Human Understanding and Free-Will

a) Understanding

By understanding—or intellect, or mind—we mean that power of man by which he has knowledge of a suprasensuous character. The understanding is a knowing-power or cognitive faculty which grasps the essences of things. It is a matter of universal human experience that man has a power of knowing things which do not fall within the range of the senses, and that this power grasps even senseobjects in a manner superior to that exhibited by the senses. In a word, it is a matter of universal experience that man has mind or intellect or understanding. Man has a power of knowing things which do not fall within the range of the senses. Man knows what is meant by substance, reality, being; man understands what is meant by unity, goodness, truth, beauty; man has a knowing grasp of virtue, honor, patriotism, religion, duty, ideals. Now, manifestly, these are realities which cannot be tasted or smelled or heard or seen or touched. These are realities which, of their nature, elude the grasp of bodily powers, of sentient faculties. But if man grasps these things—and nobody can doubt that he does—then he has a power or capacity or faculty for grasping them. This faculty is called the intellect, the mind, or the understanding. Man knows even sense-objects in a manner superior to that exhibited by the senses. The senses deal with objects in their singular or individual concreteness, but the mind or understanding deals with even sense-objects in abstract and universal essence. Thus I see a bodily object called a tree; but my mind knows not only that this is a tree (we speak of a mind already in possession of the idea tree), but knows this because it knows what a tree is, what any tree is, what every tree is as a tree. I see a picture of a triangle drawn in white chalk on a blackboard, but the mind, not limited to this single picture in all its concrete details of size and color and position, understands that this is a triangle because it knows what a triangle is, what each and every triangle is and must be to be a triangle at all. Now the tree and the picture are bodily objects which are grasped by the sense of sight. But the understanding of tree and triangle is manifestly something further and higher than the sense-grasp of these objects. Man has, therefore, a power for knowing even senseobjects in a manner superior to that of the senses.

MAN’S SOUL 93 This power we call the mind, the intellect, or the understanding. The highest of bodily powers are the senses, external and internal. Hence the power of grasping things that lie beyond the reach of the senses, and of grasping even sense-objects in a manner superior to sense, is not a bodily power. It is a spiritual power, a faculty of the soul. If we grant that man has understanding, v^e grant simultaneously that this understanding is a power or faculty of the soul. We, therefore, define the understanding or intellect as a suprasensuous (r. e., spiritual) knowing-power which apprehends non-material (r. e., non-sensible) things, and which apprehends sensible things in a manner free from the limitations of sense-knowledge. It is true, of course, that in this life of a united soul and body, the soul-faculty of mind or understanding derives its elements of knowledge from the findings of the senses. I must have sense-knowledge of tree and triangle, I must see some trees and some pictured triangles, or I must be instructed by word or image in these things, before my mind can formulate its essential grasp of these realities. But given the experience of the senses, the mind or understanding beholds far more in this experience than the senses can, and its findings are not mere associations or complexities of sense-experiences. Intellectual knowledge, knowledge of mind or understanding, is not only different in degree from sense-knowledge; it is also different in kind. We know that man has a soul-power or soulfaculty of understanding because, as a matter of fact, man exercises such a faculty. He could not exercise it unless he had it. Man, therefore, has an understanding. Man has the power of knowing realities in a suprasensuous manner. He has a further extension of the same power by which he works with these understood realities, comparing, combining, dividing, reflecting—a power of seeing these realities in their relations, in fact. In a word, man has not mere ideas of things, but he combines ideas into judgments, and from these thinks out or reasons further judgments. To illustrate: from my knowledge of what an angle is and of what equality means, I can grasp the meaning of equal angles. And from my knowledge of parallel lines and of a straight transversal cutting these lines, I can conclude to equal functions in equal situations. And so I reason out the truth that when parallels are cut by a transversal, the alternate-interior angles are equal, and the interior-exterior angles are equal, and the opposite angles are equal. These are conclusions of reason. Now, reason is but another name for understanding in a special function. Reason is understanding inasmuch as it works out or thinks out conclusions from given data, from understood premisses. When the understanding forms a

