MAN RESPONSIBLE, 
 
 10.1 
 
 HIS DISPOSITIONS, OPINIONS, AND CONDUCT. 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE 
 
 MECHANICS' INSTITUTION, SOUTHAMPTON BUILDINGS, 
 
 ON THE EVENING OF FEBRUARY 17, 1S40, 
 
 ISAAC TAYLOR, ESQ. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM," ETC. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JACKSON & WALFORD, 18, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD. 
 
 MDCCCXL. 
 PRICE ONE SHILLING.
 
 LONDON : 
 RICHARD CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.
 
 ft** 
 
 ftnnox 
 
 MAN RESPONSIBLE, 
 
 $C. SfC. 
 
 THE usual preliminary of a discussion, namely, the defini- 
 tion of the principal term in question, is, in the present 
 instance, attended with an incidental difficulty, not to be 
 surmounted without virtually affirming what has been alleged 
 to require proof. But then this same difficulty attaches to 
 every argument concerning the great principles of human 
 nature ; inasmuch as the mere fact that human language 
 furnishes terms whereby such faculties may be defined and 
 described is a substantial proof of their reality. 
 
 If, for example, it were asked Is man a rational 
 animal ? the contrary being pretended, and if the advocate 
 of so whimsical a paradox were required to make us under- 
 stand, by definitions, or circumlocutions, or by equivalents, 
 drawn from other languages, what it is precisely of which he 
 means to despoil humanity, in merely stating his objection, 
 he must answer it ; or at least supply all the materials 
 necessary for his own refutation. The fact that every lan- 
 guage of civilised men comprises a large class of words and 
 phrases dependent one upon another for their meaning, and 
 related, closely or remotely, to a certain property, or func- 
 A 2 
 
 2097103
 
 tion of human nature, and which terms we can by no means 
 dispense with in describing man, as he is distinguished 
 from the terrestrial orders around him, this fact, attaching 
 universally to the vehicle of thought, affords all the proof 
 which a strict logic would grant in reply to the sophism. 
 Language, when combined in continuous discourse, may 
 indeed, and too often does, convey notions, totally false 
 and absurd; but language itself, which is at once the 
 engine of cogitation, and the record of all facts per- 
 manently or incidentally attaching to human nature ; lan- 
 guage, the least fallacious of historians, which, while it 
 notes the revolutions of empires, is the enduring type 
 of the visible world, and the shadow of the invisible 
 the mirror of the universe, as known to man, language 
 never lies ; how should it do so ; seeing that it is itself 
 the creature and reflection of nature ? As well deny that 
 the trees, buildings, rocks, and clouds, painted on the 
 bosom of a tranquil lake are images of realities, as well do 
 this, as assume that language, in the abstract, has ever 
 belied humanity, or presented any elements foreign to our 
 constitution. 
 
 Philosophers, or teachers may have affirmed, and the 
 multitude may have believed, far more than could be 
 proved : meantime the vehicle they have employed in denn- 
 ing and promulgating such illusions, has faithfully embodied 
 the permanent verities of philosophy and religion ; just as 
 a wonder-loving traveller, while he tells a thousand tales of 
 griffins and dragons, sets us right by the dumb testimony of 
 the specimens he has brought with him. Men might as 
 easily create to themselves a sixth sense, as fabricate and 
 retain in use a system of terms, having no archetypes in 
 nature. 
 
 And what is true of language generally, respecting human 
 nature at large, is true in particular of the language of each 
 race, respecting its particular characteristics, aud even its
 
 history. For example, were we, as some have done, to 
 reject, as a tissue of arrogant fables, what we learned at 
 school concerning the early conquests of the roman people ; 
 and if Livy were dismissed as a mere romancer, yet, in 
 taking up the latin language, as a whole, and in running 
 through its vocabulary, and in considering its idioms, we 
 should find no room left for a question, whether the people 
 to whom the language of Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, was verna- 
 cular, were a military people : is it possible to believe them 
 to have been the inert cultivators of the soil ; or a nation of 
 shopkeepers ? Let the entire roman history be repudiated ; 
 yet give us only the roman language, and we should readily 
 recover, from that source alone, an authentic record of those 
 successive triumphs, which at length made the Caesars the 
 lords of the world. 
 
 Aristotle may have taught a false system of the universe, 
 and Plato may have dreamed in politics and morals ; but 
 can we turn over the pages of a greek lexicon, and affect to 
 doubt whether the greek mind was of philosophic cast? 
 With the greek language before us, in its mere words and 
 idioms, we want no historians, we want no poets, we want 
 no marbles, we want no temples, to assure us that the race 
 of men using that tongue, were, in mind and taste, all that 
 historians, poets, marbles, temples, show them to have been. 
 
 And it deserves particularly to be noted, that, while the 
 languages of civilized races at large furnish evidence on all 
 points touching man's nature, physical, intellectual, and 
 moral, so those especial refinements, which characterize this 
 or that language, and which have resulted from the eminent 
 attainments of the people using it, serve to exhibit that one 
 rudiment of human nature, as we might say magnified, and 
 its inner structure expanded. It is not in the rude speech 
 of nomadic hordes, or in the talk of the fish-eaters of a deso- 
 late shore, that we are to look for the record of the genuine 
 rudiments of human nature ; but rather in the copiousness
 
 6 
 
 of tongues which have conveyed the choicest refinements of 
 those rudiments. 
 
 Were it questioned whether man be an imaginative being, 
 formed to catch analogies, and to be charmed with resem- 
 blance ; three-fourths of every language, barbarous or 
 civilized, attests the fact ; nor is this evidence touched by 
 any instances of what may be false in taste, or factitious, in 
 the literature of the people. 
 
 Or is the question, " Am I responsible am I a moral 
 agent am I to be held accountable for my temper, dispo- 
 sitions, and conduct; and am I so constituted as that a 
 future retribution will be a fit issue of my present course of 
 life ? " If this be the question, it is answered at once con- 
 cisely, and conclusively, by simply appealing to the mere 
 words that must be employed to express it. 
 
 But if on any account we should think it well seriously to 
 go into controversy with one propounding so strange a 
 doubt, it could be thought nothing more than reasonable to 
 require him to spread out so formidable a query in some 
 variety of terms. We should ask him then to favour us 
 with synonymes, and equivalents ; and to set his difficulty 
 clear of ambiguity, by a liberal adduction of instances 
 and illustrations. Who could decline so equitable a 
 request ? 
 
 If we suppose then our objector to have complied ; he 
 stands convinced: at least, if his mind have been trained to 
 habits of logical inquiry, he will not fail to see that, in 
 describing the moral nature, with the intent to deny it, he 
 has unwittingly affirmed it; and we might say to him, 
 * More convincing than any syllogisms, or than any dis- 
 cursive argument, in proof of the reality of that moral 
 scheme which you call in question, are the words (considered 
 as products of the human mind) to which you have been 
 compelled to have recourse in enouncing your scepticism. 
 The system we live under, is in fact a moral system in the
 
 highest sense, because among all people with whom human 
 nature has been at all expanded, a copious vocabulary of 
 terms is found, to which no sense could be assigned in a 
 world of beings, either purely animal, or purely intel- 
 lectual. 
 
 If man be not a moral agent, and if his sphere in this 
 respect do not immeasurably transcend that of the sentient 
 orders around him, how comes he to talk as if he were ? 
 If, in regard to a moral system, he be only a brute of finer 
 form, born of the earth and returning to it, whence is it that, 
 in respect of virtue and vice, of good and evil, the dialect of 
 heaven rolls over his lips ? When was it, and how, that he 
 stole the vocabulary of the skies ? 
 
 You may choose to say, That men's notions of virtue and 
 vice are, and ever have been, contorted ; that they have been 
 used to call good evil, and evil good. You may say, That 
 the notions attached to these terms are variable, and the 
 terms themselves convertible ; you may say, That conscience 
 is a fallacious adviser, That notions of honour impel men to 
 acts of shame, and that reward and punishment fall as often 
 inversely, as directly, upon merit and demerit. Or you 
 may affirm, That man's actual position, creature of circum- 
 stances as he is, and yet held responsible, is severe, unde- 
 sirable, and melancholy in its consequences. You may say 
 this, or more of the sort ; and yet you cannot even murmur 
 your complaints, without establishing the very principles on 
 the ground of which, first, a moral system may be incontest- 
 ably proved ; and, secondly, the actual moral system shown 
 not to contradict the divine attributes : and, clearly, you can 
 never affirm it to be unjust to treat man as responsible for 
 his dispositions and actions, without virtually admitting every 
 postulate of the most refined moral science ; for, plainly, 
 there can be no injustice within a system which admits of no 
 justice: there can be no cruelty, where there might not be 
 goodness ; nor could any abstractions of this order have
 
 8 
 
 been named, or discoursed of, except in a community of 
 beings, who, in fact, are conversant with whatever necessi- 
 tates the inference that they are held accountable to supreme 
 justice, and will hereafter be reckoned with. Certain modes 
 of treatment may be severe, only on this supposition that 
 they have place in a system which would have admitted 
 lenient modes of treatment ; and such a system, by the very 
 statement, is abstractedly good ; it is a benevolently con- 
 structed system, and therefore the conception of a benevolent 
 mind. 
 
 But some speak as if they supposed our primary notions 
 of moral qualities to have been taught us. Nothing, how- 
 ever, can be more unphilosophical than to attribute any 
 permanent and universally diffused modes of feeling to the 
 influence, and interested teaching of some one class of the 
 community. Our notions of morality, of justice, virtue, 
 responsibility, retribution, come they from the lips of the 
 priest? Nay; whence is the priest himself, and whence 
 those emotions, working in all men's bosoms, upon which he 
 founds his power over his fellows ? Is not the priest, and 
 are not the sentiments to which he appeals, part and parcel 
 of the machinery of the human system ? To affirm, as some 
 have done, that priests are the authors of religion and moral 
 sentiment, is a sort of upside-down logic, not easily under- 
 stood. Surelylt were more philosophical to invert the terms of 
 the proposition, and to affirm that religion and moral senti- 
 ment, are the authors of priests ? * Men,' say you, ' have been 
 ill-taught on these subjects, and grossly practised upon by the 
 crafty.' Grant it. But now make the attempt, in any such 
 way, to mislead and pervert some race of beings incapable 
 of admitting the purer truths which you would put in the 
 place of such errors ! Find me a world of beings to whom 
 you could teach atheism, and I will undertake to convert 
 many of them, at least, to a true theology. And thus also, 
 those who would persuade men that they are not respon-
 
 9 
 
 sible, could not make even their first lesson understood, if 
 the fact were not that men are so, and that they know it. 
 
 But we will suppose that those whose benevolence would 
 prompt them to run about the world, for the purpose of 
 disabusing their fellows of the nurse-born and priest-gotten 
 notions of responsibility, and of a future reckoning, would 
 be likely to enhance the value of their mission, and to prove 
 the necessity of their interference, by setting forth, in its 
 particulars, the depth, intimacy, and universality of the 
 mischievous notions of which they are soon to rid the 
 earth. These apostles then, we will not say of immorality, 
 but of non-morality, tell us that * So wide-spread are the 
 errors they will have to expose, that the last recesses of 
 savage life must be penetrated, and man followed into 
 the wilderness, till we find him the naked troglodyte 
 nature's own child, before the missionaries of the new 
 philosophy need cease their labours, or can confess that 
 they have at length found disciples who are proficients in 
 this philosophy, by instinct, and who have nothing to learn 
 from their masters.' 
 
 So it is that, just where Christian missionaries begin their 
 labours the missionaries of the new philosophy would end 
 them, as finding their doctrine already understood, and 
 practised. 
 
 ' Yes,' say you, ' consoling it is to think, that, wide-spread 
 as is the heresy concerning virtue, duty, and a judgment to 
 come, there are men, altogether clean of this infection. If 
 we will but wander through the solitudes of Australian 
 deserts, and penetrate pathless jungles, or visit hitherto 
 unvisited islets of the ocean, we shall yet find sages without 
 books, who are troubled by no terrors of conscience, and 
 who (convey to them only a few syllables of the dialect of 
 the true and new philosophy) would coolly tell us, after 
 having dined upon the flesh of their fellows, " that the dis- 
 tinctions between right and wrong are altogether arbitrary,
 
 10 
 
 and that the notion of virtue is the prejudice of a northern 
 latitude."' 
 
 But our apostles of the new truths, turning towards the 
 civilized, and half civilized races of mankind, will point us 
 to all religious institutes, to all national politics, to every 
 known scheme of social existence, to every mode of domestic 
 life, as furnishing reasons why they should instantly set out 
 on their errand. Who shall number the fruitless sufferings 
 that are springing every day from these notions of right and 
 wrong ? ' Look,' say they, ' at the tumultuous crowd, 
 phrenzied to deeds of blood, by the demagogue, who is 
 telling the deluded people that they are injured, and that 
 their cause is a holy cause, the cause of truth and justice ! 
 look to the field of battle, whereon nations are marshalled, 
 and are to bleed in defence, not of their homes merely, 
 but of their altars! or go into the wilderness, and gaze, 
 in wonder, upon the anchoret, who thinks to anticipate and 
 appease a future justice by a long life of self-inflicted tor- 
 ture ! or descend into the dungeon, where the victim of 
 oppression forgets almost the physical woe and privation he 
 endures, while stung with the anguish of hopeless resent- 
 ment ! Now only tell the sufferer that justice and injustice 
 are alike illusions ; and that the despot who has held him 
 there from youth to age, could not possibly have done otherwise 
 than he has, inasmuch as he, and all, are the creatures of 
 necessity say these things to the wretch, and you abstract 
 at once the bitterness from his cup; you draw the poisoned 
 barb from the wound ; you restore him, as by a charm, if 
 not to happiness, to peace. 
 
 ' Or change the scene. Why (had not the nurse beguiled 
 him) does the infant, conscious of some petty wrong, hide 
 his crimson with his chubby hands ? Or how is it, except 
 that she has been ill-taught, that the same crimson so often 
 flushes the cheek of innocence and beauty ? Every contrast 
 we can imagine speaks to the same purpose. Whence the
 
 11 
 
 paleness and the flush that come and go on the cheek of the 
 murderer, about to die on the scaffold? Had not these 
 same illusions, the terrors of conscience, as we call them, 
 been early instilled into him, death would have had to him 
 no terrors, but such as attach to the animal instinct.' 
 Nay, were it not for the prevalence of these very notions, 
 he would never have been arraigned as guilty, any more 
 than the man who is adjudged to have committed justifiable 
 homicide. In truth the foulest murder, philosophically 
 spoken of, is Justifiable homicide. Is there not reason 
 enough then, say the missionaries of the new philosophy, 
 why we should hasten to relieve our fellow-men from 
 the pains and torments which spring from these illusory 
 notions ? Nay, read these very same facts in another 
 sense ; read them in the light of common sense, true philo- 
 sophy, and religion and acknowledge the simple truth, 
 that man is, in the fullest meaning of the term, a moral 
 agent, that he knows and feels himself to be the subject of 
 invisible government, and that his mental conformation 
 impels him to look forward to a day when he shall have to 
 confront truth and justice. Yes, man well knows that he is 
 accountable, for his dispositions, and for his actions now, 
 to his fellows, hereafter, to the Supreme. 
 
 Human responsibility then, using the term in its highest 
 sense, is not an opinion to be proved ; but a principal and 
 obvious fact in the natural history of man. The conscious- 
 ness of responsibility attaches to all men ; and the only 
 seeming exceptions (for they are not really such) are of two 
 kinds namely that of individuals or races, long brutalized 
 by sensuality and ferocity ; and that of a handful of sophists, 
 who have talked themselves, and one another, out of common 
 sense, until they no longer know where to find, within their 
 bosoms, any genuine sentiments. 
 
