d person, stumbling into the
fire, through mere lack of physical strength to keep out of it;" as
another, the case of "an ignorant child, groping about for something to
eat and drink, and stumbling on a phial of laudanum, drinking it and
dying;" and as another, the case of "a slater slipping from the roof of
a high building, in consequence of a stone of the ridge having given way
as he walked upright along it."[201] In all these cases, the accident or
misfortune which befalls the individual is represented as the
_punishment_ connected with the neglect or transgression of a "natural
law," just as remorse, shame, conviction, and condemnation may be the
punishment for a moral offence. In other words, a child who ignorantly
drinks laudanum is _punished with death_, in the same sense, and for the
same reason, that the murderer is punished with death for shedding the
blood of a fellow-creature; and the poor slater who misses his foot,
and falls, most unwillingly, from a roof or parapet, is _punished with
death_, just as a man would be who threw himself over _with the
intention_ of committing suicide! Surely there is some grave error
here,--an error opposed to the surest dictates of our moral nature, and
one that cannot be glossed over by any apologue, however ingeniously
constructed, to show the evil effects which would follow from a
suspension of the general laws of Nature. For, in the words of Mr.
Scott, it is only where "the law is previously known"--and not only so,
but where the "circumstances which determine the effect might be
foreseen"--that "the pleasures or pains annexed to actions can properly
be termed _rewards and punishments_;" for "these have reference to the
state of mind of the party who is to be rewarded or punished; it is the
intention or disposition of the mind, and not the mere act of the body,
that is ever considered as obedience or disobedience, or thought worthy,
in a moral sense, of either reward or punishment." And as the theory is
thus subversive of all our ideas of moral retribution, so it demands of
man a kind of obedience which it is _impossible_ for him to render,
since _all_ the laws of Nature, and _all_ the states of particular
things at a given time, cannot possibly be known by the ignorant many,
nor even by the philosophic few. The philosopher, not less than the
peasant, may perish through the explosion of a steam engine, or the
unsoundness of a ship, or the casual ignition of his dwelling; an