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sitions of his other qualities. But, I am ignorant whether circumstances have permitted this individual to devote himself to the pursuit to which this principal disposition would direct him. Birth, condition, education, laws, customs, and religion, have the greatest influence on the occupation, exercise, and perfection of the organs, as well as on the moral character of the man: it would be rash, therefore, to conclude, that the actions of an individual correspond to the faculty, to which we remark a predominant disposition. On seeing the organ of tones, or that of the mechanic arts, very much developed, we may affirm that the individual has a great disposition or talent for music, or for the mechanic arts; that in his youth, he must have had more success in these arts, than his comrades; and that, probably, next to the duties of his calling, he makes these his favorite occupation; but I cannot say that he is actually a musi cian, or a mechanic. If the question concerns propensities capable of leading to mischievous actions, contrary to the laws, I abstain from judging, because I admit that sane and reasonable men are capable, by nobler motives, and by the effect of fortunate habits, of controlling these propensities, or of employing them in a lawful manner. For this reason, I do not pursue such researches in my social relations, especially where there can result from them no valuable information.

In a prison, on the contrary, errors are less easy. I can, by the inspection of a greatly developed organ, the abuse of which leads to crime, pronounce with sufficient confidence on the nature of an offence. First, it is on account of a crime that the individual is imprisoned; next, we know that man, excited by energetic propensities, if not retained by powerful motives, ordinarily abandons himself to his natural inclination. There is, then, great reason to suppose, that the offence for which he is punished, is that for which we find in him a marked disposition. We may, indeed, be mistaken; fortuitous circumstances may, sometimes, for the time urge a man to acts for which he feels himself no very strong propen

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sity. We often meet robbers and assassins, in whom the organs for theft and murder have not acquired an extraordinary development. But, in this case, the malefactor has been drawn in by seduction, by misery, by unruly passions, such as jealousy, resentment, a quarrel, or other unfortunate occurrences. We are rarely deceived, when the question relates to incorrigible malefactors, or persons, who, from their childhood, have manifested evil dispositions, or criminal propensities; in these, the development of the organ is evident. If the features, the gestures, mien, or language, betray want of education, or of the exercise of the intellectual faculties; if the rest of the organization of the brain is not favorable, it will almost always happen, that the actions will accord with this unfortunate organization.

It was in conformity with these maxims, that at the conciergerie (stadtvogtey) of Berlin, I pronounced not only on the nature of the crimes of a prisoner, but also on the great difficulty of correcting his obstinate propensity to theft. I declared that this prisoner, named Columbus, was the most dangerous robber among the adults that they had presented to us. Columbus was afterwards sentenced to imprisonment for three years, at the end of which time he was released, in 1808. But he had enjoyed his liberty hardly a month, when he was again shut up. In this short interval, he had committed ten thefts, more or less considerable, and very difficult to execute.*

If the individual appears to have received education, or if several of the organs of the higher order are favorably developed, the judgment to be passed is not so certain; the propensity may have been more easily combated; it may at least be presumed, that the illegal action of such an individual may have been modified by

This fact is reported in the German paper, entitled Morgenblatt, 1809, 16th May, No. 116; but disfigured and confounded in part with another, of which I shall speak hereafter.

some peculiarity. But these cases require a peculiar kind of knowledge, which can be acquired only by long study and multiplied comparisons of cases. This suffices to show my readers that, in passing judgment on malefactors, I take for its basis not the irresistibility of actions, but the organization and nature of man.

Some of my adversaries have maintained, with impudent dishonesty, that I taught, at least in Germany, the irresistibility of actions, and that it was only the mildness and piety of the French which made me more circumspect.

