ledging the doctrine of necessity and his inference from motives to voluntary actions, from character to conduct.[1]
Но ни один автор не изобразил необходимости волевых актов с такой подробностью и убедительностью, как Пристли, в своем произведении: Учение о философской необходимости (Priestley, The Doctrine of philosophical necessity), специально посвященном этому вопросу. Кого не убедит эта чрезвычайно ясно и удобопонятно написанная книга, у того ум должно признать, действительно, парализованным предрассудками. Для характеристики выводов Пристли привожу здесь несколько мест, цитируемых мною по второму изданию, Бирмингам, 1782.
Предисловие, стр. XX. There is no absurdity more glaring to my understanding, than the notion of philosophical liberty. — Стр. 26. Without a miracle, or the intervention of some foreign cause, no valition or action of any man could have been otherwise, than it has been. — Стр. 37. Though an inclination or affection of mind be not gravity, it influences me and acts upon me as certainly and necessarily, as this power does upon a stone. — Стр. 43. Saying that the will is self-determined, gives no idea at all, or rather implies an absurdity, viz: that a determination, which is an effect, takes place, without any cause at all. For exclusive of every thing that comes under the denomination of motive, there is really nothing at all left, to produce the determination. Let a man use what words he pleases, he can have no more conception how we can sometimes be determined by motives, and sometimes without any motive, than he can have of a scale being sometimes weighed down by weights, and sometimes by a kind of substance that has no weight at all, which, whatever it be in itself, must, with respect to the scale be nothing. — Стр. 66. In proper philosophical language, the motive ought to be call’d the proper cause of the action. It is as much so as any thing in nature is the cause of any thing else. — Стр. 84. It will never be in our power to choose two things, when all the previous circumstances are the very same. — Стр 90. A man indeed, when he reproaches himself for any particular action in his passed conduct, may fancy that, if he was in the same situation again, he would have acted differently. But this is a mere deception; and if he examines himself strictly, and takes in all circumstances, he may be satisfied that, with the same inward disposition of
- ↑ „Таким образом оказывается, что связь между мотивами и произвольными действиями столь же правильна и единообразна, как связь между причиною и действием в любой области природы“. „Поэтому представляется почти невозможным заниматься каким-либо отделом науки или практической деятельности, не признавая учения о необходимости и заключении от мотивов к произвольным действиям, от характера к поведению“.
