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A system which is part of a deterministic system I shall call "determined"; one which is not part of any such system I shall call "capricious." It is to be observed that a system which has one set of determinants will in general have many. In the case of the motions of the planets, for example, the configurations of the solar system at any two given times will be determinants.
The question regarding free moral self-determination, on the other hand, is either likewise ignored, and for the same reasons, or it is supposed that it must fail of itself, if only this self-determination is explained in a deterministic way.
He manifested in his dog's brain the free agency of life, by which all the generations of metaphysicians have postulated God, and by which all the deterministic philosophers have been led by the nose despite their clear denouncement of it as sheer illusion. What Jerry did he did.
Some changes are unpredictable, even in deterministic principle. Other changes are well documented. An example of the latter class of changes in the learning curve. Humans learn and the more they learn the more they alter their behaviour. So, to obtain any meaningful data, one has to observe behaviour in time, to obtain a sequence of reactions and actions.
Whether this consideration suffices to overcome our difficulty completely, I do not know; but in any case it does much to diminish it. It will serve to illustrate what has been said if we apply it to the question of free will. Determinism in regard to the will is the doctrine that our volitions belong to some deterministic system, i.e. are "determined" in the sense defined above.
It is true that the formulæ involved may be of strictly infinite complexity, and therefore not practically capable of being written down or apprehended. But except from the point of view of our knowledge, this might seem to be a detail: in itself, if the above considerations are sound, the material universe must be deterministic, must be subject to laws.
"You seem to leave the end," he said, "tangled and unravelled; one wants the threads just gathered together again." So I will try and discharge this task. The difficulty is not to arrive at a deterministic theory of life for most men.
This deterministic role of the war machine has never been more dramatically in the foreground than during the crucial years from 1910 to the present day, when war apparatus costs have topped the list of government expenditures. Growth of state functions with the expansion of the economy has resulted in the creation of a vast state bureaucratic apparatus.
If Germany had won the war, Germany would have shown a hostility more effective than that of the Entente. However we may blame Western Governments for their policy, we must realize that, according to the deterministic economic theory of the Bolsheviks, no other policy was to be expected from them.
And the Frenchmen, Renan, Zola, and the others who have followed, are equally deterministic, but viewing the human body as a highly organized machine with which we may amuse ourselves by registering its sensations. These literatures are true in so far as they reflect the characteristics of the nations from which they spring.
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