 Our task then is not to prove the fact of human 
 responsibility, as if it might be questioned ; but so to
 
 12 
 
 spread it out in its constituents and in its effects, as to 
 leave no room for a contrary supposition. 
 
 The doctrine of responsibility will present itself, as the 
 result of 
 
 An analysis of man's nature, individually ; of 
 
 An explication of the structure of the social system, and 
 of- 
 
 A calculation (if we might so speak) of the orbit which this 
 social system is pursuing, on the field of the universe. 
 
 But here let it be well understood, that our present line 
 of argument is purely physical, and our method strictly 
 inductive. We are asking concerning THE NATURAL HIS- 
 TORY OF MAN, visible chief as he is, of the terrestrial 
 orders; and while we assume nothing which does not 
 manifestly attach to that nature, we exclude nothing that 
 does attach to it. While we borrow no aid (although we 
 might do so) from sources superior to a physical inquiry, so 
 we denounce any endeavour that might be made to snatch 
 from us certain classes of the phenomena, as if such and 
 such elements of human nature were factitious, and had 
 been thrust upon it, by knowing members of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 A most philosophic conceit truly were it, to pretend that 
 men, generally, or that some band of men, have forged a 
 rudiment of our physical, moral, or intellectual constitution ! 
 That a few have made themselves the authors of a supposi- 
 titious sense have outwitted dame nature, entering her 
 treasure-house, and thence stealing endowments which she 
 had reserved to be bestowed upon some more favoured 
 members of her great family ! Are we now at length to be 
 made to believe that eyes have been thrust into men's orbits 
 by opticians, that he owes his teeth to dentists, and his feet 
 to the company of cordwainers ? All this we shall believe, 
 or more, when we admit that it is schoolmasters who have 
 coaxed men into their conceit of rationality ; kings and
 
 13 
 
 legislators who have persuaded them that they ought to be 
 subject to law ; and priests who have created conscience, 
 and taught men that they are amenable to invisible power ! 
 
 Again, at the outset of our physical inquiry, we straitly ex- 
 clude any attempted interference of metaphysical abstractions 
 upon this ground. Using the prerogatives of the modern 
 physical logic, we do not allow any thing that has been 
 built up in the legitimate modes of induction, to be blown 
 down by metaphysic gusts. Real science is occupied with 
 the ascertained relations of things filling a middle region, or 
 terra firma, whereon the foot of man may steadily pursue its 
 way. This terra firma has, in its rear, a bottomless gulf 
 of unfixed abstractions : it has in its front the interminable, 
 unexplored fields, which are to be the inheritance of our 
 successors : meantime nothing that may be tossed up on the 
 surface of the chaos behind us, can make us unknow, what 
 we know, concerning things near us. 
 
 The logic of modern philosophy, I mean, true philosophy, 
 secures, for each separate department of science, the most 
 absolute independence of every other, within its proper 
 limits. To the operation of this very law is to be attributed 
 that remarkable intercommunity, accordance, and harmony 
 of purpose, which characterize and authenticate the philo- 
 sophy of the nineteenth century. No such harmony has 
 heretofore been seen, except when enforced by tyranny. 
 There have indeed been times when Aristotle and the pope 
 have kept the peace in the world of mind, by declaring that 
 so and so could not be true, and must not be taught. But 
 these times have gone by, unless indeed the new philosophy 
 is to revive a similar despotism. 
 
 To this point, vitally important as it is, and yet incidental 
 to our subject, a few moments only of explanation can be 
 given. A great logical principle, strangely overlooked by 
 some at present, and which it would take time to unfold, 
 may be popularly illustrated, in an instance.
 
 14 
 
 Every one knows that certain ingenious theorists, and the 
 philosophic Berkeley as their prince, have, from time to time, 
 and with a show of irresistible reasoning, boldly denied the 
 existence, nay, even the possibility, of an external world. 
 " There is nothing," say these philosophers, " there can be 
 nothing, in the universe, but MIND ; or even if there were, 
 it could never become known to us." Be it so, and let us 
 witness this demolition of the solid frame-work of nature ; 
 and watch the process, while the buttresses of the material 
 world are shook by the metaphysic ram's-head, its firmly- 
 cemented masses loosened, its high towers the mountain 
 ridges of nature made to tremble, crumble, fall ; and while 
 the ruins are beaten into dust, the dust sublimated into 
 vapour, the vapour itself made to vanish, and we are left 
 alone in the bottomless, vaultless, universe of immaterial 
 existence ! 
 
 Be it so : yet allow us, in imagination, to reassemble the 
 dissipated elements, and to suppose all things in the very 
 position in which we lately left them ; and let us, stepping 
 down from the sublime of philosophy, to the level of vulgar 
 life, assume that such a proposal as this were before us, 
 namely The throwing an eighth bridge over the Thames. 
 Does then a proposal of this sort seem in any degree the 
 less reasonable, on account of the demonstration we have 
 listened to, of the nonentity and the impossibility of an 
 external world? or shall we defer our decision, a six months, 
 in expectation that, by that time, public opinion will so have 
 come round to Berkeleyism, as that even the most zealous 
 promoters of the scheme will themselves have ceased to 
 think it desirable ; for indeed what reasonable man could 
 .v ;c h to spend a million of money in throwing a nonentity 
 bridge, over a nonentity river, for the accommodation of a 
 nonentity traffic? There is a simple answer to any such 
 endeavours to bring metaphysical enigmas in contact with 
 the business of life. Whether the Thames be a real river
 
 15 
 
 or only an idea of a river, so long as there be (whether 
 a real or an imaginary) motive for crossing it, there will 
 be a sufficient reason for building, or for seeming to build, 
 a bridge over it. All we have to do with in any case, is 
 the relations of things which relations are, in no way 
 altered by any theory we may admit, concerning the 
 abstract nature of those things. Take another instance 
 Let it be affirmed that the metals, one and all, instead of 
 being solids, are mere powers of repulsion, attaching to an 
 invisible and imponderable ether. This may be ; and yet 
 the comparative hardness, fusibility, ductility, and mallea- 
 bility of gold, silver, copper, iron, remaining the same, our 
 theory can have no practical bearing, either upon chemical 
 science, or upon the metallurgic arts. No supposition that 
 does not disturb the relation borne by one quantity or qua- 
 lity to another, can affect art or practice. This simple 
 principle carries a sufficient reply to all metaphysic soph- 
 isms repelling, even when not refuting them. 
 
 But we may come even a little nearer to certain absur- 
 dities, which have actually found zealous advocates. Let it 
 be supposed then that, with or without the leave of idealists, 
 the proposal to build the aforesaid bridge were accepted. 
 For carrying it into execution, we must engage the assistance, 
 not merely of masons, and inferior craftsmen ; but of men of 
 science, whose studies have given them a knowledge of the 
 properties and qualities of the materials to be used, along 
 with a thorough acquaintance, as well with the applicable, as 
 with the abstract branches of the mathematics ; for it is clear 
 that those only can safely be entrusted with the enterprize, 
 who know how to make a choice among the several kinds of 
 stone, and the several orders of curves. But here a difficulty 
 meets us ; for the entire deductions of mathematical science 
 flow from a few axioms, or principles, alleged to be self- 
 evident. To go about to establish these first principles, we 
 are told, would be absurd and fruitless. Not so fast
 
 16 
 
 some of the most profound minds, in pondering these very 
 axioms, and in endeavouring to trace them down to their 
 roots in the human mind, and in attempting so to express 
 them as to keep clear at once of contradictions, and of iden- 
 tical propositions, have confessed themselves to be baffled ! 
 Mathematical axioms overlay (as one might say) metaphy- 
 sical axioms ; and the darkness of the latter appears 
 through the former. 
 
 From beneath this cloud then are we to walk forth ; or 
 must we remain ? To walk forth, acting on the principle 
 above named That genuine science consists in the know- 
 ledge and application of relations, which relations, when once 
 ascertained in the modes respectively proper to them, are 
 not liable to be disturbed by speculations taking a higher 
 range. Man stands, as we have said, upon a terra-firma, 
 where he may know certainly whatever immediately affects 
 his agencies and interests. In other words, no purely 
 metaphysic question, in whatever way determined, can touch 
 what is already matter of experience or demonstration. 
 
 Besides, inasmuch as the highest abstractions are, by the 
 very terms, universals, if they touch any thing, practically, 
 they must touch every thing ; and every thing in precisely 
 the same sense, and in an equal degree. No one at all accus- 
 tomed to -abstract reasoning can need to have so simple a 
 truism expounded. Yet it is a fact, that, while it has often 
 been attempted to drive the most terrific consequences of 
 metaphysic theories over the ground of morals and religion, 
 the common business of life, and the engagements of the 
 industrious, although standing precisely in the same relation- 
 ship to these theories, have been left untouched. It would 
 seem as if, while Religion had got her sleeve caught in the 
 cogs of the metaphysic machinery of the universe, Natural 
 science, and gainful Industry, had luckily saved themselves 
 from any such entanglement ! But how manifest it is that, 
 if the doctrine of fate, or any other doctrine, had any power
 
 17 
 
 to stay a man in the cultivation of virtue, it has the same 
 power to stop him in digging his field ? 
 
 One who possesses a diamond cross puts it in a strong 
 box, in leaving his home ; or he gives it in charge to a faith- 
 ful servant with the words * remember what is the value 
 of this jewel.' But a father, in sending a son abroad into 
 the world, says, ' remember that your soul is of inestimable 
 value, and should be your first care.' Is this parental 
 advice to be regarded as nugatory and absurd, inasmuch as 
 the soul, even if it survive the body, is the passive creature 
 of destiny ? If so, then is the diamond cross also a sharer 
 in that same law of destiny ; and it should be thought futile, 
 either to awaken the servant's sense of the value of the 
 trust, or to lock the casket in which it is placed ; in fact, 
 the jewel would be equally safe, whether thrown into the 
 street, or built into the iron-bound foundations of a castle. 
 
 If all men had logical heads, metaphysic dogmas might 
 be regarded as matters of absolute indifference : they work 
 mischief only in confused brains, just as the flaring comet, 
 while coolly gazed at by the astronomer, who knows what 
 it is he is looking at, actually stirs revolutions, and over- 
 throws empires, among superstitious nations. 
 
 Ill-disciplined, or ill-constructed minds will, however, 
 always be liable to be led astray by illusions of this kind : 
 hence the necessity of again and again protesting against 
 them. Unhappily, absurdities that have been often exposed, 
 in scientific treatises, are perpetually bursting up anew from 
 the untilled wastes of the popular mind. Thus it is that we 
 still hear such things as these ' When the doctrine of 
 necessity' (mark it, whether true or false, a high abstrac- 
 tion} ' when the doctrine of necessity comes to be generally 
 understood and admitted ; and is applied, as a practical 
 principle, to men's every day conduct, temper, and dispo- 
 sitions ; then' why then, it will bring in a* millennium of 
 peace and felicity ! Those who speak thus may be assured
 
 that, with them, the abstractive faculty is very slenderly 
 developed : the doctrine of necessity can come to be a prac- 
 tical principle) only when it impels all men, women, and 
 children, to stand staring each other in the face, in stagnant 
 astonishment, until they perish. Neither the idealism of 
 Berkeley, nor the fatalism of Hume, is at all understood 
 by any one who thinks the one theory or the other, to be 
 capable of being hitched upon the movements of common 
 life. 
 
 In fact, none have ever made the attempt except in rela- 
 tion to certain picked instances, and when they have seemed 
 to be hunting for any whimsical evasion of disagreeable 
 duties. A philosopher persuaded himself that all the men 
 and women around him were mere phantoms. Never- 
 theless, as often as he walked the streets, he was used to 
 accost, with a wonted greeting, all his familiars whom he 
 might meet ; and he then only made a practical use of his 
 creed, when he happened to see, on his path, some one 
 whom he had an especial reason for not wishing to recog- 
 nize ! Such is the consistency of those whose lofty specu- 
 lations never bar their entrance to the market, or the theatre ; 
 but stand in the way, like spectres, when they would go to 
 church. 
 
 In thus speaking, we are very far from intending to inveigh, 
 as some have inconsiderately done, against the doctrine of 
 necessity, as if it were in itself of pernicious influence. Such 
 a ground of exception involves a misunderstanding, or an 
 absurdity, as great as that of those who espouse the doctrine 
 on the alleged ground of its useful tendency. It has no 
 influence, no tendency, no bearing whatever upon practice ; 
 no meaning, interpretable in the language of common life. 
 The doctrine of necessity, in itself, and not seasoned with 
 acrid admixtures of theological strife, is as tasteless as the 
 white of an egg. As well expect vegetable life to be ani- 
 mated, and our wintry wastes to be covered with verdure,
 
 19 
 
 warmed by the coruscations of the Aurora Borealis, as look 
 for life, and health, to be shed over the surface of society, 
 from the thin regions of metaphysic speculation. A man 
 who casts anchor in a storm with the angler's line and hook, 
 or who unfurls to the hurricane, as his mainsail, a spider's 
 web, is absurd only inasmuch as he employs means insuf- 
 ficient for his end, though not incongruous. But what is 
 the absurdity of one who would think to bind the timbers of 
 a raft by logic, or believe it might be paddled by syllogisms ? 
 
 That this absolute exclusion of ulterior abstractions, of 
 whatever kind, from the enclosure of men's practical 
 interests, will not be quarrelled with by clear-headed men, I 
 confidently assume.* 
 
 Our course of inquiry then, in the present instance, is 
 purely physical. We have to do with nothing but facts and 
 phenomena, while we inquire, in relation to the question 
 of man's responsibility, FIRST, concerning his individual 
 structure; SECONDLY, concerning the structure of the social 
 system ; and THIRDLY, concerning the structure of the uni- 
 verse, so far as that structure may safely be inferred from 
 those elements of it with which we are acquainted. 
 
 Be it understood that this evening I use the term responsi- 
 bility, in the fullest, highest, and most absolute sense, in 
 which it has at any time been employed by moralists ; and 
 that, when I affirm man to be accountable, I do so to the 
 whole extent which Christianity implies. 
 
 What then is the structure of man, individually, as a sen- 
 tient and voluntary agent ? and especially what is it as com- 
 pared with the structure of other sentient and voluntary 
 
 * Ulterior abstractions : the effort of the mind to resolve the elements of 
 thought into their elements ; or to carry analysis a step further than either the 
 nature of things, or the nature and powers of the mind permits. Mathema- 
 tical science affords the best and most intelligible illustration of the highly 
 important distinction between ascertained relations, which are man's province, 
 and indeterminate speculations, or ulterior abstractions, which have no 
 practical tendency. 
 
 B 2
 
 20 
 
 agents the brute orders around him? what is it as indi- 
 cating his responsibility, or the reverse? 
 
 Man, in common with the animated orders around him, 
 is so constituted as to be entrusted with the care of his own 
 preservation and well-being. To enable him, and them, to 
 secure this end, he, and they, alike, are made conscious of 
 many of the properties of the external world ; and he, and 
 they, alike, command a locomotive machinery, and are 
 endowed with instincts and propensities, severally tending to 
 well-being and yet not always, in fact, securing it ; inas- 
 much as the interference of one desire with another, under 
 especial circumstances, not seldom exposes the individual 
 to privations, injuries, and even destruction. So does the 
 urgency of famine sometimes impel the lion or the wolf to 
 brave dangers, which, in a less famished condition, his 
 instinct of caution would have instructed him to avoid. 
 
