or its maker to inflict pain as a penalty for the sin which is itself an infliction; and adds with Omar Khayyám:
"For all the sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blackened—Man's forgiveness give—and take!"
The test of an hypothesis is always its fact-explaining power—its unifying and harmonizing capacity. When, therefore, the hypothesis of determinism leads so thoughtful and earnest a spirit thus to postulate chaos in the moral universe, it tells mightily against the truth of the hypothesis.
The libertarian theory does not help us to any solution here, we are told, any more than does the theory of determinism. Yet for a theist who is also a determinist there is no possible course open but to make Deity ultimately responsible for human sin. For a theist who is also a libertarian such a course is logically impossible, so far as freedom, and hence so far as sin, can be predicated of man's action. In other words, libertarianism, at least, leaves the question Of the Divine goodness an open one. It does not, like determinism, shut the door and lock it against the possibility of any further discussion.
| Julia H. Gulliver. |
| Rockford College.. |
| Rockford, Ill.. |
There are two points in Miss Gulliver's criticism of my article which call for notice.
First, she accuses me of a fallacy of equivocation in the use of the word 'causation'; asserting that I charge libertarians with denying the universality of causation, because they do not regard voluntary actions as subject to the law of physical causation. In the article referred to, I carefully avoided taking up the problem as to whether the necessary antecedent conditions to a volition were physical, or psychical, or both physical and psychical. This is a very interesting question, but it matters no whit to the determinist as such what answer is given to it. If my critic will admit that all psychical events, including those we call volitions, are the inevitable outcome of preceding psychical conditions, I shall welcome her as a convert to the ranks of determinism, even though she refuses to take account of any determining physical antecedents whatever. As to "an efficient cause as Something more than a condition essential to the effect," I frankly confess I am in a state of total ignorance. But if Miss Gulliver
