Moral Responsibility. S3 



Animals act without reasoning — man can reason, and thus is 

 in a position to become a moral being ; but he cannot be 

 perfectly moral unless he not only reasons, but reasons accu- 

 rately, and also acts accordingly. If the consequences would 

 apparently be evil to himself, so much more evil than the 

 immediate or prospective good as to compensate for any 

 difference of distance — if the general balance of probable 

 results be evil, or appear evil to him — he will, nay, he must, 

 forego the lesser for the sake of the greater good, and avoid 

 the preponderant evil. 



If it be said that some men act for the good of others to 

 their own manifest injury, I reply that they do so solely 

 because it pleases them best. Their own pleasure is far 

 greater in contemplating the distribution of good among 

 others, than in the limited inferior pleasure of sense. They 

 feel that it is more blessed to give than to receive. The 

 indirect or moral intellectual pleasure is superior for them 

 in degree and in kind, in extent and in duration, to any 

 direct and merely sensuous one ; but both are physical results 

 of reflex nervous action, and unless a mind is nearly as 

 narrow as a beast's, it cannot be satisfied with mere direct 

 temporary enjoyment. An organism with a brain bearing a 

 large proportion to the rest of its nervous system, cannot be 

 satisfied with gratifications which arise or locate in the 

 subordinate parts of that system. Where the convolutions 

 of the brain are large and numerous, they imperatively 

 demand, and in a healthy system, reproduce the activity 

 which first developed them ; and it is only in nervous systems, 

 whose function is fitted for little more than to support life, 

 that what may be called organic pleasures can adequately 

 satisfy their demands. 



Doubtless much, and very much, depends upon the accu- 

 racy of man's apprehension of the probable good and evil 

 consequences of his acts. If this be so, then to the precise 

 extent to which a man is alive to, and justly appreciates the 

 consequences of his actions, he should invariably choose the 

 greater good or lesser evil ; which accordingly we find to be 

 the case around us. 



As the value of this principle rests upon the inseparability 

 of any act from its consequences (which is now an acknow- 

 ledged scientific fact as regards all events whatever), it 

 follows that the indispensable condition of universality of 

 application is perfectly fulfilled. The other condition neces- 

 sary to its complete efficiency — knowledge, and sagacity in 



D 



