
230 KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 

tenced to imprisonment for three years ; at the end 
of which time he was released, in 1808. But he 
had enjoyed his liberty hardly a month, when he 
was again shut up. In this short interval, he had 
committed ten thefts, more or less considerable, 
and very difficult to execute. 
If the individual appears to have received edu- 
cation, or if several of the organs of the higher 
order are favorably developed, the judgment to be 
passed is not so certain; the propensity may have 
been more easily combated ; it may, at least, be 
presumed that the illegal action of such an indi- 
vidual may have been modified by some peculiarity. 
But these cases require a peculiar kind of know- 
ledge, which can be acquired only by long study 
and multiplied comparisons of cases. This suffices 
to show my readers, that, in passing judgment on 
malefactors, I take for its basis not the irresistibi- 
lity of actions, but the organisation and nature 
of man. 
Some of my adversaries have maintained, with 
impudent dishonesty, that I taught—at least in 
Germany, the irresistibility of actions, and that 
it was only the mildness and piety of the French 
which made me more circumspect. 
I esteem my doctrine too much, to change or muti- 
late it in favor of the opinions or prejudices of any 
people. I neither speak nor write for the Germans 
nor the French, alone. As an observer of nature, 
my aim is to present and defend a doctrine, which 
may be useful to mankind in all places; which may 
be compatible with all kinds of government and 
with true morality, and which, inall ages, may be 
appropriated to the wants of human nature, since 
it is derived from the nature of things. But I 
affirm, at the same time, that I have never taught 
the irresistibility of actions, and that I have always 
upheld moral freedom. I had, at Vienna, and in 
the whole course of my journey, hearers of all 
conditions; many monks, curates, pastors, bishops, 
instructors. Even several sovereign princes, con- 
descended to hear me expound the principles of my 
doctrine. No one of these persons, perceived in it 
the slightest danger for morality and religion. 
Many of my auditors have had works printed, 
which serve to justify my conduct in this respect. 
Hardly had I obtained any results from my re- 
searches, when I foresaw the objections touching 
materialism, fatalism, and the irresistibility of 
actions. I therefore had inserted in the Mercure 
Allemand, of Wieland, 1798. No. 12, a letter 
addressed to Baron Retzer, Chief of the Imperial 
Censorship of Vienna. In this letter, I then 
answered these objections with these same argu- 
ments with which I combat them at present. And 
what best proves the unfair intentions of this class 
of adversaries, is that, for more than twenty-five 
years, no moralist and no ecclesiastic has thought 
fit to declare himself against my doctrine. On the 
contrary, better informed as they are than the laity, 
on the reciprocal influence of physical and moral 
agents, many of them of different religions, have 
written works more or less voluminous, in favor of 
my principles. 
Summary oF THE Fourta SxrcTion. 
I have shown that, in all ages, the most contra- 
dictory opinions have been denounced, and regarded 
as inspired, by turns; that, consequently, when 
one makes discoveries, he ought to trouble himself 

less for the judgment of his contemporaries than 
for the truth ;—that the Gospel, the Apostles, the 
Fathers of the Church, and, in general, the men 
who have best understood mankind, those who 
have most loved and most benefited them, have ac- 
knowledged that the qualities of the soul and mind 
are innate, and that their manifestation depends 
on material conditions ;—that those who accuse 
my doctrine of materialism, confound material con- 
ditions with the forces or the faculties, and thereby 
fall into perpetual contradictions ;—that the sup- 
position of a central point, which it was thought 
necessary to consecrate in order to secure the 
spiritual nature of the soul, does not attain this 
object, andis at war with the structure and func- 
tions of the brain ;—that even my adversaries, to 
whom it seems that the plurality of organs favors 
materialism, are forced to acknowledge this plu- 
rality, because the brain is double, and, con- 
sequently, each of its parts is so also ;—that those 
who regard as dangerous the division of the facul- 
ties of the soul into several fundamental faculties, 
have, at all times, adopted similar divisions, since 
they have admitted the faculties of judging, willing, 
remembering, imagining, &c.; that, consequently, 
they cannot, in any respect, brand my doctrine, 
any more than another, with the charge of mate- 
rialism. 
As to fatalism, and.to moral liberty, I have 
likewise shown that the most venerable men have 
acknowledged the most powerful infiuence of several 
causes on our determinations ; that the sensations, 
propensities, desires, as well as the ideas and the 
judgments of man, are submitted to determinate 
laws; but that we cannot thence infer either the 
fatalism which makes the world to be derived from 
chance, or which does not ascribe the direction of it 
to a Supreme Intelligence, nor that other fatalism; 
which subjects the actions of mento a blindchance, 
that an unlimited and absolute liberty are repug- 
nant to the nature of a created being, but that the 
reasonable man, by virtue of the faculties, whose 
number and dignity elevate him above the brutes, 
has acquired the power of fixing his attention, not 
only on impulses from within and without, but also 
on those highest motives which he finds within 
him,.or receives from abroad, and of being thereby 
enabled either to be determined by existing mo- 
tives, or to determine himself by new motives, 
which the well-organised man can continually call 
to his aid; that this faculty constitutes true moral 
liberty ; and that this practical liberty is the only 
kind which is contemplated . by civil institutions, 
education, morality, and religion ; that this liberty, 
submitted to its proper laws, such as the powerful 
infiuence of the most numerous and strongest mo- 
tives, and especially to that of the desire of happi- 
ness, render the man who acts, and his instructors, 
responsible for all their moral actions ; that on this 
notion of liberty repose the dignity and necessity of 
education, morals, legislation, punishments, re- 
wards, and religion. It follows from my doctrine, 
that, whenever a sane and well-organised man has 
willed a thing, he might have willed the contrary— 
not without motive, which would be absurd, but by 
seeking for and adopting other motives than those 
which have determined him. 
In fine, J have proved, that without the existence 
of moral evil, and vicious propensities, there could 
be neither moral freedom, nor choice between good 


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