 As a necessary consequence of this universal law of 
 animal, as distinguished from vegetable life, and which 
 makes each individual, to a certain extent, the steward of 
 his own interests, all alike, are subjected to another law, 
 clearly beneficent in its intention, and actually so in its 
 ordinary operation ; although calamitous in frequent in- 
 stances. This law makes the well-being of each individual, 
 in each moment of his existence, a consequence, or product of 
 his own agency or conduct, in some previous era, proximate, 
 or remote. Or, to state the same general fact in other terms, 
 the well-being of a sentient, voluntary, locomotive animal, 
 is, in each successive moment of his existence, a compound 
 result of many causes, or influences ; among which his indi- 
 vidual agency is the directive cause the determining reason. 
 For the manifest purpose of conserving individual life to as 
 late a period as may consist with the economic arrangements 
 of the whole system, each animal, beside his discriminating 
 senses, enabling him to select his food, and beside his 
 weapons of defence, and his instinct of self-preservation, is
 
 21 
 
 endowed with a principle of mental association, fitting him 
 to admit a degree of education, and to acquire some nidi-- 
 ments of personal prudence, under the training of expe- 
 rience. Hence it is that the senior animals, in most species, 
 are more astute, and hard to be entrapped than the juniors. 
 Sportsmen find the use of the gun in January, to be a more 
 difficult exercise than it had been in September. This 
 capability of learning, by experience, what instincts would 
 never suggest, is a proper accompaniment of the law which 
 intrusts the individual with the care of his own welfare. 
 
 And here, let it be observed, that, in proportion as the 
 faculties of any species are complicated, and in proportion to 
 the structural perfection of each species, does the well-being 
 of the individual, at any era of its existence, depend more 
 upon its spontaneous agency, and less upon external causes. 
 The oyster yawns to the coming and the ebbing ocean a 
 passive recipient of benefits he must wait for ; nor is the 
 voluntary principle, in such an animal, much more than are 
 chemical affinities, to a vegetable. But the fox which has 
 survived to take the benefit of several runs, has baffled his 
 pursuers by skill acquired ; and in such an instance, the 
 agency of the individual bears a large proportion to those 
 external circumstances which were combined in the event. 
 This relative importance of personal agency, as the ruling 
 cause of an animal's well-being, is enhanced continually, as 
 we ascend the scale of mental development. 
 
 Roughly speaking, if, in the to-day* well-being of the 
 horse, the dog, the elephant, yesterday's individual agency 
 is as one to four, compared with the influence of external 
 circumstances ; and if a similar proportion hold with the 
 infant members of the human family, and with the savage ; 
 in the to-day s well-being of adult, civilized man, the per- 
 sonal agency, compared with external influences, may be 
 taken as four to one. This same rule might serve indeed as 
 a gauge of faculty and development. It is a rule that, the
 
 22 
 
 more mind, power, culture, so muck the more is the well-being 
 of each era the sheer product of personal agency in some 
 preceding era. The less mind, the less power, the less 
 culture, just so much the more is any being ' the creature of 
 circumstances.' Or, to state the same principle otherwise, 
 persuade any being (capable of persuasion) that he is the 
 mere creature of circumstances, thereby lessening, in his 
 own view, the importance of his personal agency ; and 
 forthwith he becomes in fact, what you have persuaded him 
 that he is. Your doctrine has served to lead him down, two 
 or three steps, or more, on the scale of mind. On the con- 
 trary, find one who, from whatever cause, had desponded as 
 to the possible efficacy of his personal agency ; awaken him 
 to a sense of the range that is allowed to it, and bring him 
 confidently to believe in the force of mind ; and he is, as it 
 were, reborn into the family of mind. 
 
 This, the first condition of all animal existence, namely, 
 the dependence, as to well-being, of the present, upon the past 
 personal agency, and of the future upon the present, brings 
 with it, in the higher species of animals, and pre-eminently 
 so in the human species, a SECOND capital condition, which 
 is this That a knowledge, or recollection of the first-named 
 law, comes, by habit, to constitute the governing motive of 
 that personal agency. We feel to-day, that what we are, is 
 the product, in great measure, of what we did yesterday: 
 this feeling rules, more or less, what we shall do to-day ; 
 and so, what we shall be to-morrow. This causal continuity 
 of rational life, is the ground of all progress in skill, caution, 
 and practical wisdom. It is this which, at once, restrains 
 certain instincts, incites others, and regulates and harmonizes 
 all; and therefore is, as it were, the mistress of our destiny: 
 or it is, so far as we deserve to be called rational beings, and 
 are tending onwards. If any agent have but a dull con- 
 sciousness of the dependence of the future upon the present, 
 or if particular instincts have gained a momentum which
 
 23 
 
 overpowers it ; or, if any being come among circumstances 
 so new, as that his acquired anticipations fail him ; then, 
 and in any such case, he lies exposed to ills, or to absolute 
 destruction. 
 
 On the contrary, if any being has acquired an ex- 
 tensive and exact knowledge of the tendencies of the 
 several modes in which his personal agency may operate, 
 and if this knowledge be so pondered, and so habitually 
 recurred to, as that it have come to have more weight than 
 any single instinct or propensity, then, under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances, such a being will have secured for himself a 
 large share of good ; or, at least, will have averted the worst 
 evils. 
 
 But mark the difference between man and the brute orders, 
 in this respect. The elephant, to a certain extent, is 
 cognizant of the consequences of his actions ; yet to a very 
 limited extent ; and not so as to control his more powerful 
 instincts : this recollection rules him only in the un- 
 impassioned detail, or, as we might say, the etiquette of his 
 behaviour towards man. Meanwhile man, the elephant's 
 keeper, is cognizant of these consequences so as to be ruled 
 ordinarily by a recollection of them. Hence it is that he 
 has made himself the elephant's keeper. How could the puny 
 biped have climbed to a throne on the neck of the mighty 
 and knowing quadruped, or have come to rule his giant will 
 with a bodkin, a look, or a whisper, had not nature con- 
 ferred upon him this very prerogative namely a paramount 
 and habitual regard to the remote consequences of his 
 present conduct. It was the blind instincts of the elephant, 
 at the first, that led him within the toils of the hunter ; 
 while at the same moment the hunter's instincts, as an 
 animal his sense of hunger and of thirst, his apprehension 
 of danger, and love of ease, and his desire of life itself, 
 have all been held in abeyance, by the forethought of the 
 signal advantages he might derive from the services of the
 
 24 
 
 elephant, and which has impelled him to endure the severest 
 privations, and to encounter the most extreme perils, ani- 
 mated by the contingent hope of achieving his purpose. 
 
 EDUCATION may be described as consisting of two 
 operations, the one, that of imparting a correct knowledge of 
 the laws which regulate the dependence of future well-being 
 upon present conduct and the other operation, that of 
 giving, by habit, a sovereign influence to this same know- 
 ledge. Man therefore is susceptible of immensely more 
 education than the brute, because he can know and remember 
 this dependence. 
 
 LAW is the propounding of some specific future conse- 
 quence to those who are capable of recollecting it, and of 
 giving this recollection a due place among the motives of 
 their conduct. The brute orders are disciplined by habit ; 
 they are not governed by law, and the same is true of 
 infancy. 
 
 RESPONSIBILITY is measured by the capacity of the indi- 
 vidual to know the dependence of the future upon the 
 present, and to govern himself by that recollection. 
 
 In training then a being like man, we lift him to the level 
 which nature designed him to occupy, when we do whatever 
 may be done to enhance and invigorate his sense of responsi- 
 bility. But if we would effectually and rapidly sensualize 
 him, we need do nothing more than despoil him of this sense, 
 or blunt it. So dealt with, he becomes a brute, only 
 wanting those conservative instincts which nature has kindly 
 bestowed, where she had not bestowed reason. In the 
 words of a notorious philosopher of the past age, let men 
 be told that there are in the world no causes but physical 
 causes, and that these are all uniform and irresistible, and 
 they become themselves uniformly, and irresistibly, ferocious 
 and sensual.* 
 
 * II n'y a'qu'une sorte de causes, a proprement parler ; ce sont les causes 
 physiques. II n'y a qu'une sorte de necessity, c'est la meme pour tous
 
 25 
 
 Man's constitution, as Trustee of his own well-being, makes 
 itself seen in whatever light we view him. 
 
 It does not appear that any of the brute orders, even those 
 whose sagacity bears the nearest resemblance to human 
 intelligence, ever recognise their fault, or endure the anguish 
 of remorse, when they may happen to suffer pain or priva- 
 tion, as the consequence of a disregard of what should have 
 been remembered. The wolf does not, as we suppose, rave 
 at his own folly, in having leapt, without thought, into the 
 pit. 
 
 It is otherwise with man. 'Ah, had I wist!' is the 
 mournful ejaculation forced from him as often as his passion, 
 his pride, his over-weening ambition, his self-indulgence, 
 have brought him into the meshes of calamity. Remorse, 
 the most prompt and involuntary of our emotions, is a 
 torment super-added to suffering, whenever that suffering has 
 resulted from our disregard of the dependence of the future 
 upon the present. Remorse is man's dread prerogative, and 
 the natural accompaniment of his constitution as a knowing, 
 voluntary agent, left in trust with his own welfare, and that 
 of others. Remorse, if we exclude the notion of responsi- 
 bility, is an enigma in human nature, never to be explained. 
 Had there in fact been no Trustee-ship, there could have been 
 no anguish in the recollection of delinquency. That most 
 terrible of pains, were it here to utter its meanings, would 
 supersede argument, on our present theme. 
 
 But there are many ways in which the innate feeling of 
 responsibility displays itself. A man's sense, in any case, of 
 having acquitted himself poorly, as the trustee of his own 
 welfare, and of having forfeited advantages he might have 
 secured, and of having drawn upon himself evils he might 
 have avoided, is keenly painful. On the other hand, a 
 
 les etres. The popular comment upon this doctrine, and its consequence, as 
 given by Diderot himself That those who, in any way, incommode the social 
 system should be got rid of not punished, was expressed in the reign of 
 terror.
 
 26 
 
 lively feeling of self-gratulation, attends the consciousness of 
 having, by continuous and arduous efforts, by skill, courage, 
 self-control, achieved the object of one's fondest wishes : 
 for instance, if a man have acquired wealth and power. 
 This pleasurable sense, the proper attendant as it is, upon 
 the constitution of a being who is so constituted as to control 
 his own destiny, is, not less than remorse, an enigma, if man's 
 nature be not such as we now suppose. The pain in the 
 one case, and the pleasure in the other, are radii, produced 
 indeed from opposite sides of the circle, but pointing to the 
 same centre, and indicating the same truth. 
 
 But let us follow some of the more complicated emotions 
 of human nature, and see if it be possible to read these facts 
 in any other sense than the one we assume. The man who, 
 by negligence, or self-indulgence, has poorly played his 
 cards, and is the loser in the game of life, we will suppose 
 to be brought in some manner upon the stage, where the 
 eyes of thousands are directed towards his disgrace and 
 ruin. Instantly a new feeling heaves his bosom. He had 
 thought remorse enough ; but he now finds that shame gives 
 him a far keener sense of its stings. He had been wretched 
 in his solitary garret, but now, penetrated with shame, exist- 
 ence is intolerable. Watch him as he slinks away to his den 
 of unseen woe, where he will almost persuade himself to be 
 again happy, in being allowed to exchange the thrilling 
 anguish of shame, for the dull gnawings of remorse. 
 
 Or look to the obverse of this very instance. The diligent 
 steward of certain talents, who has distanced competitors, 
 and won the prize of his ambition, is before us. Let him 
 be supposed a pure selfist, glorying, not in beneficent deeds, 
 but in his laurels : as he urges his car through the crowd, 
 all voices greet him as great ; for ' men will praise thee when 
 thou doest well for thyself.' Now the emotion which stifles 
 the breath, and flushes the cheek of this demigod, can mean 
 nothing in the philosophy of human nature, unless it be
 
 27 
 
 taken as the proper correlative of those pains, and sense of 
 shame, which we have just above referred to. We are, and 
 we know it, and all around us know it, and feel it, the 
 responsible trustees of our personal welfare. To fail in this 
 trust is misery : to succeed is bliss ; and this, not simply on 
 account of mere loss or gain ; but much more as being in 
 consequence, blameworthy, or praiseworthy. 
 
 The poignant recollection of having acquitted ourselves 
 well, or ill ; vigilantly, or remissly ; faithfully, or falsely ; 
 as the trustees of well-being, when it extends itself beyond 
 the narrow circle of the selfish passions, by no means under- 
 goes a diminution of its force. Nay, the contrary is the 
 fact, and we find, on this ground, an ominous indication of 
 man's real, though now dimly revealed relationship to a 
 greater system than the present. A remarkable fact it is, 
 that the wider the circle which these emotions embrace, the 
 more do they swell ; so that the movement which was but a 
 ripple at the centre, becomes a mantling wave when it 
 reaches the margin of the lake. 
 
 To take an obvious instance. The sensitive, but faulty 
 father, who finds himself descending with a fond wife and 
 children from his patrimonial rank, to the level of destitu- 
 tion and contempt, will teach us the same truth. Let us 
 listen to his moans ' All this,' he says, ' is my fault 
 the fruit of my folly, of my presumption, of my pride. Oh 
 that the suffering also were all my own ! I could bear 
 these miseries, and more ; any thing, that should centre 
 upon myself alone ; any woe that should spend itself upon 
 my guilty head : but my wife, my children, must I see them 
 suffer, must I gaze at their wan cheeks, must I look on, 
 whilst they are repelled from the doors of the proud : this I 
 cannot bear ; this is torment insufferable.' 
 
 Are then such emotions factitious ; have men learned 
 them in some school of romance ? No indeed ; and every 
 bosom uncorrupted, confesses that they are the workings of
 
 28. 
 
 nature : we are speaking of feelings which, if any one want 
 them, we will not call him man. Let any one say if he 
 could admire a character which should exclude all these 
 painful sensibilities in the instance supposed. " 
 
 Suffering is rarely mere suffering ; but almost always 
 mingles itself, in some manner, with this principal element of 
 our nature, the sense of right and wrong, and of duty or 
 delinquency toward others. Thus are we constituted ; and 
 so has the wise and beneficent Creator, in fitting man to 
 act his part on the high stage of responsibility, and in quali- 
 fying him to receive, in trust, the welfare of those around 
 him, blended the elements of his moral nature, as that, 
 whenever the sense of responsibility comes to bear upon 
 the benevolent affections, an intensity of emotion is generated, 
 giving to the individual of ordinary strength, the temporary 
 energy of a giant. 
 
 We may glance for a moment at the union of the sense 
 of responsibility with the emotions of hope and fear. An 
 ominous combination truly is this, whispering of things 
 which the eye of man has not as yet seen. Guilt and 
 dread the consciousness of crime, and the trembling fore- 
 thought of retribution, combine within the human bosom, 
 so readily, and with so forcible a collapse, and so uniformly, 
 as to compel us to acknowledge that they do so by the 
 ordinance of nature. The doer of wrong expects wrath. 
 Nature originates this connexion ; and superstition and reli- 
 gion are the several expressions of it. You tell us that the 
 slumber of the guilty would never have been troubled by 
 thoughts of punishment, if men had never been preached 
 to. Whence has come that very preaching? is it from 
 heaven, or of men ? If from heaven, it must be held a true 
 and kind warning ; but if of men, then it is itself a part of 
 the machinery of the moral system, and therefore must have 
 a final cause and a meaning. 
 
