(Scripture Reading Exercise.)

THE FREE AGENCY OF INTELLIGENCES.

NOTES.

1. Free Agency: First as to the word "free." The authorities define it to mean having liberty to follow ones own views, desires, inclinations, or choice. Possessed of self-initiatory power. Hence exempt from the arbitration, dominion or direction of others. By "free agency" is meant the power or capacity of acting freely, that is, without constraint of the law. A rational agent whose actions are determined by his own unstrained will. Wayland in his University sermons says, man was endowed with the gift of free agency. He has the same power to disobey the law of God as to obey it. If a man is not a free agent he is not the authority of his actions, and has, therefore, no responsibility, no moral personality at all. (Standard Dictionary). The term "moral agent," means practically the same thing as "free agent." "A moral agent is a being that is capable of those actions that have a moral quality, and which can properly be denominated good or evil in a moral sense."

2. Analysis of mind Operations in Free Agency: I believe the student of the subject of the "free agency of intelligences" will find the following analysis on the freedom of the will, summarized from Guizot, helpful.

(a) Power of Deliberation: The mind is conscious of a power of deliberation; before the intellect passes the different motives of action, interests, passions, opinions, etc. The intellect considers, compares, estimates, and finally judges them. This is a preparatory work which precedes the act of will.

(b) Liberty, Free Agency or Will: When deliberation has taken place—when man has taken full cognizance of the motives which present themselves to him, he takes a resolution, of which he looks upon himself as the author, which arises because he wishes it, and which would not arise unless he did wish it—here the fact of agency is shown; it resides complete in the resolution which man makes after deliberation; it is the resolution which is the proper act of man, which subsists by him alone; a simple fact independent of all the facts which precede it or surround it.

(c) Free Will, or Agency Modified: At the same time that man feels himself free, he recognizes the fact that his freedom is not arbitrary, that it is placed under the dominion of a law which will preside over it and influence it. What that law is will depend upon the education of each individual, upon his surroundings, etc. To act in harmony with that law is what man recognizes as his duty; it will be the task of his liberty. He will soon see, however, that he never fully acquits himself of his task, never acts in full harmony with his moral law. Morally capable of conforming himself to his law, he falls short of doing it. He does not accomplish all that he ought, nor all that he can. This fact is evident, one of which all may give witness; and it often happens that the best men, that is, those who have best conformed their will to reason have often been the most struck with their insufficience.

(d) Necessity of Eternal Assistance: This weakness in man leads him to feel the necessity of an external support to operate as a fulcrum for the human will, a power that may be added to its present power and sustain it at need. Man seeks this fulcrum on all sides; he demands it in the encouragement of friends, in the councils of the wise; but as the visible world, the human society, do not always answer to his desires, the soul goes beyond the visible world, above human relations, to seek this fulcrum of which it has need. Hence the religious sentiment develops itself: man addresses himself to God, and invokes his aid through prayer.

(e) Man Finds the Help He Seeks: Such is the nature of man that when he sincerely asks this support he obtains it; that is, seeking it is almost sufficient to secure it. Whosoever feeling his will weak invokes the encouragement of a friend, the influence of wise councils, the support of public opinion, or who addresses himself to God by prayer, soon feels his will fortified in a certain measure and for a certain time.

(f) Influence of Spiritual World on Liberty: There are spiritual influences at work on man—the empire of the spiritual world upon liberty. There are certain changes, certain moral events which manifest themselves in man without his being able to refer their origin to an act of his will, or being able to recognize the author. Certain facts occur in the interior of the human soul which it does not refer to itself, which it does not recognize as the work of its own will. There are certain days, certain moments in which it finds itself in a different moral state from that which it was last conscious of under the operations of its own will. In other words, the moral man does not wholly create himself; he is conscious that causes, that powers external to himself act upon and modify him imperceptibly—this fact has been called the grace of God which helps the will of man, while others see in it the evidences of predestination.

3. Free Agency More Than a Mere Choice Between Alternatives: "When most people talk of believing in moral freedom, they mean by freedom a power which exhausts itself in acts of choice between a series of alternative courses: but, important though such choice as a function of freedom is, the root idea of freedom lies deeper still. It consists in the idea, not that a man is, as a personality, the first and the sole cause of his choice between alternative courses, but that he is, in a true, even if in a qualified sense, the first cause of what he does, or feels, or is, whether this involves an act of choice, or consists of an unimpeded impulse. Freedom of choice between alternatives is the consequence of this primary faculty. It is the form in which the faculty is most noticeably manifested; but it is not the primary faculty of personal freedom itself. That this faculty of the self-origination of impulse is really what we mean by freedom, and what we mean by personality also, is shown by the only supposition which is open to us, if we reject this. If a man is not in any degree, be this ever so limited, the first cause or originator of his own actions or impulses, he must be the mere transmitter or quotient of forces external to his conscious self, like a man pushed against another by the pressure of a crowd behind him. In other words, he would have no true self—no true personality at all." (Mallock, see note 4.)

