he pangs of conscience, so much
vaunted by some, do most certainly drive ten deeper into sin where they
bring one back to virtue."

"But," remarked Henry, "suppose there were no memory, and men did forget
their acts, they would remain just as responsible for them as now."

"Precisely; that is, not at all," replied the doctor.

"You don't mean to say there is no such thing as responsibility, no such
thing as justice. Oh, I see, you deny free will. You are a
necessitarian."

The doctor waved his hand rather contemptuously.

"I know nothing about your theological distinctions; I am a doctor. I say
that there is no such thing as moral responsibility for past acts, no
such thing as real justice in punishing them, for the reason that human
beings are not stationary existences, but changing, growing, incessantly
progressive organisms, which in no two moments are the same. Therefore
justice, whose only possible mode of proceeding is to punish in present
time for what is done in past time, must always punish a person more or
less similar to, but never identical with, the one who committed the
offence, and therein must be no justice.

"Why, sir, it is no theory of mine, but the testimony of universal
consciousness, if you interrogate it aright, that the difference between
the past and present selves of the same individual is so great as to make
them different persons for all moral purposes. That single fact we were
just speaking of--the fact that no man would care for vengeance on one
who had injured him, provided he knew that all memory of the offence had
been blotted utterly from his enemy's mind--proves the entire
proposition. It shows that it is not the present self of his enemy that
the avenger is angry with at all, but the past self. Even in the
blindness of his wrath he intuitively recognizes the distinction between
the two. He only hates the present man, and seeks vengeance on him in so
far as he thinks that he exults in remembering the injury his past self
did, or, if he does not exult, that he insults and humiliates him by the
bare fact of remembering it. That is the continuing offence which alone
keeps alive the avenger's wrath against him. His fault is not that he did
the injury, for _he_ did not do it, but that he remembers it.

"It is the first principle of justice, isn't it, that nobody ought to be
punished for what he can't help? Can the man of to-day prevent or affect
what he did yesterday, let me say, rat