that result necessarily from his bad character taken in conjunction with other causes. Hence, however he may account for his error from bad habits which he has allowed to grow on him, whatever art he may use to paint to himself an unlawful act he remembers as something in which he was carried away by the stream of physical necessity, this cannot protect him from self-reproach :not even if he have shown depravity so early that he may reasonably be thought to have been born in a morally hopeless condition-he will still be rightly judged, and will judge himself "just as responsible as any other man" since in relation to his noümenal self his life as a whole, from first to last, is to be regarded as a single phenomenon resulting from an absolutely free choice.

I need not labour this point further; it is evident that the necessities of Kant's metaphysical explanation of moral responsibility make him express with peculiar emphasis and fullness the notion of what I have called Neutral Freedom, a kind of causality manifested in bad and irrational volitions no less than in the good and rational.

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On the other hand, it is no less easy to find passages in which the term Freedom seems to me most distinctly to stand for Good or Rational Freedom. Indeed, such passages are, I think, more frequent than those in which the other meaning is plainly required. Thus he tells us that "a free will must find its principle of determination in the [moral] 'Law,'"1 and that "freedom, whose causality can be determined only by the law, consists just in this, that it restricts all inclinations by the condition of obedience to pure law ".2 Whereas, in the argument previously examined, his whole effort was to prove that the noümenon or supersensible being, of which each volition is a phenomenon, exercises "free causality" in unlawful acts, he tells us elsewhere, in the same treatise, that the supersensible nature" of rational beings, who have also a "sensible nature,' is their "existence according to laws which are independent of every empirical condition, and therefore belong to the autonomy of pure [practical] reason". Similarly, in an earlier work, he explains that "since the conception of causality involves that of laws. . . though freedom is not a property of the will depending on physical laws, yet it is not for that reason lawless; on the contrary, it must be a causality according to immutable laws, but of a peculiar kind; otherwise, a free will would be a chimæra (Unding)" And this immutable law of the "free" or "autonomous will is, as he goes on to say, the fundamental principle of morality, "so that a free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the same ".

I have quoted this last phrase, not because it clearly exhibits the notion of Rational Freedom, -on the contrary, it rather

1 Werke, v., p. 30. 2 Ib., p. 83. 3 Ib., p. 46. 4 Werke, iv., p. 294.

shows how easily this notion may be confounded with the other. A will subject to its own moral laws may mean a will that, so far as free, conforms to these laws; but it also may be conceived as capable of freely disobeying these laws-exercising Neutral Freedom. But when Freedom is said to be a " causality according to immutable laws" the ambiguity is dispelled; for this evidently cannot mean merely a faculty of laying down laws which may or may not be obeyed; it must mean that the will, qui free, acts in accordance with these laws;-the human being, doubtless, often acts contrary to them; but then, according to this view, its choice in such actions is determined not "freely" but "mechanically," by "physical" and "empirical" springs of action.

If any further argument is necessary to show that Kantian "Freedom" must sometimes be understood as Rational or Good Freedom, I may quote one or two of the numerous passages in which Kant, either expressly or by implication, identifies Will and Reason; for this identification obviously excludes the possibility of Will's choosing between Reason and non-rational impulses. Thus in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten,1 he tells us that "as Reason is required to deduce actions from laws, Will is nothing but pure practical reason"; and, similarly, in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, he speaks of the "objective reality of a pure Will or, which is the same thing, a pure practical reason". Accordingly, whereas in some passages the "autonomy" which he identifies with "Freedom" is spoken of as autonomy of will," in others we are told that the "moral law expresses nothing else than autonomy of the pure practical reason that is, Freedom"."

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I think that I have now established the verbal ambiguity that I undertook to bring home to Kant's account of Free Will; I have shown that in his exposition this fundamental term oscillates between incompatible meanings. But it may, perhaps, be thought that the defect thus pointed out can be cured by a merely verbal correction: that the substance of Kant's ethical doctrine may still be maintained, and may still be connected with his metaphysical doctrine. It may still be held that Reason dictates that we should at all times act from a maxim that we can will to be a universal law, and that we should do this from pure regard for reason and reason's law, admitting that it is a law which we are free to disobey; and it may still be held that the reality of this moral freedom is to be reconciled

1 Werke, iv., p. 260 (Hartenstein).

2 Werke, v., p. 58. See an acute discussion of Kant's perplexing use of the term "Will in Prof. Schurman's Kantian Ethics, which has anticipated me in the above quotations.

3 E.g., Werke, iv., p. 296.

4 E.g., Werke, v., p. 35.

412 H. SIDGWICK: THE KANTIAN CONCEPTION OF FREE WILL.

with the universality of physical causation by conceiving it as a relation between the agent's noümenal self-independent of timeconditions—and his character as manifested in time; the only correction required being to avoid identifying Freedom and Goodness or Rationality as attributes of agents or actions.

