War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [787]
But neither in the one case nor in the other, however we may change our point of view, however we may try to grasp what connection the man finds himself in with the external world, or however inaccessible it seems to us, however much we lengthen or shorten the period of time, however intelligible or unfathomable the causes are for us—we can never imagine either total freedom or total necessity.
(1) However we may try to imagine a man excluded from the influences of the external world, we will never arrive at a concept of freedom in space. A man’s every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body. I raise my arm and lower it. My action seems free to me; but asking myself if I could raise my arm in any direction, I see that I raised my arm in the direction in which there were fewest obstacles to that action either from bodies around me or from the structure of my own body. If, out of all possible directions, I chose one, I did so because there were fewer obstacles in that direction. For my action to be free, it is necessary that it not meet with any obstacles. To imagine man as free, we must imagine him outside space, which is obviously impossible.
(2) However close together we bring the time of judgment to the time of the act, we will never get a concept of freedom in time. For if I examine an act committed a second ago, I must still recognize the unfreedom of the act, since the act is bound to the moment of time in which it was committed. Can I raise my arm? I raise it, but I ask myself: could I have not raised my arm in that already past moment of time? To convince myself of it, I do not raise my arm in the next moment. But it is not in that first moment when I asked myself about freedom that I did not raise my arm. Time went by, it was not in my power to stop it, and the arm which I then raised and the air in which I then made that movement are no longer the air which now surrounds me and the arm with which I now do not make that movement. The moment in which the first movement was performed is irretrievable, and at that moment I could make only one movement, and whatever movement I made, that movement could be the only one. The fact that I did not raise my arm the next moment does not prove that I could have not raised it. And since my movement could be the only one in one moment of time, it could not be any other. To imagine it as free, one must imagine it in the present, at the border of past and future, that is, outside time, which is impossible.
(3) However much the difficulty of comprehending causes may increase, we will never arrive at the notion of total freedom, that is, the absence of cause. However unfathomable for us is the cause of the expression of will in any act of mine or others, the first demand of intelligence is the assumption of and search for a cause, without which no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm in order to perform an act independent of any cause, but the fact that I want to perform an act that has no cause, is the cause of my act.
But even if, imagining a man completely excluded from all influences, examining only his instantaneous act in the present, not provoked by any cause, we should allow the infinitesimally small remainder of necessity to equal zero, we would still not arrive at a notion of man’s total freedom; for a being who is not affected by the influences of the external world, who is outside time and does not depend on causes, is no longer a man.
In the same way, we can never imagine the actions of a man without any participation of freedom and subject only to the law of necessity.