 Look to the moral sense combining itself with hope. It
 
 does indeed belong to lofty wisdom and virtue to go on 
 doing good, even when no eye can see, no ear hear, and 
 when no earthly recompense can be expected. But it does 
 not belong to wisdom and virtue it never has, to sever 
 itself from the recollection of Him who " seeth in secret," 
 and whose approval (recompense or none) is alone an in- 
 finite reward. In such cases that hope of future good to 
 be bestowed which is instinctively connected with the con- 
 sciousness of well-doing, merges itself in a more profound 
 feeling ; the rivulet is lost in the ocean ; or we might say, 
 that the candle of hope, which is to cheer the darksome 
 path of the just, through this world of gloom, seems itself to 
 have gone out, when it is carried near to the dazzling con- 
 fines of eternal day. 
 
 That sense of right, which is the rudiment of virtue, and 
 the fulcrum of responsibility, may slumber in a man's 
 bosom from year to year, from youth to manhood ; but it is 
 awakened in a moment by witnessing some act of atrocious 
 oppression, or cruelty : a stranger perhaps is the victim ; 
 but how is that sense maddened if the victim be one most 
 dear a darling child ! and it is more than maddened, it 
 is crazed, and infatuation is added to phrensy when the 
 triumph of the oppressor, and his long impunity, seem to 
 mock our pain, and to deny that there is justice above. 
 A settled revenge then becomes the cancer of the heart. 
 Intolerable are its pains ; and yet dangerous and criminal 
 as is this passion, it does but carry out, to an excess, the 
 highest emotion of our nature ; inasmuch as it is but an 
 exaggeration of the feeling which makes man the friend 
 and adherent of JUSTICE, and the foe of wrong. Re- 
 venge is the sense of right, tortured, until it has become 
 ghastly. 
 
 Anger is an out-burst of the sense of right and wrong, at 
 a moment when an injury may be repelled by force and 
 courage. Anger disappointed of its intention, and become
 
 30 
 
 a chronic sentiment, assumes the character of malignity. 
 And yet, even the most malign minds, and those the most 
 depraved by the long indulgence of the worst emotions, are 
 still seen to justify nature, by labouring to find out reasons 
 why they ought to abhor the object of their hatred. And 
 what is the foulest calumny, but an indirect homage paid to 
 virtue, and an acknowledgment of the unchangeable prin- 
 ciples of the moral system, inasmuch as whoever is to be 
 held up as an object of public contempt, must first be shewn 
 to be worthy of it ! 
 
 In the present state, unless an extraordinary force were 
 allowed to the principle of self-love, the exigences of self- 
 preservation could hardly be provided for. Were this 
 prejudice of the individual much weakened, it would often 
 happen that he would be liable to perish in mere default of 
 the personal energy requisite for his defence or support. 
 But we have only to suppose men to have passed into a 
 world where preservation and support are otherwise pro- 
 vided for, than by the means of personal exertions. In 
 such a world, the disproportionate energy of self-love, would 
 become languid from disuse, and the sense of right and 
 wrong, continuing unabated, the instinct which impels us 
 so vehemently to desire to see right and wrong adjusted, 
 would gather a new force, and take a new direction. The 
 desire of right, and the impatience under wrong, would 
 begin to rage inward. Revenge, a viper which man had 
 hatched in his bosom, bites that bosom. Revenge, blown 
 to a new intensity, would kindle upon the material it found 
 nearest at hand, and the guilty would suffer a sort of spon- 
 taneous combustion. 
 
 If man be indeed responsible for his dispositions, as well 
 as his actions, we shall doubtless find every element of his 
 intellectual conformation therewith agreeing ; but if not, 
 then the further we pursue our analysis, the more contra- 
 dictions shall we encounter.
 
 31 
 
 Tell a man whose limjbs are affected by no disease, that, 
 although he may operate freely on materials happening to 
 lie toward his right hand, he is wholly passive, and must 
 yield to the course of inevitable laws that he is in fact 
 palsied in relation to whatever lies on his left hand. Do 
 this, and you imitate those who, while they are exulting in 
 the conquests which man has achieved by aid of the faculty 
 of abstraction, over the movements, and affinities of the 
 material world, yet affirm that this same faculty, is spell- 
 bound when it would direct itself to the properties, powers, 
 and affinities, of the. moral world ! 
 
 The point we are now considering deserves our best 
 attention. Man, we say, is responsible for his dispositions, 
 as well as for his actions ; because nature has furnished 
 him with faculties, which, if exerted, make him the -master of 
 his dispositions ; as will appear. 
 
 Far more than by any animal superiority, and more even 
 than by his lofty emotions, man is distinguished from the 
 brute orders around him, by the faculty of abstraction, apart 
 from which neither the distinctions of his animal structure, 
 nor his profound emotions, would avail him much. Apart 
 from the faculty of abstraction, there could be neither 
 science, nor art, there could be no progress, no civilization. 
 Apart from the faculty of abstraction, if men never fell into 
 error, it would be only because they never could set a foot 
 on the path that leads to truth. If this faculty lie dormant, 
 as it does, almost, in savage tribes, the wretched horde 
 straggles through the wilderness, far less blessed than the 
 beasts with which it contends for the means of life. 
 
 All the arts of life, all philosophy, all literature, all 
 social institutions, are its offspring. All that has come down 
 to us of ancient civilization is its praise ; all that we expect 
 to be achieved by our successors, is to form its triumph. 
 The faculty of abstraction is man's glory, and engine, and
 
 32 
 
 the significant seal of the truth, That man was made in the 
 image of Him who made the world. 
 
 Not merely do we see, and hear, and feel ; not only do 
 we note resemblances and differences, among the objects of 
 perception, but we learn to think separately of single qualities, 
 attaching to various objects, and variously combined with 
 other properties. The sensible qualities of the external 
 world are, by an involuntary process of the human mind, set 
 off from their usual combinations, and are then dealt with, 
 classified, and recombined at pleasure. So it is, that, 
 although it be utterly beyond our power to conceive of any 
 other properties than those with which experience has actually 
 made us acquainted, we may conceive of infinitely diversified 
 combinations of those properties. We cannot indeed invent 
 new elements ; but we might easily invent new worlds. 
 
 The human mind thus employs itself in a conjectural 
 control over the adjustments of nature ; and Nature herself 
 tempts man to try his hand in her own workshop : she shows 
 him that, as the properties and laws of the material world 
 may be thought of as otherwise combined than they are, so 
 that they may be actually otherwise combined, than they 
 are. The hand seizes its material, and gives expression to 
 what the abstractive and inventive faculties have devised. 
 Thus the arts are born ; and the same faculties, stimulated 
 by their young successes, take a bolder course : all powers 
 and laws of nature are inquired into, ascertained, and seve- 
 rally defined : philosophy is nurtured, and matured ; art 
 takes a new lesson from her younger sister, and man civil- 
 ized, goes on moulding the material elements to his 
 pleasure. 
 
 In carrying on this process, the mind is immensely aided 
 by language, which finds names, not merely for individuals, 
 species, genera, and orders ; but for abstract qualities, and 
 for general laws. Thus benefited by so pliable an instru-
 
 3J 
 
 ment, we make rapid advances in the work of accumulating, 
 arranging, and applying our abstract notions. Thencefor- 
 ward all reasonings are carried on by the means of the 
 arbitrary symbols of abstract ideas. Language, which, 
 if it were not the engine of the faculty of abstraction, 
 would be little more copious than the cawing of rooks, 
 comes to represent, not only all things actual, but all things 
 possible. 
 
 Thus set on a path immeasurably raised above the level 
 of any agencies of the brute orders, man thinks of, and 
 reasons concerning, solidity, resistance, tenacity, weight, 
 momentum, velocity; concerning affinities, attraction, repul- 
 sion, expansion, condensation, and every often-recurring 
 phenomenon of the external world. 
 
 But it is far from being true that men move forward on 
 the path of improvement, at the impulse only of necessity, 
 or only of cupidity. If necessity be sent to awaken the 
 child of reason, in the morning hour of his course, when 
 once awakened he follows inducements that have brighter 
 charms in his eye. The faculty of abstraction is possessed 
 by men in various degrees : when in the highest degree, its 
 exercise is attended with a tranquil, but intense enjoyment. 
 The man of abstraction, his mind being otherwise soundly 
 constituted, is the happiest of his species: with him, the 
 most arduous labours are also the most vivid pleasures. 
 
 But now it is not the properties of the material world alone, 
 that come within the scope of the faculty of abstraction ; far 
 from it; or if this could be questioned, we might find our 
 answer very near at hand. Are the terms just now men- 
 tioned the only abstract terms which the languages of civilized 
 man comprise ? To what class belong such words as virtue, 
 vice, goodness, malevolence, generosity, meanness, justice, 
 truth; or what is our term this evening responsibility? 
 These, and such like terms, are the symbols of those abstract 
 notions which offer themselves to the human mind, as often
 
 34 
 
 as it turns itself to consider the properties and qualities of 
 the moral world. The human mind, when once awakened 
 from the torpor of savage life, as inevitably gathers to itself 
 and embodies the one class of abstractions, as it does the 
 other. In fact the history of language proves that men 
 concern themselves sooner with moral, than with physical 
 abstractions : the words goodness, truth, justice, are older 
 than the words solidity, extension, cohesion. It would be 
 as easy to persuade mankind to keep one eye constantly 
 closed, as to wean them from the habit of employing them- 
 selves upon moral abstractions, while they are permitted to 
 be occupied with physical abstractions. There is but one 
 means of bringing these intellectual processes to a stop, 
 namely, to brutalize men by foul gratifications and ferocity : 
 the faculty of abstraction then indeed gives way. 
 
 And as man thinks of the properties of matter, with a 
 view to some purpose which he desires to effect, by recom- 
 bining them, so does he think of moral properties, with a 
 view to certain recombinations of them devised by himself, 
 and which he finds to affect his welfare, especially as a 
 social being. Experience teaches him that some combina- 
 tions of these qualities promote his happiness, and that 
 others are hostile to it. Experience has taught him more- 
 over, that moral, not less than physical qualities and laws, 
 are open to his interposition, and will yield to his plastic 
 hand. The applicate mathematical sciences are the product, 
 on the one hand ; education (personal culture included) 
 legislation, and public instruction, are the product on the 
 other, of these inventive powers of the human mind ; and 
 thus it is that civilized man moulds the material world 
 (within certain limits) to his will ; and moulds the moral world 
 (also within certain limits) to his will. 
 
 If any choose to say that the assumed distinction between 
 the physical and moral world is nugatory, and is dissipated 
 by a strict and philosophical analysis I care not at all for
 
 35 
 
 such an objection, in respect of my present argument, inas- 
 much as the fact of the control exercised by man over both 
 classes of qualities (distinction or none) remains untouched. 
 If man can construct machines, he can, in the same sense, 
 form his character. We ask for him no more liberty than 
 this ; but this involves responsibility in the fullest manner. 
 
 In every department, as well of physical, as of moral 
 science, the merely theoretic and the practical are intimately 
 blended. Some powers or properties we can in no way 
 touch ; others are subjected to our almost unlimited control. 
 But then, so it is, that, in vigorously performing our part in 
 relation to the latter, we nearly or entirely, obviate the diffi- 
 culties presented by the former. We have little or no 
 control over original temperament, or individual peculiarities 
 of organic structure ; nevertheless, knowing in any instance, 
 this temperament, and duly regarding such peculiarities, we 
 adapt the forces of education to the instance, and if we do 
 not infallibly succeed, we rarely fail altogether in effecting 
 our purpose. 
 
 Again, it can never be to more than a limited extent that 
 any man, or body of men, whether sages, teachers, or legis- 
 lators, can bring the material they would work upon 
 namely, the dispositions of their fellow-creatures, for a suffi- 
 cient length of time, under their influence. There is how- 
 ever a sphere within which a man may work at pleasure, 
 and continue to work as long as he will ; and that sphere is 
 his own bosom. With respect to what is taking place there, 
 the most powerful motives of genuine self-love prompt his 
 endeavours. With respect to that circle, his knowledge of 
 the facts is, or may be, exact. In that home he is little 
 interfered with ; and there, if any where, he may safely 
 promise himself success. If, in any line of labour, and if, 
 in respect of any mass of materials submitted to his hand, 
 man be responsible for what he does, or for what he does 
 not do, clearly he is so in regard to his personal
 
 36 
 
 and character. But you say, the doctrine of necessity ! 
 how get rid of that? I will tell you how, when the watch- 
 maker, the millwright, the mason, come forward, and 
 complain that, in their endeavours to bring their several 
 operations to the point of perfection, they are, they know 
 not how, stopped and thwarted by the doctrine of ne- 
 cessity. 
 
 Waiving this, * What say you,' asks an opponent, ' to 
 the irresistible force of particular tendencies ? what say you 
 to ominous protuberances in this or that region of the 
 cranium? what, to a morbid condition of the hepatic 
 apparatus ? what, to undue constitutional mixtures in the 
 blood ?' W T hat we say to these untoward conditions of 
 human nature is this, That, whereas man shares them with 
 the brute orders around him, he is distinguished from them 
 by the possession of faculties, arid by a susceptibility to 
 motives in which they have no part, and which give to him, 
 at the worst, a counteractive force, or power of control. 
 
 If indeed the possession of such powers, and a sensibility 
 to such motives, still leave man on a level with the brutes 
 equally helpless equally irresponsible, then power is not 
 power, motive is not motive ; and if the case be so, then we 
 may indifferently say that four is equal to two and two ; or, 
 to two and six. 
 
 In truth, the tendencies, defects, redundancies, of the in- 
 dividual organization, are but varied types of the common 
 organization, and they all stand related, some more, and 
 some less favourably, to those forces of the moral world 
 which it is our business to acquaint ourselves with, and to 
 employ. We are neither denying, nor underrating the 
 difficulties that arise from temperament and organization. 
 But the very word difficulty reminds us of powers which are 
 to surmount it. It is quite true that, if these powers are 
 unknown to the individual, or, if being known and present, 
 they are abated by false notions, or are turned aside by
 
 37 
 
 sophisms, then temperament and organization will have their 
 way. What is this but to affirm that, if the expansive force 
 of heat be uncontrolled, or ill-managed, it will prove de- 
 structive, not useful ? 
 
 The powers of the moral system, truly understood, and 
 wisely employed, are always of immeasurable force ; and 
 they are so, because man, as a responsible and religious 
 being, stands related to infinity and omnipotence. 
 
 Let not any misinterpret what is now affirmed, concerning 
 man's control over his character and dispositions. No prin- 
 ciple of religion is really compromised by the sense in which 
 this affirmation is made. I say this; but will not diveit 
 from my argument to give an explanation foreign to it. 
 
 In speaking of man's control over his dispositions and 
 character, we must observe some other distinctions. Chil- 
 dren of five and seven years do not invent or construct 
 chronometers and steam-engines ; and so far as they may be 
 benefited by any such contrivances, we must say to them 
 ' Machines are made for you, not by you.' Nevertheless 
 many a child, in his fifth or sixth year, by his intelligent 
 inquiries, and by the devices he resorts to in his sports, gives 
 evidence that he inherits that very abstractive and inventive 
 faculty which made Arkwright and Watt the boast of their 
 country, and the benefactors of mankind. 
 
 Neither have the inert natives of Australian islets, as yet, 
 constructed chronometers, or steam engines : and if we 
 found them availing themselves of the one, or clad in the 
 products of the other, we must say to them ' Machines are 
 made for you, not by you.' And yet it is true that the 
 implements formed and used by the savage, speak plainly 
 enough the great principle that man is man, in all latitudes ; 
 and that although his higher faculties may lie dormant, 
 century after century, they are not extinct, but may be 
 awakened at any time, and may be put in movement. 
 Again, even within civilized communities, all men do not
 
 38 
 
 show equal readiness and ability in the construction of 
 machines ; and, to the vast majority it must be said, ' Ma- 
 chines are made for you, not by you.' And yet, if an 
 Arkwright and a Watt be rare, equally rare are instances of 
 human beings, not ranking among idiots, who exhibit abso- 
 lutely no traces of the abstractive and inventive faculties. 
 In respect to the power of adapting means to a preconceived 
 end, the most stupid individual of mankind immeasurably 
 surpasses the most intelligent of the brute orders, when not 
 obeying a blind instinct. 
 
