. . . “_Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor_.”
but at the time of action “the worse” must appear to him as a good, at any rate then and in his own judgment. Further, beyond these psychological considerations there are grave moral objections, Renouvier points out, to admitting “an indifferent will,” for the acts of such a will being purely arbitrary and haphazard, the man will be no moral agent, no responsible person. A man who wills apart from the consideration of any motive whatever can never perform any meritorious action. Under the conception of an indifferent will the term “merit” ceases to have a meaning. The theologians who have asserted the doctrine (indeed, it seems to have originated, Renouvier thinks, with them) have readily admitted this point, for it opens up the way for their theory of divine grace or the good will of God acting directly upon or within the agent. Will and merit are for them quite separate, the latter being due to the mystical operations of divine favour or grace, in honour of which the indifference of the will has been postulated. Philosophers not given to appeals to divine grace, who have upheld the doctrine of the indifferent will, have really been less consistent than the theoloians and have fallen into grave error.
Renouvier appeals to the testimony of the penal laws of all nations in favour of his criticism of an indifferent will. Motive _is_ deemed a real factor, for men are not deemed to have acted indifferently. Some deliberation, indeed, is implied in all action which is conscious and human, some comparison of motives and a conscious, decision. The values of truth, as well as those of morality are equally fatal to the indifferentist; for, asks Renouvier, is a man to be regarded as not determined to affirm as true what he judges to be true?
The doctrine of freedom as represented by that of an indifferent will is no less vicious, Renouvier affirms, than the opposing doctrine of universal necessity. The truth is that they both rest on fictions. “Indifferentism” imagines a will divorced from judgment, separated from the rational man himself, an unseizable power, a mysterious absolute cause unconnected with reflection or deliberation, a mere chimera. For determinism the will is equally a fiction.