MAN’S SOUL 95 judgment without having to think it out; when the ideas combined in a judgment are such that their union is inevitable once the mind views them together, then the judgment is called immediate, and is said to be recognized by intelligence. But intelligence is not a faculty distinct from the understanding; it is understanding or intellect inasmuch as this faculty recognizes a self-evident truth. To sum up. Man has mind, understanding, or intellect. In its special function of thinking things out, this power is called reason. In its special function of recognizing self-evident and necessary judgments or propositions, this power is called intelligence. But, in every case, mind, understanding, intellect, reason, intelligence, are only different names for the one suprasensuous faculty which is usually called the understanding.

b) Free-will

Wherever a knowing-power is found, there is also found a tendency to act upon the knowledge gathered by that power. Indeed, if this were not true, we should not know how to distinguish living bodies into sentient and non-sentient. If the dog sniffs his food and then takes it or refuses it, it is because his knowing-power of smell and taste have functioned to attract him to desirable food or to repel him from what is not desirable, either in itself or in relation to his own state of hunger or repletion, of health or sickness. It is the sense of touch manifested by certain one-celled beings which enables us to know that they are sentient and not merely vegetal, and the sense is manifested by their movement away from uncomfortable stimulus and towards that which is desirable. There is always a tendency to action where there is any sort of knowledge. Now, we have seen that man has not only the lowest form of knowledge, that is, sensuous knowledge, but that he has suprasensuous knowledge as well. He has not only the knowledge of the senses; he has intellectual knowledge or knowledge of the understanding. The tendency to follow sense-knowledge (towards desirable objects and away from those that are undesirable) is called appetency or appetite. The tendency to follow intellectual knowledge is called intellectual appetency or the will. We are justified by common, hourly, human experience in stating that man has a will. Each of us can verify the assertion by a thousand ready examples. If I am tired when the alarm-bell rings, I find the bed good, I have a tendency to prolong my time of rest. This is appetency or appetite, and in itself it is sensuous appetite. But I have consciousness of my power to approve this appetite and remain at rest, or to refuse to follow it and rise for the day’s duties. My knowledge of duty may prove a sufficient incentive to induce me to overcome the senseappetency which inclines me to rest, and thus my

MAN’S SOUL 97 intellectual appetency for what the mind knows to be right and good can prevail. My intellectual appetency is called the will. No man who has ever dragged himself wearily from bed can rationally doubt the existence of the will. But it is not enough that we recognize the appeal to man of suprasensuous motives. It is not enough to assert and to prove the existence of the will. We have also to establish the fact that the will has freedom in its choice. Indeed, the example just given,— the example of the reluctant riser—is an evidence not only of the existence of the will, but also of its freedom. But we shall defer for a moment our further study of the interesting and somnolent gentleman and look more deeply into the question of freedom or liberty. Freedom is always a kind of immunity, an immunity from force, from compulsion, from determination to action. A great many things in this world of ours are not free, and man, inasmuch as he is bodily and sentient, finds himself subject to determinateness of being and action. Man is not free to disregard the force or law of gravity and to fly at will through the heavens without mechanical aids which help him use the law against itself. Man is not free to grow a foot or an inch merely by taking thought. Man is not free to have the digestive function operate in a manner other than that naturally required, or to violate the “law” of the circulation of the blood and still retain life. Nor is man free to annihilate the tendency which follows normally upon sense-knowledge. A hungry man will feel the appetite for food, whether he likes it or no; an upright man will experience the tendency to follow selfishness or greed or anger or sloth or lust. But the hungry man, however great his appetite, can refuse the food, as, for example, the Irish patriot refused it for weeks, moved to fast even until death by a motive that only the mind could grasp and of which the senses had, and could have, no knowledge whatever. The upright man can instantly resist the sway of temptation, refusing, for motives which the mind alone can grasp, consent and action in a thing of vileness. This is human freedom; this is freedom of the will; this is the crowning glory of man amohg all the creatures of the bodily universe. The power of choosing, within the field of objects made known by the understanding, or by sense with recognition of the understanding, to do or to leave undone an action for the performance of which all is in readiness—this is the freedom of the will. An illustration or two will be in order. In one of the tales of O. Henry, a despicable beachcomber, reduced to the last and lowest extremity, determines to blackmail an honest citizen. He enters the citizen’s house, is treated kindly, and is offered that which his shaken body craves above all—whiskey. He drinks eagerly. Then, about to launch into his wicked

