Chapter XXXVII. Free Will and Moral Responsibility 1. Judaism has ever emphasized the freedom of the will as one of its chief doctrines. The dignity and greatness of man depends largely upon his freedom, his power of self-determination. He differs from the lower animals in his independence of instinct as the dictator of his actions. He acts from free choice and conscious design, and is able to change his mind at any moment, at any new evidence or even through whim. He is therefore responsible for his every act or omission, even for his every intention. This alone renders him a moral being, a child of God; thus the moral sense rests upon freedom of the will.(706) 2. The idea of moral freedom is expressed as early as the first pages of the Bible, in the words which God spoke to Cain while he was planning the murder of his brother Abel: “Whether or not, thou offerest an acceptable gift,” (New Bible translation: “If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up? and if thou doest not well,”) “sin coucheth at the door; and unto thee is its desire, but thou mayest rule over it.”(707) Here, without any reference to the sin of Adam in the first generation, the man of the second generation is told that he is free to choose between good and evil, that he alone is responsible before God for what he does or omits to do. This certainly indicates that the moral freedom of man is not impaired by hereditary sin, or by any evil power outside of man himself. This principle is established in the words of Moses spoken in the name of God: “I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed.”(708) In like manner Jeremiah proclaims in God’s name: “Behold I set before you the way of life and the way of death.”(709) 3. From these passages and many similar ones the sages derived their oft-repeated idea that man stands ever at the parting of the ways, to choose either the good or the evil path.(710) Thus the words spoken by God to the angels when Adam and Eve were to be expelled from Paradise: “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil,” are interpreted by R. Akiba: “He was given the choice to go the way of life or the way of death, but he chose the way of death by eating of the forbidden fruit.”(711) R. Akiba emphasizes the principle of the freedom of the will again in the terse saying: “All things are foreseen (by God), but free will is granted (to man).”(712)