I had many conversations on the point with one of my
teachers, a young man of very wide experience, who combined in an
unusual way a close scientific knowledge of the subject with a peculiar
emotional sympathy. He told me once that it was the best outfit for the
scientific study of these problems, when the heart anticipated the
slower judgment of the mind, and set the mind a goal, so to speak, to
work up to; though he warned me that the danger was that the mind was
often reluctant to abandon the more indulgent claims of the heart; and
he advised me to mistrust alike scientific conclusions and emotional
inferences.
I had a very memorable conversation with him on the particular question
of responsibility, which I will here give.
"The mistake," I said to him, "of human moralists seems to me to be,
that they treat all men as more or less equal in the matter of moral
responsibility. How often," I added, "have I heard a school preacher
tell boys that they could not all be athletic or clever or popular, but
that high principle and moral courage were things within the reach of
all. Whereas the more that I studied human nature, the more did the
power of surveying and judging one's own moral progress, and the power
of enforcing and executing the dictates of the conscience, seem to me
faculties, like other faculties.
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