MAN’S SOUL 99 proposal, he suddenly recalls some remnants of his code of decency. With the words at his very lips, he pauses, stops definitely, and says to himself: “No; I can’t do it. A gentleman can’t blackmail the man he drinks with.” There came another day when the craving for alcohol drove the wretch almost to madness. Again he entered the honest citizen’s house; this time, without ado, he made his threat, and was told that he would be given money for his silence. The citizen left the room to procure the money, remarking as he stepped to the door, “The decanter is on the side-board; help yourself.” With hands that trembled in eagerness, the sorry villain poured out a glass of liquor. With nerves tingling, with appetite calling wildly, he raised the glass. Every cell in his tortured body was calling for that drink. And yet, with the glass at his lips, he stopped and put it down. “No,” he said, “I can’t do it. A gentleman can’t drink with the man he blackmails.” This is not a very elevating example, but it is a striking one— perhaps the more striking for the character of the chief actor—of what we mean by freedom of the will. We mean the freedom to do or not do a thing for motives which the mind alone can grasp (and the result of such motives is intellectual appetency) when all is in readiness for the action. St. Agnes, a little child in years and bodily growth, was led to the altar of the pagan god. She knew that her life was at stake. She could save it by the slight action of taking a few grains of incense from the vessel offered her and tossing these into the altarflame. Every bodily appetite cried out for life and against torture and violent death. All was in readiness for the simple act. Yet, in the face of death, and despite the cajoleries and fair promises made her if she would accept life, she refused the action, and died a martyr. Here is what we mean by freedom of the will: the power to do or not do a certain thing when all is in readiness for its performance. This is the freedom of choice, and this is the freedom which we call freedom of the will. One final illustration: David with a small group of followers was a fugitive from King Saul. He came near his own city of Bethlehem, but the town was held by the Philistines, and he dared not enter. David was weary and terribly oppressed by thirst. “And David longed, and said: O that some man would get me a drink of the water out of the cistern that is in Bethlehem by the gate. And three valiant men broke through the camp of the Philistines, and drew water out of the cistern… and brought it to David; but he would not drink, but offered it to the Lord, saying… Shall I drink the blood of these men that went, and the peril of their lives?” Here again, the will of David was free to choose; he could drink or refuse to drink. And even though every sensible motive called for the water, the higher motive of showing appreciation for devotion and noMAN’S SOUL ioi bility in his soldiers made David rather endure the thirst than seem to value his own comfort more than the lives of his men. He chose not to do, even though every circumstance for doing was present. This is what we mean by freedom of the will. The choice of the free-will is not always noble. If David had chosen to drink, if St. Agnes had chosen to live as an apostate, the will, in each case, would have been demonstrated free by their choice. To return to our sleepy friend. The motive which induces him to heed the alarm may not be high or noble. He may fear the loss of his job; he may fear the jibes of his family; and these motives may suffice to make him turn reluctantly from his rest. Or, on the contrary, he may mentally approve the bodily tendency and, casting care of consequences to the winds, he may return to his slumber. In any case his will has chosen. In any case, he has made free choice, and for motives which only the mind could know, or only the mind approve. So a sinner in deliberately submitting to temptation is still free, and his evil choice is a demonstration of freedom of the will. Freedom is demonstrated not only in the things that are hard to do (although it is more clearly and forcefully illustrated in such things), but in those which are easy as well. Esau, following the hunger of body with mental approval (for the mind can focus on certain motives, even the lowest, and so shut out the attractive power of those that are higher and stronger), gave up his rich inheritance for a single meal, and, in so doing, proved the freedom of his will quite as completely as the holy Susanna did when she accepted the loss of her good name rather than offend Almighty God. We have given these examples of what we mean by free-will. Now, it is a matter of experience, a matter of everyone’s consciousness, that this thing which we mean is a fact. For consciousness is our witness that we are masters of our deliberate actions. The testimony of this witness is heard unmistakably before, during, and after our action. Before action we are wont to weigh motives, to ponder what had best be done, to “make up our minds”; and if we omit this process, so naturally and humanly preparatory to sane action, we are perfectly conscious that the omission is our own doing. While performing the action, we are still aware that it is ours, and that we are doing it because we choose to do it. After the action, we are conscious of self-approval for having done it, or of regret and remorse. If we are placidly indifferent, we are still aware that this is due to the fact that the action itself involved no serious issues, or to the fact that we have hardened ourselves by drifting into what spiritual writers call tepidity and what the ordinary person would call, not without good warrant, stupidity. But no normal person will deny for a moment that this consciousness, this open awareness, of self-mastery and responsibility is a

