There is, therefore, nothing incompatible between Determinism and Responsibility. The incompatibility lies between Indeterminism and Responsibility. What meaning can we attach to it, on what ground can we call a person to account, if our calling him to account is not one of the considerations that will affect his conduct? Grant that a consciousness of responsibility decides how a person shall act, and the principle of Determinism is admitted. Deny that a consciousness of responsibility determines action, and the phrase loses all meaning and value. The difficulty arises, as has been said, by ignoring the fact that responsibility is of social origin, and in looking for an explanation in individual psychology. It would, of course, be absurd to make man responsible for being what he is, but so long as he is amenable to the pressure of normal social forces he is responsible or accountable for what he may be. Whatever his character be, so long as it has the capacity of being affected by social pressure, it is a responsible character. And this is the sole condition that makes responsibility intelligible. Having said this, it is not difficult to see the place of punishment and reward, or praise and blame, in the Determinist scheme of things. Another word than punishment might be selected, and one that would be without its unpleasant associations, but on the whole it is advisable perhaps to retain the word in order to see the nature of the problem clearly. Of course, punishment in the sense of the infliction of pain merely because certain actions have been committed, no Determinist would countenance. So far as punishment is inflicted in this spirit of sheer retaliation it serves only to gratify feelings of malevolence. A society that punishes merely to gratify resentment is only showing that it can be as brutal collectively as individuals can be singly. And if punishment begins and ends with reference to the past, then it is certainly revolting to inflict pain upon a person because he has done what education and organization impelled him to do. So far one can agree with Professor Sidgwick that when a man's conduct is "compared with a code, to the violation of which punishments are attached, the question whether he really could obey the rule by which he is judged is obvious and inevitable." But when he goes on to reply "If he could not, it seems contrary to our sense of justice to punish him," the reply is, Not if the code is one that normal human nature can obey, and the individual one who can be modified in a required direction in both his own interest and the interest of others. For if our punishment is prospective instead of retrospective, or at least retrospective only so far as to enable us to understand the character of the individual with whom we are dealing, and using punishment as one of the means of securing a desirable modification of character, then punishment is merged in correction, and