 We now turn to the analogical instances which we have 
 especially in view. When it is said that man's dispositions 
 and character are made for him, not by him, we must ask, in 
 detail, what is meant. ' Are you speaking of man under 
 his seventh year, or of the cultured adult? Are you 
 speaking of the houseless tenant of the desert, or of the 
 disciplined, temperate, energetic, and religious man, the 
 representative of advanced civilization ?' How manifest is it 
 that precisely the same things cannot be predicated of these 
 various samples of humanity ! 
 
 Men's dispositions, say you, are made for them, and not 
 by them : if you mean all men, on the ground of that doc- 
 trine which totally excludes agency, in a proper sense, from 
 the world of mind, as well as from the world of matter, then 
 we do not trouble ourselves with an inane affirmation of 
 that sort. It is enough for our purpose if man be shown to 
 have as direct a control over his own dispositions, as it is 
 acknowledged that he has, by the means of education and 
 teaching, over the dispositions of others ; and as much as he 
 exerts over the properties of matter. We do not want for 
 him any more liberty or power in regard to what lies within 
 his own bosom, than he is confessed to exercise in relation 
 to what lies without it. 
 
 But if by men's dispositions, you mean some men's, then 
 there is room for the assertion, which indeed may be applied
 
 39 
 
 to all instances, and they are lamentably too many, in which 
 human nature, having fallen into neglect and decay, its self- 
 controlling energies have become dormant. Or, to look 
 among individuals inasmuch as every man is not an Ark- 
 wright, so neither is every man a Socrates : and it would be 
 inconsiderate to affirm precisely the same thing of Alcibiades, 
 as we should of his master. Yet both are, and in the same 
 sense, responsible for their dispositions, as well as actions ; 
 and if Alcibiades gives indulgence to his passions, and to 
 his vain-glorious temper, we boldly tell him '" You are to 
 blame, in not having profited more by the instruction and 
 example of such a teacher.' 
 
 In bringing the doctrine of responsibility home, in a 
 practical manner, it is especially important that we should 
 tenderly regard peculiarities of individual temperament. The 
 moralist and the religious teacher are bound to announce 
 the same serious truth, whether Marcus Aurelius or Helio- 
 gabalus be before them ; if they fail to do this, whether from 
 timidity and false delicacy, or from the misgivings of a scepti- 
 cal temper, it is plain that they fearfully aggravate the 
 danger of the most critical cases, by holding back the 
 remedy, in part, where its utmost efficacy is needed. Yet 
 the personal adviser will use his skill in carrying home this 
 truth to the conscience of each, in the manner most likely to 
 awaken its energies. This skill, scientifically expressed, is 
 the applicate of morals. But it is an art which would have 
 neither reason nor utility to recommend it, if it were not 
 true, that all varieties of natural temperament, are fit objects 
 of discipline ; and that the moral element, or conscience, in 
 all men, affords ground enough for the hope of refor- 
 mation. 
 
 We must not, perhaps, blame the moralist who prefers, 
 as his pupil, Marcus Aurelius : but it would be a work, 
 not merely of greater difficulty, but of greater charity, to 
 take in hand Heliogabalus ; and yet it would not be so
 
 40 
 
 except on the principle that, even in him, the rudiment of 
 virtue might be quickened, and that even he might be 
 incited to the labours of self-reform. 
 
 The two parts of this process are distinctly visible: there 
 \sfirst, the external influence the incitement the example 
 the precept, which those, by the way, are of all men the 
 most bound to use assiduously, who are professing that man 
 is 'the creature of circumstances.' Is he so? then let us 
 take especial care that the circumstances surrounding him, 
 and the conversation he hears, are of a kind to inspire him 
 with the highest notion, and the most serious sense, of his 
 responsibility. But the second part of this process is as 
 obvious as the first, namely, the internal energy to which 
 education and external influence give incitement and direc- 
 tion. Without the second, the first would be only a dumb 
 show a writing on the sands, a ploughing the bosom of a 
 lake. 
 
 It may be well to look a little nearer at the process, 
 while the mind's power over its own machinery is at work. 
 Marcus Aurelius, we will suppose, is perusing the history 
 of Alexander ; and, as he reads, he says to himself, ' If I 
 had been Alexander, I would, if it were from mere motives of 
 ambition, have learned to control my impetuous passions. 
 I should then have survived to consolidate the conquest of 
 the world.' But now, why may we not give Marcus 
 Aurelius another, and an analogous subject of meditation, 
 namely, the dispositions of Marcus Aurelius, instead of 
 those of Alexander ? If any mysterious difficulty, whether 
 metaphysical or moral, attaches to this change of subject, 
 let it be pointed out. Our ordinary consciousness advertises 
 us of none ; or, if some persons assure us that they really do 
 experience an indescribable stagnation of the faculties as 
 often as they endeavour to ruminate on their particular faults, 
 we presume a similar stoppage attends the effort to medi- 
 tate upon their own merits, their virtues, and their talents.
 
 41 
 
 But now, if Marcus Aurelius have discovered flaws in 
 the philosophic emperor's character, and if he sensibly feel 
 the discredit and disadvantage thence accruing, as well to 
 himself as to others, and to the roman world, and if his 
 bosom heave with a generous conception of the fair and 
 good, attainable by man, and yet not actually attained by 
 himself; what is it that hinders his setting about the cor- 
 rection of his fault, and the pursuit of the opposite virtue ? 
 Let us be told, what hand, visible or invisible, stays his 
 course, when stretching toward the mark set before him ? 
 He clearly perceives what is wanted : the particular motive 
 that is adapted to the occasion, he also recognises. He 
 puts himself then under the guardianship of that particular 
 motive : looks to it, challenges its aid, and will have it 
 always near him; just as the timid catch the hand of the 
 strong and the brave, on the field of danger. 
 
 Who must not acknowledge that, whatever difficulties 
 Marcus Aurelius may encounter in the culture and ad- 
 vancement of his personal character, he enjoys peculiar 
 advantages for overcoming them, and such as he could not 
 hope for, if he were attempting the reformation of another ? 
 His pupil is always near him, and has no diversity of interests 
 at stake. He possesses the most intimate knowledge of 
 the patient's case, and is aware also, or may be, of every 
 changing symptom. Especially, he is at hand, and ready 
 with corroborative motives, in each crisis of peculiar peril. 
 
 No effort of designing intelligence, and of assiduity, which 
 can be named, offers itself to man, accompanied with so 
 many inducements and facilities, as does the work of moral 
 self-culture : none is so full of hope ; and if, in any instance 
 whatever, a man may be blamed for not having effected the 
 good which was in his power, most of all may he be blamed 
 if, after having received the rudiments of self improvement, 
 precept, and example, he yet has neglected to amend his 
 dispositions, and to elevate his character.
 
 42 
 
 That the human mind feels itself peculiarly at home in 
 this field, is shown by the intense delight with which all 
 contemplate the portraiture of character, whether real or 
 fictitious. No kind of literature is so eagerly devoured 
 as that which depicts men individually, marked by their 
 peculiarities of disposition and temper. And it is so, 
 because the human mind, while conversing with images of 
 this class, feels that it is among the objects over which it 
 has the most immediate control : the mind delights itself in 
 the things of the mind, because they are its creatures the 
 materials upon which it may work without interruption. 
 
 Analyze the enthusiasm of the youth who stands, lost in 
 thought, before the monument of Nelson. ' / may be a 
 Nelson,' he whispers to himself ; which means, 'I will make 
 myself such.' Place by the side of the statue of Nelson, 
 the statue of a Croesus : the boy might indeed desire to be 
 as rich, but the thought of becoming so does not kindle the 
 soul, because wealth is an accident, over which the mind has 
 no direct command. Valour and high conduct, even springing 
 as they may from original conformation, are yet felt to be 
 things lying within the mind's jurisdiction, and the soul is 
 on fire with the thought of making them her own. 
 
 Do we say that the work of forming and perfecting the 
 character is one of little difficulty, and not liable to disap- 
 pointments ? far from it. What we say is this that it is a 
 work, with all its difficulties, and all its disappointments, 
 manifestly lying within the range of the abstractive faculty 
 to devise it, and of the active faculties to achieve it. It is 
 therefore a work, like others, upon which the very same 
 faculties are every day employed, in relation to which man 
 may be, and is, responsible. When we see that he is doing 
 his part, we sympathize with him in his regrets for having 
 so poorly succeeded. So we listen to ingenious mechanists, 
 one of whom sighs for more costly materials than he can 
 command, and says, ' if I could but afford to point every
 
 43 
 
 axle with a diamond, or to cog my wheels with rubies, I 
 should be able to bring my invention to a faultless perfection:' 
 another blames the humidity of the climate, which, he says, 
 forbids his preserving his speculum from congelations, for 
 one hour, or from rust for a single day : so that he never 
 points his instrument to the skies, without being reminded 
 of the exhalations of earth. Another, if asked why he does 
 not rectify his time-piece by observations, replies, ' it is 
 impracticable to do so in Holborn, where the rumbling of 
 carriages, night and day, imparts to our instruments a tremu- 
 lous oscillation.' Such are the vexations of the mechanist ; 
 but does he therefore throw up his employment? he rather 
 redoubles his assiduity in finding means for commanding 
 success, spite of difficulties. 
 
 And so, in the labours of self-culture, one laments 
 the infirmity of his animal temperament ; another feels the 
 ill influence of the society he frequents; another mourns 
 the agitations of public life ; another the particular disadvan- 
 tages or temptations to which he is exposed, in the line of 
 his profession. All are conscious of these discouragements ; 
 but none who adhere to common sense would abandon their 
 hopes of excellence in the inane profession, ' That a man's 
 character is made for him, not by him.' 
 
 A prejudice besetting the human mind, and yet wholly 
 destitute of reason, leads us to suppose that some inscrutable 
 mystery attaches to the intellectual operation, in any case in 
 which, either the subject of our cogitations, or the result, 
 is peculiarly momentous. Thus it is that difficulties have 
 been imagined to belong to moral agency, which, if real 
 (and if real, they must be universal} would make the every 
 day behaviour of mankind, a burlesque of rational conduct. 
 
 We should particularly bear in mind this prejudice when 
 we listen to the many absurd things that have been uttered 
 (and by men of high note) concerning responsibility as 
 to belief and opinion. This topic is, in fact, of no little
 
 44 
 
 importance in relation to our present argument. Men, it is 
 said, are not to be held responsible for their actions, inas- 
 much as their actions are the products of their dispositions, 
 and then again, their dispositions are greatly influenced by 
 their belief or opinions ; and, as to these, it has been solemnly 
 announced as a ' GREAT TRUTH, finally gone forth to all 
 the ends of the earth, That man shall no more render 
 account to man for his belief, OVER WHICH HE HAS HIMSELF 
 
 NO CONTROL.'* 
 
 If, however, it might be thought lawful to call in question 
 a ' final decision,' pronounced by a high authority, we 
 should be tempted to bring this same ' Great Truth ' to the 
 test of common sense ; as thus : a belief or opinion (over 
 which we are told a man 'has himself no control') is, we 
 presume, nothing else but a proposition, held to be true on 
 some ground of evidence falling short, a little, of direct and 
 irresistible demonstration. Propositions established by 
 demonstrations are said to be known, not believed ; we are 
 also said to know those things with which we are personally 
 and familiarly conversant. A man who walks every day 
 from Islington to the Bank may affirm that he knows his way 
 thither ; whereas a countryman, on his first visit to town, 
 although he may have examined a map of London, and may 
 have asked directions, at setting out, will only profess that 
 he believes himself to be taking the right road. 
 
 Whatever may be the philosophy of the intellectual 
 operation which is concerned in the acquirement, either of 
 knowledge, or of belief, it can surely be in no way affected by 
 the weight of the consequence attaching to the proposition. 
 For example ; whether the countryman were going to the 
 Bank to receive a dividend of fifteen shillings, or of five 
 thousand pounds, is a circumstance altogether indifferent to 
 the mental operations concerned in his finding his way 
 thither. 
 
 * An 'Inaugural Discourse.'
 
 45 
 
 But we may approach nearer to the awful confines of this 
 1 Great Truth ' by another supposition. On some urgency 
 of public business, a great man despatches a servant at 
 night-fall, across an open country, to the remote residence of 
 a friend. The messenger loses his path in the pitchy dark- 
 ness, and at day-break finds that he has been making a 
 toilsome circuit, and is near upon his master's house. 
 Another is forthwith despatched, and is thus enjoined 
 ' You will have daylight throughout your journey ; and 
 besides, there are houses at each point where it is likely you 
 might go wrong.' Nevertheless, he also returns, having 
 missed his way. Yet he comes not without his apology ; 
 for he happens to be one of those who have found that ' the 
 highest intellectual cultivation is perfectly compatible with 
 the daily cares and toils of working men :' he is one of 
 those who, although born in a low station, has had ' his 
 thoughts turned towards philosophy :' he is therefore quali- 
 fied to make his excuse in philosophic style, and to say, 
 ' My lord, blame me not. It was, I assure you, my conscien- 
 tious belief that the road I took was the right road : it has 
 proved otherwise : this is my misfortune, and yours : but 
 you know the time has gone by when men may be required 
 to render account to others, for their belief, over which THEY 
 
 THEMSELVES HAVE NO CONTROL.' 
 
 Some would venture to say that my lord's man might have 
 entertained a doubt concerning this, his ' conscientious belief,' 
 and that, on the ground of such a doubt, he might have 
 inquired his way. But let the ' Great Truth ' be brought 
 to the test of another instance. A man has lived half a 
 century in the 'conscientious belief that the tales related 
 by Geoffrey of Monmouth, are veritable histories. But at 
 length, frequenting well-informed society, he hears his 
 favourite author spoken of very contemptuously. Neverthe- 
 less, his disposition being of the sort which makes him a 
 steady friend to whomsoever he has once patronized, he
 
 46 
 
 resolves to adhere to his faith. He might indeed (unless 
 some mysterious power sways the world of opinion) he 
 might easily examine the evidence, and so convince himself 
 that, in this instance, he had carried credulity a little too 
 far ; he is half inclined to exempt himself from the. ridicule 
 he has found himself exposed to ; but he hears the GREAT 
 TRUTH announced, that opinion, or belief, is a thing over 
 which ' MAN HAS NO CONTROL,' and he therefore thinks 
 himself happy in the privilege, thus secured to him by the 
 highest authority, of continuing to be a firm believer in the 
 exploits of Prince Arthur ! 
 
 Unless this ' Great Truth ' means that some awful 
 fatality stands in the way of a man's admitting, or entertain- 
 ing the suspicion that his belief may be erroneous, and 
 denies him the liberty to examine evidence unless it means 
 this, what does it mean ? Unless we are prepared to say that 
 a man who takes the third turning in a street when he should 
 have taken the fourth, is the helpless victim of the cruel des- 
 tiny which tyrannises over the world of belief, unless we say 
 this, then this ' Great Truth ' can be regarded as little better 
 than a pompous contradiction of every one's common sense. 
 
