Freedom of the will, which in itself is nothing other than freedom of thought, is limited in the same way as the freedom of thought. Thought cannot go beyond the horizon to which ideas extend; however, it is based on perceptions which are gradually aquired, and can be expanded as it does so. Likewise, the freedom of the will can also be expanded to that same extent, although, within such confines, it is unlimited. Another thing altogether is the working of the will; the faculty of willing is fatalistically imposed on us.
To the extent that fatum appears to man in the mirror of his own personality, free will and individual fatum are two rivals of equal value. We find that the peoples who believe in a fatum stand out for their strength and the power of their will, and that, on the other hand, men and women who let things flow as they are, since “what God has done well it is done’, they allow themselves to be carried away by circumstances in an ignominious way. In general, “surrender to the will of God” and “humility” are nothing more than covers for the fear of decisively assuming one’s own destiny and facing it.
Now, as much as the fatum appears to us, in its condition of ultimate delimiter, as more powerful than free will, we must not forget two things: first, that fatum is only an abstract concept, a force without matter, which for the individual there is only one individual fatum, that the fatum is nothing other than a concatenation of events, that man determines his own fatum as soon as he acts, thereby creating his own events, and that these, as they concern man, are provoked consciously or unconsciously by himself, and they must adapt to him. But the activity of man does not begin with birth, but already in the embryo and perhaps also – who knows – much earlier in his parents and ancestors. All of you, those who believe in the immortality of the soul, must first believe in its pre-existence, if you do not wish to make something immortal arise from the mortal; you will also have to believe in that kind of existence of the soul if you do not want to make it float through space until it finds a body to suit it. The Hindus say that the fatum is nothing other than the deeds we have done in a previous condition of our being.
How can the argument be refuted that one has not already acted consciously since eternity? From the still undeveloped consciousness of the child? Furthermore, can we not affirm that our conscience is always in relation to our actions?
Emerson also says: “Thought is always attached to the thing that appears as its expression.”
Can a musical note affect us without there being something in us that corresponds to it? Or, put another way: can we capture an impression in our brain if it no longer has the capacity to receive it?
Free will is not, in turn, much more than an abstraction, and means the ability to act consciously, while, under the concept of fatum, we understand the principle that directs us to act unconsciously. Acting, in itself and for itself, always entails an activity of the soul, a direction of the will that we ourselves do not have to have before our eyes as an object. In conscious action we can let ourselves be carried away by impressions much more than in unconscious action, but also much less. Faced with a favorable action, it is usually said: “it came to me by chance”, which need not be true at all. Psychic activity continues its march always with the same intense activity, even when we do not contemplate it with our spiritual eyes.
It is as if, closing our eyes to the sunlight, we think that the star is no longer shining. However, neither its life-giving light nor its heat cease, and they continue to exert their effects on us, even if we do not perceive them with the sense of sight.
Thus, if we do not assume the concept of unconscious action as a mere letting oneself be carried away by previous impressions, the strict opposition between fatum and free will disappears for us, and both concepts merge and disappear in the idea of individuality.
The more things move away from the inorganic and the more education and culture expand, the more outstanding individuality becomes and the richer and more diverse its characteristics. What are inner strength and self-determination for acting, and external manifestations -its evolutionary lever-, if not free will and fatum?
In free will, the principle of singularization is encoded for the individual, the principle of separation from the whole, from the unlimited; the fatum, however, once again puts man in a close organic relationship with general evolution and forces him, insofar as it seeks to dominate him, to set reactive forces in motion; an absolute and free will, devoid of fatum, would make man a god; the fatalistic principle, instead, makes him an automaton.
Pforta, April 1862