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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM
Volume 8
THE IMPLICATIONS OF
DETERMINISM
THE IMPLICATIONS OF
DETERMINISM
ROY WEATHERFORD
First published in 1991 by Routledge
This edition first published in 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1991 Roy Weatherford
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-138-63228-8 (Set)

ISBN: 978-1-315-20086-6 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-70375-9 (Volume 8) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-20300-3 (Volume 8) (ebk)
Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but
points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome
correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.
The Implications of
Determinism
Roy Weatherford ·
London and New York

First published 1991
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1991 Roy Weatherford
Typeset in 10/12pt English Times
by Mayhew Typesetting, Bristol
Printed in Great Britain
by T.J. Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Weatherford, Roy
The implications of determinism. - (problems of philosophy)
I. Title
123
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Weatherford, Roy
The implications of determinism/Roy Weatherford.
p. em. - (The Problems of philosophy: their past and present)
Includes bibliographical references and index,
1. Determinism (Philosophy) 2. Free will and determinism.
I. Title. II. Series: Problems of philosophy (Routledge (Firm))
B105.D47W42 1991 90-47549
123-dc20
ISBN 0-415-03303-9
To
my parents
Opal Wynona Luter Weatherford
and
Rev. Frank Carter Weatherford
who gave me the genetic make-up, the secure home,
the love of learning, and the moral
upbringing that made me the person I am.
Contents
Preface
Part One The History of the Problem 1

I Introduction 3
II Determinism in Antiquity 17
III God Through the Ages 35
IV The Rise of Science 48
v The Grand Metaphysicians 61
VI The Soft Determinists 78
VII The Hard Determinists 91
VIII More Science 104
IX Action Theory 123
X Micro-determinism, Macro-determinism, and
Supervenience 132
XI Other Contemporary Analyses 142
Part Two Determinism - So What? 171

XII Logical Determinism 173
XIII Theological Determinism 177
XIV Psychological Determinism 183
XV Physical Determinism 189
XVI Physical Implications of Determinism 205
XVII Moral Implications of Determinism 220
XVIII Cultural Implications of Determinism 236
Notes 243
Bibliography 256
Index 268
vii
Preface
This book owes a great debt to Ted Honderich. His suggestion

started me to work on it. His encouragement kept me going. His
own book, A Theory of Determinism: The Mind, Neuroscience
and Life-Hopes (Oxford, 1988), was the most useful and
stimulating source in my research effort; and his criticism helped
make the last draft better than what had gone before.
I have not tried to compete with Honderich's book. This book
is intentionally less technical and unavoidably less original. It is
designed to give the average, educated reader an understanding
of the problem of determinism, to give the somewhat more
sophisticated student of philosophy an historical exposition of
main currents of ideas on the topic, and to give anyone who is
interested my personal views on the most important issues
involved.
Determinism is a difficult and complex subject, which has
been addressed by many brilliant thinkers throughout an enor-
mous and sophisticated body of historical literature. Clearly, one
cannot hope to do justice to all their ideas. Some must be
ignored, others slighted, if we hope to finish our discussion in a
volume of reasonable size. No doubt everyone will find some
grounds for criticizing my choice of thinkers to discuss and the
degree of detail I have accorded each. I hope there will be less
grounds for faulting the accuracy of the things I have said, but
here too, so long as philosophers dispute the interpretation of
even the best-known historical texts, we must expect some
disagreement. There is even today a considerable dispute, for
example, about what Aristotle meant to say about future
contingent statements, much less whether he was right.
My own views, given in the second part of this book, will
certainly find many critics. Apparently, a large number of
ix
Preface
philosophers believe that quantum mechanics has disposed of the
implications of determinism. I, to the contrary, believe that
quantum mechanics not only has failed to settle the physical/
metaphysical question of the truth of determinism, but it has, if
anything, exacerbated the moral question of human respon-
sibility. For even if quantum mechanics did establish the
existence of importantly undetermined events they would have
the moral character of roulette wheels rather than the much-
sought-for human agency.
The questions involved in this discussion range over physics
and metaphysics, ethics and meta-ethics. Important concepts are
slippery and ill-defined. Deep intellectual prejudices and moral
desires cloud the issues. Some believe the question of deter-
minism to be of profound and disturbing importance; others
think it an unimportant verbal dispute. But for anyone who
seeks an understanding of the universe, few questions are more
fundamental.
I would like to thank my friend and philosophical gadfly, Bert
Carleton, for many suggestions and sources, and for persistently
disagreeing with me.
My wife, Doris, and daughter, Meg, gave me the support and
understanding made possible by their own writing. Blue funks
and computer problems visit us all equally, and we have
contrived a lifestyle of shared isolationism that gives each the
freedom and encouragement all writers need.
The University of South Florida gave us the freedom to spend
a term in Europe; a third mortgage and various credit cards gave
us the funds. We all learned a great deal, had a devil of a good
time, and still managed to write a combined 120,000 words.
Everyone should be so lucky.
My parents also have supported and encouraged me. It is clear
from our discussions of determinism that they disagree with
almost everything I say. So even though this book is dedicated
to them, it's not really their fault.
Seffner, Florida
March 1990
X
Part One
The History of the Problem
CHAPTER I
Introduction
The General Idea

The general idea of determinism is that the future of the world
is fixed in one unavoidable pattern. The different forms of deter-
minism invoke different explanations of why and how it is fixed.
The Forms of Determinism

