ON HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY. 33 
fore it is a law of nature that each man who does so can- 
not help it, though the vast majority do help it—an absurdity 
which only needs stating in this naked way to become 
ashamed; and yet I will try to shame it a little more by 
applying Buckle’s own mathematical test to it. It is certain 
that 1 in 100,000 people (or whatever is the number) will 
kill themselves generally in a year. That means, in mathe- 
matics, that the chances are 100,000 to 1 against any one 
man doing it. Buckle called that a necessity that all who 
do must. It is absolutely certain that in the long run an 
unbiassed halfpenny will as often come heads as tails. What 
is the certainty about each toss? The only certainty is 
that one is likely as the other. And so one might go on 
with any number of illustrations of such a piece of nonsense. 
No materialist. ever treated himself as being a machine, or 
anybody else over whom he has power; and every man is a 
hundred times surer that he can generally do as he likes 
than anyone who has muddled his head with either misap- 
plied physics or unintelligible metaphysics can be of any 
or all arguments to the contrary. I say “muddled with 
physics” as well as with metaphysics, because using physical 
facts to prove things entirely beyond them is mere darken- 
ing of counsel without knowledge, and making a pretence of 
omniscience under the guise of humility and agnosticism, 
Still, I think Dr. Row’s statement of his argument did 
leave a gap unfilled. Indeed I always distrust those neat 
epigrammatic statements which have the appearance of 
settling difficult questions in two or three lines of axioms 
and deductions. Generally it is the materialistic party that 
is fondest of them. I have exposed several of them in 
former papers here and elsewhere, and need not advert 
to them now. I am afraid his assertion that “maukind 
have unanimously asserted that certain actions are virtuous 
and vicious” will hardly carry all the weight he put upon 
it, either in fact or logic. If it were true that even all 
civilised mankind were agreed as to the virtue or vice of 
every action (not of certaim actions), that might be a safe 
basis to work upon; but conscience is far too variable and 
dependent on external circumstances to be accepted as a 
basis for this demonstration. Certainly no opponent will 
accept it. Nor do I see how even that proves that we shall 
ever be held responsible by any power beyond human 
vengeance. Unfortunately, however, the assumed universal 
agreement is not universal. Some things which no Chris- 
tian has the least doubt about being virtuous or vicious are 
D 