I esteem my doctrine too much, to change or mutilate it in favor of the opinions or the prejudices of any people. I neither speak nor write for the Germans nor the French, alone. As an observer of nature, my purpose is to present and defend a doctrine, which may be useful to mankind in all places; which may be compatible with all forms of government, and with true morality, and which, in all ages, may be appropriated to the wants of human nature, since it is derived from the nature of things. But I affirm, at the same time, that I have never taught the irresistibility of actions, and that I have always upheld moral freedom. I had, at Vienna, and in the whole course of my journey, hearers of all conditions; many monks, curates, pastors, bishops, instructors. Even several sovereign princes condescended to hear me expound the principles of my doctrine. No one of these persons perceived in it the slightest danger for morality and religion. Many of my auditors have had works printed, which serve to justify my conduct in this respect.

Hardly had I obtained any results from my researches, when I foresaw the objections touching materialism, fatalism and the irresistibility of actions. I therefore had inserted in the Mercure Allemand, of Wieland, 1798, No. 12, a letter addressed to Baron Retzer, chief of the imperial censorship of Vienna. In this letter I then answered these objections with these same arguments with which I combat them at present. And what best

proves the unfair intentions of this class of adversaries, is, that for more than twenty-five years, no moralist and no ecclesiastic has thought fit to declare himself against my doctrine. On the contrary, better informed as they are than the laity, on the reciprocal influence of physical and moral agents, many of them of different religions, have written works more or less voluminous, in favor of my principles.

Summary of the fourth Section.

I have shown, that in all ages the most contradictory opinions have been denounced and regarded as inspired, by turns; that, consequently, when one makes discoveries, he ought to trouble himself less for the judgment of his contemporaries than for the truth;-that the Gospel the apostles, the fathers of the church, and in general the men who have best understood mankind, those who have most loved and most benefited them, have acknowledged that the qualities of the soul and mind are innate, and their manifestation depends on material conditions;—that those who accuse my doctrine of materialism, confound material conditions with the forces or the faculties, and thereby fall into perpetual contradictions; that the supposition of a central point which it was thought necessary to consecrate in order to secure the spiritual nature of the soul, does not attain this object, and is at war with the structure and functions of the brain-that even my adversaries, to whom it seems that the plurality of organs favors materialism, are forced to acknowledge this plurality, because the brain is double, and, consequently, each of its parts is so also; that those who regard as dangerous the division of the faculties of the soul into several fundamental faculties, have, at all times, adopted similar divisions, since they have admitted the faculties of judging, willing, remembering, imagining, &c.; that, consequently, they cannot, in any respect, brand my doctrine, any more than another, with the charge of inaterialism.

As to fatalism and to moral liberty, I have, likewise, shown, that the most venerable men have acknowledged the most powerful influence of several causes on our determinations; that the sensations, propensities, desires, as well as the ideas and the judgments of man, are submitted to determinate laws; but that we cannot thence infer either the fatalism, which makes the world to be derived from chance, or which does not ascribe the direction of it to a Supreme Intelligence, nor that other fatalism, which subjects the actions of men to a blind chance; that an unlimited and absolute liberty are repugnant to the nature of a created being, but that the reasonable man, by virtue of the faculties whose number and dignity elevate him above the brutes, has acquired the power of fixing his attention, not only on impulses from within and without, but also on those highest motives which he finds within him, or receives from abroad, and of being thereby enabled either to be determined by existing motives, or to determine himself by new motives, which the well-organized man can continually call to his aid; that this faculty constitutes true moral liberty; and that this practical liberty is the only kind which is contemplated by civil institutions, education, morality and religion; that this liberty, submitted to its proper laws, such as the powerful influence of the most numerous and strongest motives, and especially to that of the desire of happiness, render the man who acts, and his instructors, responsible for all their moral actions; that on this notion of liberty repose the dignity and necessity of education, morals, legislation, punishments, rewards, and religion. It follows, from my doctrine, that, whenever a sane and well-organized man has willed a thing, he might have willed the contrary, not without motive, which would be absurd, but by seeking for, and adopting other motives than those which have determined him.

In fine, I have proved, that without the existence of moral evil, and vicious propensities, there could be neither moral freedom, nor choice between good and evil,

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