lso whether
he knew what he was doing, what were the motives which urged him, and
who is the real instigator of the misdeed. Alcohol, mental anomalies
and diseases, suggestions, passions, etc., concur in influencing the
human brain so that it is hardly responsible for its acts.

Again, on further examination, we find that the accepted and
historical notion of free-will, that is to say the absolute liberty of
man's will, which constitutes the very existence of our old penal law,
becomes not only more problematical, but may even be considered as a
purely human illusion, resting on the fact that the indirect and
remote motives of our actions are mainly subconscious.

The great philosopher, Spinoza, has already demonstrated this truth in
a masterly manner, and modern science confirms it in all respects.
Every effect has its cause, and all our resolutions are the result of
the activities of our brain, in their turn determined or influenced by
hereditary engrams (instincts and dispositions) or acquired
(memories), which are their internal causes, and combine with causes
acting from without. Let us admit freely the fallacy of the old axiom
of human free-will and endeavor to understand that what we consider as
free will is nothing else than the very variable faculty of our brain,
more or less developed in different individuals, of adapting its
activity to that of its environment, and especially to that of other
men. Also let us endeavor to take into account that our will and all
our actions are, consciously or unconsciously, determined by a complex
of energies or hereditary engrams (character), combined with those
which have acted upon us from without during our life, as well as with
emotional or intellectual sensory impressions.

Our whole conception of rights, and especially of penal law, should
then change. We should entirely do away with _retaliation_, a
barbarous relic of a more or less animal sentiment of our ancestors,
and _expiation_, the relic of a superannuated and superstitious
mysticism. Modern and truly scientific reformers of penal law have
already taken account of this necessity. But, in spite of the complete
inefficacy of the old penal system as regards the diminution of crime,
they have so far only put into practice few of their ideas.

=Justification of Rights and Laws.=--After what we have just said,
there only remain, two reasons to justify the existence of rights and
laws:

(1). To protect human socie