Physical
For the majority of contemporary thinkers, it is physical deter-
minism (also called "causal," or "scientific," determinism) that
is the version most likely to be a live option. Simply put,
physical determinism asserts that natural laws are strictly deter-
minative of future consequences, so that given one initial state of
a physical system, at a definite later time there is one and only
one outcome possible. Newtonian celestial mechanics are most
frequently cited as having this characteristic. Given the current
state of the heavens, the next solar eclipse visible in the United
States will occur in 2017. It is logically possible that this eclipse
could occur in 1999, if either the current position of the moon
had been different or the (contingent) laws of nature were other-
wise. But in fact, and inevitably, it will be 2017. Physical deter-
minism holds that all physical events, including those involving
human beings, have this characteristic of physical inevitability.
Psychological
Psychological determinism restricts itself to the consideration of
human beings and their actions. It contends that all our actions
are the result of the same kind of genetic and environmental
conditioning that compels neurotic and compulsive behavior. In
3
The Implications of Determinism
the deep recesses of the unconscious, it is said, are the driving
forces that cause one person to succeed, the other to fail. While
this is a less inclusive version of determinism, it is to many
people more disturbing than physical determinism, because it
places the source of our actions within our own psyche, while
denying that we are really in control. It conflates all actions with
those of the mentally ill.
Theological
God is the central idea in theological determinism. There are two
main reasons why the existence of God might be said to
guarantee that the future of the world is fixed: (1) God's decrees,
and (2) God's foreknowledge.
God's decrees are, of course, sufficiently powerful to settle any-
thing. The essence of Her omnipotence is that God can do any-
thing. Now picture God preparing to create the universe. It has
seemed to many philosophers that anything less than a complete
specification of every event would be incompatible with God's
Majesty. For suppose that God chose not to decide if my table
would be brown or orange: then at least one fact about the world
owes nothing to God for its existence. But the entire earth is sup-
posed to praise the Glory of God, so how can my table be left out?
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) went even further.
He argued that not only are there good grounds for believing
that God's nature compelled Him (Leibniz' God was male) to
specify each detail about the universe, but we could even be sure
that God would inevitably choose to create one and only one
world - the one that we do in fact inhabit. Leibniz' reasoning
proceeds from the Principle of Sufficient Reason ("Every thing
must have a sufficient reason why it is as it is, and not other-
wise") to the conclusion that we live in the Best of All Possible
Worlds. We will see in Chapter V how Leibniz tried to show that
God's detailed creation of this one specific world is nevertheless
compatible with human freedom. Many philosophers have
thought otherwise. The type of determinism based on God's
decree is commonly called preordination or foreordination.
The other type of theological determinism is based on God's
foreknowledge. The term "predestination" serves ambiguously
to refer to both this form and foreordination.
4
Introduction
This version of predestination derives from God's omniscience,
rather than Her omnipotence. Let us suppose that a god exists who
is sufficiently like the traditional Judeo-Christian conception that
She is omniscient. Then God knows everything, including what
will happen in the future. Specifically, God knows whether or not
I will give in to temptation and knock off work early in order to
watch a baseball game. In that case, it is already settled whether
or not I will watch the game and God knows how it is settled. She
even knows the final score! If this is so, then neither the Red Sox
nor I can do anything to change the outcome, which God has
already foreseen.
Logical
It is an oddity of language that "logical" determinism is almost
exactly "theological" determinism without the God ("theo"). In
this version, the determinist invites us to consider the pair of
sentences: "The Red Sox win today" and "The Red Sox do not
win today." Since these are contradictories (in the logical sense,
going back to Aristotle) exactly one must be true and the other
false. Let us suppose the former is true and the latter false. Then
it is true that the Red Sox will win today. Then the Red Sox will
win today- and nobody can change that fact, because, to a logi-
cian, each proposition is either timelessly true or timelessly false.
Thus each proposition purporting to describe a future event is
either true or false. Imagine that all true propositions concerning
the future are collected into a compendium which we will call The
Book of the Future. This book would describe entirely and
precisely the future history of the universe; it would, in short, be
equivalent to what God would know about the future, if God
existed. But while no one claims that the book actually exists, the
sentences that make it up do exist, at least in part. One of them
is in this paragraph: it is either "The Red Sox win today" or "The
Red Sox do not win today.'' Now it is true that I do not know
which of these sentences is true, but logically, one of them must
be true. Therefore, either their winning or not is already fixed, and
the future is determined.
Special
In addition to the traditional varieties of determinism, there are
5
other specialized ways in which some have argued (or may argue)
that certain features of human existence are determined and
therefore not under the control of the individual.
Marxism
Marxism, for example, is a form of economic determinism, which
is the general position that the broad features of society, many or
all aspects of a culture and its institutions, and the attitudes,
desires, and perhaps even the actions of all individuals are alike
the inevitable result of certain macro-forces of economics. Marx-
ists speak of the means of production and the relations of produc-
tion, and from these, they believe, they can infer the necessary -
inevitable - course of development of a culture.
I have a great deal of respect for economic determinism as a
general thesis. I tend to think that the "dialectical" part of dialec-
tical materialism is an accidental hangover of Marx's Hegelian
education, but little of interest turns on that. Certainly, Marx
seems justified in his observation that the institutions of an
agrarian feudal economy must differ from those of an advanced
industrial capitalist economy.
Most of the implications of economic determinism also follow
directly from physical determinism: the form of society is
inevitable, the actions of individuals are predictable, etc. The
prime difference between the theses are: (a) that economic deter-
minism could be true without complete physical determinism being
true (if, say, a few micro-particles spontaneously disintegrate but
nothing of human interest ever occurs "freely"), and (b) that
economic determinism explains the causal force of determinism as
flowing through the means of economic relations. This latter
focuses our interest on economic relations and their importance in
a way other forms of determinism do not. It is, in Terence
Horgan's happy phrase, part of cosmic hermeneutics. 1
Sociobiology
Sociobiology, on the other hand, does for biology what Marxism
does for economics: it captures the explanatory force and predic-
tive power of determinism in general and focuses it on the
subject matter of one science. If "Biology is destiny" is true,
human beings have less ability to control their own lives and
their cultural future than we would like to think. Certain roles
6
Introduction
in society are preordained by our genetic structure and species
evolution. Peter van Inwagen has wondered why, when people
argue about sociobiology, no one ever seems to adopt the
compatibilist position that free will can exist even if our actions
are determined:
Perhaps the answer is that the participants in these debates
take the idea of biological determinism much more seriously
than philosophers are accustomed to take the idea of
"universal" and "Laplacian" determinism, and that
compatibilism with respect to a given type of determinism is
possible only for people who do not take that type of
determinism very seriously. 2
Cultural
It would be unseemly to write an entire book about free will and
determinism without ever making the point that the majority of
the people in the world - and especially the majority of women
in history - have no need to worry about their metaphysical
freedom as they have no power or control over their own lives
for straightforward reasons of human oppression and exploita-
tion. To a slave girl in Aristotle's Athens, tomorrow's sea-fight
may or may not be avoidable, but her duties in the scullery are
inevitable.
Up until now, only upper-class white men have had the
freedom to worry about whether they were free. Most others
find the question answers itself immediately - they're not free to
go to the store and buy paper and pens to write down their
answer, and they cannot afford the wine to have a philosophical
drinking party and debate it, so clearly they are not free in the
sense that is really important to human beings.
Indeterminism
Many philosophers - probably most philosophers - reject deter-
minism. There are, of course, many reasons for this rejection,
just as there are many reasons why philosophers have accepted
determinism as true.
7
Randomness
The obvious rejoinder to physical determinism is that physical
laws are not deterministic. It is now common for many
philosophers to believe that quantum mechanics has disproved
determinism once and for all. (In chapters VII and XV we will
assess these claims, together with some rather surprising
possibilities for indeterminism in Newtonian mechanics.) The
usual form of these arguments is that scientists have established
that some events in the sub-microscopic world of particle physics
are not the inevitable and unique solution to single-valued
differential equations, but are the random expression of a
probability distribution. The present state, it is said, limits the
probability of future outcomes, but does not determine a definite
fixed result.
Defenders of determinism have several moves available to them.
The simplest is Einstein's continuing belief that God does not play
dice with the universe and therefore there must be a possible
physical theory more fundamental than quantum mechanics,
which would show how the probability distributions were just
approximations to the fully determined events beneath the sur-
face. This response is usually shrugged off as just wishful thinking
- no one can reasonably shape a philosophy on the possibility that
some future scientist might discover a law of the desired type; we
must deal with science as it is, not as it might become.
A second rejoinder is that even if micro-events are undeter-
mined, the same is not true of middle-sized material objects.
According to quantum mechanics, each sub-atomic particle in
the body I call my table possesses a real and non-zero probability
that it might randomly "decide" to move toward my ceiling,
despite the force of gravity and its interaction with the other
particles in the table. Indeed, there is a non-zero probability that
every particle in my table might simultaneously "realize" that
possibility of motion, so that the whole damned thing would
inexplicably rise up into the air in the absence of any external
agent at all. But while this probability is mathematically non-
zero for each particle, it is very small for most of them. When
you multiply these very small probabilities to get the joint
probability that all will act in such an odd fashion, that figure
approaches zero so quickly and so closely that such an event
8
Introduction
would be unlikely to happen even once in billions of repetitions
of the universe's lifetime. But since we are middle-sized material
objects, the probability that we will ever do something unex-
pected, based on quantum mechanics, is about the same as that
of the table's levitation, and if that is not precisely absolute
determinism, it is close enough for government work.
Indeterminists have argued that while the randomness of quan-
tum mechanics may be negligible for gross bodily motions, it is
not so easily ignored at the level of neural events within the
brain. Here there might be enough "slack" in the laws of nature
to guarantee that human actions are not the totally fixed events
the determinist claims.
But this freedom from determinism has been achieved only by
asserting that the motions of our bodies (at least of our brains)
are in some irreducible sense random motions. Is this the
vaunted human liberty - that it is a matter of chance whether I
watch the game today or not? More on this in chapter XVII -
for now let us just note that the possibility that our actions are
uncaused and random is just as upsetting to many philosophers
as the determinism it replaces.
Indeed, Franklin suggests 3 that the main argument for deter-
minism is just this dichotomy: "either caused or random." If
human actions are to fall into one or the other, determinists
argue, they are only explicable and continuous with the rest of
nature in the former category. If our "actions" occur without
cause, they are nothing to be proud of, or even to be under-
stood. If they are caused, on the other hand, it is the business
of science to understand their causes.
Mental health
Psychological determinism has found even fewer supporters than
physical determinism, despite· the fact that, on one interpreta-
tion, if physical determinism is true, then psychological deter-
minism is true a fortiori. (If the materialists are right, and
human beings are only a body, its states, and its actions, so that
no "spiritual" substances exist, then psychological events are
merely a sub-class of physical events, and if all the events in the
larger class are determined, it is even more certain that all the
events in the smaller class are.)
9
The reason psychological determinism is repellent to many
philosophers is that it assimilates our actions, not to machines,
as do the physical determinists, but to crazy people. Most of us
would rather think of ourselves as being computers than as being
neurotics, but the psychological determinists are claiming that
the forces compelling our actions are "just like" the forces driv-
ing the neurotic.
The usual response to psychological determinism is that the
forces driving the mentally ill are by definition unusual forces -
that's how we come to call them mentally ill, aberrant - and the
great contribution of psychiatry is not that it discovered that we
are all like them, but that it discovered how to account for and
even reverse some of their differences from us! The state of
sickness is logically subordinate to the state of health - unless
most of us were free in our daily actions, it would not make
sense to single out a group with the label "compulsives," so it
is logically impossible for everyone to be mentally ill.
Atheism
The most straightforward response to theological determinism is
just to deny the existence of God. It might even be that some
philosophers would view this threat to our free will as an argument
against the existence of God. If God's existence and omniscience
are incompatible with human freedom, then our daily experience
that. we are free to choose in important ways would be evidence
that God does not exist, just as our all too frequent experience of
evil in the world is the most philosophically important evidence
against the existence of an all-powerful, ali-good divinity.
But while atheism is the most straightforward response to
theological determinism, the one most frequently encountered is
something like this: God's creation of the world is not a threat
to human freedom because God chose to create us as moral
'
agents, the concept of a moral agent without free will is
contradictory, so God is logically compelled to create us as free
if She wishes us to be moral agents (as most theologies assume).
God's foreknowledge of the future is not a threat to human
freedom because She is outside of time and space, observing us
not as we observe each other but as part of the omni-temporal,
universal fact that is the universe's existence. God "watches" us
10
Introduction
freely choose - the vantage point of Her watching is neither
past, nor present, nor future, but Her knowledge is based on
observation, not prediction, and is thus no more threatening to
our freedom than a historian, who describes in detail what we
actually do (as opposed to a seer, who describes in detail what
we will actually do).
Statements without truth values