I should quite admit that the most important parts both of Kant's doctrine of morality, and of his doctrine of Freedomn may be saved:-or I should perhaps rather say that the latter may be left to conduct an unequal struggle with the modern notions of heredity and evolution at any rate I admit that it is not fundamentally affected by my present argument. But I think that a good deal more will have to go from a corrected edition of Kantism than merely the "word" Freedom in certain passages, if the confusion introduced by the ambiguity of this word is to be eliminated in the manner that I have suggested. I think that the whole topic of the "heteronomy" of the will, when it yields to empirical or sensible impulses, will have to be abandoned or profoundly modified. And I am afraid that most readers of Kant will feel the loss to be serious; since nothing in Kant's ethical writing is more fascinating than the ideawhich he expresses repeatedly in various forms-that a man realises the aim of his true self when he obeys the moral law, whereas, when he wrongly allows his action to be determined by empirical or sensible stimuli, he becomes subject to physical causation, to laws of a brute outer world. But if we dismiss the identification of Freedom and Rationality, and accept definitely and singly Kant's other notion of Freedom as expressing the relation of the human thing-in-itself to its phenomenon, I am afraid that this spirit-stirring appeal to the sentiment of Liberty must be dismissed as idle rhetoric. For the life of the saint must be as much subject-in any particular portion of it—to the necessary laws of physical causation as the life of the scoundrel: and the scoundrel must exhibit and express his characteristic selfhood in his transcendental choice of a bad life, as much as the saint does in his transcendental choice of a good one. If, on the other hand, to avoid this result, we take the other horn of the dilemma,—if we accept the development of Kantian criticism which Mr. Ritchie and his friends offer us, and identify inner freedom with rationality,-then a more serious excision will be required. For, along with Neutral' or 'Moral' Freedom, the whole Kantian view of the relation of the noümenon to the empirical character will have to be dropped, and with it must go the whole Kantian method of maintaining moral responsibility and moral imputation: in fact, all that has made Kant's doctrine interesting and impressive to English advocates of Free Will (in the ordinary sense), even when they have not been convinced of its soundness.

IMPERSONAL PROPOSITIONS.

By JOHN VENN.

In reading the able and instructive logical essay, Die Impersonalien, which Prof. Sigwart has just published [for brief general notice, see below, p. 463.-ED.], one thing that seems to me to come out clearly is the advantage of a broad survey of the various devices adopted in different languages for the expression of these forms of proposition. So long as we look only to the English, in which the impersonal propositions are comparatively few, one might be inclined to adopt the view which the general teaching of Formal Logic rather tends to enforce the view, namely, that the predicative form is the only regular and common one, and that the others are always to be regarded as mere contractions of this, or as forms of a primitive kind which have not yet expanded themselves into their due proportions; and that in any case a subject is wanted to render even their meaning complete. This view would hardly be adopted by anyone familiar with the symbolic renderings of Logic,-at least with those founded on the general scheme of Boole,-for in these we resolutely interpret every proposition into an assertion of the existence or non-existence of some particular combination. Accordingly, here the existential, and therefore impersonal, form becomes the universal one; and we are perpetually being reminded that any proposition, however naturally appropriate to it might be the ordinary predicative form, will adapt itself, at any rate in the language of symbols, to the alternative form. It is, however, none the less desirable to be reminded that the actual usage of existing and highly-cultivated languages is very variable in this respect, and that the German, for instance, which makes a very large use of the impersonal form, employs it in many classes of cases where the English invariably adopts the predicative. If there is any form of assertion which to us would seem naturally adapted for the latter, it is that in which we attribute a simple sensation to ourselves, for our own personality is about the most natural and appropriate subject' to the reflective mind which we can well conceive. Accordingly, if we thought only of our own usage, we might argue that I am cold,' in which 'I' stand prominent, and the cold' is regarded as an attribute, was the peculiarly appropriate expression. But the German says 'Es friert mich'; and so in many other cases.

I judge that, on the whole, Prof. Sigwart adopts much the same view that I incline towards myself; but I give it here rather in a form of my own, because in a brief note it is easier to do justice to oneself than to another. On this view, when we look to the actual subject-matter about which we have occasion to make assertions and denials, we can trace two broadly contrasted

classes of things or events, which are respectively the appropriate material for a subject-and-predicate,' and for what may be called an 'existential' form of proposition. There is nothing, however, to show that either kind of subject-matter is one of earlier recognition than the other, or that consequently the form of proposition appropriate to it is either intrinsically more primitive, or more likely ultimately to prevail, than the other. But when we have the two forms of proposition in familiar use, we find ourselves able without much trouble to extend either of them over a large part of the province which lies between their most appropriate applications indeed, it is difficult to say that either of the two cannot be employed for any purpose of assertion or denial whatever.

The typical instances of the contrasted classes mentioned above seem to me to be the following. On the one hand, there are substances, which possess a considerable number of permanent attributes, sufficient, so to say, to yield a solid nucleus: solid enough to bear the detachment of the predicate-attribute without interfering with the integrity of the subject. In such a case the difficulty often felt in removing an attribute to the place of predicate, and yet treating the subject as if it were unaltered, by retaining its name unchanged, is not seriously felt. I can say The fruit is green' or 'The lion is enraged,' without feeling that the attributes which I have thus detached from the subject and relegated to the predicate have in any way interfered with its comparatively massive and unchangeable character. To such cases as these, therefore, the apparently contradictory assumption of a fixed subject with variable attributes seems peculiarly appropriate. On the other hand, we meet with groups of events with no underlying bond of a single substance to give them their unity. The occurrence of a storm is a good case in point. What we want to indicate is the combination of cloud, wind, rain, and possibly thunder and lightning. The machinery of subject and predicate seems intrinsically unsuitable for this. A far more natural way would seem to be to give a name to the combination as a whole, and to adopt some modification of this name to indicate that a thing corresponding to this combination was in occurrence. This is readily done by saying 'There is a storm' or 'It storms' ('Es stürmt').

This seems to me to be the rationale of the distinction between the two common forms of proposition; and if so, it certainly suggests that neither of the two is essentially the more primitive or simple of the two, and also that neither of them is likely entirely to supersede the other. But it also suggests that between one of these typical cases and the other there are any number of intermediate cases, and that therefore we may often find it difficult to say which of the two forms is the most appropriate. Consider, for instance, the group of events known as an execution. Convention does not allow us to say 'It executes,' as