MAN’S SOUL 103 fact. He may deny the value of consciousness as a witness and proceed logically by that process of denial into the impossible and self-contradictory state of skepticism. Or he may admit its value as an undeniable and universal factual experience, which has value if any awareness or thinking has value, and so he must come to the admission that free-will is really free. The testimony of consciousness to the freedom of the will is not merely an individual experience of every human being. The whole social structure is built up upon the solid conviction that man is, as a fact, free. The existence of laws and governments, for example, is proof positive of this conviction. We do not make laws for trees or horses; the gardener does not petition the legislature to pass an ordinance against weeds; the owner of a canary does not hang out a sign, “No cats allowed,” or, if he does, he does not expect the cats, but the human owners of cats, to pay attention to the proscription. The whole point of a law is that man who is free must be urged to choose wisely and in a manner consistent with public peace and security; the whole essence of a law—as G. K. Chesterton says somewhere—is that it may be broken. But necessitated things cannot keep a law or break it; only a free being can do that. Man can do that, and man, therefore, is free. In the full expression, man is endowed with freedom of choice or freewill.

Carry the argument from the social structure a bit farther. Human society is made up of a vast multitude of individuals who are busily presenting, every moment of their waking lives, incontrovertible evidence for human freedom. For everywhere human beings are seeking advice or giving it; they are contracting bills or paying them; they are delivering exhortations, promising rewards, threatening punishments, urging people to buy or sell, to speak or be silent. Now, all these things are so many proclamations of the universal acquiescence of mankind in the truth that the human will is free. Why ask advice, if one is not free to follow or reject it? Why give counsel, if it can have no possible effect? Why should my grocer or baker trust me, if I am fated to refuse payment, for aught he knows? Why should I trust the dollar bill or the coin I accept in payment, if the government, for anything I can tell, is fated to render such things worthless by repudiating its obligations ? Why should I praise a fine action and blame a cowardly one, if neither came by freedom, but both by necessity? Why should the criminal be punished, if he had no freedom and hence no responsibility in his criminal action? Denial of human freedom is a possibility in theory; it is an absurdity in practical social life. And, if this fact of freedom, universally and inevitably recognized among men, is an illusory thing and no true fact, then there remains no value in human knowledge at all, and we are all doomed to the

