Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/59

48 W. MITCHELL : MORAL OBLIGATION. impulse, from cause to consequence, thereby being partly determined from without. Now the will must in action be always one or other of these two, that is, it must manifest itself either in absolute or in formal freedom. But obligation, as it applies to the individual before such manifestation of his will, applies to a state in which it is possible for the individual either to identify himself with the universal reason and be free or to refuse to do it. A murderer sentenced to death, says Hegel, is free only when he wills to get hung. We with the postulate of obligation, if in this case it applies, if the harmony of desire and knowledge is attainable, claim for him a freedom which shall enable him to attain it. Nor is this distinction of subjective and objective will to be compared with that absurd outstart of much current discus- sion as to freedom, ' Will is either determined or unde- termined, that is, indifferent ; now, if it is not determined,' and so on. The alternative is perfectly good in Psychology, but except for the misconception it breeds it has precisely the same importance to Philosophy as the fact that it was fair yesterday but it rains to-day. Indifference, indeed, is generally itself a form of determination and is always on a level with it in the case of a self-conscious being. Man lias always subjective freedom the power to realise or not his proper or objective freedom. If he does not so realise him- self in his actions, he is indifferent to his proper self or is determined by the blind force of his external relations. If he does realise his objective freedom, he is indifferent to the blind force of his external relations and is determined determining them according to his proper self. I ought now to examine in the same way the ideas of Merit and Responsibility, but it is better to close here as these subjects have lately become too prominent in ethical literature to be adequately treated within the limits of this paper. For the present purpose, too, a critical dis- cussion is unnecessary. Merit mid Responsibility are the necessary consequents or complements of the ideas already discussed. It is just as legitimate to reject them (in the only sense in which anybody gives them any meaning and value), on the ground of Physical Ethics, as it would be fora man who had gone round the world to deny the existence <>f some place which could not have, lain in his way. Nor are these ideas in any way inconsistent with the fact that to make the moral law square with the appetites is, as Kant says, "to corrupt at the source the fountain of Duty mid to banish and cloud all its dignity"; seeing that in ethics they spring from and are determined by that very fountain of Moral Obligation.