The most frequent response to logical determinism is: "Who
cares?" After all, the only point the logical determinist makes is
that some true description of the universe exists, not that anyone
knows or can discover what it is.
Nevertheless, some people have felt perplexed enough by the
idea of "future truths" that they have felt compelled to escape
this difficulty by decreeing that some statements have no truth
values, or that "true" and "false" are not the only truth values.
Oddly enough, the most famous context for these discussions is
the work of that father of hard-and-fast, either-or logic, Aris-
totle himself, and we will consider the issue in the next chapter
when we discuss Aristotle's posing of the problem of the
inevitability of the sea-fight tomorrow.
Special indeterminisms
Just as there are various grounds for accepting economic,
sociobiological, and cultural determinisms, there are corres-
pondingly varied reasons for rejecting them.
The Marxist version of economic determinism is encountering
some heavy weather in contemporary times. Most of the
avowedly Marxist nations are reintroducing some form of
economic incentives for production and some are experimenting
with free· elections and legalized opposition parties. A smug
confidence pervades the writings of capitalist observers, and
there is a general feeling in the air that a great social experiment
has failed and Marxism is demonstrably a dead-end for a society.
This may or may not be true, and even if it is true it may not
falsify the general thesis of economic determinism, but it is
certainly true that trendy intellectuals are less likely to espouse
economic determinism now than in previous decades.
Sociobiology remains controversial, both as to its truth and its
11
content. Presumably no one would deny that our genetic
inheritance matters a great deal in establishing the course of our
individual and social lives, but only a few hardy advocates insist
that inheritance is fully determinative. Questions of scientific fact
are clearly at issue, but so too are questions of conceptual
significance and application. Because of the specialized nature of
the argument, we will not pursue the issue further, but just set
it aside as one of the ways our lives may be determined, but not
a leading contender for the role.
Of greater interest is the theoretical point that, surprisingly
enough, physical determinism does not imply any or all of the
special determinisms, nor is it implied by any of them. Economic
determinism, for example, could obviously be true even if
physical determinism is false (because, for example, sub-
microscopic randomness exists but fails to be important at the
macroscopic level). In the other direction, one might be tempted
to think that the truth of physical determinism would imply the
truth of economic determinism since, if all physical events are
determined, then the subclass of physical events that we call
economic must be determined a fortiori. But if by economic
determinism we mean determinism by economic laws, it might be
that no such laws exist, relating economic concepts and observa-
tions in lawlike ways, even though every physical event is the
inevitable consequence of the previous physical state.
Libertarianism
The position that opposes determinism in the context of moral
philosophy was once called ''Free Will,'' but as the Will loses
prominence and ceases to be viewed as a philosophical reality,
the modern position of moral indeterminism is coming to be
called libertarianism (not to be confused with the doctrine of the
American political party, which stresses political, rather than
metaphysical, liberty).
Libertarianism is the view that at least some human actions
and decisions are not determined. Many philosophers have
argued that we know this to be so by direct inspection of our
own experience. We prove it to be so each time we turn a page,
when we could have stopped reading instead. We presuppose it
to be so each time we distinguish "persons" from the other
12
Introduction
furniture of the world. Our moral, legal, and much of our social
interaction rests on this foundation - to abandon it would be
unthinkable: therefore it is true!
There are two fundamental grounds for the libertarian's rejec-
tion of determinism: (1) determinism is inconsistent with (the fact
of) moral responsibility, and (2) each of us directly experiences
freedom in our own choices.
On the first point, it is clear that one of the major driving
forces behind libertarianism is a conviction that we must avoid
determinism at all costs, lest we imperil the institution of
morality. In this case, however, libertarians are far more confi-
dent in what they reject than in what they assert. If we deny that
our actions are the inevitable consequence of preceding physical
and psychological factors, how, then, do we explain their origins?
The libertarian cannot just reject the determinist's demand for
a nomological explanation of human action, but must show why
such a demand is unreasonable or impossible, on pain of being
convicted of superstitious ostrichism.
One common approach for libertarians is to argue that our
actions are indeed caused, but they are not caused by physical
events or states, they are caused by agents or persons. These
agents or persons play the metaphysical role that Ted Honderich
suggestively calls "the originator." That is, the libertarian asserts
that a new causal chain comes into existence when an agent or
person initiates an action.
One of the major problems with the notion of agent causation
is that it seems to blur the difference between an agent and states
of an agent. In saying that Patricia caused the adoption of the
new policy, we normally mean that she is responsible. But if we
examine the case a little more closely, we see that not Patricia,
but Patricia's states and actions brought about the new policy.
Otherwise, if the unchanging agent were the cause, there would
be no reason why the new policy should have been adopted
yesterday, rather than the day before or today. But each time we
assign the causal role to one of Patricia's states or actions, we slip
indiscernibly back into a deterministic causal chain with no room
for contra-causal freedom. 4
If, on the other hand, we insist that there is no cause for
Patricia's taking action at just this time, it again seems to be a
randomly occurring event, and defeating physical determinism by
13
invoking randomness would be a pyrrhic victory for the moral
philosopher. The fundamental conflict that makes determinism
loom so large in ethics is its conflict with moral responsibility,
through its denial of free will. If Jones had to drive the get-away
car, because he was under compulsion and not free to do other-
wise, then most of us feel he was not responsible, or not fully
so. But if Jones drove the get-away car by accident, because a
randomly firing neuron in his brain caused him to mistake it for
his own, once again his moral responsibility seems to dissipate.
If this is so, then randomness is no more a solution to the free
will problem than the determinism it hoped to avoid.
In the second argument, libertarians point to the "immediate"
or "indubitable" or "self-evident" fact that we sometimes just
know that we are free to choose. We find ourselves, that is,
inevitably forced to believe that in certain situations of choice we
are able to choose A and we are able to choose B and nothing
compels us to choose one or the other. After the choice, then,
we describe such a situation by saying that we "could have done
otherwise,'' from which it follows that we are morally responsi-
ble for the choice.
The stock determinist response to this argument is that (1)
there is no such perception of freedom, or, if there is one, it is
illusory, and (2) we could have done otherwise if we had chosen
otherwise, and we could have chosen otherwise if either the facts
or our values had been otherwise, but we could neither have
chosen nor have done otherwise if everything were exactly the
same in every respect.
On the first point, Mill, for example, denied that we directly
experience an awareness that we can do otherwise than what we
actually do. Instead, experience teaches us, he says, that in one
case we could do A, because we did A, and that in another,
similar case we could do B, because we did B. The similarity
between the cases suggests, but does not demonstrate, that we
could have done B in the first case as well. Indeed, Mill argues,
since we always act from our strongest desire, it is clear that in
the first case we desired A and in the second case we desired B
and therefore we could not have done otherwise in either case.
Furthermore, for convinced determinists, the "experience of
freedom" becomes like "the experience of the self" did to David
Hume. This unquestioned thing that generations of philosophers
14
Introduction
had said was directly revealed in experience, Hume said, did not
arise in his experience at all.
Likewise the determinist, choosing between alternatives, feels
the pull and tug of competing motives, feels the relief of tension
at the moment of choice, and completely agrees that the choice
is the proximate cause of the action. But in all of this, there need
be no awareness of freedom at all.
In this case, the best analogy is probably the experience of
generations of observers of the heavenly bodies rotating around
the fixed earth. 5 No one, it was thought, could deny this clear
fact of experience. But, as it turned out, the earth is not the
center of the universe and the indubitable experiences of so many
observers were just non-veridical. Likewise, the determinists say,
one may quite easily feel certain that one is acting freely, when
the freedom is just an illusion.
In an example from Locke, consider a man who wakes up in
a room where some friends are engaged in agreeable conversa-
tion. He stays and enjoys their company, feeling quite sure that
he is staying of his own free will, when, unbeknown to him, the
door is locked and he could not leave if he chose. It may be, the
determinist argues, that all of our experiences are as unfree as
those of the Locked Man, but since our (unfree) choices
obviously are effective in selecting our actions, we seem to
ourselves to be acting freely.
The second of the determinists' rejoinders to the libertarians is
of a piece with our general desire for conceptual repeatability.
Franklin, 6 for example, points out a striking similarity between
the uniformity or regularity asserted by a candidate for the status
of natural law, and the universalizability required of a candidate
for moral judgment (or, more broadly, evaluative judgment). As
moral philosophers such as R. M. Hare7 and John Rawls 8 have
pointed out, it would be extremely peculiar to say, "This is just
like that in all respects, except that this is good and that is bad."
In a case like this we would surely ask, '' Why is one good and
the other bad? There must be a reason." And this, of course,
is just what the determinist says to the libertarian: "How can
you say that this moment of choice is exactly like the other
(perhaps hypothetical) one, except that in this one Jones decides
to commit murder and in that one she doesn't?" There must be
a reason why she does the one thing in one case and the other
15
in the other. And, of course, if the libertarian admits there is a
reason, the action is thus far determined; if the libertarian denies
there is a reason, the action is thus far irrational. The dilemma
confronting the libertarian is that we can act freely, or we can
act rationally, but we cannot simultaneously do both.
Evidently this is not a controversy that can easily be resolved.
The determinist and the libertarian may accept each other's
evidence (the progress of science and the feeling of freedom,
respectively) without feeling obliged to accept the other's conclu-
sion. Partly this is a matter of judgment in assessing the
evidence, but largely it is a matter of resistance to the conclu-
sion. The determinist will not believe, on so little evidence, that
human beings are discontinuous with the rest of nature and
science is a priori doomed to failure in its efforts to develop a
nomological explanation of our conduct. The libertarian, on the
other hand, refuses to believe (on so little evidence) that all our
human concern for freedom, the entire institution of morality,
and the intimate perception of personal ability to choose are just
so much illusion and superstition. The stakes are too high; the
opposing arguments are too weak; and the controversy lies
unresolved.
16
CHAPTER II
Determinism in Antiquity
Homer and the Fates

If we restrict ourselves to the history of western civilization
beginning with the ancient Greeks, the first intimation that the
future is fixed can be found in the role of the fates and seers in
the works of Homer. In some passages it appears that nothing
can alter the fixed course of events. Thus the two main Homeric
characters, Achilles and Odysseus, are aware in general of what
awaits them in the future:
Do you not see what a man I [Achilles] am, how huge, how
splendid and born of a great father, and the mother who bore
me immortal? Yet even I have also my death and my strong
destiny, and there shall be a dawn or an afternoon or a
noontime when some man in the fighting will take the life
from me also either with a spearcast or an arrow flown from
the bow-string.'
Even so I [Odysseus] spake, and he [Proteus] straightway
answered me, saying: "Nay, surely thou shouldest have done
goodly sacrifice to Zeus and the other gods ere thine
embarking, that with most speed thou mightst reach:thy
country, sailing over the wine-dark deep. For it is not thy fate
to see thy friends, and come to thy stablished house and thine
own country, till thou hast passed yet again within the waters
of Aegyptus, the heaven-fed stream, and offered holy
hecatombs to the deathless gods who keep the wide heaven.
So shall the gods grant thee the path which thou desirest. '' 2
Despite these prophecies, however, neither Achilles nor Odysseus
ever draws the conclusion that his life is out of control, or that
he should give up the struggle. Each continues to strive, in
17
accordance with his sense of values, to achieve his desired end.
Since the value system of the day generally placed less emphasis
on the notion of moral obligation than we have come to do, the
problem of scientific determinism and its moral implications was
essentially unknown to Homeric Greeks.
The Pre-Socratics
If we think of western philosophy as beginning with the pre-
Socratic philosophers, it is possible to view philosophy itself as
beginning with the attempt to discover a system and order in the
working of the universe.
The early form of this system was shaped by the religious
order depicted in the Homeric tales. Thus Ana:ximander finds a
necessity working in things, but the necessity is more moral than
physical. 3 Likewise, Heraclitus says in Fragment 94: "The sun
will not transgress his measures; otherwise the Furies, ministers
of Justice, will find him out"; 4 and Empedocles speaks in Frag-
ment 115 of
an oracle of Necessity, an ancient decree of the gods, eternal,
sealed fast with broad oaths, that when one of the divine
spirits whose portion is long life sinfully stains his own limbs
with bloodshed, and following Hate has sworn a false oath -
these must wander for thrice ten thousand seasons far from
the company of the blessed, being born throughout the period
into all kinds of mortal shapes, which exchange one hard way
of life for another. 5
These dimly grasped forces had neither the religious qualities of
a personal god nor the mechanical implacability of a scientific
determinism. Perhaps, as Copleston suggests, the kind of law the
pre-Socratics were trying to impose on the universe was neither
religious nor physical, but an order similar to the new political
order being developed in the city-states of Greece. 6
The Atomists
One group of pre-Socratic philosophers, however, not only
formed the idea of an all-governing physical law, they
hypothesized the existence of invisible atomic particles as the
18
mechanism of that law, and nearly developed the implications of
scientific determinism.
Leucippus (flourished c. 450 BC) and Democritus (c. 460-430
Be) are the leading members of that group of philosophers we
refer to as "the Greek Atomists." They deserve the credit for
first suggesting the atomic model as an explanation of the
physical universe.
Of Leucippus little is known. He is reported to have said:
"Nothing happens at random; everything happens out of reason
and by necessity. " 7 Nevertheless, Leucippus appears not to have
applied his concept to all things that happen, but only ''to
explain the original motion of the atoms. " 8 It is only later that
'' 'necessity' in the hands of Democritus becomes the equivalent
of 'natural law', the most fully scientific conception in Greek
philosophy, associated with a complete determinism. " 9
Even Democritus, however, seems not to have noticed the
moral implications of his necessitarianism, for he went on to
propound some moral teachings "on the assumption that man is
free to act as he will. " 10
The first true recognition of the moral implications of deter-
minism, and the first attempt to escape those implications
metaphysically, appear to have occurred much later in the
writings of Epicurus (341-270 BC) and of his follower Lucretius
(c. 99-55 BC), who accepted the physical system of Leucippus
and Democritus, but modified it to permit freedom of the will.
We will return to discuss this development in its proper
chronological position, but for now we must look briefly at the
views of Socrates and Plato."
Plato's Moral Determinism

