the will is completed. Before this it was only incipient or inchoate; now it has put forth the full fruit of guilt. Hence a man's acts are of great importance in determining our judgments of his conduct, although it is really his will that we judge.
42. Further, in conceiving the manner in which our thoughts are inevitably affected by the act, as something distinct and separate from the mind and will of the agent, we cannot help considering the state in which a man has placed himself by his act, in comparison with the state he held before its perpetration. We suppose the act to be some deed of guilt. Before this act he occupied a respectable place in society. Now, the moment the act is over, he is, it may be, a murderer, and he feels the irrevocable doom that awaits him. One moment ago, his whole futurity hung in suspense before him: it was still possible for that futurity to be filled with virtue and happiness. That moment is past; the deed is done; there is no locus pœnitentiæ for him now, in so far, at least, as man is concerned; and the result must go with him for evermore. The indignation of his fellow-men pursues him from place to place; the phantom of an ignominious death haunts him till its shadow becomes a reality. All these horrors his one act has in a moment brought upon him. All these accompany the act, they intensify our imagination of it. But still, though our mind naturally fastens on the act, and on
