. 1899); Paul- sen, I/ttroilurtion to Philosophy (tr. New York, 189.'i); Schilleh, Studies in Humanism (London, 1907); Wdndt, System der Phi- losophic (2nil ed., Leipzig. 1S97).
Leslie J. W.\lker.
Voluntary, wilful, proceeding from the will. I( is requisite that the tiling be an effect of the will
consequent upon actual knowledge, either formal or
virtual, in the rational agent. It is not quite the
same as free; for a free act supposes self-determina-
tion proceeding from an agent capable, at the time,
of determining himself or not at his choice. However,
as every specific voluntary act in this life is also free
(except those rare will-impulses, when a man is swept
to sudden action without time to perceive in non-
action the element of good requisite for determination
not to act) the moralist commonly uses the terms
voluntary and free interchangeably. A thing may
be voluntary in itself, as when in its own proper
concept it falls under the efficacious determination
of the agent, or voluntary in something else, as in its
cause. Voluntary in cause requires foreknowledge
of the effect, at least virtual, viz. under a general
concept of effects to follow; and production thereof
by virtue of the will's efficiency exercised in the
wilhng of its cause. For the verification of the latter
requisite the morahst distinguishes two classes of
effects which commonly follow from the same cause,
those namely to produce which the cause is destined
by its nature, and those to which it is not so destined.
Of the former the cause is sole and adequate cause,
the effect natural and primary. The human will
cannot without self-contradiction put a cause into
existence without efficaciously willing this natural
effect also. In the case of the other class of effects
the cause placed by the will is not the sole and ade-
quate cause, but the effect results from the coincident
efficiency of other causes, whether contingent, as
upon the exercise of other free wiUs or upon the acci-
dental coincidence of necessary causes beyond the
knowledge and control of the agent, or whether
necessarily resulting from the coincident efficiency of
natural causes ready to act when occasion is thus
given. An effect of this class does not come into
existence by the efficiency of the will placing the
occasioning cause. The utmost result of the will's
efficiency, when it places a cause and wills its natural
effect, is to make that secondary class of effects
possible. Sometimes the agent is so bound to prevent
the existence of a secondary effect as to be beholden
not to make it possible, and so is bound to withhold
the occasioning cause. In case of failure in this duty
his fault is specified by the character of the effect to
be prevented, and so this effect is then said to be
morally involved in his voluntary act, whereas
in strict analysis the will only caused its possi-
bility.
Vincible ignorance as a reason of an effect does not rob it of its voluntariness, as the ignorance is volun- tary and its effect immediate and natural. Invin- cible ignorance, however, removes its effect from the domain of the voluntary, in itself because unknown, in its cause, for the ignorance is involuntary. Passion pursuant of its sensible object, when voluntarily induced, does not deprive its act of voluntariness, as the passion is the natural cause and is voluntary. Passion spontaneously arising does not ordinarily mean the loss of voluntariness, as in ordinary course it leaves a man both the necessarj' knowledge and power of self-determination, as we know by experience. In the extraordinary case of such an excess of passion as paralyzes the use of reason obviously the act cannot be voluntary. Even fear and the cognate passions that turn a man from sensible harm do not destroy the simple voluntariness of their act, as this (excepting again such excess as holds up the reasoning faculty) iiroceeds with such knowledge and efficacious self-del crminal ion conse(iuent thereon as fulfil the recjuisiti's for voluntary action. Of course there will commonly leniain an inefficacious reluctance of the will to such action. Physical force can coerce only the external act: our experience shows that the inter- nal act of the will is still our own.
Charles Macksey.