It is often said that Plato and Socrates were "moral deter-
minists." The reason is that it is one of the central doctrines of
their moral theory that no one ever can knowingly do other than
what she believes to be the good at any given time.
Socrates: Isn't it clear then that this class, who don't

recognize evils for what they are, don't desire evil but what
they think is good, though in fact it is evil; those who
through ignorance mistake bad things for good obviously
19
desire the good?
(Meno, 77d-e)
Socrates: Then when we slaughter or banish from the city or
deprive of property, we do not thus simply will these acts.
But if they are advantageous to us, we will them; if harmful,
we do not. For as you say, we will the good, not what is
neither good nor evil, nor what is evil.
(Gorgias, 468c)
Then to sum up, my dear Clinias, I said, the truth is that in
all those things which we said at first were good, the question
is not how they are in themselves naturally good, but this is
the point, it seems. If ignorance leads them, they are greater
evils than their opposites, inasmuch as they are more able to
serve the leader which is evil; but if intelligence leads, and
wisdom, they are greater goods, while in themselves neither
kind is worth anything at all.
(Euthydemus, 281d)
knowledge is a fine thing quite capable of ruling a man, and
that if he can distinguish good from evil, nothing will force
him to act otherwise than as knowledge dictates, since wisdom
is all the reinforcement he needs ...
(Protagoras, 352c) 12
Evil, then, is always the result of ignorance, and if we wish to
make people better it is always sufficient to educate them.
Philosophers, thus, would become society's moral as well as
intellectual leaders. From there it is a short step to The
Republic's position that they should be the political leaders as
well.
In the history of determinism, this idea is important because
it implies that our actions at any given time are fully determined
by our beliefs at that time. If we always do what we think good,
then (barring inconsistency) there is at any instant only one
course of action open to us.
To develop this view into a full-blooded determinism requires the
added premise (not found in Plato) that our beliefs about what is
the Good are at all times the inevitable consequences of our birth
and upbringing. If this be so, then we never have any free choice,
but are condemned to do (what we think of as) the right thing.
20
The classic rejoinder to Plato is Aristotle's assertion that it
blinkers the fact of weakness of the will (akrasia), of yielding to
temptation, of being unable to rise to our duty:
Now we may ask {1) how a man who judges rightly can
behave incontinently. That he should behave so when he has
knowledge, some say is impossible; for it would be strange -
so Socrates thought - if when knowledge was in a man
something else could master it and drag it about like a slave.
For Socrates was entirely opposed to the view in question,
holding that there is no such thing as incontinence; no one,
he said, when he judges acts against what he judges best -
people act so only by reason of ignorance. Now this view
plainly contradicts the observed facts, and we must inquire
about what happens to such a man; if he acts by reason of
ignorance, what is the manner of his ignorance? For that the
man who behaves incontinently does not, before he gets into
this state, think he ought to act so, is eviderit. [But] ...
when, then the universal opinion is present in us forbidding
us to taste, and there is also the opinion that "everything
sweet is pleasant", and that "this is sweet" {now this is the
opinion that is active), and when appetite happens to be
present in us, the one opinion bids us avoid the object, but
appetite leads us towards it {for it can move each of our
bodily parts); so that it turns out that a man behaves
incontinently under the influence (in a sense) of a rule and an
opinion, and of one not contrary in itself, but only
incidentally - for the appetite is contrary, not the opinion -
to the right rule. It also follows that this is the reason why
the lower animals are not incontinent, viz. because they have
no universal judgment but only imagination and memory of
particulars. 13
While it is far from settled just what Aristotle meant by
akrasia, 14 it is generally agreed that his position is sounder than
Plato's.
A more contemporary refutation of Plato's view forces it into
the familiar dilemma of being true but trivial or significant but
false. If Plato is saying that human beings always act on motives
that they would, on reflection in all seriousness, hold to be the
morally highest available to them, the world would be a far
21
better place if it were true, but it is obviously false. If, on the
other hand, the Good is "extended so widely as to render true
the doctrine that men always act on what they take to be good
reasons, then this doctrine will in the end reduce to the irrelevant
tautology that men act on the reasons they act on.'' 15
Yet another way of dealing with Plato is to treat his views as
a sub-category of the view (found in J. S. Mill, for example) that
our actions are always determined by our "strongest motive." It
is then either tautologous or false, as I show in chapter XIV.
On the whole, Plato's "moral determinism" is not very impor-
tant in the history of determinism but belongs to the field of
ethics (where it is generally rejected as false, for reasons much
like Aristotle's).
Aristotle's Sea-fight
One of the most famous examples for analysis in the history of
philosophy is Aristotle's "sea-fight tomorrow." He invokes it in
De interpretatione 9, as part of a discussion of the truth value
of statements concerning the future:
Let me illustrate. A sea-fight must either take place to-
morrow or not, but it is not necessary that it should take
place to-morrow, neither is it necessary that it should not take
place, yet it is necessary that it either should or should not
take place to-morrow. Since propositions correspond with
facts, it is evident that when in future events there is a real
alternative, and a potentiality in contrary directions, the
corresponding affirmation and denial have the same
character. 16
Prior to this, Aristotle had argued that if statements concerning
the future did have fixed truth values, then "nothing is or takes
place fortuitously, either in the present or in the future, and
there are no real alternatives; everything takes place of necessity
and is fixed." But this would lead to the "awkward result" that
''There would be no need to deliberate or to take trouble, on the
supposition that if we should adopt a certain course, a certain
result would follow, while, if we did not, the result would not
follow." But this leads to "an impossible conclusion; for we see
that both deliberation and action are causative with regard to the
22
future, and that, to speak more generally, in those things which
are not continuously actual there is a potentiality in either direc-
tion. Such things may either be or not be; events also therefore
may either take place or not take place. There are many obvious
instances of this. . • . ''
From all of which Aristotle reaches his famous conclusion
that it is therefore plain that it is not of necessity that
everything is or takes place; but in some instances there are
real alternatives, in which case the affirmation is no more
true and no more false than the denial ...
Everything must either be or not be, whether in the present
or in the future, but it is not always possible to distinguish
and state determinately which of these alternatives must
necessarily come about. 17
Now Aristotle's conclusion has frequently been reported as
being that "future contingent" statements have no fixed truth
value. This interpretation is "a notoriously controversial
topic. " 18 One forceful opponent of the philosophical position of
the official interpretation is D. C. Williams, who says:
The whole argument, however, as many philosophical
generations have piecemeal discerned, is an instructive tissue
of error. . .. To say that it is true that either there is a sea-
fight tomorrow or there is not, but that it is not true that
there is and it's not true that there's not, is a sheer
contradiction. So if there is force in the argument which
brought us to this pass, we are abandoned of logic. 19
The root of Aristotle's claim that determinate truth values for
future contingent propositions leads to determinism is, Williams
says,
an argument so swaggeringly invalid that the student can
hardly believe he meant it. He equates It is necessary that
either there is a sea-fight tomorrow or there is not a sea-fight
tomorrow, understood in our "determinate" way, with Either
it is necessary that there is a sea-fight tomorrow or it is
necessary that there is not a sea-fight tomorrow (18b 4, 30;
19a 1); and he equates It is necessary that, if there is a sea-
fight tomorrow, there is a sea-fight tomorrow with If there is
23
a sea-fight tomorrow, it is necessary that there is a sea-fight
tomorrow (18b 1, 12, 22, 35). It is plain to us now that both
transformations are invalid. 20
G. E. M. Anscombe's famous defense of Aristotle points out
that he says: "still, it is not open to us, either, to say that
neither is true: And yet Aristotle is often supposed to have
adopted this as the solution.' ' 21 Instead, she argues, what
Aristotle is doing is attributing a kind of necessity to proposi-
tions about present and past - a necessity that springs from there
being appropriate objects of knowledge. But propositions about
the future, though they are either true or false, are not fit
objects of knowledge, and hence are not certain.
Colin Strang, likewise, argues that Aristotle is not denying that
future propositions have truth values, he is denying that they
necessarily have particular truth values. 22
Whether or not Aristotle intended the official interpretation is
a question in the history of philosophy (as is the question of
whether he even wrote it - some say the attribution is spurious)
with which we shall not deal (though I find Anscombe's and
Strang's arguments generally persuasive). Let us, instead, assume
that the official interpretation is what Aristotle meant, and ask
instead: Is he right?
Consider the pair of linguistic constructions: P - there will be
a sea-fight tomorrow; and not-P - there will not be a sea-fight
tomorrow. The official interpretation is that Aristotle accepts
both P and not-P as propositions but denies that one of these
propositions is true (the alternative interpretation is that he
denies that one of them must be true).
Now Aristotle's own law of the excluded middle tells us that
for every proposition, P, it is necessarily the case that either P
is true or not-P is true. The two possible ways to salvage the
official interpretation are: (1) deny that the law of the excluded
middle applies to future contingent propositions; or (2) deny that
P and not-P are propositions at all.
While some have attempted to impute (1) to Aristotle, this
seems to me inconsistent with his general excellence as a logician
and the importance of the law of the excluded middle to
Aristotelian (two-valued) logic.
McClister23 has argued that in this passage Aristotle fails to
24
distinguish clearly between what makes P v- P true and what
makes it necessarily true. Considered barely as a truth-functional
connective, the inclusive "or" statement is true if one of its
disjuncts is true or if the other is true or if they are both true.
But if none of these cases holds, the disjunction is false.
Therefore, so far from being necessarily true, P v- P is false if
neither of its disjuncts has the truth value "true," and a fortiori
false if neither of the disjuncts has any truth value at all. Thus
when Aristotle claims that "it is necessary that everything either
be or not be,'' he evidently bases this not on the necessary truth
of either disjunct, but on the law of the excluded middle. It
follows that (1) cannot be the basis of the official interpretation,
and we are left with option (2).
If we adopt option (2), we are to deny that P and not-P are
propositions at all. This will solve our problem with the law of
the excluded middle, because if these verbal constructs are not
propositions, the law of the excluded middle does not apply to
them at all, any more than it does to tables or chairs. In this
case, P v- P is neither true nor false (since it is not yet a state-
ment), but it becomes true when the future arrives and P
becomes a statement. (Note that this is not the same as a state-
ment becoming true.) The closest approximation of the original
necessary truth, then, is "Necessarily, when the future arrives, P
v- P will be true." It thus is inappropriate to speak of "future
contingent propositions,'' and we should instead say something
like: "verbal expressions that will become propositions in the
future."
The attractiveness of this proposal is that it solves the problem
of logical determinism and the parallel problem of God's
foreknowledge in the same familiar way that St Thomas Aquinas
resolved the paradox of whether or not God could make a stone
so heavy He could not lift it: whatever implies a contradiction,
he said, falls outside the scope of God's omnipotence because it
is not a real thing at all, but a phantasm. Likewise, if P and not-
p are not propositions, they fall outside the scope of God's
omniscience because they are not proper objects of knowledge at
all.
Unfortunately, the cost of the solution is too high. In order to
avoid the consequences of logical determinism, the official inter-
pretation forces us to the metaphysical position that the future
25
is not real. While this may not seem in itself too high a price to
pay for metaphysical freedom, its implication is that since the
future is not real, we can say nothing about it. If P and not-P
have no truth values, then they have no significance, so that it
makes no difference which set of words you utter - you must
necessarily fail to say anything when you try to speak of the
future. But this is absurd. Obviously we speak of the future all
the time. Sometimes what we say is clearly and necessarily true
("It will rain tomorrow or it won't") and sometimes it is not so
obviously true ("All students will pass this course"), but if it
were not possible for it to be true, there would be no point in
saying it. (And it won't do to say that future contingent
statements "point to" future possibilities without naming them
- the problem is that if the future does not exist in any sense,
you cannot even point to it, or all paintings are equivalent.)
Evidently, then, the official interpretation of Aristotle cannot
be sustained by either option (1) or option (2). But if he was
wrong about this, need we fear the consequences that served as
his reasons for taking this position? The two implications that
seem most important in his mind are:
1. If future contingents have truth values, then the future is
determined.
2. If the future is determined, then deliberation and action
are pointless.
The first of these will be addressed in the chapters dealing with
logical determinism; the second, in the sections on action theory
and the implications of physical determinism. For now, I think
it is wisest to conclude that Aristotle did not make the philo-
sophical mistakes we have been attributing to him, but instead
had difficulty explaining what he meant, as we have trouble
understanding him, because his conceptions of alethic modalities
were not clearly developed. In part, they were still too tied to
temporal concepts. 24 In part, also, Aristotle's conception
of what we call alethic modalities were residually epistemo-
logical. (This is the force of Anscombe's and Strang's interpreta-
tion.) And in part, he was grasping for a conception that G. H.
von Wright has called "diachronic modality." 25 In this sense,
Aristotle can, with most people, accept that future contin-
gent propositions are true without concluding that they are
26
necessarily true. Hence, the world is saved from determinism and
saved for logic.
This problem will recur (eternally) as we address the deter-
minism of the Stoics.
The Stoics and Fate

