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The moral character of an action is entirely dependent 
on its voluntariness. A voluntary action is one of which the 
power to do or forbear is in ourselves. Aristotle has taught 
us, more than two thousand years ago, that an action which is 
not voluntary is incapable of either praise or blame ; that no 
action can be either virtuous or vicious, unless it is accom- 
panied with a feeling that it is a voluntary act ; and that the 
principle of the action must be within our own power. An 
action not within our own power is no more virtuous or vicious 
than the act of a machine. The philosopher has proved that 
to render an action virtuous or vicious, the following condi- 
tions are requisite. It must be voluntary ; it must be within 
our own control ; and, besides this, it must be the subject of 
rational choice, which he designates by the Greek term 
Trpoa'ipzaiQ, 
The whole of his masterly analysis of the relation which the 
voluntary principle bears to virtuous action, and its culmina- 
tion in the mental act of rational or moral choice, is contained 
in the third book of the Nicomachean Ethics. To abridge it is 
hardly possible, and to refute it hopeless ; but to transcribe it 
in intelligible English would exceed the limits of this paper. 
Under what circumstances do we hold men responsible for 
their actions ? What is the nature of that feeling which we 
designate a sense of guilt ? I answer, that both are insepa- 
rably united with the perception that the action has been 
voluntary. Once convince us that a man was not a free 
agent, and we cease to hold him accountable. If motive 
exerts a necessary influence on the mind — if the will is power- 
less to resist the influence of impulse, we cease to be 
responsible for what we do. It may have been a man's 
misfortune to have done us an injury; but when we clearly 
perceive that he was not a free agent, we are as incapable of 
holding him responsible as the stone which we kick against, 
and which hurts our foot. In the same manner a sense of 
guilt, self-condemnation, or repentance, can only be felt for an 
action which we feel to have been within our own power to do 
or to abstain from. We may be very sorry that we have been 
made the unwitting agents in an act the consequences of which 
are pernicious. But for the act itself we can feel neither a 
sense of guilt, repentance, nor remorse. It was our misfor- 
tune, not our sin, to have committed it. A sense of freedom, 
therefore, is bound up with the moral character of our actions ; 
and where there is no freedom, there can be no morality. 
It is on these accounts that all Pantheistic religions are 
destructive of a sense of sin. Where actions are not voluntary, 
sin is not possible. 
