Art. II.— Moral Responsibility. By Me. H. K. Rusden. 



[Read 24th February, 1868.] 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Royal Society, 



I think it will not, and cannot, be contested that the 

 current morality is lamentably imperfect ; and that an 

 alarming proportion of society being immoral, it follows that 

 sufficient reasons for being moral are either unknown or do 

 not exist. The fact that some persons are moral affords 

 ground, however, for believing that such reasons are to be 

 found ; and if it be possible to discover and disseminate 

 them, so as to augment the number of the moral and 

 diminish that of the immoral, I think that time could not 

 be better spent than in endeavouring to render such a ser- 

 vice to humanity. Trusting that this is possible, let us, as 

 an essential preliminary, examine the subject of moral 

 responsibility. 



In dealing with moral subjects, great obscurity arises from 

 the arbitrary addition to those qualities of human actions 

 which constitute them physically good or bad, of a totally dif- 

 ferent and transcendental class of qualities, in conformity 

 with the hypothesis of meiit and demerit. The reality of the 

 distinction upon which that hypothesis is based, has been 

 repeatedly and gravely questioned ; and therefore it should 

 not be too rashly assumed. A presumption against it is at 

 least suggested by its mysterious nature. But, avoiding the 

 adoption of any premisses which might be disputed, we 

 may safely postulate that the distinction between pleasure 

 and pain, or physical good and physical evil, is more clear, 

 certain, and indisputable, than that which imputes merit or 

 demerit to an intelligent agent. The former is discerned 

 readily and clearly by children and savages, long before they 

 acquire the slightest glimmering of the latter. Many, indeed, 

 never arrive at the conception of merit and demerit ; which 

 proves that it is certainly not original and universal, like 

 that of pleasure and pain. Without assuming, as might be 

 contended, that this alone is fatal to the more subtle theory, 

 and desiring to take for granted no more than would be con- 

 ceded by those who uphold it most strenuously, I propose 

 first to examine the most currently propounded bases for it ; 