The Stoics viewed themselves as determinists. They clearly
believed that everything happened according to Fate, necessity,
or God's will, and that these events repeated themselves in an
endless cycle of universal creation, development, and conflagra-
tion. While their conception of God was derived from, and still
carried the name of, the Zeus of the ancient Roman religion, He
had more in common with Spinoza's "God or Nature." The
Spirit of the Universe develops itself according to the Eternal
Logos, or Right Reason.
Since the Stoics were also enormously concerned with ethics
and social philosophy, the problem of reconciling determinism
and human responsibility was of considerable importance to
them. We can trace at least three different answers found in the
Stoic philosophers.
(1) Cicero, in his De Fato, describes the Stoic Chrysippus as
attempting to "flee necessity and retain fate" by showing that
universal causation does not imply necessitation. The argument
is subtle and obscure, Chrysippus' own presentation is lost to us,
and it is at least doubtful that Cicero is presenting it as it was
intended. According to Michael J. White's reconstruction:
The basic strategy is (1) to affirm a universal causal
determinism while (2) developing an account of the alethic
concepts of relative or "conditional" necessity and possibility
and their contradictories that allow at least some events/ states
of affairs to possess the modal status of being possible and
non-necessary relative to some time t (or to the "cosmic
state" obtaining at t). 26
While an approach of this sort recurs throughout the history
of philosophy, it is not generally associated with nor well
developed by the Stoics. I propose, therefore, to pass over this
answer as not central to the legacy of Stoicism.
(2) The second type of argument we find the Stoics employing
27
to justify the coexistence of determinism and ethics is that the
proper sphere of ethical judgment concerns those actions that are
"up to us" - our decisions and actions influence their outcome,
we play some causal role in the event. In this arena, it is obvious
that some people are wise, some foolish, some good, some bad.
The Stoics thought that generally we all start out with good souls
(the universe is providentially ordered, after all) and are capable
of being moral. Much of their emphasis is on the social and
educational reforms necessary to create a world where human
beings can live in harmony with each other and with the rest of
creation. In pursuing this goal the Stoics were admirably
dedicated and, through action and example, played a major role
in the civilizing of western culture. To achieve these ends they
did not need a clear metaphysical explanation of moral choice -
they needed only a criterion of moral responsibility, and that
they found in the notion of some actions being up to us as
agents while others are not.
While the Stoics were determinists, they rejected fatalism.
Against the "Idle Argument" (When I am ill it is idle to
consider calling the physician, for if I am fated to die, the physi-
cian cannot prevent it and if I am fated to get well, I have no
need of the physician), Chrysippus responded with the notion of
"condestinate" events: events that are fated to occur only
together. Thus, I am fated to get well as a result of my calling
the physician. The universal causal determinism of .the Stoics
makes nothing idle. or pointless - every little thing or event has
its role to play in the grand scheme of the Universe, without
which the world would be different and contrary to God's plan.
Our actions, therefore, are both central and effective in the
Stoics' view of the world. If they never quite explained how this
could be so, that is no worse than most determinists have done.
Whether or not a call to action is compatible with a belief in
determinism will be a recurrent problem throughout this book.
(3) The third and most characteristically Stoic response to the
problem of holding responsible people who could not have done
otherwise is acceptance and resignation. No doubt it is unfor-
tunate that some people are born into circumstances or suffer
experiences that make it nearly impossible for them to refrain
from evil. Our clear duty is to try to eliminate such
circumstances and experiences, to understand and not to
28
criticize, and to educate the people and improve their lot in life.
But if, along the way, we have to punish some metaphysically
innocent souls, it is evidently God's plan that we do this. (One
can imagine the Stoic emperor, Marcus Aurelius, adopting this
attitude as he persecuted the Christians ''more in sorrow than in
anger" for the sake of imperial unity and social harmony.)
Stoic acceptance does not necessarily imply approval. It is
important to the Stoics that we have the power to accept or
assent to some things, while rejecting or denying others. This
feature of human existence helps explain, I think, both the
importance of logic in Stoic philosophy and the relative unim-
portance of deliberation in their ethics and metaphysics. 27 It is
not that the wise person will never experience failure, but that
her reaction will never be one of defeat, despair, and frustration,
that sets her apart from others and makes her happy. The great
Stoic insight is that almost all the pain and suffering we
experience in the world is self-inflicted. Leaving aside physical
pain, what makes life hard for most people is not the actual
events of the world, but their response to those events. An act
of combustion occurs and we wail that our home ·has burned;
but what made it our home and what made it worth crying
about? Nothing but the value that we place on things gives them
any power to harm us spiritually or emotionally. When others
dislike, criticize, or even insult us, why should we allow it to
harm us? The sage continues unperturbed, knowing that it
matters not, where the fool breaks down into tears. As Marcus
Aurelius says, "The soul of man does violence to itself. " 28 But
the soul of a wise person does less violence to itself than do
most.
The most forceful and seemingly callous statement of this
attitude is perhaps found in Epictetus:
"His son is dead."
What has happened?
"His son is dead."
Nothing more?
''Nothing.''
"His ship is lost."
What has happened?
"His ship is lost."
29
"He has been haled to prison."
What has happened?
"He has been haled to prison."
But that any of these things are misfortunes to him, is an
addition which every one makes of his own. But (you say)
God is unjust in this. -Why? For having given thee
endurance and greatness of soul? For having made such
things to be no evils? For placing happiness within thy reach,
even when enduring them? For opening unto thee a door,
when things make not for thy good? -Depart, my friend,
and find fault no more! 29
The Stoic sage, faced with determinism, finds happiness in
understanding and assent. Their favorite homely analogy is a dog
tied behind a wagon, which, if rebellious, gets dragged along and
harmed because of his own attitudes, but which, if understand-
ing and accepting, trots happily along, suffering no pain, in the
direction he would be compelled to travel in any case. The value
and sagacity of this indifference to worldly circumstance shines
clearly through the consideration of two of the greatest of the
later Stoics. Epictetus, the slave, and Marcus Aurelius, the most
powerful ruler in the world, alike find happiness in meditating
on the wisdom of Providence and the unimportance of circum-
stance. How much easier it should be for us in our bourgeois
comfort to avoid unhappiness, and how miserably we fail for
lack of their wisdom.
The other great contribution of the Stoics to the theory of
determinism is the now passe theory of the Eternal Recurrence
of Events. There is some scholarly dispute as to whether the
Stoics thought (or should have thought) that time is circular,
repeating exactly the same events over and over, or linear but
cyclical, repeating a pattern of qualitatively indistinguishable but
numerically distinct events over and over. Whichever might be
the case, it seems clear that the doctrine was not inspired by the
kind of scientific considerations that lead many thinkers
nowadays to speculate that gravitational closure will cause this
cycle of the history of the universe to end in a big crunch, to be
followed by a big bang, etc.
Rather, it seems clear that Stoic thinkers were still under the
influence of the temporal conception of the modalities. In this
30
way of thinking, to say that something is necessary is to say that
it is true at all times or in all cases of a certain sort. But this
view has difficulty accounting for necessity in individual events.
The difficulty can be resolved if all events recur eternally, so
there are no unit sets of events, only infinite sets. Since the
problem that occasioned it is no longer taken seriously, the Eter-
nal Recurrence of Events has also declined and is seldom
mentioned as a serious philosophical theory.
On the whole, the most important contribution the Stoics
made to our topic was to demonstrate that it is possible to accept
determinism gracefully and even to find in it a source of
philosophical comfort and moral support. Determinist or not,
everyone could benefit by reading the Stoics. (In fact, I have
probably recommended the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius to
more people than any other single book.)
The Swerving Atoms of Epicurus

