ON FREE-WILL, AND MAN'S AUTOMATISM. 141 



strongly to deter you from wrong doing, society, also 

 governed by motives directed to its own preservation 

 and weal, is justified, through its arm of justice guarding 

 its interests, in punishing you, so as to make the deterr- 

 ing motives stronger in future in you and others similar." 

 In order to show the falseness of the theory, a burglar or 

 murderer of a metaphysical turn of mind, who has adopted 

 the necessitarian creed, is sometimes represented as 

 urging : " But is the punishment really j ust ? How can 

 it be just to punish me if my will has been coerced by 

 the strength of the motives which were unfortunately 

 present to me ? " And the answer provided by Bishop 

 Butler still holds good, even from the necessitarian point 

 of view. "As if," says Butler, "the necessity which is 

 supposed to destroy the injustice of murder would not 

 also destroy the injustice of punishing it." But the 

 burglar may be answered more fully from the point of 

 view of his own creed, from the principles of Edwards 

 and Priestley, of Mill and Bain. We may suppose a 

 necessitarian judge to have tried the necessitarian house- 

 breaker, and to reply to his objection : " It appears 

 from the event that respect for the rights of others, for 

 the just rights of property, were very feebly deterring 

 motives with you when you committed this crime; 

 further, that the fear of punishment was not so strong as 

 it is desirable it should have been ; it was calculated that, 

 if not as a moral being, yet at least as *a prudent one, 

 mindful of your own interest and self-preservation you 

 would have had the latter motive before you; it was 

 even confidently assumed that ycru would have it before 

 you in some degree, since you were forewarned of the 

 penalty attached to your offence against the law ; it now 

 appears that, though you doubtless had it before you, 

 you had it not in sufficient degree. This is unfortunate 



