Page:Ethical Studies (reprint 1911).djvu/27

 might just as well have been anybody else from the first, since nothing remains which is specially his. The sanctum of his individuality is outraged and profaned; and with that profanation ends the existence, that once seemed impenetrably sure. To explain the origin of a man is utterly to annihilate him.

Even when the character is formed, and the knowledge of it by others is not objected to, every one knows it is the grossest rudeness to affect to understand a man, or to know him, as well or better than he knows himself, unless the parties are on intimate terms. And one ground of this is no doubt the feeling just mentioned, that a man can not be worked like a sum, but repels the intrusion of an external mind.

That a man feels no pain at the thought that God knows his inmost being, and the elements of it; or that he feels such pain only, when irreligiously he thinks of himself and of God as two finite persons, is a confirmation of the above account. In that religious relation the relation ceases; the self loses sight of its private selfness, and gives itself up, to find itself and more than itself.

The objection to the rational developement of the character is founded, I believe, on the above ideas. But, if we come now to belief in responsibility, and ask how far, in the mind of our man, it stands connected with these notions, the answer must be, that immediately, and in the mind of the practical man, it is not so connected at all. He is responsible for that which he is, no matter what he is, and no matter how he became so; provided only that the conditions of imputation are present. But what the ordinary man would think is one thing; what he ought to think, if he saw more clearly, is another thing. And if we state the question differently, and ask whether rational prevision is consistent with all that is implied in accountability, can coexist with the conditions of imputation, a different reply must, I think, be given. We saw that a man was accountable, because he himself, and no other, has acted; and now, so far as I am able to see, the possibility of the explanation of his self means that his self does not exist at all, and therefore, of course, can not act.

The matter in hand has important bearings, and I do not think that, in general, our ideas are very clear concerning it.