The first philosopher who seems to me to have truly come to
grips with the implications of determinism is Epicurus (341-270
BC)
Epicurus was primarily concerned with ethics, and dealt with
physics only in so far as it had implications for ethics. 30 He was
particularly anxious to free humanity from subservience to myth
and religion, and was therefore in the market for a materialistic
system of physics.
Epicurus had no interest in or respect for predictability or
foreknowledge. His conception of "predictability" was rooted in
divination rather than science, and divination was intrinsically
religious. But for Epicurus, religion was the "true enemy,"
according to Bailey:
"Prophecy," he says himself, "does not exist, and even if it
did exist, things that come to pass must be counted nothing
to us." Cicero bears this out: "there is nothing which
Epicurus derides so much as the prediction of future events.''
If the gods had no part in the ordering of events, much less
would they foretell their course to men. 31
As we saw earlier, Leucippus and Democritus had developed
a cosmological scheme based on atoms moving by necessity
31
through the void, colliding with each other and thus creating the
bodies and motions we experience in the world. The gods played
no part in such a scheme, and thus need not be either feared or
supplicated. This seemed to be just what Epicurus needed, so he
adopted the fundamental tenets of atomism.
But Epicurus saw, as Democritus had not, that if all material
events occur by implacable necessity, then ethics is in trouble.
In our day, it is common. to see the problem as focused on the
question of whether or not one has a will that is either free or
determined. Furley has argued convincingly32 that Epicurus
probably did not take this approach, but, following Aristotle, 33
directly faced the problem of which actions are excusable and
which are to be blamed. If all that one does flows of necessity
from the motion of the atoms, no part is left at all for ethics to
play in the world, and, for Epicurus, this is worse even than
believing in religion:
"it were better to follow the myths about the gods than to
become a slave to the 'destiny' of the natural philosophers:
for the former suggests a hope of placating the gods by
worship, whereas the latter involves a necessity which knows
no placation.' ' 34
(Ep. iii., s. 134)
To make the world safe for morality, Epicurus decreed that
the atoms must ·swerve:
"but that the very mind feels not some necessity within in
doing all things, and is not constrained like a conquered thing
to bear and suffer, this is brought about by the tiny swerve of
the first-beginnings in no determined direction of place and at
no determined time. " 35
(Ep. ii., 289-93)
There is some scholarly dispute as to exactly how Epicurus
intended for the swerve to "break the chains of Destiny." Bailey
takes the orthodox view that each individual choice is free
because it involves at least one swerve of an atom. 36 Furley,
however, points out that if Epicurus really meant that, he would
have escaped destiny only by embracing randomness:
32
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
we know that seven years later the vicar of Garde married a girl in
the east villages to a young Icelander.
Meanwhile, in plague-stricken England, Bristol, our biggest
seaport, had not enough men living even to bury the dead, and labor
was so scarce that the crops rotted for lack of harvesters. That is
why an English squadron raided Iceland, Greenland, perhaps even
Vinland, for slaves, and the people were carried away into captivity.
Afterward England paid compensation to Denmark and returned the
folk to their homes, but in 1448 the pope wrote to a Norse bishop
concerning their piteous condition. And there the story ends, for in
that year the German merchants at Bergen in Norway squabbled
with the forty master mariners of the American trade. The sailors had
boycotted their Hanseatic League, so the Germans asked them to
dinner, and murdered them. From that time no man knew the way to
lost America.
II
A. D. 1248
THE CRUSADERS
IN the seventh century of the reign of Our Lord Christ, arose the
Prophet Mahomet. To his followers he generously gave Heaven, and
as much of the earth as they could get, so the true believers made
haste to occupy goodly and fruitful possessions of Christian powers,
including the Holy Land. The owners were useful as slaves.
Not having been consulted in this matter, the Christians took
offense, making war upon Islam in seven warm campaigns, wherein
they held and lost by turns the holy sepulcher, so that the country
where our Lord taught peace, was always drenched with blood. In
the end, our crusades were not a success.
About Saint Louis and the sixth crusade:
At the opening of the story, that holy but delightful king of France
lay so near death that his two lady nurses had a squabble, the one
pulling a cloth over his face because he was dead, while the other
snatched it away because he was still alive. At last he sent the pair
of them to fetch the cross, on which he vowed to deliver the Holy
Land. Then he had to get well, so he did, sending word to his barons
to roll up their men for war.
Among the nobles was the young Lord of Joinville, seneschal of
Champagne—a merry little man with eight hundred pounds a year of
his own. But then, what with an expensive mother, his wife, and
some little worries, he had to pawn his lands before he could take
the field with his two knights-banneret, nine knights, their men-at-
arms, and the servants. He shared with another lord the hire of a
ship from Marseilles, but when they joined his majesty in Cyprus he
had only a few pounds left, and the knights would have deserted but
that the king gave him a staff appointment at eight hundred pounds a
year.
The king was a holy saint, a glorious knight errant, full of fun, but
a thoroughly incompetent general. Instead of taking Jerusalem by
surprise, he must needs raid Egypt, giving the soldan of Babylon the
Less (Cairo) plenty of time to arrange a warm reception. The rival
armies had a battle on the beach, after which Saint Louis sat down in
front of Damietta, where he found time to muddle his commissariat.
On the other hand, the soldan was not at all well, having been
poisoned by a rival prince, and paid no heed to the carrier pigeons
with their despairing messages from the front. This discouraged the
Moslems, who abandoned Damietta and fled inland, hotly pursued
by the French. As a precaution, however, they sent round their ships,
which collected the French supplies proceeding to the front. The
Christians had plenty of fighting and a deal of starving to do, not to
mention pestilence in their ill-managed camps. So they came to a
canal which had to be bridged, but the artful paynim cut away the
land in front of the bridge head, so that there was no ground on
which the French could arrive. In the end the Christians had to swim
and, as they were heavily armored, many were drowned in the mud.
Joinville’s party found a dry crossing up-stream, and their troubles
began at the enemy’s camp whence the Turks were flying.
“While we were driving them through their camp, I perceived a
Saracen who was mounting his horse, one of his knights holding the
bridle. At the moment he had his two hands on the saddle to mount, I
gave him of my lance under the armpit, and laid him dead. When his
knight saw that, he left his lord and the horse, and struck me with his
lance as I passed, between the two shoulders, holding me so
pressed down that I could not draw the sword at my belt. I had,
therefore, to draw the sword attached to my horse, and when he saw
that he withdrew his lance and left me.”
Here in the camp Joinville’s detachment was rushed by six
thousand Turks, “who pressed upon me with their lances. My horse
knelt under the weight, and I fell forward over the horse’s ears. I got
up as soon as ever I could with my shield at my neck, and my sword
in my hand.
“Again a great rout of Turks came rushing upon us, and bore me
to the ground and went over me, and caused my shield to fly from
my neck.”
So the little party gained the wall of a ruined house, where they
were sorely beset: Lord Hugh, of Ecot, with three lance wounds in
the face, Lord Frederick, of Loupey, with a lance wound between the
shoulders, so large that the blood flowed from his body as from the
bung hole of a cask, and my Lord of Sivery with a sword-stroke in
the face, so that his nose fell over his lips. Joinville, too badly
wounded to fight, was holding horses, while Turks who had climbed
to the roof were prodding from above with their lances. Then came
Anjou to the rescue, and presently the king with his main army. The
fight became a general engagement, while slowly the Christian force
was driven backward upon the river. The day had become very hot,
and the stream was covered with lances and shields, and with
horses and men drowning and perishing.
Near by De Joinville’s position, a streamlet entered the river, and
across that ran a bridge by which the Turks attempted to cut the
king’s retreat. This bridge the little hero, well mounted now, held for
hours, covering the flight of French detachments. At the head of one
such party rode Count Peter, of Brittany, spitting the blood from his
mouth and shouting “Ha! by God’s head, have you ever seen such
riffraff?”
“In front of us were two of the king’s sergeants; ... and the Turks
... brought a large number of churls afoot, who pelted them with
lumps of earth, but were never able to force them back upon us. At
last they brought a churl on foot, who thrice threw Greek fire at them.
Once William of Boon received the pot of Greek fire on his target, for
if the fire had caught any of his garments he must have been burnt
alive. We were all covered with the darts that failed to hit the
sergeants. Now, it chanced that I found a Saracen’s quilted tunic
lined with tow; I turned the open side towards me, and made a shield
... which did me good service, for I was only wounded by their darts
in five places, and my horse in fifteen.... The good Count of
Soissons, in that point of danger, jested with me and said,
“‘Seneschal, let these curs howl! By God’s bonnet we shall talk
of this day yet, you and I, in ladies’ chambers!’”
So came the constable of France, who relieved Joinville and
sent him to guard the king.
“So as soon as I came to the king, I made him take off his
helmet, and lent him my steel cap so that he might have air.”
Presently a knight brought news that the Count of Artois, the
king’s brother, was in paradise.
“Ah, Sire,” said the provost, “be of good comfort herein, for never
did king of France gain so much honor as you have gained this day.
For in order to fight your enemies you have passed over a river
swimming, and you have discomfited them and driven them from the
field, and taken their engines, and also their tents wherein you will
sleep this night.”
And the king replied: “Let God be worshiped for all He has given
me,” and then the big tears fell from his eyes.
That night the captured camp was attacked in force, much to the
grief of De Joinville and his knights, who ruefully put on chain mail
over their aching wounds. Before they were dressed De Joinville’s
chaplain engaged eight Saracens and put them all to flight.
Three days later came a general attack of the whole Saracen
army upon the Christian camp, but thanks to the troops of Count
William, of Flanders, De Joinville and his wounded knights were not
in the thick of the fray.
“Wherein,” he says, “God showed us great courtesy, for neither I
nor my knights had our hawberks (chain shirts) and shields, because
we had all been wounded.”
You see De Joinville had the sweet faith that his God was a
gentleman.
After that the sorrowful army lay nine days in camp till the bodies
of the dead floated to the surface of the canal, and eight days more
while a hundred hired vagabonds cleared the stream. But the army
lived on eels and water from that canal, while all of them sickened of
scurvy, and hundreds died. Under the hands of the surgeons the
men of that dying army cried like women. Then came an attempt to
retreat in ships to the coast, but the way was blocked, the little
galleys were captured one by one, the king was taken, and what
then remained of the host were prisoners, the sick put to death, the
rich held for ransom, the poor sold away into slavery.
Saint Louis appeared to be dying of dysentery and scurvy, he
was threatened with torture, but day after day found strength and
courage to bargain with the soldan of Babylon for the ransom of his
people. Once the negotiations broke down because the soldan was
murdered by his own emirs, but the king went on bargaining now
with the murderers. For his own ransom he gave the city of
Damietta, for that of his knights he paid the royal treasure that was
on board a galley in the port, and for the deliverance of the common
men, he had to raise money in France.
So came the release, and the emirs would have been ashamed
to let their captive knights leave the prison fasting. So De Joinville’s
party had “fritters of cheese roasted in the sun so that worms should
not come therein, and hard boiled eggs cooked four or five days
before, and these, in our honor, had been painted with divers colors.”
After that came the counting of the ransom on board the royal
galley, with the dreadful conclusion that they were short of the sum
by thirty thousand livres. De Joinville went off to the galley of the
marshal of the Knights Templars, where he tried to borrow the
money.
“Many were the hard and angry words which passed between
him and me.”
For one thing the borrower, newly released from prison, looked
like a ragged beggar, and for the rest, the treasure of the Templars
was a trust fund not to be lent to any one. They stood in the hold in
front of the chest of treasure, De Joinville demanding the key, then
threatening with an ax to make of it the king’s key.
“We see right well,” said the treasurer, “that you are using force
against us.” And on that excuse yielded the key to the ragged
beggar, tottering with weakness, a very specter of disease and
famine.
“I threw out the silver I found therein and went, and sat on the
prow of our little vessel that had brought me. And I took the marshal
of France and left him with the silver in the Templars’ galley and on
the galley I put the minister of the Trinity. On the galley the marshal
handed the silver to the minister, and the minister gave it over to me
on the little vessel where I sat. When we had ended and came
towards the king’s galley, I began to shout to the king.
“‘Sire! Sire! see how well I am furnished!’
“And the saintly man received me right willingly and right
joyfully.”
So the ransom was completed, the king’s ransom and that of the
greatest nobles of France, this group of starving ragged beggars in a
dingey.
Years followed of hard campaigning in Palestine. Once Saint
Louis was even invited by the soldan of Damascus to visit as a
pilgrim that Holy City which he could never enter as a conqueror. But
Saint Louis and his knights were reminded of a story about Richard
the Lion-Hearted, king of England. For Richard once marched almost
within sight of the capital so that a knight cried out to him:
“Sire, come so far hither, and I will show you Jerusalem!”
But the Duke of Burgundy had just deserted with half the
crusading army, lest it be said that the English had taken Jerusalem.
So when Richard heard the knight calling he threw his coat armor
before his eyes, all in tears, and said to our Savior,
“Fair Lord God, I pray Thee suffer me not to see Thy Holy City
since I can not deliver it from the hands of thine enemies.”
King Louis the Saint followed the example of King Richard the
Hero, and both left Palestine broken-hearted because they had not
the strength to take Jerusalem.
Very queer is the tale of the queen’s arrival from France.
“When I heard tell that she was come,” said De Joinville, “I rose
from before the king and went to meet her, and led her to the castle,
and when I came back to the king, who was in his chapel, he asked
me if the queen and his children were well; and I told him yes. And
he said, ‘I knew when you rose from before me that you were going
to meet the queen, and so I have caused the sermon to wait for you.’
And these things I tell you,” adds De Joinville, “because I had then
been five years with the king, and never before had he spoken to
me, nor so far as ever I heard, to any one else, of the queen, and of
his children; and so it appears to me, it was not seemly to be thus a
stranger to one’s wife and children.”
To do the dear knight justice, he was always brutally frank to the
king’s face, however much he loved him behind his back.
The return of the king and queen to France was full of adventure,
and De Joinville still had an appetite for such little troubles as a
wreck and a sea fight. Here is a really nice story of an accident.
“One of the queen’s bedwomen, when she had put the queen to
bed, was heedless, and taking the kerchief that had been wound
about her head, threw it into the iron stove on which the queen’s
candle was burning, and when she had gone into the cabin where
the women slept, below the queen’s chamber, the candle burnt on,
till the kerchief caught fire, and from the kerchief the fire passed to
the cloths with which the queen’s garments were covered. When the
queen awoke she saw her cabin all in flames, and jumped up quite
naked and took the kerchief and threw it all burning into the sea, and
took the cloths and extinguished them. Those who were in the barge
behind the ship cried, but not very loud, ‘Fire! fire!’ I lifted up my
head and saw that the kerchief still burned with a clear flame on the
sea, which was very still.
“I put on my tunic as quickly as I could, and went and sat with
the mariners.
“While I sat there my squire, who slept before me, came to me
and said that the king was awake, and asked where I was. ‘And I told
him,’ said he, ‘that you were in your cabin; and the king said to me,
“Thou liest!”’ While we were thus speaking, behold the queen’s clerk
appeared, Master Geoffrey, and said to me, ‘Be not afraid, nothing
has happened.’ And I said, ‘Master Geoffrey, go and tell the queen
that the king is awake, and she should go to him, and set his mind at
ease.’
“On the following day the constable of France, and my Lord
Peter the chamberlain, and my Lord Gervais, the master of the
pantry, said to the king, ‘What happened in the night that we heard
mention of fire?’ and I said not a word. Then said the king, ‘What
happened was by mischance, and the seneschal (De Joinville) is
more reticent than I. Now I will tell you,’ said he, ‘how it came about
that we might all have been burned this night,’ and he told them what
had befallen, and said to me, ‘I command you henceforth not to go to
rest until you have put out all fires, except the great fire that is in the
hold of the ship.’ (Cooking fire on the ship’s ballast). ‘And take note
that I shall not go to rest till you come back to me.’”
It is pleasant to think of the queen’s pluck, the knight’s silence,
the king’s tact, and to see the inner privacies of that ancient ship.
After seven hundred years the gossip is fresh and vivid as this
morning’s news.
The king brought peace, prosperity and content to all his
kingdom, and De Joinville was very angry when in failing health
Saint Louis was persuaded to attempt another crusade in Africa.
“So great was his weakness that he suffered me to carry him in
my arms from the mansion of the Count of Auxerre to the abbey of
the Franciscans.”
So went the king to his death in Tunis, a bungling soldier, but a
saint on a throne, the noblest of all adventurers, the greatest
sovereign France has ever known.
Long afterward the king came in a dream to see De Joinville:
“Marvelously joyous and glad of heart, and I myself was right glad to
see him in my castle. And I said to him, ‘Sire, when you go hence, I
will lodge you in a house of mine, that is in a city of mine, called
Chevillon.’ And he answered me laughing, and said to me, ‘Lord of
Joinville, by the faith I owe you, I have no wish so soon to go
hence.’”
It was at the age of eighty-five De Joinville wrote his memoirs,
still blithe as a boy because he was not grown up.
Note. From Memoirs of the Crusaders, by Villehardouine

