28 Moral Responsibility. 



and, if still necessary, to search then for some more definite 

 and consistent principle as a guide to a feasible and universal 

 morality. We surely cannot adopt a course better calculated 

 to attain this end ; and, if we fail to do so, then, I say, that 

 though we may not have proved the popular theories to be 

 merely factitious, still the probability of their reality will be 

 so far lessened ; and, if we arrive at any more substantial 

 and effective principle, then the importance and essential 

 value of the system of merit and demerit, — praise and 

 blame, — will have been sufficiently disproved. 



To begin with our terms. The term moral is derived from 

 the Latin (mos, movis, moralis), for manners, customs ; and 

 it is often used in a similar sense among us. It remains to 

 be seen whether every practical purpose would not be better 

 served by using it thus only. Moral philosophy is defined 

 as the study of social duties. Moral responsibility implies, 

 beside moral obligation, — which I would interpret as the 

 reason why a man acts well rather than ill, because an 

 obligation, to be real, should ob lige, — that he is answerable 

 to some authority for doing one or the other. But it seems 

 to me that the day is past when any authority could be 

 quoted as a universal guide for conduct. The idea is wholly 

 repugnant to the tendencies of modern thought, which 

 entirely claims, if it cannot secure, for man, exemption from 

 control by any power in the constitution of which he has no 

 voice. Even under the most despotic monarchies of Europe, 

 the principle of no taxation, and even no legislation, without 

 representation, is asserted by all who dare to speak, their 

 minds. 



But to whom or to what, and in what manner can man be 

 responsible or answerable for his acts ? Some will say to 

 God. But the existence of immorality proves that God does 

 not interpose to prevent it, which is the very thing that 

 we require ; and all who recognise and appreciate the abso- 

 lutely sequential operation of natural forces upon man, as 

 inevitably as upon any other object in the universe, and the 

 proof of this afforded by statistics; must see, that, as physical 

 and social influences are all that are certainly discernible as 

 affecting or necessary to account for the conduct of man, and 

 are fully adequate causes of all such effects, the gratuitous 

 introduction of doubtful occult forces can be productive only 

 of complication and difficulty. In any case, upon thousands 

 who admit a divine authority it is notoriously practically 

 inoperative ; and it is necessarily so upon all who know 



