THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF '' FREE- WILL:' 753 



stones at strangers passing by ; a dog barks at their heels ; both are 

 soundly whipped at each offense, and sooner or later both cease its 

 repetition. In both instances punishment was given from the same 

 standpoint ; its action on child and dog was alike— equally effectual, 

 and I see no reason for the interposition of moral responsibility in the 

 one case, if denied in the other. 



I do not believe that the doctrine of necessity, if generally held, 

 would lessen in any way our abhorrence of evil, or our approval of the 

 good. To assert, as Professor Bascom does in his recent work on 

 "Ethics," as a proof of free-will, that the doctrine of necessity " does 

 not merely strangle virtue — it leaves every thought and action as true 

 and as just, one as another," and that " all our moral action loses its 

 character without liberty," seems to me to make statements unsup- 

 ported by any evidence whatever. Would Professor Bascom allow 

 that Deity is free to become a fiend ? And if not — if to be God he 

 must of necessity be good — does he conceive that divine action " loses 

 its character without liberty " ? Or can he explain why conduct should 

 be deprived of the distinctions of good and evil because conditioned, 

 any more than physical qualities admitted to be determined indepen- 

 dently of the individual's will ? If beauty in the human form is bet- 

 ter than ugliness, health than disease, symmetry than distortion, intel- 

 ligence than idiocy, why should not modesty, humanity, justice, and 

 truth, not only seem, but be better than profligacy, cruelty, iniquity, 

 and falsehood ? The fact is, goodness is essentially beautiful, and in 

 the slow progress of mankind upward, from savagery to the ultimate 

 civilization yet to be, can not fail to command admiration. Evil is 

 hateful, independently of its relations to ethics, and its awful realm 

 extends far beyond the area of human action. In the spider springing 

 upon the entangled fly, the cat playing with its victim before tearing 

 it to pieces, in the teeth of the shark, the fangs of the rattlesnake, the 

 poisonous slaver of the rabid dog ; in the deposition of tubercle, the 

 slow growth of cancer, the ravages of syphilis upon innocent child- 

 hood, we get glimpses of the great mystery of Evil, separate from hu- 

 man will, where we pity but never condemn. And if, perchance, some 

 day the world should learn to discriminate in the sphere of human 

 action between the deed and doer ; if, acknowledging necessity, it 

 should come to have a larger and more comprehensive charity for all 

 mankind, will it have strayed very far from the example and precepts 

 of the world's great Teacher ? Was there not one who, hating leprosy, 

 loved the leper ? — about whom Pharisees murmured because he sat 

 at meat with sinners ? — who condemned not her whom the law would 

 have stoned ? — who taught that " it must needs be that offenses come," 

 and whose last prayer asked forgiveness for his enemies, " for they 

 know not what they do " ? I do not believe these dying words were 

 without meaning ; they were the expression of a scientific truth. 



Nor, finally, will belief in the conformity of will to law hinder our 



VOL. XTI.— 48 