and De Joinville. Dent & Co.
III
A. D. 1260
THE MIDDLE AGES IN ASIA
THE year 1260 found Saint Louis of France busy reforming his
kingdom, while over the way the English barons were reforming King
Henry III on the eve of the founding of parliament, and the Spaniards
were inventing the bull fight by way of a national sport. Our own
national pastime then was baiting Jews. They got twopence per
week in the pound for the use of their money, but next year one of
them was caught in the act of cheating, a little error which led to the
massacre of seven hundred.
That year the great Khan Kublai came to the throne of the
Mongol Empire, a pastoral realm of the grass lands extending from
the edge of Europe to the Pacific Ocean. Kublai began to build his
capital, the city of Pekin, and in all directions his people extended
their conquests. The looting and burning of Bagdad took them seven
days and the resistless pressure of their hordes was forcing the
Turks upon Europe.
Meanwhile in the dying Christian empire of the East, the Latins
held Constantinople with Beldwin on the throne, but next year the
Greek army led by Michael Paleologus crept through a tunnel and
managed to capture the city.
Among the merchants at Constantinople in 1260 were the two
Polo brothers, Nicolo and Matteo, Venetian nobles, who invested the
whole of their capital in gems, and set off on a trading voyage to the
Crimea. Their business finished, they went on far up the Volga River
to the court of a Mongol prince, and to him they gave the whole of
their gems as a gift, getting a present in return with twice the money.
But now their line of retreat was blocked by a war among the Mongol
princes, so they went off to trade at Bokhara in Persia where they
spent a year. And so it happened that the Polo brothers met with
certain Mongol envoys who were returning to the court of their
Emperor Kublai. “Come with us,” said the envoys. “The great khan
has never seen a European and will be glad to have you as his
guests.” So the Polos traveled under safe conduct with the envoys, a
year’s journey, until they reached the court of the great khan at Pekin
and were received with honor and liberality.
Now it so happened that Kublai sought for himself and his
people the faith of Christ, and wanted the pope to send him a
hundred priests, so he despatched these Italian gentlemen as his
ambassadors to the court of Rome. He gave them a passport
engraved on a slab of gold, commanding his subjects to help the
envoys upon their way with food and horses, and thus, traveling in
state across Asia, the Polos returned from a journey, the greatest
ever made up to that time by any Christian men.
At Venice, Nicolo, the elder of the brothers, found that his wife
had died leaving to him a son, then aged sixteen, young Marco Polo,
a gallant, courageous, hardy lad, it seems, and very truthful, without
the slightest symptoms of any sense of humor.
The schoolboy who defined the Vatican as a great empty space
without air, was perfectly correct, for when the Polos arrived there
was a sort of vacuum in Rome, the pope being dead and no new
appointment made because the electors were squabbling. Two years
the envoys waited, and when at last a new pope was elected, he
proved to be a friend of theirs, the legate Theobald on whom they
waited at the Christian fortress of Acre in Palestine.
But instead of sending a hundred clergymen to convert the
Mongol empire, the new pope had only one priest to spare, who
proved to be a coward, and deserted.
Empty handed, their mission a failure, the Polos went back, a
three and one-half years’ journey to Pekin, taking with them young
Marco Polo, a handsome gallant, who at once found favor with old
Kublai Khan. Marco “sped wondrously in learning the customs of the
Tartars, as well as their language, their manner of writing, and their
practise of war ... insomuch that the emperor held him in great
esteem. And so when he discerned Mark to have so much sense,
and to conduct himself so well and beseemingly, he sent him on an
embassage of his, to a country which was a good six months’
journey distant. The young gallant executed his commission well and
with discretion.” The fact is that Kublai’s ambassadors, returning
from different parts of the world, “were able to tell him nothing except
the business on which they had gone, and that the prince in
consequence held them for no better than dolts and fools.” Mark
brought back plenty of gossip, and was a great success, for
seventeen years being employed by the emperor on all sorts of
missions. “And thus it came about that Messer Marco Polo had
knowledge of or had actually visited a greater number of the different
countries of the world than any other man.”
In the Chinese annals of the Mongol dynasty there is record in
1277 of one Polo nominated a second-class commissioner or agent
attached to the privy council. Marco had become a civil servant, and
his father and uncle were both rich men, but as the years went on,
and the aged emperor began to fail, they feared as to their fate after
his death. Yet when they wanted to go home old Kublai growled at
them.
“Now it came to pass in those days that the Queen Bolgana, wife
of Argon, lord of the Levant (court of Persia), departed this life. And
in her will she had desired that no lady should take her place, or
succeed her as Argon’s wife except one of her own family (in
Cathay). Argon therefore despatched three of his barons ... as
ambassadors to the great khan, attended by a very gallant company,
in order to bring back as his bride a lady of the family of Queen
Bolgana, his late wife.
“When these three barons had reached the court of the great
khan, they delivered their message explaining wherefore they were
come. The khan received them with all honor and hospitality, and
then sent for a lady whose name was Cocachin, who was of the
family of the deceased Queen Bolgana. She was a maiden of
seventeen, a very beautiful and charming person, and on her arrival
at court she was presented to the three barons as the lady chosen in
compliance with their demand. They declared that the lady pleased
them well.
“Meanwhile Messer Marco chanced to return from India, whither
he had gone as the lord’s ambassador, and made his report of all the
different things that he had seen in his travels, and of the sundry
seas over which he had voyaged. And the three barons, having seen
that Messer Nicolo, Messer Matteo and Messer Marco were not only
Latins but men of marvelous good sense withal, took thought among
themselves to get the three to travel to Persia with them, their
intention being to return to their country by sea, on account of the
great fatigue of that long land journey for a lady. So they went to the
great khan, and begged as a favor that he would send the three
Latins with them, as it was their desire to return home by sea.
“The lord, having that great regard that I have mentioned for
those three Latins, was very loath to do so. But at last he did give
them permission to depart, enjoining them to accompany the three
barons and the lady.”
In the fleet that sailed on the two years’ voyage to Persia there
were six hundred persons, not counting mariners; but what with
sickness and little accidents of travel, storms for instance and
sharks, only eight persons arrived, including the lady, one of the
Persian barons, and the three Italians. They found the handsome
King Argon dead, so the lady had to put up with his insignificant son
Casan, who turned out to be a first-rate king. The lady wept sore at
parting with the Italians. They set out for Venice, arriving in 1295
after an absence of twenty-seven years.
There is a legend that two aged men, and one of middle age, in
ragged clothes, of very strange device, came knocking at the door of
the Polo’s town house in Venice, and were denied admission by the
family who did not know them. It was only when the travelers had
unpacked their luggage, and given a banquet, that the family and
their guests began to respect these vagrants. Three times during
dinner the travelers retired to change their gorgeous oriental robes
for others still more splendid. Was it possible that the long dead
Polos had returned alive? Then the tables being cleared, Marco
brought forth the dirty ragged clothes in which they had come to
Venice, and with sharp knives they ripped open the seams and
welts, pouring out vast numbers of rubies, sapphires, carbuncles,
diamonds and emeralds, gems to the value of a million ducats. The
family was entirely convinced, the public nicknamed the travelers as
the millionaires, the city conferred dignities, and the two elder
gentlemen spent their remaining years in peace and splendor
surrounded by hosts of friends.
Three years later a sea battle was fought between the fleets of
Genoa and Venice, and in the Venetian force one of the galleys was
commanded by Marco Polo. There Venice was totally defeated, and
Marco was one of the seven thousand prisoners carried home to
grace the triumph of the Genoese. It was in prison that he met the
young literary person to whom he dictated his book, not of travel, not
of adventure, but a geography, a description of all Asia, its countries,
peoples and wonders. Sometimes he got excited and would draw the
long bow, expanding the numbers of the great khan’s armies.
Sometimes his marvels were such as nobody in his senses could be
expected to swallow, as for instance, when he spoke of the Tartars
as burning black stones to keep them warm in winter. Yet on the
whole this book, of the greatest traveler that ever lived, awakened
Europe of the Dark Ages to the knowledge of that vast outer world
that has mainly become the heritage of the Christian Powers.
See the Book of Sir Marco Polo, translated and edited by

