Moral Responsibility. 45 



atrocious. But as beyond dispute he acted conscientiously, 

 we cannot blame him ; his knowledge being the measure of 

 his obligation. And his case is only one among thousands. 

 Calvin in the same manner, in a religious paroxysm, burnt 

 Servetus alive on a tire of green faggots, and was thus most 

 criminal when most pious. But the only difference between 

 them and us is, that we have acquired more knowledge of 

 physical science, and consequently of the nature and social 

 relations of man ; while their rule of conduct was simply 

 their religious duty, as deduced from the Bible. If it be 

 said that they mis-interpreted it, that is only one proof 

 among thousands, that interpretations of any such standard 

 are and must be as various as men ; and a demonstration of 

 the inefficacy of any mysterious and therefore supposititious 

 principle. 



Altogether it seems clear that such notions as desert for 

 praise and blame, and merit and demerit, are the results of 

 the force of imagination and idealistic habits, upon a ground- 

 work of ancient conventional customs ; and that they are 

 purely arbitrary and factitious. For all proves that standards 

 of morality vary with degrees of latitude and the lapse of 

 time ; and that he who conforms to, or violates, or endea- 

 vours to improve the local current standard, whatever it 

 may be, must as necessarily experience the exactly propor- 

 tioned and appropriate consequences, as the planets must 

 fulfil their cycles in accordance with the law of gravity. 



I have now endeavoured to establish consistent and 

 practical moral principles upon patent facts, and the 

 invariable relation between causes and effects which it is 

 impossible to infringe, instead of upon a mysterious fiction, 

 which is directly violated daily by whosoever lists ; to prove 

 that it is only a superficial and erroneous observation which 

 leads to the supposition of any injustice in the mundane 

 distribution of pains and pleasures; — a fundamental error, 

 which, while it forms the motive for imagining endless 

 methods of compensation, can never explain or remove, or 

 more than evade the anomaly, that the injustice so assumed 

 must be the deliberate act of the Deity ; and I trust that I 

 have succeeded in showing that we are justified in attribut- 

 ing absolute infallibility to the rule that every effect of 

 every cause must be the most perfectly appropriate, morally 

 as well as physically ; and also that careful examination will 

 transform even apparently vitiating exceptions into irre- 

 fragable proofs of its validity. 



