human action is at the foundation of all possible conceptions of human 
morality. It is perfectly evident that if I am not a voluntary agent I am not 
responsible. Hence, persuade me that I am not a voluntary agent, and I 
cease to blame myself from that hour. Let us illustrate this a little, for it is 
most important that we should have a clear conception of it. Suppose I kick 
a stone on the ground and it hurts my foot ; I am perfectly aware that 
I have no occasion to blame the stone, and that not being a free agent it has 
no responsibility resting upon it. But now let us see how the notion of a 
sense of responsibility arises in our mind. Suppose a person near whom 
I am standing takes hold of the fist of another and thrusts it into my 
face, I am not angry with the man whose fist has been thrust into my face, 
but I am with the person who thrust it : therefore it is necessary that there 
should exist the idea of a voluntary agency, because we cannot excite the 
feeling of anger in ourselves ; it must be excited through a voluntary or what 
we deem to be a voluntary agency. But this admits of one more illustration. 
Suppose the man whose fist is knocked into another man’s face turns round, 
and by a smile or in any other way expresses a conscious approval of the act, 
then a share of the blame becomes attached to him, and there is a responsi- 
bility attaching to both parties. This shows that we may attach blame or 
praise to an action which, though at first strictly involuntary, yet, by a 
subsequent act of the agent, is made his own. And this is the great principle 
upon which all morality must rest. Of course every custom and every system 
which denies the voluntary character of human actions is laying the axe to 
the foundation of all principles of morality in man ; and I need not tell you 
what a very large number of systems are involved in that category. All those 
to which Dr. Irons has referred very distinctly lay the axe to the foundations 
of the voluntary character of human actions in some form or other, and in 
this way destroy all sense of human responsibility ; for I defy a man 
to feel any responsibility for any act which he has done, if he has not 
the sense that he might have avoided it ; the foundation of all responsibility 
being that you may do an act or avoid it. I now wish to draw your atten- 
tion to one or two other passages in the paper. There is a small paragraph 
which I marked before I came here, feeling some doubt as to the accuracy of 
its assertion ; but when Dr. Irons read it he put a certain emphasis upon 
the words, which made me at once comprehend their meaning, and I fully 
agree with Dr. Irons. The passage is this : — 
“ The responsibility of each is, in fact, held to be individual; yet it is 
part of that responsibility that men influence each other.” 
I perfectly agree with that, as Dr. Irons read it, but I had mistaken the 
meaning of it ; and I think that if he could possibly mend that sentence, it 
would be desirable ; for I came here with a decidedly false impression as to 
its meaning. I think that Dr. Irons has hardly done justice to his subject 
in his remarks upon internal compulsion. I quite agree that it arises from 
the limit of the paper that he has not brought before us fully this subject of 
internal compulsion. We do acts, resulting from force of habit, which qualify 
