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The realm of necessity, therefore, must comprise two categories: the subjective or arbitrary, and the objective or mandatory. Mandatory necessity-like natural law which cannot be disobeyed-is that which cannot be suspended. It derives from forces, conditions, events which lie beyond the self, not subject to choice, unyielding to will and effort. “I wish I had blue eyes,” “…wish I were twenty again,” ” … wish I could fly,” “…wish I lived in the court of the Sun King.” Such wishes are futile, choice is inoperative; the necessity impartially constrains. And since it cannot be put aside there’s not much arguing about it. “If you jump you will fall-whether or not you choose to Fly.” There is consensus, we don’t dwell on it, we accept.

Arbitrary necessity derives from forces within the personality, but construed to be outside. The force may be either impulse or prohibition: “I didn’t want to drink, but couldn’t help it.” That is to say, the impulse to drink does not lie within the “I.” The “I,” which is of course the locus of choice, does not “want” to drink, would choose otherwise, but is overwhelmed by alien force. “I want to marry you,” a woman says to her lover, “want it more than anything in the world. But I can’t divorce my husband. He couldn’t take it . . . would break down. He depends on me. It would kill him.” Here it is loyalty, caring for another’s welfare, which is alleged to lie outside the deciding “I,” which therefore cannot choose, cannot do what it “wants,” but is held to an alien course. As though she were saying, “I do not here preside over internal conflict, do not listen to contending claims within myself to arrive finally at an anguished, fallible decision, but am coerced by a mandate beyond my jurisdiction. I yield to necessity.” The issue is not one of conscious versus unconscious. The contending forces are both conscious. The issue is the boundary of the self, the limits of the “I.”

Arbitrary necessity, therefore-like man-made law is that which may be suspended, disobeyed. When dealing with ourselves the constraining force seems inviolable, a solid wall before us, as though we really “can’t,” have no choice; and if we say so often enough, long enough, and mean it, we may make it so. But when we then look about and observe others doing what we “can’t” do we must conclude that the constraining force is not an attribute of the environing world, not the way things are, but a mandate from within ourselves which we, strangely, exclude from the “I.”
The lady who “wants” to marry her lover but “can’t” divorce her husband might here object. “When I said ‘can’t,”’ she might say, “it was just a way of speaking, a metaphor. It meant that staying with my husband represents duty, not desire, that’s all. In’ a theoretical way I could choose … I know that. But it’s just theoretical. Because … you see, the conflict is so terribly unequal, the considerations that make me stay, that absolutely demand I stay with my husband … they’re so overwhelmingly strong, there’s really no choice. That’s all I mean.”

We make serious record of her objection. In passing we note with surprise that the inequality of the conflict leads her to conclude there is “really no choice,” whereas this same circumstance would have led us to say rather that the choice is easy, one she might arrive at promptly, with the conviction of being right.

It’s only a metaphor, she says. In some theoretical way, she says, she is aware of choice. Perhaps. But we have doubt. In any event we must point out that she specifically denies this choice for which she now claims oblique awareness, that she locates the determining duty outside the “I” and its “wants.” And we might add that if she continues such metaphorical speech long enough she will eventually convince even herself; her “theoretical” choice will become more and more theoretical until, with no remaining consciousness of option, it will disappear in thin air. She then will have made actual something that may once have been but a metaphor. Nothing guarantees our freedom. Deny it often enough and one day it will be gone, and we’ll not know how or when.

Objective necessity is not arguable. My lover dies, I weep, beat my fists on the coffin. Everyone knows what I want; everyone knows that nothing will avail, no prayer, no curse, no desperate effort, nothing, that I shall never get her back. When there is argument about necessity, the alleged constraint is arbitrary, subjective. A house in flames, a trapped child, a restraining neighbor: “You can’t go in! It’s hopeless.” I see it differently: I can go in-if I have the nerve. There may be a chance. It’s not clear whether the situation permits or proscribes; the difference of opinion indicates that the necessity at issue is arbitrary. My neighbor’s statement is more plea than observation; he asks me to perceive that the contemplated action is precluded, to “see” that there is no choice. By so deciding I can make it so. If I agree it is impossible, then-even if mistaken-my having arrived at that judgment will, in a matter of moments, make it true. Our judgments fall within the field of events being judged, so themselves become events, and so alter the field. We survey the course of history and conclude, “Wars are inevitable.” The judgment seems detached, as if we observed from a distant galaxy; in fact it comes from within and, like all judgments, it may be mistaken. It is not inert, :it has consequences, shapes action, moves interest and behavior from, for example, the politics of dissent to the connoisseurship of wine; and so chips off one more fragment of the obstacle to war, thereby makes more likely the war which, when it comes, will vindicate our original judgment and the behavior which issued from it. So we create the necessity which then constrains us, constrains ever more tightly day after day, so vindicating ever more certainly our wisdom in having perceived from the outset we were not free. Finally we are bound hand and foot and may exclaim triumphantly, how right we were!

