these its results, it is not these that are the objects of our judgment. It is the will of the agent that we condemn. But then we must look also to the act and to the circumstances, because it is by these only that the will is consummated or made known to us.
43. You may thus see how very different degrees of guilt and of reprehension attach to a will which, though wickedly inclined, shrinks from the commission of a meditated crime, and one which goes forward without flinching to the fulfilment of its purpose. Nature herself has raised barriers which the will, irresolute in wickedness, fears to overleap. This man has not passed the fatal Rubicon of crime. He still may be restored. His hand may have let fall the dagger when in the very act of striking the blow. He may have made up his mind to commit the murder, but he does not commit it. Our judgment of this man is very different from that which we pronounce on him whose will has gone forward to the perpetration of the deed. And our judgments are thus different: our judgment in the one case is much more lenient than in the other, because, although in both cases a guilty will is the subject of our condemnation, still the will of the one man did not pass into act, did not show that it was fully formed and complete, while that of the other did; and hence there is nothing inconsistent in our maintaining that it is the will alone on which our moral judgments are pronounced, although acts must also