 Nothing can be clearer than that, as well in regard to 
 opinion or creed,, as to disposition and conduct, responsibility 
 takes its measure from the means of information : it does 
 not indeed spring thence ; but it rises or falls in proportion. 
 The Chinese artisan lives and dies without ever suspecting 
 that his notions of the figure of the earth are false, or that 
 his religious belief is unfounded. Thousands, it is to be 
 feared, in this land of light, pass their seventy years with 
 little more opportunity than Hindoos or Hottentots enjoy, 
 of ' coming to the knowledge of the truth,' and, with 
 reference to such, it must, with a sigh, be acknowledged 
 that, ' over their belief, they have no control.' 
 
 But now, shall a man stand up in the heart of a highly 
 civilized and cultured community, and among men who are
 
 47 
 
 reading all books, and mixing in all societies who hear and 
 discuss everything and solemnly tell them that, over their 
 belief they have no control ? Such an assertion, unless it 
 be intended to express the speaker's belief in a fatality that 
 excludes the notion of agency, in any sense, is a flat contra- 
 diction of the plainest facts. Let us no more ridicule the 
 absurdities that were gravely discussed in the schools of the 
 dark ages ! No ' angelical doctor ' of those times ever 
 strove to make good, by syllogisms, a more absurd dogma, 
 or one of worse tendency than this so ponderously 
 enounced in the hearing of the youth of the nineteenth 
 century, that responsibility does not extend to men's belief, 
 inasmuch as opinion is a matter of fate, over which they 
 have no control, and that 'Henceforward nothing' should 
 ' prevail upon us to praise or to blame any one for that which 
 he can no more change, than he can the hue of his skin or 
 the height of his stature !' 
 
 In the place of this ' great truth,' let us admit the simple 
 fact, which asks no rhetoric to recommend it to our serious 
 regard, That, if there be any thing at all, touching a man's 
 intellectual and moral condition, over which he has a ready, 
 easy, and absolute control, it is his belief or opinion ; and 
 especially so, when high culture has opened to him all 
 means of information, and imparted to his faculties the power 
 to avail himself of them. To overcome inveterate evil 
 tempers, and to give a new direction to dispositions too 
 long indulged, is indeed a difficult task. But at least a 
 man may inquire into the ground of his opinions, and 
 revise them if erroneous; and therefore he is to be held 
 in the highest degree culpable if he fail to do so. 
 
 A man, unless he be a hermit, cannot pass through the 
 engagements of a single day, without, in twenty instances, 
 treating others, and allowing himself to be treated as 
 responsible, for actions, dispositions, and opinions. He 
 who should attempt to act the philosopher, on this ground,
 
 48 
 
 toward his children, his domestics, his tradesmen, would be 
 judged fit only for a lunatic asylum. Send your servant 
 to obtain change for half-a-crown ; and if he bring back only 
 twenty-nine pence, hold him blameless, on the ground that 
 ' men are not responsible for their actions.' Allow a child 
 to indulge a disagreeable habit, because we are ' not respon- 
 sible for our dispositions ;' or exempt a school-boy from 
 chastisement who tells his master that he ' conscientiously 
 believes 'Ferula to mean holyday, and Ferialis, an instrument 
 for slapping on the palm ! 
 
 Not even philosophers are so absurd in the petty detail of 
 common life ; and yet, when they come forward to guide the 
 public mind, and when they employ a great reputation for 
 giving currency to their whimsical theories, they do not 
 scruple formally to loosen all the obligations of virtue, or to 
 put their signatures to a solemn acquittance, toward God 
 and man, of every duty. This is indeed a ' preaching of 
 indulgences ' which one would not have looked for in these 
 times. And the Tetzels, in this instance, are sages and 
 statesmen who are used to curl the lip, when religious 
 dogmas are mentioned ! 
 
 But what is likely to be the influence of such preaching 
 when addressed to flippant youth ? Men who retain any 
 serious convictions of truth and piety, have constant occa- 
 sion to lament that frivolity of the young which, even while 
 secular studies are assiduously pursued, deafens the ear 
 when the principles of a higher wisdom are insisted upon. 
 Are young men at college generally actuated by a too eager 
 solicitude concerning points of faith ? or are they ordinarily 
 weighed down by a too deep sense of their individual re- 
 sponsibility in regard to the opinions they may hold ? We 
 presume the very contrary, and that, therefore, a truly wise 
 instructor will be apt to choose some other theme in his 
 addresses, than this of the involuntariness of belief. It is 
 a mode of talking pernicious enough, to tell the young that
 
 49 
 
 a creed is ( of little importance,' so long as the exterior 
 behaviour be irreproachable ; but to proclaim to them, in 
 loud tones, that, over their opinions, how false soever, ' they 
 have no more control than over the hue of their skins, or 
 the height of their stature,' is a procedure that can be saved 
 from indignant condemnation only by a recollection of its 
 ineffable absurdity. 
 
 The control which men, living amid the advantages of 
 high culture, hold over their opinions, springs, in the most 
 direct manner, from the structure of the human mind, as 
 endowed with faculties of abstraction, comparison, analysis ; 
 and as liable to powerful motives, tending to give activity 
 to these faculties, and to extend their operation over the 
 widest range of subjects. All who are, in any degree, in- 
 tellectually alive, are conscious enough of this power of con- 
 trol, in relation to the changing aspects of scientific or 
 political belief. Is a new and dazzling theory of chemical 
 affinity, or of magnetic influence, put forth, or are the long 
 hidden mysteries of the ' new social system ' proclaimed by 
 ' great men ?' where shall we find those who will choose 
 to suffer the shame of adhering to ' antiquated prejudices,' 
 in deference to the 'great principle,' that men have no 
 control over their opinions? Singular fact, that this 
 ' great truth ' is to be barred out of every department of 
 human research religion and morals excepted, where it is 
 to be indulged with a terrible despotism, as a compensation 
 for the wrong done it in the regions of physical science, and 
 politics ! 
 
 That man is responsible, and that he must be treated as 
 such, as well in respect of his dispositions as his actions, 
 appears incontestably, when we examine the structure of the 
 
 SOCIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 But where are we to find our specimens of the social
 
 50 
 
 system ? The human family is found subsisting, grega- 
 riously, in innumerable modes of combination ; from the 
 small gatherings, or clanships, of savage tribes, to the com- 
 plicated machinery of high civilization. Now surely, what- 
 ever may be the sufferings or the abuses which there meet 
 us, we must follow man, until we discover him in a state 
 admitting of the full development, and free exercise of all his 
 faculties. 
 
 And yet our argument would be borne out, if we were to 
 stop far short of the highest condition of the social system; 
 for in fact, no social system whatever can subsist, or be 
 permanent, where man ceases to be dealt with as respon- 
 sible, and where he himself has forgotten that he is so. ^ 
 
 It is moreover manifestly true, that the extent to which, 
 in any community, men are trusted and relied upon, as 
 responsible, is the measure of civilization ; no criterion 
 more exact or infallible. A high doctrine of responsibility, 
 accepted on all hands, and connected with the loftiest mo- 
 tives, is the reason, and the gauge, of social advancement. 
 Enhance this doctrine, and give it a new force, and bring 
 it to bear upon a larger surface of the community, and such 
 a community, whatever be its political framework, is happy, 
 and in progress. The complicated contrivances of political 
 theorists are superseded, opinion rules rather than law, and 
 the means of terror are forgotten. 
 
 On the contrary, spread a low doctrine of human respon- 
 sibility, talk of necessity, as ' a practical principle,' say 
 much of the omnipotence of physical causes ; ridicule lofty 
 sentiments, of whatever kind ; mock all terrors reflected 
 from futurity ; do this, and you lower the social condition as 
 certainly as you would lower the energies of animal life by 
 shedding a new proportion of azote into the atmosphere. 
 
 What we here venture to affirm roundly, presents itself 
 as a practical truth, whenever we go into the details of the 
 social economy. We shall gather a few instances, while we
 
 .51 
 
 consider -first, those NATURAL INEQUALITIES, bodily and 
 mental, which permanently divide the human family into 
 classes. The infant, the constitutionally weak, the sick, the 
 aged, the unskilful, the incautious, the inexperienced, are, in 
 every community, by the appointment of nature, the de- 
 pendents and clients of the adult, the robust, the wise, the 
 well-skilled, and the experienced ; and they must always be 
 liable to become the victims of the selfish, the cruel, the 
 crafty, and the rapacious. 
 
 Find a world in which each individual enters upon his 
 course in the condition of ripe manhood, as strong as the 
 strongest, and as wise as the wisest ; and to such a world, we 
 may remit the consideration of the project to do away with 
 the doctrine of responsibility. Or find a country under 
 whose azure skies men are never afflicted with loathsome 
 maladies ; or where, if afflicted, they do not become so 
 peevish as to make an attendance upon them altogether irk- 
 some. Find a land in which none are credulous or foolishly 
 sanguine, none infirm of purpose ; and under such a sky, 
 and in such a land, we will consider whether the doctrine 
 of responsibility may not be dispensed with, and whether 
 men may not shake off their fears of a future tribunal. 
 
 Who can seriously think of such a proposal that has ever 
 listened to the cries of a new-born infant? you allege the 
 maternal instinct, and say it is nature's provision for the 
 welfare of the offspring: ' the mother's milk for its nutri- 
 ment, and her animal fondness for its defence and comfort.' 
 But you are plainly wrong in thinking this instinct sufficient ; 
 nor can those believe it to be so who are conversant with 
 infancy. The maternal instinct, strong as it generally is, is 
 of variable intensity ; and instances might be mentioned in 
 which it has seemed to be almost entirely wanting, even in 
 those eminent for the higher qualities of the heart. The 
 maternal instinct fades or expires too soon ; that is to say, 
 before the time when parental care has done all it ma}' do, 
 D 2
 
 52 
 
 for the welfare of a child. And more than this, the parental 
 instincts are every hour suggesting a course of conduct de- 
 trimental to the ultimate welfare of the child, and which 
 suggestions can be controlled by nothing but a sense of 
 responsibility. Who does not know that the business of 
 early training is a sort of perpetual warfare, carried on 
 between a sense of duty, and the fond, blind, parental 
 instincts. 
 
 Why has nature done so much less for the young of man, 
 than for the young of the brute orders, but because she has 
 given to the human mother a sense of responsibility, equal 
 to the difficult occasions which the long continued helpless- 
 ness of the human infant presents. 
 
 And how feeble and how variable are those instincts upon 
 which any reliance might be placed for the due care of the 
 maimed, the blind, the sick, the aged ; of those affected with 
 loathsome and contagious diseases, as well as the dull in 
 intellect, and the wayward ! How shall we get these un- 
 fortunates duly cared for? shall we give high wages to 
 whoever will undertake such labours ? Alas for those who, 
 in sickness, are left to the tender mercies of the hireling ! 
 compare the soeurs de la charite, who have been so often 
 named, with the hospital nurse ! What the weak and the 
 suffering want, in those who attend them, is not so much an 
 instinctive compassion, as a firm, invariable, and deeply- 
 based sense of duty. 
 
 The good Samaritan, might, or might not be by nature, 
 more compassionate than the priest and the Levite ; yet the 
 result would have been the same, if we only suppose him to 
 have been habitually governed by a homely sense of his 
 duty to his fellows. The priest could perhaps have boasted 
 his fine sensibilities ; but withal he has a nervous horror at 
 the sight of ghastly wounds : and the Levite was a philan- 
 thropist, only that a severe delicacy in regard to the sanc- 
 tities of his person forbade his approaching a perhaps dying
 
 53 
 
 man ; and why cross the road to examine a case of suffering 
 to which, probably, he could not, ' in conscience,' have 
 allowed himself to administer any aid ? meantime the ' good 
 Samaritan,' less nice in taste, and poorer in scruples, alights 
 from his beast; and we may suppose him to have taken as 
 his rule of conduct, the Mosaic precept * Thou shalt in no 
 wise shut up thy bowels of compassion against thy brother.' 
 This precept he considers, not merely as abstractedly rea- 
 sonable ; but as the expressed will of the Almighty ; and he 
 acts on the strength of it. 
 
 It is a fact that has often been noticed, that, in a long 
 continued course of benevolent labour, the instinct of com- 
 passion, which was the philanthropist's prime mover, becomes 
 fainter and fainter every year ; or at least recedes, if it does 
 not wear itself out ; while a steady sense of duty, to which, 
 at the first, he had recurred only on signal occasions, or 
 when called upon to make costly sacrifices, or to encounter 
 dangers, gradually spreads itself out in his view, becoming 
 to him a second nature, and at length constitutes almost the 
 only motive to which he refers. 
 
 What did the instinct of compassion do for the wretched, 
 the sick, the oppressed, in the brightest times of ancient 
 civilization ? Look into the amphitheatre of the Augustan 
 age ; listen to the yells of innocent captives, thrown to the 
 lions, for the amusement of philosophers : or, making your 
 escape from the amphitheatre, walk among the marbled 
 palaces, and look on the right hand, and on the left, among 
 schools, halls, temples, for HOSPITALS ! 
 
 Christianity did not confer upon men any new instinct; 
 nor did it altogether teach them a new doctrine ; but it 
 brought them to feel that they were responsible, and wherever 
 the gospel has had influence, and even when loaded with 
 corruptions, the miserable, and they that were ' ready to 
 perish,' have blessed it as their angel of mercy. 
 
 If you point to the masses of wretchedness, yet in the
 
 54 
 
 world, and even near us, we can read these facts in no other 
 sense, than as furnishing an imperative motive for urging 
 upon all men anew, the religious belief of responsibility 
 toward their brethren. And especially these melancholy 
 facts animate our zeal in opposing a doctrine which would 
 administer a mortal opiate to the sense of duty. 
 
 Many, even among its foes, have acknowledged that the 
 gospel of Christ has ever been the friend of the poor : but 
 all do not notice that peculiarity which attaches to the chris- 
 tian principle of benevolence. The Sovereign Judge the 
 patron of the wretched, in making a demand on their behalf, 
 from the rich, advances it, not in their name, but his own. 
 He will have himself considered, not so much their 
 advocate, as their actual representative, and, condescending 
 to a gracious fiction in the terms, he says to the selfish, ' / 
 was hungry, and sick, and in prison, and ye ministered not 
 unto me.' In other words, the great principle of respon- 
 sibility toward the RIGHTEOUS JUDGE, is put forward, as 
 the only sufficient motive of a beneficent life. The selfish 
 are not arraigned as having wanted compassion, but as 
 having disregarded duty. 
 
 We say then, that the natural inequalities always sub- 
 sisting within the human family, render indispensable the 
 doctrine of responsibility that impels men to perform 
 offices which no instincts would lead them to undertake. 
 Not less is this same principle demanded by circumstances 
 springing from the natural EQUALITY of all men, in regard 
 to their rights, and personal liberty. No human being has 
 a natural right to deprive another of life, liberty, or goods. 
 To prevent any such invasions, civil society is instituted, 
 and a force is somewhere accumulated, which shall always 
 be greater than the force of individuals. 
 
 Need it be proved that no such protective force can ever 
 be wielded by the many? it must be confided to a few. 
 NEVER has the civil guardianship of the weak, been really
 
 55 
 
 exercised by more than a few. We may think one, too 
 few ; or three, or thirty, or five hundred ; yet it must be a 
 few. And therefore we can do nothing but throw ourselves 
 upon the principle of responsibility. Devise what restraints 
 you will, bind the hands of your public trustee as you can ; 
 yet trust him you must. Call him to account every year, 
 every month, every week, every day, every hour ; yet, trust 
 Mm you must. Let him know, when he is appointed, that 
 he is to be discharged on the least suspicion of misconduct ; 
 yet, trust him you must. This very reckoning with him, 
 from day to day, is but the correlative of his responsibility, 
 and means nothing, unless he be considered as accountable. 
 You cannot then lay the first stones of a polity, such as 
 shall be efficient to any good purpose, if you discard the 
 principle of individual responsibility. 
 