MAN’S SOUL 105 intellectual madness of complete skepticism. For, after all, there is some value in the words plain, manifest, obvious. And if so manifest a thing as human freedom be unreal, no human knowledge can be trusted for a moment. For no item of human knowledge is more manifestly a fact than this, that the human will is free. There is a philosophical proof for the freedom of the will, a proof of the greatest value and most conclusive power. But it is not an argument to read with a running glance. Some careful attention is here required. A faculty is a power for doing or receiving something. Our knowing-powers are faculties. So is our choosing-power, even if, for the moment, we suppose that it is not free. Now, no faculty is necessitated unless its object is so complete and perfect that it fills up the capacity of the faculty in such a thorough way as to leave no possible tendency of that faculty unsatisfied. Such an object does necessitate a faculty, for it meets the nature and requirements of the faculty at every point. It is what the faculty is for, and, in consequence, it is an object to which the faculty necessarily responds. A faculty is a living tendency for something and a power to achieve that something; and the perfect object of the faculty meets the tendency perfectly, satisfies it, renders its achievement so complete that not even a possible element of its natural striving is left unmet and unsatisfied. Such an object is perfect truth with reference to the understanding, and perfect truth is infinite Truth; it is God Himself. Such an object is perfect good, the Summum Bonum, with reference to the tendency which we have called the human will. And the Summum Bonum is God. Such an object thoroughly fulfills the capacity of the will, and there is not even a possibility of its having a shred or scrap of its natural tendency unsatisfied in such Good. God is the necessary final object of the whole of life, and to God, the Summum Bonum, the human will ever tends in all its deliberate actions. Even the sinner in his act of sin is tending towards what he perversely regards as somehow satisfactory, that is, as somehow partaking of the nature of good, and so in line with the boundless good, the Summum Bonum or God. Sin, of course, does not satisfy, but brings emptiness and remorse. But it is satisfaction, it is the quest of good, that explains the sinner’s perverse and mistaken choice. Similarly, if a man is actually looking for diamonds, and perversely insists on seeking them in a muck-heap, it still remains true that it is diamonds he is after. To such a seeker we rightly say, “Not there, you fool! You will never find gems in that stinking filth.” But the fact remains that, in spite of his perverse and deliberately mistaken choice of his field of search, he is really seeking diamonds. So the sinner, in spite of his perverse and deliberately mistaken field of choice, is actually looking for good (and ultimately the Summum Bonum) in the muckheap of moral filth. He will never find what he seeks in that place; but the point we make is that what he is seeking is good. For the will tends towards good, the Summum Bonum. In this the will is not free; this is its natural and inevitable bent; this is what the will is for. Now, only the Summum Bonum or Infinite Good can so fill up the will-tendency as to leave no possibility of further desire. Hence, only the Infinite Good can necessitate the will. Here upon earth, however, the good that attracts man’s will is ever finite. Therefore, here upon earth there is no object which can necessitate the will. As a consequence, the will remains free. Nor can it be objected that the will of a good man tends directly to God, the Summum Bonum, even in this life. This is true, but it constitutes no objection. For the tendency towards God which a virtuous person exercises does not find its object with perfect grasp in this world, and there are ever other objects which, under the aspect of good, seek to lure the will away from its final goal; such objects are, for instance, one’s own convenience or comfort (for the quest of the true goal is, in this world, a very real labor, and calls for endurance under stress); the presence and immediate appeal of objects which offer pleasure to the mind or promise satisfaction to strong bodily appetites. The absurdities which follow upon the denial of human free-will are such as to indicate beyond quibble the utter impossibility of finding truth in such denial. For, if man is not free, if he is not master of his deliberate conduct, then he is not responsible for his actions. And, if there is no human responsibility, there is no such thing as good and bad conduct, no such thing as virtue or vice, no morality in fact. And if all human conduct comes thus from an irresponsible and necessitated nature, governments and laws are but means of oppression and enslavement. No sane mind can accept these conclusions. Yet they are logically necessary if free-will is not a fact. We are thus driven by reason itself to accept free-will as a fact.

C) FUNDAMENTAL DUTY A duty is an obligation, incumbent upon one who has free-will, of doing, or omitting to do, or avoiding something. Now, an obligation incumbent upon one who has free-will is called a moral obligation. Duty stands correlated with right, and one possessed of free-will has a duty to do or to avoid that which another (and, ultimately, his Absolute Superior) has a right to require him to do or to avoid. Duty answers right; right gives rise to duty. The understanding grasps the reasoned fact that this world (and man who is the only free inhabitant of the bodily universe) has been made, and made for a purpose, by the infinite and all-perfect God. All worldly creatures except free man tend to their appointed end by natural and inevitable processes, which

