Willing not to do a thing must be distinguished from not willing to do a thing; forbearances must be distinguished from omissions. An omission--in the restricted sense of the word--is characterised by the absence of volition. It is, as Austin puts it, "the not doing a given act, without adverting (at the time) to the act which is not done."[19] Now moral judgments refer not only to willing, but to not-willing as well, not only to acts and forbearances, but to omissions. It is curious that this important point has been so little noticed by writers on ethics, although it constitutes a distinct and extremely frequent element in our moral judgments. It has been argued that what is condemned in an omission is really a volition, not the absence of a volition; that an omission is bad, not because the person did not do something, but because he did something else, "or was in such a condition that he could not will, and is condemned for the acts which brought him into that condition."[20] In the latter case, of course, the man cannot be condemned for his omission, since he cannot be blamed for not doing what {211} he "could not will"; but to say that an omission is condemned only on account of the performance of some act is undoubtedly a psychological error. If a person forgets to discharge a certain duty incumbent on him, say, to pay a debt, he is censured, not for anything he did, but for what he omitted to do. He is blamed for not doing a thing which he ought to have done, because he did not think of it; he is blamed for his forgetfulness. In other words, his guilt lies in his negligence. [Footnote 19: Austin, _op. cit._ i. 438.] [Footnote 20: Alexander, _Moral Order and Progress_, p. 34 _sq._ So, also, Professor Sidgwick maintains (_op. cit._ p. 60) that "the proper immediate objects of moral approval or disapproval would seem to be always the results of a man's volitions so far as they were intended--_i.e._, represented in thought as certain or probable consequences of such volitions," and that, in cases of carelessness, moral blame, strictly speaking, attaches to the agent, only "in so far as his carelessness is the result of some wilful neglect of duty." A similar view is taken by the moral philosophy of Roman Catholicism. (Göpfert, _Moraltheologie_, i. 113). Binding, again, assumes (_Die Normen_, ii. 105 _sqq._) that a person may have a volition without having an idea of what he wills, and that carelessness implies a volition of this kind. Otherwise, he says, the will could not be held responsible for the result. But, as we shall see immediately, the absence of a volition may very well be attributed to a defect of the will, and the will thus be regarded as the cause of an unintended event. To speak of a volition or will to do a thing of which the person who wills it has no idea seems absurd.]