 Yet this is saying little. The perfectibility of a political 
 structure, whatever may be its model, is directly, as the doc- 
 trine of responsibility which it works upon. Let all func- 
 tionaries, from the king to the constable, be fully alive to 
 the sense of their individual responsibility not to their 
 fellows merely, but to the Supreme, and then a half of the 
 expensive, and ineffectual mechanism of our political institu- 
 tions, is superseded. 
 
 Give us only, in its fullest force, the principle of religious 
 responsibility, and then the simplest, and most efficient of all 
 forms of government, as well as the least expensive, namely 
 absolute monarchy, becomes practicable ; and away with 
 our cumbrous schemes of representative government ! 
 
 Again ; that man is responsible, and must always be so 
 treated, becomes evident when we follow, into any of its 
 details, the principle of the division of labour. We may 
 surely be excused the task of proving this principle to be 
 indispensable to even the rudest forms of civilization : this 
 is assumed. Do away, as some are talking, with the divi- 
 sion of labour! Do away with the professions! Break a
 
 limb dislocate a shoulder find yourself to be afflicted with 
 the stone, and then go for assistance to any of your un- 
 skilled friends, who will be so kind as to help you ? J 
 would go to an able practitioner, who, after having given his 
 youth to the study of anatomy, has already set ten thousand 
 broken limbs, returned hundreds of balls to their sockets, 
 and used the inevitable knife, in scores of instances. 
 
 But this very principle, clearly indispensable as it is to 
 the welfare and comfort of all, and to the progress of the 
 arts of life, is attended with this inseparable consequence 
 That it puts the SKILLED FEW, in a position of control over 
 the welfare, and even the lives of the many. This is un- 
 avoidable. Even the most learned, the most knowing, the 
 most powerful, must consent to be dealt with as mere chil- 
 dren, by each artisan who comes to their aid. There must 
 be a trusting of men, in the line of their profession. Their 
 ultimate interests, as professional men, may often suggest to 
 them a course which conscience would forbid. Unless the 
 proficients in any science or art be governed by a sense of 
 duty, call it professional honour, or religious principle, the 
 mass of men are left fearfully at the mercy of the few. To 
 make trial of a new drug, may seem likely to promote the 
 professional success of a practitioner far more certainly than 
 the saving the life of a single obscure patient. But con- 
 science, if he have a conscience, will make him shudder at 
 the thought of playing with the life of one who is wholly in 
 his power. 
 
 We have become used, of late, to repeat the glorious 
 axiom, ' KNOWLEDGE is POWER.' But do we remember 
 the obvious inference, that, as knowledge must ever be 
 possessed by mankind in very unequal degrees, the few will 
 command an advantage, which nothing but conscience can 
 effectually prevent their abusing. Knowledge is power : 
 yes, it is the power of the knowing over the ignorant. 
 
 We will imagine now that, in all lands on the northern
 
 57 
 
 side of the equator, the doctrine of responsibility, expounded 
 and enforced by religion, pervaded all classes ; while, in all 
 lands south of the line, such notions were exploded, as the 
 fabrications of the priest. Would any one here present, 
 for the sake of enjoying personal immunity from responsi- 
 bility, and that he might breathe a freer air, migrate, with 
 his family, and property, from the north to the south ? 
 
 Let the alternative be stated in any way we please, or let 
 us attribute to a sense of interest all the force that can be 
 rationally assigned to it ; we can never, as the members of a 
 social system, wish any thing else than that all with whom 
 we have to do, and upon whose agency nature makes us 
 dependent, should think themselves responsible. Nay, we 
 must always, and in each particular instance, wish to see the 
 notions of others, on this point, enhanced, expanded, and 
 refined to the utmost. You yourselves are better taught 
 than to be the slaves of popular superstitions ; but you hide 
 your liberty in your sleeves. You listen in scorn to the 
 ministers of religion, when they declaim about a judgment 
 to come ! But now, in all candour plainly tell us, are you used 
 to whisper the doctrine of irresponsibility to your wife, to 
 your daughter, to your son, to your servant, to your broker, 
 to your collector of rents, to your bailiff, your steward, 
 your banker, or to your lawyer ; or have you subjoined it as 
 a codicil to your last will and testament? or, having done so, 
 do you mean, by and by, to call your physician to your bed- 
 side, and mustering your strength, assure him, that you 
 hold him exempt from all responsibility, as to the life of his 
 patients ? You mean to speak to him as thus ' Doctor ! 
 for aught I know, the present product of external circum- 
 stances, combining with your actual dispositions, which have 
 been made for you, not by you, may now impel you to do 
 an office highly acceptable to my hungry heir at law. Be 
 it so ! I exonerate you from all blame ; well knowing that, 
 even in such a case, you could not possibly act otherwise !'
 
 58 
 
 One cannot but feel an impatience in formally stating, or 
 in listening to a statement of facts so obvious. What can 
 be clearer than that man, as compared with the orders 
 around him, is so constituted as to make him, what they can 
 never be responsible for his actions, and for the condition 
 of his mind. And again, the entire structure of society 
 implies this responsibility ; nor could the business of life be 
 carried forward through one day's routine, if this principle 
 were renounced. 
 
 How comes it then that, what all men know, and feel, 
 and act upon, every day, has been brought into question ? 
 How this has happened is plain enough. Promulgate what 
 whims we please, there is little danger that men should be 
 so far beguiled out of their common sense as to cease to 
 think themselves responsible in the ordinary affairs of life ; 
 but yet they may be so far embarrassed in their conceptions 
 concerning the high principles of morality and religion, as 
 to imagine themselves set free from these obligations obli- 
 gations surrounded by a degree of obscurity. This then is 
 the extent to which the doctrine of irresponsibility is to be 
 pushed. ' All we want is to release you from your sense 
 of duty toward God : that effected, and we will leave you 
 alone when we come down to the level of pounds, shillings 
 and pence. Be assured that we ourselves will hold you 
 responsible in such matters.' 
 
 This is the rationale of the new philosophy respecting 
 human responsibility. Sweep the world clean of all notions 
 of religion ; exempt mankind effectively from the terrors 
 of conscience, and then we should hear no more of men's 
 actions being the products of necessity of their dispositions 
 being made for them, or that they have no control over 
 their opinions ! 
 
 I here loudly challenge the candour of any opponent to 
 tell me whether he thinks, if ' creeds' and religious opinions 
 had not been covertly in view, a man of high reputation
 
 would have so stultified himself as to tell men, who in fact are 
 every day rescinding some of their opinions, and amending 
 others, in relation to history, physical science, and politics, 
 that they have ' no more control over their opinions than 
 over the colour of their skins ! ' This doctrine applied to 
 any one department of human inquiry (religion excepted) 
 must be scouted as sheer nonsense. Utter it in the hearing 
 of men of business, who, to-day, on the ground of a certain 
 opinion, embark thousands in a speculation which, on the 
 ground of a better-considered opinion, they will to-morrow 
 endeavour to withdraw thence. Whenever a man feels that 
 his immediate welfare depends upon the correctness of his 
 opinions, he does not go to the sophist to ask whether 
 opinion be as unchangeable as the colour of his skin ; but 
 forthwith runs about, in all directions, to inform himself on 
 the matter. 
 
 The real, though unconfessed motive which has impelled 
 men of intelligence to put forth sophisms so prodigiously 
 absurd, is plain enough ; and it is a delicacy I do not 
 pretend to, which would lead one to affect not to understand 
 what is so simple. Let the promoters of such doctrines 
 have the honesty to tell us that they mean nothing more 
 than to dispel the notion of religious responsibility, and to put 
 contempt upon religious opinions ; and that they are fully 
 resolved to talk like madmen or fools no longer than until 
 the restraints of piety and morality shall have been levelled 
 with the ground ! 
 
 Every one who knows anything of the art of reasoning 
 well knows that the intellectual process by means of which 
 we arrive at truth, in any instance, is not affected, either by 
 the quality of the subject of an argument, or" by .the inci- 
 dental motives which attach to it. There is no pretext- then 
 for alleging a distinction between scientific, mercantile, and 
 religious opinions. Certain questions, touching these 
 matters, may be more difficult than others, or less suscep-
 
 60 
 
 tible of an immediate and final determination : concerning 
 some, a wise man will hold his opinion in suspense ; con- 
 cerning others, fix it unchangeably. But these differences 
 do not logically belong to any one class of opinions, while 
 other classes are exempt ; they belong to all classes ; and 
 therefore, a sweeping doctrine concerning opinion) as a thing 
 for which a man is no more accountable than he is for 
 having a brown or a yellow skin, although, in the mind of 
 the speaker, it may be intended to bear only upon religions 
 opinion, must, if logic be logic, be deemed to hold good of 
 all opinions. For a plain avowal of so clear an inference 
 nothing is wanted but the requisite honesty. 
 
 That man is responsible, in the religious sense of the 
 term, and shall hereafter give account, as well of his actions, 
 as of his dispositions, to Him who is ready to judge the 
 world, we confidently infer, from what we know, or are 
 compelled to believe, concerning the structure of the universe. 
 
 1 The structure of the universe,' exclaims an opponent 
 ' what know you of the structure of the universe ?' More than 
 a little ; not indeed by travelling over it, or by bare inspec- 
 tion of its phenomena, as seen from this planet ; but by the 
 aid of just methods of reasoning, founded on those pheno- 
 mena. Enough is known of the universe to make it certain 
 that it is A UNIVERSE ; one system, the product of One 
 Mind, sustained by One Power, and governed by one law. 
 The incessant miracle of the transmission of light, from 
 innumerable points, unconfused, through spaces not to be 
 conceived of, is evidence irresistible of oneness of design, as 
 well as of unobstructed dominion. The prevalence of one 
 law of gravitation, and motion, seen in the spinning of the 
 schoolboy's top, and in the gyration of stars infinitely 
 remote, assures us that the universe is as much a single
 
 Gl 
 
 mechanism, as this planet, or an animal, or a plant, or a 
 leaf, is one piece of workmanship. Observe binary stars, 
 revolving about their common centre of gravity, not in a 
 perfect circle, but in an ellipse, and you hear a voice coming 
 from that remote region, and bearing a testimony, not merely 
 to the first truth of philosophy, but to the first truth of 
 theology. 
 
 And it is worth observing (while speaking of our know- 
 ledge of the universe) that we, of this age, know immensely 
 more than our predecessors knew : we know what philoso- 
 phers of old desired to be informed of, but died without 
 ascertaining. We know that which our Bacon, only two 
 hundred years ago, thought questionable, and which our 
 Newton hardly dared to profess. Now the long- continued 
 ignorance of things which, at length, have come to be 
 familiarly understood, affords a corroboration of our faith in 
 great truths, although very partially admitted, and widely 
 rejected, and also of our hope in the ultimate prevalence of 
 such truths. 
 
 Any portions of a regular curve being given, we may find 
 the centres, and complete the periphery. Take the instance 
 of the French astronomers, mapping the path- way of Halley's 
 comet, and predicting the time of its return to our system; 
 and this with no other data than a small, and much per- 
 turbed portion of that orbit, as observed from this planet. 
 In such instances immensely more is proved to be prac- 
 ticable, than the uninformed would easily credit, or can even 
 understand. The reasoning faculty, in man, has, in such 
 instances, made good its pretensions to stretch its inferences 
 far and wide, when governed by a docile and patient love 
 of truth. 
 
 But if the visible world be the product of one power and 
 intelligence, the intellectual universe may safely be assumed 
 to be so, until the contrary is proved pervaded by one law, 
 and tending to one issue. For the purpose of ascertaining
 
 62 
 
 that law, we must do in moral science, what we do in 
 mathematical, take our own system, as the ground of our 
 calculations. What focus then is the moral system, in this 
 world, apparently pointing to ? What interpretation are we 
 warranted in putting upon the consent of mankind, in all 
 ages, regarding invisible power, a future life, and a future 
 retribution ? Or, why should not the workings of a single 
 human mind, soundly constituted, and exhibiting a harmony 
 of the faculties, why should not the workings of such a 
 mind be taken as a true indication of the great system in 
 which that mind is placed ? Now wherever we find suffer- 
 ing virtue, that is a strong, sensitive spirit, calumniated 
 and oppressed, by lawless power, and whenever the out- 
 raged sentiment of right, instead of generating malign 
 motives of revenge, takes a more generous form ; in all such 
 instances, the eye is seen to be directed upward, to the 
 throne of righteous invisible power. Is there then no 
 meaning in this convergence of generous minds, unjustly 
 suffering ? Again, wherever we find guilt aroused from its 
 lethargy, and having an eye to look into the invisible world, 
 it is seen directing its glance along that same radius, toward 
 the awful centre of justice. Or, wherever we find the high 
 abstractive faculty, conjoined with profound and pure 
 emotions, there also, the eye of expectation is seen to be 
 bent toward the centre of the moral world, where sits the 
 Sovereign Goodness, and the Universal Truth. In other 
 words, human minds, not debauched, not sophisticated, 
 under every variety of circumstance, if only the deeper emo- 
 tions are stirred, declare their relationship to a great invisible 
 system, and utter some notes of a harmony, which is indeed 
 the harmony of the spheres. 
 
 But let us take up another position on our little world, 
 that we may thence calculate the orbit of the great world. 
 We have seen, and the fact is obvious enough, that men 
 can never deal one with another otherwise than on the
 
 63 
 
 principle of responsibility, and that without a high ami 
 religious notion of responsibility, the social system can 
 make no advances. But now is it true that men are to 
 be required to work every day on the strength of a doctrine 
 which is a fiction, and which, as they become enlightened, 
 they must know to be such ? This can never be. Sound 
 minds scorn as a subterfuge whatever does not satisfy 
 reason. We must have responsibility ; but it can be of no 
 solid use to us unless felt to be founded in truth. In other 
 words, that very doctrine of responsibility which is needed 
 as the only safe ground of the commonest commercial 
 transactions, can be of no avail, unless men may be ration- 
 ally convinced that it is a principle which connects them, 
 and all creatures, with God, and each other, throughout the 
 universe. This practical doctrine of responsibility, without 
 which the movements of common life come to an end, can 
 rest on no fulcrum short of the centre of the universe the 
 throne of God. Rest it at any intermediate point, and 
 though it may bear some stress, it will not bear every stress ; 
 and it fails where most it will be needed. 
 
 JUSTICE, in its abstract idea, is a universal : its very 
 nature is destroyed by limitation. (Mercy does not dis- 
 place justice, but honours it by a special provision). Partial 
 justice, is injustice: frustrated justice is not justice: tem- 
 porary justice, is not justice : justice taking effect by fits 
 and starts, is not justice. Justice is like a band or tier, 
 passing around the base of a dome, which, unless it meet 
 and be clenched, grasping all things, has no binding force 
 in any of its parts. 
 
 On the severest principles of reasoning, as I think, it 
 may be affirmed, that, if our having come to think and speak 
 of right and wrong, and retribution, be not an ineffable 
 solecism, it is a conclusive proof that the great principles of 
 retribution are the laws, universal, of the moral world. 
 They are real in any world, only because they are neces-
 
 64 
 
 sarily real in all worlds. They can be valid any moment, 
 only because they are binding eternally. 
 