Colonel Sir Henry Yule. John Murray.
IV
A. D. 1322
THE MARVELOUS ADVENTURES OF SIR
JOHN MAUNDEVILLE
“I, JOHN MAUNDEVILLE, Knight, all be it I am not worthy, that was

born in England, in the town of St. Allans, passed the sea in the year
of our Lord 1322 ... and hitherto have been long time on the sea, and
have seen and gone through many diverse lands ... with good
company of many lords. God be thankful!”
So wrote a very gentle and pious knight. His book of travels
begins with the journey to Constantinople, which in his day was the
seat of a Christian emperor. Beyond was the Saracen empire, whose
sultans reigned in the name of the Prophet Mahomet over Asia
Minor, Syria, the Holy Land and Egypt. For three hundred years
Christian and Saracen had fought for the possession of Jerusalem,
but now the Moslem power was stronger than ever.
Sir John Maundeville found the sultan of Babylon the Less at his
capital city in Egypt, and there entered in his service as a soldier for
wars against the Arab tribes of the desert. The sultan grew to love
this Englishman, talked with him of affairs in Europe, urged him to
turn Moslem, and offered to him the hand of a princess in marriage.
But when Maundeville insisted on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, his
master let him go, and granted him letters with the great seal, before
which even generals and governors were obliged to prostrate
themselves.
Sir John went all over Palestine, devoutly believing everything he
was told. Here is his story of the Field Beflowered. “For a fair maiden
was blamed with wrong, and slandered ... for which cause she was
condemned to death, and to be burnt in that place, to the which she
was led. And as the fire began to burn about her, she made her
prayers to our Lord, that as certainly as she was not guilty of that sin,
that he would help her, and make it to be known to all men of his
merciful grace. And when she had thus said she entered into the fire,
and anon was the fire quenched and out; and the brands which were
burning became red rose trees, and the brands that were not kindled
became white rose trees full of roses. And these were the first rose
trees and roses, both white and red, which ever any man saw.”
All this part of his book is very beautiful concerning the holy
places, and there are nice bits about incubators for chickens and the
use of carrier pigeons. But it is in the regions beyond the Holy Land
that Sir John’s wonderful power of believing everything that he had
heard makes his chapters more and more exciting.
“In Ethiopia ... there be folk that have but one foot and they go so
fast that it is a marvel. And the foot is so large that it shadoweth all
the body against the sun when they will lie and rest them.”
Beyond that was the isle of Nacumera, where all the people
have hounds’ heads, being reasonable and of good understanding
save that they worship an ox for their god. And they all go naked
save a little clout, and if they take any man in battle anon they eat
him. The dog-headed king of that land is most pious, saying three
hundred prayers by way of grace before meat.
Next he came to Ceylon. “In that land is full much waste, for it is
full of serpents, of dragons and of cockodrills, so that no man may
dwell there.
“In one of these isles be folk as of great stature as giants. And
they be hideous to look upon. And they have but one eye, and that is
in the middle of the forehead. And they eat nothing but raw flesh and
raw fish. And in another isle towards the south dwell folk of foul
stature and of cursed nature that have no heads. And their eyes be
in their shoulders and their mouths be round shapen, like an
horseshoe, amidst their breasts. And in another isle be men without
heads, and their eyes and mouths be behind in their shoulders. And
in another isle be folk that have the face all flat, all plain, without
nose and without mouth. But they have two small holes, all round,
instead of their eyes, and their mouth is flat also without lips. And in
another isle be folk of foul fashion and shape that have the lip above
the mouth so great that when they sleep in the sun they cover all the
face with that lip.”
If Sir John had been untruthful he might have been here tempted
to tell improbable stories, but he merely refers to these isles in
passing with a few texts from the Holy Scriptures to express his
entire disapproval. His chapters on the Chinese empire are a perfect
model of veracity, and he merely cocks on a few noughts to the
statistics. In outlying parts of Cathay he feels once more the need of
a little self-indulgence. One province is covered with total and
everlasting darkness, enlivened by the neighing of unseen horses
and the crowing of mysterious cocks. In the next province he found a
fruit, which, when ripe, is cut open, disclosing “a little beast in flesh
and bone and blood, as though it were a little lamb without wool. And
men eat both the fruit and the beast. And that is a great marvel. Of
that fruit have I eaten, although it were wonderful, but that I know
well that God is marvelous in all his works. And nevertheless I told
them of as great a marvel to them, that is amongst us, and that was
of the barnacle geese: for I told them that in our country were trees
that bear a fruit that become birds flying, and those that fall on the
water live, and they that fall on the earth die anon, and they be right
good to man’s meat, and thereof had they so great marvel that some
of them trowed it were an impossible thing to be.”
This mean doubt as to his veracity must have cut poor
Maundeville to the quick. In his earnest way he goes on to describe
the people who live entirely on the smell of wild apples, to the
Amazon nation consisting solely of women warriors, and so on past
many griffins, popinjays, dragons and other wild fowl to the Adamant
Rocks of loadstone which draw all the iron nails out of a ship to her
great inconvenience. “I myself, have seen afar off in that sea, as
though it had been a great isle full of trees and bush, full of thorns
and briers great plenty. And the shipmen told us that all that was of
ships that were drawn thither by the Adamants, for the iron that was
in them.” Beyond that Sir John reports a sea consisting of gravel,
ebbing and flowing in great waves, but containing no drop of water, a
most awkward place for shipping.
So far is Sir John moderate in his statements, but when he gets
to the Vale Perilous at last he turns himself loose. That vale is
disturbed by thunders and tempests, murmurs and noises, a great
noise of “tabors, drums and trumps.” This vale is all full of devils, and
hath been alway. In that vale is great plenty of gold and silver.
“Wherefore many misbelieving men and many Christian men
also go in oftentime to have of the treasure that there is; but few
come back again, and especially of the misbelieving men, nor of the
Christian men either, for they be anon strangled of devils. And in the
mid place of that vale, under a rock, is an head and the visage of a
devil bodily, full horrible and dreadful to see ... for he beholdeth every
man so sharply with dreadful eyes, that be evermore moving and
sparkling like fire, and changeth and stareth so often in diverse
manner, with so horrible countenance that no man dare draw nigh
towards him. And from him cometh smoke and stink and fire, and so
much abomination, that scarcely any man may there endure.
“And ye shall understand that when my fellows and I were in that
vale we were in great thought whether we durst put our bodies in
adventure to go in or not.... So there were with us two worthy men,
friars minors, that were of Lombardy, that said that if any man would
enter they would go in with us. And when they had said so upon the
gracious trust of God and of them, we made sing mass, and made
every man to be shriven and houseled. And then we entered
fourteen persons; but at our going out we were only nine.... And thus
we passed that perilous vale, and found therein gold and silver and
precious stones, and rich jewels great plenty ... but whether it was as
it seemed to us I wot never. For I touched none.... For I was more
devout then, than ever I was before or after, and all for the dread of
fiends, that I saw in diverse figures, and also for the great multitude
of dead bodies, that I saw there lying by the way ... and therefore
were we more devout a great deal, and yet we were cast down and
beaten many times to the hard earth by winds, thunder and tempests
... and so we passed that perilous vale.... Thanked be Almighty God!
“After this beyond the vale is a great isle where the folk be great
giants ... and in an isle beyond that were giants of greater stature,
some of forty-five foot or fifty foot long, and as some men say of fifty
cubits long. But I saw none of these, for I had no lust to go to those
parts, because no man cometh neither into that isle nor into the other
but he be devoured anon. And among these giants be sheep as
great as oxen here, and they bear great wool and rough. Of the
sheep I have seen many times ... those giants take men in the sea
out of their ships and bring them to land, two in one hand and two in
another, eating them going, all raw and all alive.
“Of paradise can not I speak properly, for I was not there. It is far
beyond. And that grieveth me. And also I was not worthy.”
So, regretting that he had not been allowed into paradise, the
hoary old liar came homeward to Rome, where he claims that the
pope absolved him of all his sins, and gave him a certificate that his
book was proved for true in every particular, “albeit that many men
list not to give credence to anything but to that that they have seen
with their eye, be the author or the person never so true.” Yet,
despite these unkind doubts as to its veracity, Maundeville’s book
lives after five hundred years, and ranks as the most stupendous
masterpiece in the art of lying.

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The Implications of Determinism 1st

Edition Roy Weatherford

You Can Fly The Tuskegee Airmen Carole Boston

Empiricism and the Metatheory of the Social Sciences

Education and Free Will Spinoza Causal Determinism and

Exploring the Power of ChatGPT: Applications,

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ISBN: 978-1-138-63228-8 (Set)

London and New York

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Part One The History of the Problem 1

Part Two Determinism - So What? 171

This book owes a great debt to Ted Honderich. His suggestion

The General Idea

The Forms of Determinism

Statements without truth values

Homer and the Fates

Plato's Moral Determinism

Socrates: Isn't it clear then that this class, who don't

The Stoics and Fate

The Swerving Atoms of Epicurus

Note. From Memoirs of the Crusaders, by Villehardouine

See the Book of Sir Marco Polo, translated and edited by

“I, JOHN MAUNDEVILLE, Knight, all be it I am not worthy, that was

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