Have we not advanced far enough intellectually to deny the existence of
chance? Are we not satisfied now that back of every act and thought and
dream and fancy is an efficient cause? Is anything, or can anything,
be produced that is not necessarily produced? Can the fatherless and
motherless exist? Is there not a connection between all events, and is
not every act related to all other acts? Is it not possible, is it not
probable, is it not true, that the actions of all men are determined by
countless causes over which they have no positive control?
Certain it is that men do not prefer unhappiness to joy.
It can hardly be said that man intends permanently to injure himself,
and that he does what he does in order that he may live a life of
misery. On the other hand, we must take it for granted that man
endeavors to better his own condition, and seeks, although by mistaken
ways, his own well-being. The poorest man would like to be rich--the
sick desire health--and no sane man wishes to win the contempt
and hatred of his fellow-men. Every human being prefers liberty to
imprisonment.
Are the brains of criminals exactly like the brains of honest men? Have
criminals the same ambitions, the same standards of happiness or of
well-being? If a difference exists in brain, will that in part account
for the difference in character? Is there anything in heredity? Are
vices as carefully transmitted by nature as virtues? Does each man in
some degree bear burdens imposed by ancestors? We know that diseases of
flesh and blood are transmitted--that the child is the heir of physical
deformity. Are diseases of the brain--are deformities of the soul, of
the mind, also transmitted?
We not only admit, but we assert, that in the physical world there are
causes and effects. We insist that there is and can be no effect
without an efficient cause. When anything happens in that world, we are
satisfied that it was naturally and necessarily produced. The causes may
be obscure, but we as implicitly believe in their existence as when we
know positively what they are. In the physical world we have taken the
ground that there is nothing miraculous--that everything is natural--and
if we cannot explain it, we account for our inability to explain, by
our own ignorance. Is it not possible, is it not probable, that what is
true in the physical world is equally true in the realm of mind--in that
strange world of passion and desire? Is it possible that thoughts or
desires or passions are the children of chance, born of nothing? Can we
conceive of nothing as a force, or as a cause? If, then, there is behind
every thought and desire and passion an efficient cause, we can, in part
at least, account for the actions of men.
A certain man under certain conditions acts in a certain way. There are
certain temptations that he, with his brain, with his experience,
with his intelligence, with his surroundings cannot withstand. He is
irresistibly led to do, or impelled to do, certain things; and there
are other things that he can not do. If we change the conditions of
this man, his actions will be changed. Develop his mind, give him new
subjects of thought, and you change the man; and the man being Changed,
it follows of necessity that his conduct will be different.
In civilized countries the struggle for existence is severe--the
competition far sharper than in savage lands. The consequence is that
there are many failures. These failures lack, it may be, opportunity or
brain or moral force or industry, or something without which, under
the circumstances, success is impossible. Certain lines of conduct are
called legal, and certain others criminal, and the men who fail in one
line may be driven to the other. How do we know that it is possible for
all people to be honest? Are we certain that all people can tell
the truth? Is it possible for all men to be generous or candid or
courageous?
I am perfectly satisfied that there are millions of people incapable of
committing certain crimes, and it may be true that there are millions
of others incapable of practicing certain virtues. We do not blame a man
because he is not a sculptor, a poet, a painter, or a statesman. We say
he has not the genius. Are we certain that it does not require genius
to be good? Where is the man with intelligence enough to take into
consideration the circumstances of each individual case? Who has the
mental balance with which to weigh the forces of heredity, of want, of
temptation,--and who can analyze with certainty the mysterious motions
of the brain? Where and what are the sources of vice and virtue? In what
obscure and shadowy recesses of the brain are passions born? And what is
it that for the moment destroys the sense of right and wrong?
Who knows to what extent reason becomes the prisoner of passion--of
some strange and wild desire, the seeds of which were sown, it may be,
thousands of years ago in the breast of some savage? To what extent do
antecedents and surroundings affect the moral sense?
Is it not possible that the tyranny of governments, the injustice
of nations, the fierceness of what is called the law, produce in the
individual a tendency in the same direction? Is it not true that the
citizen is apt to imitate his nation? Society degrades its enemies--the
individual seeks to degrade his. Society plunders its enemies, and now
and then the citizen has the desire to plunder his. Society kills its
enemies, and possibly sows in the heart of some citizen the seeds of
murder.