Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/233

* SIMSON. 189 SIN. matics, he devoted nuioli of liis life in making the early classics in geometry known in England. In 1701 he retired from his active work in the university and devoted the remaining years of his life to revising his works. Besides numerous memoirs, Simson puhlished the following works: ficrlioinim Conicdiiiiii IJhri. (173.'). 2d ed. 1750; Eng. trans. 1804) ; Aiiollonii Penja-i Lo- coruiii Planorum Lihri II. (1749; Oer. trans. 1822); Elemeiils of Euclid (1756. and many subsequent editions ) . His collected works were published at (Glasgow in 17.76. SIMULTANEOUS EQUATIONS. See Eqiation. SIN (AS. sytvn, OHG. suntea, stmta, Ger. Siiiidc: probably connected with Lat. sons, guilty, Gk. dri), ate, mischief, harm). Voluntary trans- gression of a moral law believed to possess divine sanction. All theories assume a fact which they presuppose to be well understood from the experi- ential point of view by all. The various mean- ings attached to this fact reveal a gradual pro- gression out of the crudest physical conceptions to the highly individualized views of modern ethics. Thus among savages we do not find any consistent perce])tions of right and wrong, and it is doubtful if we have any ground for speaking of "the sense of sin' in their case. The only ele- ment of our definition obvious here is the vague apprehension of a power, higher than the hvunan, approving or disapproving, whom it is possible to offend and therefore wise to conciliate. Clearer conceptions appear among the Oriental nations, whose elaborate ceremonial and mechanical piety are calculated to foster the sense of sin in the soul. The Hindus, moreover, extend this idea of evil to the cosmos, which is conceived of as sharing the common evil of all existence. The fatalistic pessimism of the Orient has made little attempt to trace sin to a common root in human nature. Among the Greeks and Romans the idea of sin takes on the more positive character of their life and temperament. The essential excellence of human nature and the power of the human will, unaided, to attain to a high standard of virtue, was part of the genius of the Grfeco-Roman civi- lization. Yet the idea of moral evil is not lack- ing, especially in the days of the decline of Rome, In the main, however, sin is conceived either as physical disease or as ignorance. With Christianity there came a change, the chief cause of which was the teaching of the doctrine of a future life, especially the doctrine of penalty for sin. This acted as a strong deterring influ- ence, which showed itself still further in the practice of self-accusation and in the habit of affixing personal responsibility for the smallest departures from the divine law. In their con- flict with paganism and Greek philosophy the early fathers were led to define the nature of sin more fully and precisely. We find two troadly divided schools. One regarded sin as an individual affair, as a voluntary act, as an actual reality. The other regarded it as a mat- ter of the race, as a matter of hereditary de- pravity and corruption. The former school held that moral responsibility was confined to the in- dividual's own acts; the latter, that this respon- sibility is shared and conditioned by the race as such. Out of these opposing views arose the dis- tinction between actual and original (q.v.) sin. Later speculation made much of the classification into mortal (([.v.) and venial (q.v.) sins. In modern tliought sin is studied for the most part in connection with theodicy, psychological ethics, and sociology. It assumes three forms : (1) the impiiry into (he origin of evil; (2) the ques- tion of freedom and lu'cessity ; and {3) the rela- tion of sin lo final caiiscs, .s regards the first, we find Descartes ami Spinoza jiractically denying the positive character of sin, being followed in this view by Malebranche, who, however, perceiving the dilemma of absolute determinism, maintained that sin is a phenomenon, through which God occasionally acts, as lie might through any other act of a human being. For Leibnitz, the author of the most original system of theodicy, evil is the contrast to the good. The origin of evil, therefore, is not to be founil in the divine will, nor entirely in the action of man, but rather in the essential limitations of matter, which is the condition of realizing the good. Thus evil is merely privation and has no true cause. In re- gard to the second question Spinoza's theory of universal determinism led him to attribute free- dom to God alone, and, of course, this caused liim to deny the reality of free agency, Des- cartes's view that God creates the distinction be- tween truth and falsehood, right and w-rong, tended in the same direction, Leibnitz, on the other hand, while admitting that 0!od is the only complete and perfect cause, nevertheless con- tended that He has, in creating man, conferred upon him the prerogative of freedom. Now the possession of freedom by man is not a limitation of God's ab.soluteness. For, first, freedom in a finilc agent involves the liability to error and sin: and. second, the sin of man is not predes- tined or ordained by God, but only jiermitted, so that the good may be more completely mani- fested. Sin, therefore, cannot defeat the final purpose of God, which is the completion of the system, the establishment of good in the heart of every man ; for God has determined or chosen that, on the whole, the system shall promote the happiness of His creatures, which is the only principle that has positive character. .fter Leibnitz we do not find any original sys- tems of theodicy, and the problem of sin tends to be considered in connection with psychological ethics and sociology'. Its subjective character and its reflex action on social life are the chief matters of interest to the more modern mind. We notice a disinclination to regard sin as a cosmical or metaphysical reality, and a decided effort to understand its psychological nature. Thus physical conditions are now admittedly agreed to be important predisposing factors of sin. The part played by choice, by feelings of fear, and by the primitive passions in perverting hu- man nature is also fully acknowledged, especially in determining the intention of the act of sin and its relation to the universal disapproval that accompanies wrongdoing (guilt). The tendency to trace all sins to one common root in Inunan nature is ilhistrated in .Tilius Muller's idea that the root of all sin is selfishness, i.e. the willful choice of the ego as the supreme object of love. The complex character of sin is, however, from the psychological point of view, nearer the truth than this theory of a single motive. Besides all this, the vast social significance of the fact of sin has been fully recognized, as appears in all modern systems of penolog}', in which remedial