FREEDOM AND 'FREE AY ILL: 183 



FREEDOM AND TREE-WILL.' i 



By Professor GEORGE STUART FULLERTON, 



UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



LET us suppose two men before a jury on the accusation of 

 homicide. Each admits that he has occasioned the death of a 

 man, but each has his own account of how the thing came about. In 

 the first instance, the accused was holding the gun that sped the fatal 

 bullet; his finger was on the trigger and pressed it; the discharge fol- 

 lowed; the victim fell. But it seems that the gun had been forced into 

 his unwilling hands by one stronger than he; an iron finger lay above 

 his own, and it was under its pressure that his finger became the proxi- 

 mate cause of a series of events which he cannot even now contemplate 

 without horror. He was the unwilling instrument of a bloody deed, and 

 does not account himself the responsible cause; he slew because he 

 'couldn't help it.' 



The second man lays before his jurors a story in many respects dif- 

 ferent, but ending with the same words. He was alone when the shoot- 

 ing occurred. He was under no compulsion at the hands of another, 

 but was shooting at a mark, and taking delight in dotting the target 

 near the bull's-eye, when lo! across the field, above the hedge that 

 bounds the horizon on that side, appears a tempting mark, the rubicund 

 face of a rustic whose open mouth strikes his joyous mood at just that 

 instant as an irresistible target, and one altogether too delightful to be 

 passed by. "I had not the faintest intention, a moment before, of shoot- 

 ing any man," he explains; "but, really, it was too good a shot to miss, 

 and I simply couldn't help it." 



Let us suppose it possible for the same jury to hear these two ex- 

 planations, one after the other. The action of a petit jury is said to be 

 most uncertain, but there can be little doubt that even a jury would 

 detect an important distinction between these two "couldn't help's.' 

 The world seems to be full of 'couldn't help's' of the two sorts; the man 

 who stumbled on the stairs couldn't help rolling to the bottom; the 

 man who was thrown from a window couldn't help descending to the 

 street; the man who was seized by the police couldn't help failing to 

 meet his engagement; the greedy boy couldn't help taking the larger 

 muffin; the devoted mother couldn't help spoiling her only child; the 

 emotional philanthropist couldn't help feeling in his pocket on hearing 

 the plausible tale of the wily tramp. 



Probably most jurymen would refuse to recognize "couldn't help's' 



