The Daily Astorian. [volume] (Astoria, Or.) 1876-1883, 1882-04-02
Untenable Premises.

clan, in the New England Medical
Journal for March we find these
somewhat startling assertions:
"Insane people, haxe-no power to
''resist the strongest motive. No
'beings that ever lived possessed
"the power to do different from
"what they did"
There is sophistry of reasoning
calculated to mislead and befog
the mind. By it, wrong may be
made to appear right, light dark
ness. Such we regard the re ason-
ing that leads the mind to such
conclusions as those given above.
For instance, we are told by
those who believe in this irresponsi-
bility of action that no sane mind
acts without motive that motive
is not subject to the will-that the
mind must necessarily yield to the
strongest motive,-and that there.
fore whatever a man does he is
compelled to do.
This process of reasoning, if
accepted, leaves the opponents of
such conclusions without any
ground to stand on. 1t takes away
the last vestige of moral accounta-
bility, and makes him the veriest
shuttlecock of irresistible fate.
If such were the prevailing belief
of the world, man would soon set
tie back into the lower types from
whence he sprung, and chaos
would come again. But the rea-
soning, in our judgment, is falla-
cious, and the conclusions wrong.
1t is no doubt true that man is
very largely subject to conditions
of birth, education and surround
ings. We can readily see that he
is free moral agent only in a
limited sense, if at all. If born
in vice, and educated in crime, he
will be very apt to be criminal
although the rule is not absolute
ly invariable; and it is this varia-
tion of rule that lies at the basis
of all evolution. Like a horse
tethered to a stake, with freedom
to crop the heritage over a circum-
scribed area, so man, in a moral
sense, is free to act within a Ger.
tain length of rope. He knows
the right from the wrong. lie is
capable Of weighing and deter
mining the motives that prompt
him to do the one to avoid the
other. If the wrong he does was
the right thing for him to do,-the
thing concerning which he had nc
volition and was compelled to dc
why should he experience regret
for wrong doing?
We say the reasoning which
leads to such fatal conclusions as
those quoted is erroneous. I,
makes man a mere machine, al
helpless as the weather vane upon
church steeple, or the lnsensate
clod that is swept along by the
food.
The man who acts upon a crimi.
nal impulse or motive to steal
where detection and punishment
are uncertain, restrains that i'm.
pulse with the certainty of detec.
ton and punishment before him
Thus he is able to shape and
control motive. And just here
the weak point in the reasoning
referred to is seen to be that it is
based upon false premises. The
strongest motive is not irresistible;
or, if it is, then 1t is in some
sense subject to the will. That
is, one who wants plausible ex-
cuse for doing wrong can readily
shape the motive to afford him that
excuse.
The human intellect is as many
sided as the shape of the brain
In its operations we find that there
is a mysterious something tina,
seems to sit behind all the facul.
ties, and that stimulates or curbs
their actions-,hat encourages this
and condemns that. This is the
EGO the conscious ME-the auto.
crat of volition. Otherwise there
could be no such thing as reason
or Judgment.
No man ever lived that did bis