CHAPTER III.

OF HUMAN ACTS.

SECTION I.--_What makes a human act less voluntary_.


1. See c. i., nn. 2, 3, 4.

2. An act is more or less voluntary, as it is done with more or less
knowledge, and proceeds more or less fully and purely from the will
properly so called. Whatever diminishes knowledge, or partially
supplants the will, takes off from the voluntariness of the act. _An
act is rendered less voluntary by ignorance, by passionate desire, and
by fear_.

3. If a man has done something in ignorance either of the law or of
the facts of the case, and would be sorry for it, were he to find out
what he has done, that act is _involuntary_, so far as it is traceable
to ignorance alone. Even if he would not be sorry, still the act must
be pronounced _not voluntary_, under the same reservation. Ignorance,
sheer ignorance, takes whatever is done under it out of the region of
volition. Nothing is willed but what is known. An ignorant man is as
excusable as a drunken one, as such,--no more and no less. The
difference is, that drunkenness generally is voluntary; ignorance
often is not. But ignorance may be voluntary, quite as voluntary as
drunkenness. It is a capital folly of our age to deny the possibility
of voluntary intellectual error. Error is often voluntary, and (where