MAN’S SOUL 109 we call physical laws. But man has free-will, and if he is to tend to his appointed end by his human conduct, he must freely choose to do so. Reason shows him that there is a requirement incumbent upon him to choose rightly. For the infinite and all-perfect God has made man for Himself and for endless beatitude, and He has a right to require man to use free-will for achieving that end. To this right of God corresponds fundamental duty in man. The Creator and Ruler of the universe has established it in order, and man is the only creature who can disturb that order; he can do so because he is free in his deliberate human acts. Yet reason shows him that he ought not to disturb the order divinely decreed, but ought to preserve it. This function of reason is called—in every individual instance in which free-choice is made—by the name conscience. God’s eternal Law of order, and human conscience (or reason) applying that Law—these are man’s guides in the way of duty. Man knows by reason that what is in line with the order he apprehends in the universe is good; and what is out of line with that order is evil. At an early age, each human person comes to an understanding of the law, “Good is to be done, and evil avoided.” Now, reason shows man that justice is good, and is to be done. And justice requires that everyone be given his due. Reason declares that honor is due to excellence, obedience to lawfully constituted authority, love to what is most worthy and perfect, gratitude to the giver of great and necessary gifts. Justice, therefore, requires free man to render, in full measure, honor, obedience, love, and gratitude to God, who is the supreme Excellence, Authority, Perfection, and Bestower of necessary gifts. But to render these duties to God is to practise religion. Religion is, therefore, a duty, and an obvious and fundamental duty, of man, the creature ennobled by free-will. In the exercise of the duty of religion man must practise virtue. Religion is itself a virtue in the man who observes this duty, and the recognition of the divine Excellence, Authority, and Perfection implies the exercise of every virtue. Man is, therefore, bound by a moral obligation from which, as reason shows him, there is no justifiable escape, to practise religion and to live virtuously. Obviously, in a muddled world stupefied by sin, the many forms of religion which clamor for man’s attention are not all of equal value. Man is to find and practise the true religion. This is but a logical extension of the duty which reason makes obvious—the duty of practising religion. For, in the last analysis, there is only one religion which deserves the name. This is the religion objectively established by God Himself when He walked the earth as Man. Men are not morally free (though physically they are) to choose the way in which they please to recognize God; men are morally bound (though not physically

MAN’S SOUL in coerced) to find out what God wills in this matter, and to get in line with His established decrees. Now, as we have seen, God became man and founded a Church, to which all men are called. It is a man’s fundamental duty, therefore, to find that Church and to practise the religion it prescribes. Hence, if a man is not perfectly sure that the form of religion which he professes is the one and only true religion of Jesus Christ (who is God and Man), then reason indicates the duty, imperative and absolute, of his seeking for the true religion until he finds it. This task, being imposed by infinite Wisdom as well as infinite Justice, a man will not find too exacting; if he is sincere and earnest, he will quickly discover what he seeks. For the rest, we have already seen that the one true Church of Christ is the Roman Catholic Church. Reason, therefore, requires every man to recognize and enter the Catholic Church, and to profess the Catholic religion with loyalty and fervor. This statement will not please non-Catholics; but our purpose is not to please or to displease, but to establish the truth by cold reason. The statement expresses truth; it expresses a fact; and the fact remains a fact even for those who shrink from facing it.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have defined understanding or intellect, and have studied brief but compelling evidence for the fact that man possesses this faculty.

We have shown what is meant by free-will, and have proved by concrete example as well as by abstract reasoning that free-will in man is a fact that cannot be rationally denied. We have seen that duty is consequent in man upon his character as free, and we have indicated and justified the fundamental human duties of practising the true religion and living virtuously. In all this we have studied much that is important, and important above others for the sociologist. Many modern sociologists, and notably “field workers/’ fail to recognize that the “cases” with which they deal so impersonally are human beings with understanding and free-will, not herd-animals or mechanical robots. Too many modern sociologists discount free-will altogether, attributing to heredity and environment the characters and personal qualities of those with whom they deal. Consequently, they make no appeal to free-will, they open up no avenues for its readier functioning, in the remedial measures which they take for “social betterment.” In this failure they are demonstrably unscientific, as we have seen in our present study. No sociologist is worthy of the name, none is worthy of his work with men, who does not recognize in those whom he directs and provides for, reasoning creatures capable of grasping and freely pursuing noble and ennobling ends.