esson as we may, it is cowardice which refuses to
hear it.

The popular belief is, that right and wrong lies before
every man, and that he is free to choose between them,
and the responsibility of choice rests with himself. The
fatalist's belief is that every man's actions are
determined by causes external and internal over which he
has no power, leaving no room for any moral choice
whatever. The first is contradicted by plain facts; the
second by the instinct of conscience. Even Spinoza allows
that for practical purposes we are obliged to regard the
future as contingent, and ourselves as able to influence
it; and it is incredible that both our inward convictions
and our outward conduct should be built together upon
a falsehood. But if, as Butler says, whatever be the
speculative account of the matter, we are practically
forced to regard ourselves as free, this is but half the
truth, for it may be equally said that practically we are
forced to regard each other as not free; and to make
allowance, every moment, for influences for which we
cannot hold each other personally responsible. If not,
--if every person of sound mind (in the common
acceptation of the term) be equally able at all times to
act right if only he will,--why all the care which we
take of children? why the pains to keep them from
bad society? why do we so anxiously watch their
disposition, to determine the education which will best
answer to it? Why in cases of guilt do we vary our
moral censure according to the opportunities of the
offender? Why do we find excuses for youth, for
inexperience, for violent natural passion, for bad
education, bad example? Except that we feel that all these
things do affect the culpability of the guilty person, and
that it is folly and inhumanity to disregard them. But
what we act upon in private life we cannot acknowledge
in our general ethical theories, and while our conduct in
detail is human and just, we have been contented to
gather our speculative philosophy out of the broad and
coarse generalisations of political necessity. In the swift
haste of social life we must indeed treat men as we find
them. We have no time to make allowances; and
the graduation of punishment by the scale of guilt is a
mere impossibility. A thief is a thief in the law's eye
though he has been trained from his cradle in the
kennels of St. Giles's; and definite penalties must be
attached to definite acts, the conditions of political lif