 Let us here guard against a frequent misapprehension. 
 Men quarrel with the notion of a future judgment, because, 
 in the place of retribution, they put something very different, 
 and then declare they can never admit it to enter into the 
 administration of a righteous being. Such illusions might 
 be dispelled, simply by saying, that the word retribution 
 means RETRIBUTION the rendering to every one his 
 due ; and when applied to a future judgment it must be 
 held to stand as the symbol of an unknown quantity, con- 
 cerning which we may safely reason, although it be un- 
 known. To say, in any case, that retribution is inequitable, 
 or undue, or severe, is merely to contradict the meaning of 
 the word. What is severe, and unjust, comes under another 
 category, and is to be dealt with on other ground : to affirm 
 that a future retribution is unjust, is to profess that two and 
 three are equal to more than five. 
 
 Most manifest is it that, before we can be qualified to 
 enter at all upon the question of the lenity or severity of a 
 future judgment, we must be informed on two points 
 namely the actual culpability of the parties, so dealt with ; 
 and the amount of the penalty imposed upon them. 
 
 We are often tempted, under the influence of the same 
 misapprehension, to inquire what shall be the retributive lot 
 of the uninstructed and degenerate millions of mankind. A 
 far more pertinent theme of meditation surely would be 
 the probable retribution of those who, having enjoyed every 
 moral advantage, by culture of the faculties, and by contact 
 with truth, have yet abused all ! 
 
 We should not fail here to notice one circumstance, 
 attaching to the present system of things, which seems to 
 be full of meaning, as indicative of the principles of universal 
 government. It has been often adverted to by moralists, 
 and is this, that the direct consequences of a fault, are
 
 65 
 
 frequently such as seem out of proportion to the actual blame- 
 worthiness, in the particular instance : thus a mere impru- 
 dence of early life is sometimes followed by irremediable 
 sufferings ; while the worst crimes are as often perpetrated 
 with impunity. A system of natural retribution is evidently 
 established, and yet is broken in upon by frequent anomalies. 
 
 Such facts are interpretable in several senses. They may 
 mean, that the demands of absolute justice are such, that a 
 comparatively venial offence is never over punished, by any 
 course of suffering to which, in the present life, we are 
 liable. So understood, the impunity of atrocious offenders 
 speaks aloud of a judgment to come. Or again ; such facts 
 may be thought to present themselves as a kindly-intended 
 warning, or as if it were whispered to us ' Learn the 
 danger of sin ; and see what may be the consequence of 
 faults you deem trivial.' Or they may be intended to 
 arouse the feeling which leads us to desire an equalization 
 of all inflictions. Or perhaps, we may the most safely con- 
 sider them as attesting the serious truth, that man, in being 
 made liable to the operation of general laws, beneficial when 
 respected, is left to sustain the entire ill consequence, be it 
 what it may, which attaches to a disregard of them. 
 
 Now in fact this is the very inference, alarming as it may 
 be in its application to the present and future condition of 
 the human family, which presents itself on all sides, whether 
 we look to the material, or to the moral world. General 
 laws are every where taking their course, let the conse- 
 quence be never so disastrous to individuals, or to millions 
 of individuals. An inundation rushes with as wild a rage 
 over a populous province, as over a desert; the volcano 
 buries in fire, either a capital and its thousands, or a 
 forest. Nay, the crust of the earth itself may one day 
 break up, and let forth the central heat, from as simple 
 a cause as that which produces the bursting of a chestnut 
 before the fire. Every day the fair prosperity of families is
 
 GG 
 
 blighted by the operation of some general law of the human 
 system ; a law good and necessary in its tendency, but 
 destructive in this or that instance. All we assume then is, 
 that there is one inflexible rule of RIGHT, taking effect in all 
 worlds; happily for those who are in harmony with it; 
 destructively for any who stand opposed to it. What is 
 ordinarily called future retribution, might, on this supposi- 
 tion, be designated as the natural issue of the one law of the 
 universe, in respect of those who are at variance with it. 
 
 I will now for a moment go over to the position of an 
 opponent, and state his argument for him : he says, Look 
 to the actual condition of the human family, at this moment. 
 Is it possible to bring a religious notion of responsibility to 
 bear upon that moral condition in which \ve find the vast 
 majority of mankind ? Put out of view the exceptive cases 
 of nations, or individuals, who, by culture, have come into 
 a state to which such a doctrine might possibly seem con- 
 gruous. These cases overlooked, the mass of men are seen 
 to have entered upon their course and to have run to the 
 end of it, under circumstances which ought to be held to 
 have necessitated their evil dispositions and bad conduct. 
 Can we then believe man to be responsible, when we find 
 him in a condition which candour compels us to call irre- 
 sponsible, involuntary, hopeless?' 
 
 So speaks my opponent ; and not without an appear- 
 ance of reason ; but the real difficulty is not encountered 
 in his view of the case ; for a fact not less manifest than that 
 of the inert, irresponsible condition of the mass of mankind, 
 is the one already more than once adverted to, that, when- 
 ever human nature is developed, and its germs quickened, 
 the principles of a moral system are recognised, as indispen- 
 sable in practice, and as abstractedly true. Nor have even 
 the most degraded families of mankind altogether lost their 
 hold of these same principles. Superstitions, sanguinary 
 rites, and horrid retaliations, have proved that what was
 
 67 
 
 wanting was not the rudiment of the moral life, but the 
 culture of it. 
 
 The degraded condition therefore of the million, is not 
 our datum, looked at apart from the condition of the few. 
 In considering both classes of facts, we must assume, either 
 that the few have snatched an excellence not intended for 
 them by nature ; or that the many have fallen from their 
 original place. Which is the easier supposition ? Shall 
 we say that savage man, sensual, fierce, and irresponsible, is 
 nature's legitimate son ; while civilized man, controlling his 
 inferior instincts, and adhering to truth and virtue, is her 
 spurious offspring ? We must either believe this, or assent 
 to what is here assumed to be the real fact, melancholy 
 as it is, that, whereas human nature includes every element 
 of the moral life (if it did not, they could never have 
 appeared at all) yet that some dire and ancient calamity has 
 brought all into a position which is actually ruinous to most. 
 
 We suppose then that this world of ours, one among 
 millions of worlds, was not subjected, as some have strangely 
 seemed to think, to the perilous conditions of a moral economy 
 arbitrarily, or as if an experiment were to be tried in an 
 obscure corner of the universe, and on a small scale. No ; 
 but man was made responsible (come what might) and 
 was constituted a religious being, simply because there is 
 
 NO OTHER LAW OF RATIONAL EXISTENCE, ACTUAL, OR 
 
 POSSIBLE, in all the fields of creation ! Responsibility, with 
 its risks, is man's lot, because there is no other lot for 
 thinking orders. The moral system, with its portentous 
 issues, is, we assume, as old as the heavens, and will out- 
 last them : it is as wide as the skies, as high as the throne 
 of God, and as deep as hell. 
 
 There is one law, as we see, for the material world : 
 gravitation, which rules the harmony of the planetary systems, 
 has probably thrown some planets on a tempest of fire, in 
 the bosom of their central suns ; and the projectile force
 
 68 
 
 may have sent other planets on an endless journey, through 
 the voids of space. Suppose that, from whatever unusual 
 perturbation, or collision, a planet, in full career, has slipped 
 its centripetal tie : off it flies, and who shall stay it ? away 
 it speeds parts company from its neighbours traverses 
 unmeasured spaces shoots right through the starry fields 
 takes its last look at the regions of light and life, and goes 
 on journeying, an exile, never to reach a home ! 
 
 The counterpart of such a supposition is easily supplied : 
 the human family, subjected, like all other families, to the 
 law and issues of responsibility, has, from whatever cause, 
 loosened its firm hold of that law : it has gone off, and is 
 in peril of, we know not what final catastrophe. What 
 has happened, is just what must have happened, on our 
 supposition, unless omnipotence should interpose. The 
 course of things in this world is no mystery as to the 
 process, for we see it exemplified every day on a small 
 scale. An insulated family, trained to virtue, and living 
 somewhile in purity and peace, at length declines from that 
 happy condition : forgetting their hereditary faith, the mem- 
 bers of it cease to think themselves bound by motives of 
 virtue ; they learn to consult only selfish and animal 
 instincts, and a little time suffices for so far debauching them 
 as that, to the eye of a spectator, they should appear really to 
 have laid down their moral nature, and to act under a 
 terrible necessity of doing evil. And if the original mem- 
 bers of this family might sink so low, what would be the 
 condition of their children, of the third, and fourth genera- 
 tion ? Born in the blindness of fierce and sensual propen- 
 sities, they would be, what the untaught millions of man- 
 kind actually are* 
 
 But such a state of things, how melancholy soever, affects 
 not at all our notion of human nature, as still belonging to a 
 universal moral economy. Even if there were no truth in 
 the world, our inference would be valid, although less satis-
 
 69 
 
 factory. But there is truth in the world elevated notions 
 of virtue are extant, and are acted upon ; and this truth com- 
 prising the great principles of religion, wherever it is wisely 
 and assiduously brought to bear, takes effect, and repeats 
 itself. At this very moment, when the civilized races are 
 every where invading the wastes of barbarism, long lost 
 truth is also being carried out, and under promise to regain 
 its ancient territory. That the recovery of even the most 
 degraded races to a sense of religion, is possible, has been 
 demonstrated, again and again, in our times, and under 
 every variety of circumstance. Nothing then forbids the 
 hope that savage, and semi-savage man, may at length 
 be led home to God. Conscience, and the highest moral 
 sentiments, have already been wakened in the bosom of the 
 Negro, the Hottentot, the South Sea islander, the Hindoo ; 
 these have learned that they are responsible : they have 
 acquired the fear and hope of futurity. The problem then 
 is solved ; the redemption which has actually been effected in 
 thousands of instances, may be effected in millions. Entire 
 communities of lately savage men have been reclaimed ; and, 
 if we speak of virtuous sentiment, and purity of conduct, 
 these converts take a position on a level with the best 
 ordered societies of the civilized world. 
 
 Let but this process go on, and the long dismembered 
 human family, not more various in temperament, colour,, 
 and speech, than in belief, will become a family indeed, 
 worshipping at one altar, and restored to the great system 
 of which, even now, it declares itself to be a member by its 
 ominous anticipations, and its contrarieties. We appeal to 
 undisputed facts in saying That, if the elements of the 
 moral economy, as expounded and sanctioned by the reli- 
 gion of Christ, have but free course, the time will come 
 when the philanthropist must cease to be ashamed in calling 
 the black, the tawny, and the copper coloured races, his 
 brethren.
 
 70 
 
 But an anxiety of a very different sort attaches, at this mo- 
 ment, to the condition, and probable destiny of the untaught 
 millions who crowd the homes of civilization. Dense masses 
 of what is little better than savage life, marked by its charac- 
 teristic wretchedness, improvidence, ignorance, sensuality, 
 and ferocity, are stowed, to suffocation, within all the great 
 cities of Europe and especially the commercial and manu- 
 facturing towns of Great Britain. 
 
 Civilization has several times been overthrown by a hurri- 
 cane of barbarism, coming down upon it from a distance ; but 
 it is now everywhere put in peril by the same rude elements, 
 bursting up from caverns under our feet. Heretofore savage 
 life has come in upon civilized life, armed only with brute 
 strength ; but if now it commands less hardihood and nerve, 
 the deficiency is more than made up by the frenzy of false 
 doctrine. The domestic millions who, at this time, menace 
 liberty, property, life, together with the arts, commerce, 
 philosophy, religion, and who must plunge themselves into 
 deeper misery in effecting the desolation of society these, 
 barely hearing the voice of truth, or only catching it as a 
 remote and confused sound of many discordant tongues, 
 are giving the ear, in gloomy thoughtfulness, to the wildest 
 absurdities absurdities so gross as to be almost secure 
 from refutation by setting common sense at defiance. 
 
 Meantime, inasmuch as it is an hour of infatuation an 
 hour of want of counsel want of union want of principle, 
 those who should see the peculiar peril of the moment, and 
 know how to meet it, are allowing it to be inferred, by the 
 mass of the people, that, in theory they themselves are one 
 with them. Some, cutting the roots of all serious regard to 
 truth, as what every man is bound to look to, by declaring 
 that belief, religious belief, is a matter of chance or destiny, 
 an accident of the mind, as colour is of the body. Others 
 (alas that newspapers are listened to by millions, sermons 
 only by hundreds) others, high in station, are professing
 
 71 
 
 before the world that they have themselves no fixed notions 
 of responsibilitymetaphysical enigma as it is ! Not under- 
 stand responsibility ? not know so plain a thing as this, that 
 if a man receives the cloak of another in charge, he may 
 reasonably be required to restore it ? not understand that, 
 if a man accept the hospitalities of a friend, it is a detestable 
 baseness to abuse his confidence, and desolate his home ? 
 not understand that, if a man be intrusted with the welfare 
 of an empire, he may look to a time when he shall be called 
 to give an account of his stewardship ? not understand Re- 
 sponsibility ? not know that God will hereafter judge men 
 in righteousness, rendering to all according to their works ? 
 
 Grant it, there are mysteries in religion ; but, at least, 
 these things are no mysteries. Grant it, there are depths 
 in abstract philosophy ; but these things come not within the 
 province of abstract philosophy. If indeed these things be 
 obscure, reason totters, and we must no longer trust either 
 its plainest deductions, or the evidence of the senses. 
 
 Thus it happened fifty years ago, when the social body was 
 about to break up, and its elements to putrefy, in France. 
 Philosophers had made themselves the apostles, and states- 
 men the smiling patrons, of the doctrine which, at length, 
 spoke its meaning in the guillotine. Truth had been 
 mocked at as a phantom ; all obligations had been scouted ; 
 the moral system had been proclaimed null, and men were 
 told that they were the creatures of ' physical necessity,' and 
 that responsibility is a fable ; or at best an unsearchable 
 mystery a something which ' cannot be understood ;' these 
 things having first been said by men of high culture half 
 in jest, were caught at by ferocious seducers, and repeated 
 and expounded, with grim explicitness, in the lanes and 
 alleys of every town : and then the work was ready : the 
 clusters of the earth were fully ripe, and the wine-press was 
 trodden until there flowed from it a broad river of human 
 blood.
 
 These things are yet fresh in our recollection : they were 
 not witnessed by our fathers, but by ourselves ; yet we 
 seem to have forgotten so soon. the lesson they teach. The 
 miasma that is rising in visible fumes from the unwhole- 
 some levels around us, has crept into palace windows, and 
 works as a stupor upon men's minds, so that the most pal- 
 pable dangers are idly gazed at, or are even jested with. 
 
 The invention of gunpowder, it has been said, effectually 
 secures the civilized world against any second overthrow by 
 barbaric horJes : vain confidence ! vain at least, if the time 
 should come when the barbaric host shall start up, in a 
 day, knife in hand, from our domestic soil. Goths, and 
 Huns, and Vandals, if they were terrible by their supersti- 
 tions, were also held in check by them : the moral element 
 was some way conserved in their bosoms : and they soon 
 yielded themselves, conquered by the milder creed of their 
 victims. 
 
 But more terrible evils are to be looked for when, the 
 conscience having been cut clean out of the bosom by the 
 traitorous hand of the sophist, millions, maddened by cruel 
 privations, are told, even by their superiors, that force is the 
 only reason. Brutalized, even more in creed than in habits, 
 they will not be found to have lost any of those terrible 
 energies which belong to man, as a moral agent ; and, if 
 lost to virtue, they are not lost to the powers which virtue 
 should have commanded : if severed from the restraints of 
 religion, it is only that they may surrender themselves the 
 more fully to the frenzy of fanaticism ; and if the fanaticism 
 of religion have devastated kingdoms, the fanaticism of irre- 
 ligion will pass as a deluge of blood over the field of the 
 civilized world : which may God in his mercy avert ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HIM,, LONDON.
 
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