THE HUMAN WILL 



the fathers and, I suppose, every physiologist and 

 scientific psychologist of the present day. But if 

 I am a determinist, can I in consistency, and in 

 point of fact do I, ever praise or blame any one? 

 Do I, to begin at home, regard myself as a respon 

 sible person? Do I, as it might appear I should, 

 regard praise and blame as absurdities, the sense 

 of moral responsibility as an illusion ? If so, do I 

 defend the laws which hang one murderer and 

 detain another &quot; at his Majesty s pleasure &quot; ? Surely 

 (it may be said), on the scientific theory of deter 

 minism, which declares that each of us is what 

 heredity and environment have made him, I have 

 no business to punish or acquiesce in the punish 

 ment of anybody my dog or my servant. Nor 

 can I consistently praise or reward. There cannot 

 be degrees of irresponsibility. If no one can help 

 doing anything, must I not regard with impartial 

 eye and equal lack of favor or disfavor the sage 

 and the fool, the saint and the criminal, the sane 

 and the insane? And if science and determinism 

 deny the validity of universal instincts, declare 

 that praise and blame are absurd, resolve con 

 science into superstition or indigestion, and make 

 no distinction between deliberate crime, impulsive 

 crime, and maniacal crime, is not determinism 

 stultified by the reductio ad absurdum? Must there 

 not be but a foundation of shifting sand for the 

 premises that lead to such conclusions? 



Such are some of the questions which we must 

 attempt to answer. 



189 



