This is indeed a plausible theory, and it would help us to read some dark riddles if it were true, but there is not the slightest reason for supposing that it is. If ever there was a theory in the air, this is one. We not only have no recollections of any past incarnations, but we have no ground for inferring that there were any. I have mentioned the theory merely in order to exhibit its opposite. And the opposite is this: that a man is not responsible for the attractive or repulsive qualities with which he is born; that these are not to be accounted as his, in the sense that he is accountable for them. The son of the dipsomaniac, for instance, is not responsible for the morbid craving that stirs in him. He begins life, so far as responsibility is concerned, so far as merit or demerit is concerned, with a fresh start. He is not responsible for the craving; he is responsible only for assenting to it. True, the pull in his case is incomparably stronger than in others; still he can resist. He is responsible, not for the hideous thing itself, but for the degree in which he yields to it. He is meritorious to the extent of the effort he puts forth not to yield to it. The reason why this point is often obscured is that from the first awakening of consciousness, from the time when first we have been capable of deliberate choice, we have more or less often assented to these evil propulsions and have thus made them our own. It has therefore become impossible to separate clearly between that element in our acts which is imposed upon us from without, and that deliberate element in the act which is our own. Nevertheless, no fair-minded person will dispute that there are qualities or predispositions, for which--hideous as they may be--we are no more responsible than we are for being born with an unprepossessing face. Men are born with certain attractive qualities and certain atrocious qualities, but moral goodness and badness consists not in having these predispositions, but rather in consenting to them and adopting them into our will.