for acting rationally; and further, that this means to act with some regularity, to act so that your actions can be counted on, and, if counted on, then with more or less certainty predicted.
Nothing is clearer than that the plain man does not consider himself any less responsible, because it can be foretold of him that, in a given position, he is sure to do this, and will certainly not do that; that he will not insult helplessness, but respect it; not rob his employer, but protect his interests; and, if this be admitted, as I think it must be, then it will follow that it can not be all his actions, to the prediction of which he entertains an objection.
So much being settled, we must ask, Is there no prediction then which he does find objectionable? I think there is. I believe that if, at forty, our supposed plain man could be shown the calculation, made by another before his birth, of every event in his life, rationally deduced from the elements of his being, from his original natural endowment, and the complication of circumstances which in any way bore on him,—if such a thing were possible in fact, as it is conceivable in certain systems, then, I will not go so far as to say that our man would begin to doubt his responsibility; I do not say his notions of right and wrong would be unsettled (on this head I give no opinion); but I believe that he would be most seriously perplexed, and in a manner outraged.
Let us take these two points for granted then, that some prediction is not objectionable, while some, on the other hand, is; and let us now proceed, if we can, to distinguish the cases, and find, in the first place, what is not, and, in the second, what is objected to.
Subject to the correction of the reader, I say that, when we confine ourselves to mere prediction (as we must, because the attendant circumstances may always annoy), the man of healthy mind has no objection to the prediction of any actions, which he looks on as issuing from his character.[1] A formed man, if healthy, feels
- ↑ We can not use, as an instance, the prediction of bad actions, i.e. such actions as the man himself considers bad. This is painful, not because it is a prediction, but because here the man is forced to see that he is bad, that another knows it for certain, and also has said it.
