en seen to be imposed by the conditions of its
executive capacity, and this restraint it is that constitutes man a
rational agent. On the other hand, the structure of conscience--however
we may suppose this to have been formed--imposes that further and inward
restraint upon his Will, which constitutes man a moral agent. But
neither of these restraints can properly be said to constitute bondage
in the sense required by Necessitarianism, because neither of them
requires that the man's Will must will as it does will; they require
merely that his Will should act in certain ways if it is to accomplish
certain results; and to this extent only is it subject to law, or to the
incidence of those external influences which help to shape our motives.

But if this is so, is it not obvious that the sense of moral
responsibility is rationally justified? This sense goes upon the
supposition that a man's conduct in the past might have been different
from what it was. Clearly, therefore, no question of moral
responsibility can ever obtain in cases where the general system of
external causation, or natural law, rendered an alternative line of
action physically impossible. _The question of moral responsibility can
only obtain in cases where two or more lines of conduct were alike
possible, so far as the external system of causation is concerned--or
where the Will was equally free to choose between two or more courses of
bodily action._ In other words, the question of moral responsibility has
nothing to do with the only kind of bondage to which, according to our
present point of view, the Will is subject--namely the bondage of being
rationally obliged to will only what is capable of performance. The
question of moral responsibility has only to do with the system of
causation which is inherent in the mind itself; not with the system that
is external to the mind. And as the theory of Monism identifies the mind
with this its own inherent system of causation--or regards a man's Will
as the originator of a particular portion of general causality--it
follows from the theory that a man is justly liable to moral praise or
blame as the case may be: the moral sense no longer appears as a
gigantic illusion: conscience is justified at the bar of reason.

It appears to me impossible that any valid exception can be taken to the
above reasoning, if once the premiss is granted--namely, that the
principle of Causality admits of being regarded as identical w