Freedom would assure him of his responsibility, and our plain man would welcome and emphasize the statement. Our apostle would inform him, that the secret of man’s accountability was in his possession. He would be received with attention, though perhaps not belief. He might go on to say that a man was responsible, because he always had liberty of choice; and so far he might be followed. But, when he advanced, and began to explain that such freedom of choice must mean, that, before a man acted, it was never certain how he would act, then, I think, he might get for an answer, ‘that depends on what sort of man he is.’ Perhaps at this point he might appeal to his hearer’s consciousness, and put it to him, whether he was not aware that, on opportunities rising for the foulest crimes, he could not only do these acts if he would, but also that it was quite possible, in every case, that he should do them. Such a question, if asked, would be answered, I doubt not, by an indignant negative; and should a similar suggestion be made with respect to a friend or relation, the reply might not confine itself to words. What sayings in life are more common than, ‘You might have known me better. I never could have done such a thing.’ ‘It was impossible for me to act so, and you ought to have known that nothing could have made me’?
We have seen that responsibility (on the usual understanding of it) can only exist in a moral agent. And, if it be true of any man, that his actions are matters of chance, and his will in a state of equilibrium disturbed by contingency, then I think that the question, whether such a being is a moral agent, is a question answered, as soon as raised. And, if this is so, then, with the best of intentions, (such good intentions are the ruin of thinking) the saviours of accountability have failed to save it. They may have held their own against the enemy, and borne in triumph their ark from the contest. But what is brought out of the battle is a very different thing from that which went in, or, perhaps, which never was there at all.
Having first seen what responsibility was for the vulgar mind, we have now also seen what it is (or ought to be) for the one of ‘our two great schools’; and we have seen that the creed of the philosophical, so far, seems seriously different from that which the people hold by. In saying thus much we feel ourselves safe; but
