Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/491

No. 4.] it may. The responsibility of the original personality as compared with the second would be proportional to the degree of co-ordination between them, and especially between the first and the causes of the change. So when social influences develop in an individual tendencies already existing in him, the original personality bears every whit as much responsibility for this difference and its consequences as society. If a man's crime is the expression of his character, the suppression of the latter may be necessary. Society has produced the assassin, the assassin has committed the murder; each is responsible for his deed. We may apply the same law here as above. The greater the responsibility of society, the less that of the individual, and conversely. The stronger and better organized the elements, the less their acts are subordinated to the general life of the whole, the greater is their responsibility, and vice versa. Individual responsibility is inversely proportional to social responsibility. Where the individual and society are equally well organized, and where the acts of the individual are in teleological accord with social acts, there rests a common responsibility. Responsibility establishes a solidarity between the ego, its acts, and their consequences. This implies a rigorous determination. Indeterminism signifies pure chance; what place could responsibility have in such a scheme? It would make morality uncertain. Determinism is the postulate of morality as well as of science. We may call a volition free that conforms to all the tendencies of one's nature, one that systematizes or co-ordinates our desires and acts. Such freedom lies at the basis of responsibility. Personality, liberty, finality, systematization, responsibility, define the same general fact: the co-ordination, the teleological unity of psychical elements.

The moral law differs from natural law, the latter consisting only of the constant mode of occurrence of observed phenomena, whereas the moral law includes the notion of a command and implies a valuation. The subject may be considered historically and theoretically. In ancient times the moral law was conceived as an external command to be blindly obeyed. To the Greek the source of the command was nature, to the mediæval Christian it was God. Modern thought finds the source of morality in human reason. Kant's system of ethics make morality only formal and gives no account of the psychological origin of the notion of goodness. Mill derives moral acts from the original tendency of man to actions which promote his own pleasure. Actions that have this result may in time acquire value for their own sake,