e
not admitting of any other method of dealing with them.
But it is absurd to argue from such rude necessity that
each act therefore, by whomsoever committed, is of specific
culpability. The act is one thing, the moral guilt is
another. And there are many cases in which, as Butler
again allows, if we trace a sinner's history to the bottom,
the guilt attributable to himself appears to vanish altogether.

This is all plain matter of fact, and as long as we
continue to deny or ignore it, there will be found men (not
bad men, but men who love the truth as much as ourselves),
who will see only what we neglect, and will
insist upon it, and build their system upon it.

And again, if less obvious, yet not less real, are those
natural tendencies which each of us brings with him into
the world,--which we did not make, and yet which
almost as much determine what we are to be, as the
properties of the seed determine the tree which shall
grow from it. Men are self-willed, or violent, or
obstinate, or weak, or generous, or affectionate; there is as
large difference in their dispositions as in the features of
their faces; and that by no original act of their own.
Duties which are easy to one, another finds difficult or
impossible. It is with morals as it is with art. Two
children are taught to draw; one learns with ease, the
other hardly or never. In vain the master will show
him what to do. It seems so easy: it seems as if he
had only to will and the thing would be done; but
it is not so. Between the desire and the execution lies
the incapable organ which only wearily, and after long
labour, imperfectly accomplishes what is required of it.
And the same, to a certain extent, unless we will deny
the plainest facts of experience, holds true in moral
actions. No wonder, therefore, that evaded or thrust
aside as these things are in the popular beliefs, as soon
as they are recognized in their full reality they should
be mistaken for the whole truth, and that the free-will
theory be thrown aside as a chimera.

It may be said, and it often is said, that all such
reasonings are merely sophistical--that however we
entangle ourselves in logic, we are conscious that we are
free; we know--we are as sure as we are of our
existence that we have power to act this way or that
way, exactly as we choose. But this is less plain than
it seems; and if we grant it, it proves less than it appears
to prove. It may be true that we can act as we cho