that our detestation of an act is not always proportionate to our moral condemnation of the agent; people do terrible things in ignorance. But our detestation of an act is, properly speaking, a moral emotion only in so far as it is directed against him who committed the act, in his capacity of a moral agent. We are struck with horror when we hear of a wolf eating a child, but we do not morally condemn the wolf.
13 Cf. James Mill, Fragment on Mackintosh, p. 376; Sidgwick, op. cit. p. 364.
14 Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 26.
15 Ibid. p. 26.
A volition may have reference not only to the doing of a thing, but to the abstaining from doing a thing. It may form part not only of an act, but of a forbearance. A forbearance is morally equivalent to an act, and the volition involved in it is equivalent to an intention. “Sitting still, or holding one’s peace,” says Locke, “when walking or speaking are proposed, though mere forbearances, requiring as much the determination of the will, and being as often weighty in their consequences as the contrary actions, may, on that consideration, well enough pass for actions too.”16 Yet it is hardly correct to call them acts. Bentham’s division of acts into acts of commission and acts of omission or forbearance17 is not to be recommended. A not-doing I do not call an act, and the purpose of not doing I do not call an intention.18 But the fact remains that a forbearance involves a distinct volition, which, as such, may be the subject of moral judgment no less than the intention involved in an act.
16 Locke, op. cit. ii. 21, 28 (Philosophical Works, p. 218).
17 Bentham, op. cit. p. 72.
18 Cf. Clark, Analysis of Criminal Liability, p. 42.
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 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.
19 Austin, op. cit. i. 438.
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.
Closely related to negligence is heedlessness, the difference between them being seemingly greater than it really is. Whilst the negligent man omits an act which he ought to have done, because he does not think of it, the heedless man does an act from which he ought to have forborne, because he does not consider its probable or possible consequences.21 In the latter case there is acting, in the former case there is absence of acting. But in both cases the moral judgment refers to want of attention, in other words, to not-willing. The fault of the negligent man is that he does not think of the act which he ought to perform, the fault of the heedless man is that he does not think of the probable or possible consequences of the act which he performs. In rashness, again, the party adverts to the mischief which his act may cause, but, from insufficient advertence assumes that it will not ensue; the fault of the rash man is partial want of attention.22 Negligence, heedlessness, and rashness, are all included under the common term “carelessness.”
21 The meaning of the word “negligence,” in the common use of language, is very indefinite. It often stands for heedlessness as well, or for carelessness. I use it here in the sense in which it was applied by Austin (op. cit. i. 439 sq.).
22 Austin, op. cit. i. 440 sq. Clark, op. cit., p. 101.
Our moral judgments of blame, however, are concerned with not-willing only in so far as this not-willing is attributed to a defect of the will, not to the influence of intellectual or other circumstances for which no man can be held responsible. That power in a person which we call his “will” is regarded by us as a cause, not only of such events as are intended, but of such events as we think that the person “could” have prevented by his will. And just as, in the case of volitions, the guilt of the party is affected by the pressure of non-voluntary motives, so in the case of carelessness mental facts falling outside the sphere of the will must be closely considered by the conscientious judge. But nothing is harder than to apply this rule in practice.
Equally difficult is it, in many cases, to decide whether a person’s behaviour is due to want of advertence, or is combined with a knowledge of what his behaviour implies, or of the consequences which may result from it—to decide whether it is due to carelessness, or to something worse than carelessness. For him who refrains from performing an obligatory act, though adverting to it, “negligent” is certainly too mild an epithet, and he who knows that mischief will probably result from his deed is certainly worse than heedless. Yet even in such cases the immediate object of blame may be the absence of a volition—not a want of attention, but a not-willing to do, or a not-willing to refrain