The areas of necessity and of freedom vary in proportion to each other and in absolute measure. They vary, also, from person to person, and, within the same person, from time to time. Together they comprise the total extent of available experience the range of which is a function of awareness and concern.

Adolescence, traditionally, is the time of greatest freedom, the major choices thereafter being progressively made, settled, and buried, one after another, never to be reopened. These days, however, an exhumation of such issues in later life has become quite common, with a corresponding increase in freedom which makes life again as hazardous as in youth.

Throughout our lives the proportion of necessity to freedom depends upon our tolerance of conflict: the greater our tolerance the more freedom we retain, the less our tolerance the more we jettison; for high among the uses of necessity is relief from tension. What we can’t alter we don’t have to worry about; so the enlargement of necessity is a measure of economy in psychic housekeeping. The more issues we have closed the fewer we have to fret about. For many of us, for example, the issues of stealing and of homosexuality are so completely buried that we no longer have consciousness of option, and so no longer in these matters have freedom: We may then walk through Tiffany’s or go to the ballet without temptation or conflict, whereas for one to whom these are still live issues, the choice depending upon a constantly shifting balance of fallibly estimated rewards of gain or pleasure as against risks of capture or shame, such jaunts may entail great tension.

Tranquility, however, has risks of its own. As we expand necessity and so relieve ourselves of conflict and responsibility, we are relieved, also, in the same measure, of authority and significance. When there arises then a crisis which does not fall within our limited routine we are frightened, without resources, insignificant.

For some people necessity expands cancerously, every possibility of invention and variation being transformed into inflexible routine until all of freedom is eaten away. The extreme in psychic economy is an existence in which everything occurs by law. Since life means conflict, such a state is living death. When, in the other direction, the area of necessity is too much diminished we become confused, anxious, may be paralyzed by conflict, may reach eventually the extreme of panic.

The more we are threatened, fragile, vulnerable, the more we renounce freedom in favor of an expanding necessity, Observing others then who laugh at risk, who venture on paths from which we have turned back, we feel envy; they are courageous where we are timid. We come close to despising ourselves, but recover quickly, can always take refuge in a hidden determinism. “It’s all an illusion,” we say; “it looks like their will and daring as against my inhibition and weakness, but that must be illusion. Because life is lawful. Nothing happens by chance. Not a single atom veers off course at random. My inhibition is not a failure of nerve. We can’t see the forces that mold us, but they are there. The genetic and experiential dice are loaded with factors unknown, unknowable, not of our intending, are thrown in circumstances over which we have no vision or control; we are stuck with the numbers that turn up. Beware the man who claims to be captain of his soul, he’s first mate at the very best.”

The more we are strong and daring the more we will diminish necessity in favor of an expanding freedom. “We are responsible,” we say, “for what we are. We create ourselves. We have done as we have chosen to do, and by so doing have become what we are. If we don’t like it, tomorrow is another day, and we may do differently.”

Each speaks truly for himself, the one is just so determined, the other is just so free; but each overstates his truth in ascribing his constraint or his liberty to life at large. These truths are partial, do not contend with each other. Each expresses a quality of experience. Which view one chooses to express, to the exclusion of the other, better describes the speaker than the human condition.

In every situation, for every person, there is a realm of freedom and a realm of constraint. One may live in either realm. One must recognize the irresistible forces, the iron fist, the stone wall-must know them for what they are in order not to fall into the sea like Icarus-but, knowing them, one may turn away and live in the realm of one’s freedom. A farmer must know the fence which bounds his land but need not spend his life standing there, looking out, beating his fists on the rails; better he till his soil, think of what to grow, where to plant the fruit trees. However small the area of freedom, attention and devotion may expand it to occupy the whole of life.

Look at the wretched people huddled in line for the gas chambers at Auschwitz. If they do anything other than move on quietly, they will be clubbed down. Where is freedom? … But wait. Go back in time, enter the actual event, the very moment: they are thin and weak, and they smell; hear the weary shuffling steps, the anguished catch of breath, the clutch of hand. Enter now the mind of one hunched and limping man. The line moves slowly; a few yards ahead begin the steps down. He sees the sign, someone whispers “showers,” but he knows-what happens here. He is struggling with a choice: to shout “Comrades! They will kill you! Run!” or to say nothing. This option, in the few moments remaining, is his whole life. If he shouts he dies now, painfully; if he moves on silently he dies but minutes later. Looking back on him in time and memory, we find the moment poignant but the freedom negligible. It makes no difference, we think, in that situation, his election of daring or of inhibition. Both are futile, without consequence. History sees no freedom for him, notes only constraint, labels him victim. But in the consciousness of that one man it makes great difference whether or not he experience the choice. For if he knows the constraint and nothing else, if he thinks “Nothing is possible,” then he is living his necessity; but if, perceiving the constraint, he turns from it to a choice between two possible courses of action, then-however he choose-he is living his freedom. This commitment to freedom may extend to the last breath.