120 LESSONS FKOM NATUKE. [CHAP. V. 



himself into this state without previous acts of conscious will ? 

 Can a man love justice without being able to distinguish 

 between the just and unjust ? If he loves moral beauty, must 

 he not know it ? 



I would fain believe that Professor Huxley does not 

 mean what he says when he asserts that acts may be moral 

 which are not directed to a good end. Were it so, such 

 words as &quot;virtue&quot; and &quot;goodness&quot; would have no rational 

 and logical place in his vocabulary. Similarly, I would 

 fain disbelieve him when he says he &quot;utterly rejects&quot; the 

 distinction between &quot; material &quot; and &quot; formal &quot; morality. I 

 would do so because whatever he may have said since, he 

 did once maintain that &quot; our volition counts for something as 

 a condition of the course of events.&quot; If, however, he rejects 

 the distinction he says he rejects, he thereby positively 

 denies every element of freedom and spontaneity to the 

 human will, and reduces our volition to a rank in the 

 &quot; course of events,&quot; which counts for no more than the 

 freedom of a match as to ignition, when placed within the 

 flame of a candle. With the enunciation of this fatalism, 

 &quot; formal morality &quot; most certainly falls, and together with 

 it every word denoting &quot;virtue,&quot; which thus becomes a 

 superfluous synonym for pleasure and expediency. 



And here it may be well to make a few further remarks 

 upon our power of will as connected with respousi- 



Free-will. r . 



bility and moral reprobation. We have seen that 

 the distinction between duty and pleasure is a fact which 

 introspection shows us. Another fact which introspection 

 also shows, is our power of &quot; attention.&quot; By this attention 

 is meant the deliberate, self-conscious act, not the mere 

 automatic attention which a sudden strange sensation may 

 call from us indeliberately. This distinction is recognised 

 and well stated by Dr. Carpenter. He says : 



&quot; Now this state of active as compared with passive recipiency of 

 attention as compared with mere insouciance, may be either volitional or 

 automatic j that is, it may be either intentionally induced by an act of 

 the will, or it may be produced uninttntionally by the powerful attrac- 