4. Free Agency in Practical Life—Literature—History: In his work on the "Reconstruction of Religious Belief," (a work by the way, we recommend to our Seventies) W. H. Mallock devotes a chapter to "Mental Civilization and the Belief in Human Freedom," the tenor of which assumes that in the practical affairs of life, in literature and in history, we proceed upon the assumption that man is a free agent and can determine, within certain limits at least, both his physical and moral conduct; and argues that without this power, the life of man would be meaningless. In the matter of love he decides with Shakespeare's Iago that "It is in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are the gardens to the which our wills are gardeners." That this is true he holds to be "attested not only by the private experiences of most civilized men, but also by all the great poetry in which the passion of love is dealt with." "Such poetry is," in Shakespeare's words, "a mirror held up to nature; and it is only recognized as great because it reflects faithfully." In the matter of heroism in the face of physical danger, he holds that the same story repeats itself. "A man who for some great end undergoes prolonged peril, and deliberately wills to die for the sake of that end if necessary, is no doubt valued, because such conduct 'originates in the man's conscious self, which he has deliberately chosen, when he might just as well have chosen its opposite and which is not imposed on him by conditions, whether within his organism or outside it." The virtue which arises from forgiveness of sin exists in consequence of recognition of this force we call agency in man. "Forgiveness," says our author, "is an act which, in the absence of a belief in freedom, (free agency) not only would lose its meaning, but could not take place at all. To forgive an injury, implies that bad as the offence may have been, the man who committed it was better than his own act, and was for this reason not constrained to commit it; and while it is only the assumption of the better potential self in him that makes him a subject to whom moral blame is applicable, it is only for the sake of this self that forgiveness can abstain from blaming. The believer in freedom says to the offending party, 'I forgive you for the offense of not having done your best.' The determinist (one who believes that man has not the power of free will) says: 'I neither forgive nor blame you; for although you have done your worst, your worst was your best also.'" Of the great characters of literature, Mr. Mallock also says: "They interest us as born to freedom, and not naturally slaves, and they pass before us like kings in a Roman triumph. Once let us suppose these characters to be mere puppets of heredity and circumstance, and they and the works that deal with them lose all intelligible content, and we find ourselves confused and wearied with the fury of an idiot's tale." Historical characters are placed in the same category. All praise or blame only has meaning as we regard these historical characters as free moral agents: "All this praising and blaming is based on the assumption that the person praised or blamed is the originator of his own actions, and not a mere transmitter of forces. Man's significance for men in the whole category of human experiences 'resides primarily in what he makes of himself, not in what he has been made by an organism derived from his parents, and the various external stimuli to which it has automatically responded." ("The Reconstruction of Religious Belief," W. H. Mallock.)

5. The Fact of Free Agency Assumed in the Jewish Scripture: It will be matter of surprise perhaps to the student that in the scriptural references upon the subject of free agency of intelligencies no references are cited in either the Old or the New Testament. The reason is that so far as the writer knows there is no explicit text in either covering the exact point. The "freedom" of man, however, free agency, power to obey or disobey the law of God, is everywhere pre-supposed throughout both the Old and New Testaments. It is a doctrine nowhere in doubt from the first commandment in Genesis to the last in the Book of Revelation. Of what significance is the commandment in Genesis: "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die"—of what significance, I say, is this law to man if he possesses not the power within himself to obey it or disobey it? Then in the last chapter of the last book of the Bible (as now arranged) it is written: "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. * * * And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely"—of what significance to man is this scripture if he has not the power of his own volition to keep the commandments of God that he may have right to the tree of life; or to accept the invitation of the Lamb and the Bride to come and "take of the water of life freely?" "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely!" What a mockery is here if man cannot "will" to take of the waters of life! Is it thinkable that the "Lamb," the loving Christ, would issue an invitation to man in a matter so important as partaking of the water of life, if man has no power to accept such invitation? Is the Christ capable of such mockery? One could think it of some malicious demon; but of Messiah, never!

I have said that so far as known to this writer there is no passage either in the Old or New Testament that explicitly teaches the free agency of intelligencies of men; but implicitly free agency is taught in many passages throughout the Jewish scriptures of which the above quoted passages are but examples. In lesson IX of Part II of the First Year Book (p. 53) attention is called to the fact that in the Book of Esther the name of Deity does not occur; and yet it may be said to be the general opinion of all Bible scholars that in no book in the sacred collection is the presence of God more felt than in that same Book of Esther! So it is in respect of this doctrine of free agency and the Jewish scriptures. Though this doctrine is nowhere explicitly designated in terms in the Old or New Testament, yet every where throughout the sacred book its presence is felt, and the fact of it is everywhere assumed.

[Note: This is a brief treatise on the spiritual and natural creations, but is too long for insertion in the notes of this lesson. Where available I suggest it be read to the quorums.]