On this difficult point we will venture a few remarks, though our want of acquaintance with what juridical and other literature there may be on the subject, as well as our own very partial insight, prevent our attempting to deal with the matter fully.
Ignorance, as a plea for non-responsibility, is easier to discuss. It seems that either ignorance of particular facts, or of moral distinctions generally, or of the moral quality of this or that act, remove responsibility, provided only that the ignorance itself be not imputable to us as a fault.
What is compulsion? The word is no doubt used loosely, but we see at once that it is applicable to nothing which has not will. We do not talk of the inanimate being ‘compelled.’ This raises the question, ‘unless I am compelled to do something, am I compelled?’ But this we shall not trouble ourselves to answer, as at any rate we can say, ‘I am forced;’ and in relation to the will we had better take force and compulsion to be the same, even if the words are not quite synonymous.
To proceed then, when I am forced there is some state (in the widest sense) of my body or mind, which is referred to me without being referred to my will (properly speaking). And so compulsion will be the production, in the body or mind of an animate being, of a result which is not related as a consequence to its will, in the highest sense of the term will. And to that we must add that the result must be contrary to the actual desire of the person forced, or, given knowledge, would have been contrary; e.g., if a man is first drugged and then robbed, it is compulsion. This is why, where compulsion is doubtful, present repentance has been used as a test; because, given present grief for a past event, from that we infer in the past a presumable will contrary to the event (Arist. Eth. III. i. 13). But (to say nothing of ‘repentance’) grief need not follow compulsion, and is not always a sign of it. I must be forced, or not, at the time; I can not by subsequent sorrow make myself to have been forced, and it is possible 1 may now be glad to have been really forced.
