The nature of the moral emotions also gives us the key to another important problem--a problem which has called forth endless controversies--namely, the co-existence of moral responsibility with the general law of cause and effect. It has been argued that responsibility, and moral judgments generally, are inconsistent with the notion that the human will is determined by causes; that "either free-will is a fact, or moral judgment a delusion." The argument has been well summed up by Sir Leslie Stephen as follows:--"Moral responsibility, it is said, implies freedom. A man is only responsible for that which he causes. Now the _causa causæ_ is also the _causa causati_. If I am caused as well as cause, the cause of me is the cause of my conduct; I am only a passive link in the chain which transmits the force. Thus, as each individual is the product of something external to himself, his responsibility is really shifted to that something. The universe or the first cause is alone responsible, and since it is responsible to itself alone, responsibility becomes a mere illusion."[20] We are told that, if determinism were true, human beings would be no more proper subjects of moral valuation than are inanimate things; that the application of moral praise and blame would be "in itself as absurd as to applaud the sunrise or be angry at the rain";[21] that the only admiration which the virtuous man might deserve would be the kind of admiration "which we justly accord to a well-made machine."[22] Nor are these inferences from the doctrine of determinism only weapons forged by its opponents; they are shared by many of its own adherents. Richard Owen and his followers maintained that, since a man's character is made _for_ him, not _by_ him, there is no justice in punishing {321} him for what he cannot help.[23] To Stuart Mill responsibility simply means liability to punishment, inflicted for a utilitarian purpose.[24] So also Prof. Sidgwick--whose attitude towards the free-will theory is that of a sceptic--argues that the common retributive view of punishment, and the ordinary notions of "merit," "demerit," and "responsibility," involve the assumption that the will is free, and that these terms, if used at all, have to be used in new significations. "If the wrong act," he says, "and the bad qualities of character manifested in it, are conceived as the necessary effects of causes antecedent or external to the existence of the agent, the moral responsibility--in the ordinary sense--for the mischief caused by them can no longer rest on him. At the same time, the Determinist can give to the terms 'ill-desert' and 'responsibility' a signification which is not only clear and definite, but, from an utilitarian point of view, the only suitable meaning. In this view, if I affirm that A is responsible for a harmful act, I mean that it is right to punish him for it; primarily, in order that the fear of punishment may prevent him and others from committing similar