The Latest Infidelity.pdf 487KB May 19 2009 - R.L. Dabney Archive

514 THE LATEST INFIDELITY.
it involves us in absolute contradictions. If honesty in error
were all that is needed to hold us innocent, truth would have
no practical value above that of error. But truth has its eternal
intrinsic value. Again, our decisive conclusions according to
the necessary laws of our spirits direct us in our actions. It
is proper that they should, or otherwise our actions might al-
ways be irrational, aimless, and worthless. Now if we allow
the man to hold himself irresponsible for his moral opinions,
of course we must hold him irresponsible for all the actions
which they logically direct. After you have justified the tree
in being the species of fruit-tree it is, you cannot blame it for
'bearing that species of fruit. So that this philosophy requires
us to justify some of the most mischievous and abominable
crimes that are done on earth. Let us see again whither it car-
Ties its advocate. Colonel Ingersoll knows that the slave-hold-
ers were generally sincere in their belief of their right; there-
fore he would have to justify the slavery he so abhors. He
knows that Messrs. Davis, Lee and Jackson were perfectly sin-
cere in their convictions; so he must justify them in all those
blows at "the life of the nation" which his patriotism abhors.
Supposing the magistrates of the old-fashioned State of Dela-
ware, honest and sincere in the advocacy of that antiquated stat-
ute which, we are told, still makes atheistic utterances a mis-
demeanor punishable at the whipping-post, and supposing the
gallant Colonel's zeal for his truth to have led him to that
Pauline grade of heroism which makes men glory in stripes for
the'truth's sake, his philosophy would require him to justify
those magistrates, even at the moment the constable's scourge
was descending on his back. But would it? We trow not.
Again he provokes the inextinguishable laughter of the on-
lookers. His theory of free thought is "unworkable."
Again, the position leads to a consequence yet worse. It
is entirely possible that two sincere reasoners may reach op-
posite conclusions concerning the same moral object. If each
is irresponsible and innocent in his conclusion, he must be
equally so in the action to which it directs him. So our phil-
osopher has on his hands this strange case: A has a logical
right to execute an action touching the disputed object, which
B, the other party, has an equally logical and moral right to re-