MATERIALISM AND MORALITY. 483 



no more to be chosen by men or women, Savonarola reminds the fugi- 

 tive Romola, than birthplace, or father, or mother could be chosen, 

 though men might choose to forsake them. So long as a re oral code 

 exists, and is generally acknowledged and revered, the fact of indi- 

 vidual deflections from it, whether they be more or less numerous, is 

 of comparatively small importance. It is the invalidation of the moral 

 code, the prevalence of ethical agnosticism, the skepticism as to all 

 first principles, which I account so portentous a sign of our own times. 

 It seems to me to be the token of a decadent and moribund civili- 

 zation. 



Let us look at the matter as practical men. Assuredly what we 

 may expect from materialism is not construction but destruction in all 

 the most important departments of human life. Consider only two. 

 The bond of civil society is obedience to law, fenced round with pen- 

 alties ; but legislation rests upon the doctrine of human responsibility. 

 " Will," Kant tells us, " is a kind of causality belonging to living 

 beings in so far as they are rational ; and freedom is such a property 

 of causality as enables them to be efficient agents, independently of 

 outside causes determining them ; while, on the other hand, necessity 

 is that property of all irrational beings, which consists in their 

 being determined to activity by the influence of outside causes." 

 This conception of human freedom underlies the notion of crime. 

 Yes ; the sense of crime is bound up with the belief in man's power 

 of choice, and in his obligation to choose rightly. Where there 

 is no faculty to judge of acts, as right or wrong, and to elect be- 

 tween them, as in a young child or a lunatic, there is no criminal 

 responsibility, for there are no persons. Personality manifests itself 

 under the condition of free-will, influenced but not coerced by mo- 

 tives, a will which has the power of choice between two alternative 

 courses. Without that power assuredly there is no moral acountability. 

 Ought is a meaningless word without Can. Now, every school and 

 variety of materialism does, in effect, deny free-will, be the denial 

 more or less direct, more or less veiled.* Either we are presented 

 with the a posteriori argument, so elaborately worked out by Buckle, 

 which aims at establishing, by the aid of statistics, that what we call 

 morality is subject to fixed laws, like the course of the stars or the 

 return of the seasons ; that what we call virtue and vice are the results 

 of physical causes, as regular as those which rule the germination of 

 plants or the procreation of animals. Or the a priori road is followed, 

 and we are told that though we can determine our actions according 

 to our wishes, we can not determine our wishes. The will — what we 

 call will — is exhibited to us as always governed by the strongest mo- 

 tives, the force of which is not due to us, for we suffer them, we do 



* Thus, Mr. Clifford, in words, admits man's free agency ; but, in fact, he reduces it to 

 the mere shadow of a great name. It is with him nothing but the consciousness of being 

 attracted, not propelled. 



