Responsibility therefore also exists in Morality as understood by sociologists. As far as his intentions are concerned the individual must come to terms with his conscience, which, as a rule, he does not find difficult. For his deeds he must account to society, and it does not ask what took place in his consciousness, but only how his spiritual impulses were manifested. For his deeds, then, he is summoned before society's court of justice and must answer for them without having recourse to the excuse that he acted as he was forced to do by his disposition and the pressure of circumstances, and that he had no choice and could not act otherwise. Though Morality has always been necessary for the life of the community, and though the latter has, under the pressure of the law of self-preservation, always had to make its members strictly subservient to Morality, it has ever had a dim idea that the responsibility of the individual for his actions is only of practical, not of fundamental or ideal significance. It has never pushed investigation as to how far the individual acted freely or not to any great lengths, never attempted to trace it to the foundations of his consciousness, to the inception of the impulses of his Will. Where the lack of freedom was obvious, for instance, where every layman could see there was insanity, the Moral law has been disregarded ever since ancient times, and society has contented itself with protecting itself from the intolerable actions of the lunatic by rendering him harmless. Since positive Law, made concrete in the laws with penal sanctions, was evolved from the universal Moral law, it has admitted the plea of irresponsibility and refrained from exercising its coercive powers where such irresponsibility has been established. In addition to madness, demonstrable coercion and self-defence relieve the individual from responsibility for the crime and render him immune from punishment.
In the course of evolution society has conceded still further limitations of individual responsibility. It willingly admits new knowledge gained by scientific psychology and concedes limited responsibility, not only in case of madness, but in such cases, too, where experts can convincingly prove to the judges, the guardians of its Law, that the individual was in an abnormal condition and affected by morbid influences at the time of the crime. Farther society cannot go, if it does not want to put an end to Moral law and do away altogether with positive law. Concern for its continued existence forbids this. It must leave it to the philosophers to continue the investigation. They must show that the Will is never free, always fettered, not only in the extreme cases of madness or when under the influence of suggestion. They must make it clear that there is only a difference of degree and not of kind between the determining influences under which the individual is constrained to act, and that the causation which binds him proceeds by imperceptible degrees from the delirium of the maniac and the obsession of the abnormal man to the passion, lust and desire of the man with strongly developed instincts, and to the slight stimulus of habits, the colourless judgment and shallow considerations of the ordinary man with a deformed character and no definite features. Society can draw no practical conclusion from the theoretical recognition of the lasting limitation and lack of freedom of the Will, because moral law by its very nature implies coercion, and therefore excludes freedom. Whether the individual submits to the Moral law of his own accord, or because he is forced thereto by the community's powers of coercion, is of no account to society. It deals only with the visible results.