CHAPTER IX.

THE WILL THE SEAT OF RESPONSIBILITY.

By this I mean that man is responsible for his voluntary and for his voluntary acts exclusively. For instance, there is nothing either virtuous or vicious in the exercise of mere intelligence. I speak of mere intelligence, for, as we have seen, the voluntary power may associate itself with any one exercise of the intellectual powers for which, in that case, we are responsible. But speaking of understanding not exercised with will, but following the constitutional laws which God has planted in the mind, I cannot see that it is either virtuous or vicious. There is nothing morally commendable or the opposite in the operation of perception, of memory, or imagination, or the faculties which perceive resemblances, observe causes or other relations. That I see the trees bare in winter and covered with leaves in summer; that I remember to-day what I saw yesterday; that when I see a house burning I infer it must have been kindled, in all this there is, there can be, nothing either of virtue or vice. This will, I think, be acknowledged by all. But I am inclined to go a step farther, and to hold that moral good and evil do not lie, at least directly and immediately, in the possession or operation of conscience or the flow of instinctive feeling. I observed, when treating of the conscience, that it is upon voluntary acts that it pronounces its judgments, declaring that they are good or that they are evil. Virtue and vice do not consist in the possession of a

conscience, but in that at which the conscience looks, and of which it approves or disapproves, in a holy or unholy will. It may be doubted whether a person possessed of mere emotion could, in any circumstances, be regarded as responsible. It is when the element of will, the optative, the freedom of choice, is working, that we declare man to be a responsible agent.

But in making will the seat of responsibility I give it a larger place than most philosophic and ethical writers do; I make its essence to be choice or the opposite of choice, rejection; and I believe that there is this element not merely in volition or the final determination to act, but in other steps which may never reach the length of outward acts. Under will I include not merely the volition or determination, but wishes, desires, and the opposite, voluntary aversions and antipathies. This gives the will a wide range, but not wider, I believe, than the place and consequent power which it has in the human constitution. Accountability is as wide as the will, and embraces all tendencies to good or evil created by voluntary acts on our part. The drunkard is responsible not only for his individual acts of drinking, but for the habit which he has formed, and for all the iniquities of profanity, quarreling, or licentiousness which he may commit in the state of intoxication. The prejudiced skeptic will have to render an account not only of his rejection of evidence, but that hardness and obstinacy which have been gendered, and which render him incapable of listening to truth with candor. In this way responsibility, though applicable primarily to acts of will, may through them reach every part of man's nature and conduct.

While wish and volition are both acts of will, they differ in their influence. Wish may reach over ourselves

only, but volition may have an effect on many others, directly or indirectly, at this present time and forward into a prolonged future. It is said that in moving his finger a man starts a force which may take the round of the universe; it is certain that, in performing a particular act or in uttering a word, good or bad, he may put in motion a moral potency which may reach over widely scattered nations, and go down through many generations. Who can estimate the influence exercised over thought and character by the words uttered by such as Socrates or by the greater than Socrates? Deeds have produced yet greater effects, such as the battles of patriots, the sufferings of martyrs, and above all the death which has been the life to so many.

CHAPTER X.

IDEAS GIVEN BY THE MOTIVE POWERS.

IN Volume First it has been shown how the different Cognitive Powers give us each a new idea. The senses give us Extended Space and Resisting Energy. Selfconsciousness reveals Self and Personality. The two, the outer and inner, senses make known Substance. The Memory furnishes the Idea of Time. The Imagination in its widening power genders such an idea of the Infinite as the mind of man can hold. The comparative powers show us various Relations, such as that of Personal Identity, of Composition, of Classes, of Space and Time, of Proportion, Activity, and Causation.

The Motive Powers also furnish us each with an idea. The Conscience shows us Moral Good and Evil, with their annexes Merit and Demerit, Sin, Desert, Reward, and Penalties. The Emotions disclose to us the Lovely and the Unlovely, with their colors, shades, hues, and tints, attractive and repulsive, specially the Beautiful, the Picturesque, the Ludicrous, the Sublime. The Will, as it has freedom, so it imparts the idea of Freedom in its various forms of Wish, Attention, Rejection, Preference, Resolution, Volition.

The capacity to form such lofty ideas distinguishes mind from matter, man from the brute, and shows that man is fashioned after the likeness of God. All the rays of light shining on earth proceed from the Fountain of Lights in the heavens.

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CHAPTER XI.

CONCLUSION.-MAN'S RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES.

MAN is commonly represented as a religious animal. Certainly he has some sort of religious instincts or inclinations. If this be so, and he exhibits them so universally, it is the business of psychology to expose them to the view and unfold their elements.

It is clear to me that this characteristic of man is not a simple faculty, like the memory or the conscience. It is complexity with various composites, and varying with the elements involved. There are motives, there are capacities which prompt to religious ideas and feelings, often very crude, in all men.

All the stronger capacities and cravings of our nature, in seeking a foundation, go down deeper than the crust of our earth. All the higher mount into a sphere above our earth and atmosphere. All the streams which we see flowing on are believed to rise in a fountain and go on to an ocean. We may have very obscure ideas as to where the fountain and what the ocean is.

Causation about the deepest intellectual principle in our nature, and acting without cessation, goes out beyond the tangible and visible. The manifest effects, that is new things or changes in old things, lead the mind to a cause which is seen itself to be an effect leading on to a higher cause till we reach the Uncaused. The law of cause and effect is not satisfied till it comes to this independent substance and calls in a god.