`One's first thought,' Arthur proceeded, `in reading anything specially vile or barbarous, as done by a fellow-creature, is apt to be that we see a new depth of Sin revealed beneath us: and we seem to gaze down into that abyss from some higher ground, far apart from it.'

`I think I understand you now. You mean that one ought to think--not "God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are"--but "God, be merciful to me also, who might be, but for Thy grace, a sinner as vile as he!"'

`No,' said Arthur. `I meant a great deal more than that.'

She looked up quickly, but checked herself, and waited in silence.

`One must begin further back, I think. Think of some other man, the same age as this poor wretch. Look back to the time when they both began life--before they had sense enough to know Right from Wrong. Then, at any rate, they were equal in God's sight?'

She nodded assent.

`We have, then, two distinct epochs at which we may contemplate the two men whose lives we are comparing. At the first epoch they are, so far as moral responsibility is concerned, on precisely the same footing: they are alike incapable of doing right or wrong. At the second epoch the one man--I am taking an extreme case, for contrast--has won the esteem and love of all around him: his character is stainless, and his name will be held in honour hereafter: the other man's history is one unvaried record of crime, and his life is at last forfeited to the outraged laws of his country. Now what have been the causes, in each case, of each man's condition being what it is at the second epoch? They are of two kinds--one acting from within, the other from without. These two kinds need to be discussed separately--that is, if I have not already tired you with my prosing?'

`On the contrary,' said Lady Muriel, `it is a special delight to me to have a question discussed in this way-- analysed and arranged so that one can understand it. Some books, that profess to argue out a question, are to me intolerably wearisome, simply because the ideas are all arranged haphazard--a sort of "first come, first served".'

`You are very encouraging,' Arthur replied, with a pleased look. `The causes, acting from within, which make a man's character what it is at any given moment, are his successive acts of volition--that is, his acts of choosing whether he will do this or that.'

`We are to assume the existence of Free-Will?' I said, in order to have that point made quite clear.

`If not,' was the quiet reply, `cadit quaestio: and I have no more to say.'

`We will assume it!' the rest of the audience--the majority, I may say, looking at it from Arthur's point of view--imperiously proclaimed. The orator proceeded.

`The causes, acting from without, are his surroundings--what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls his "environment". Now the point I want to make clear is this, that a man is responsible for his act of choosing, but not responsible for his environment. Hence, if these two men make, on some given occasion, when they are exposed to equal temptation, equal efforts to resist and to choose the right, their condition, in the sight of God, must be the same. If He is pleased in the one case, so will He be in the other; if displeased in the one case, so also in the other.'

`That is so, no doubt: I see it quite clearly,' Lady Muriel put in.

`And yet, owing to their different environments, the one may win a great victory over the temptation, while the other falls into some black abyss of crime.'