J. BUTLER.
Oriel, Oct. the 6th.
THE ANSWER.
Your objection seems indeed very dexterous, and yet I really think that there is at bottom nothing in it. But of this you are to judge, not from my assertion, but from the reason I shall endeavour to give to it.
I think then, that a disposition to be influenced by right motives being what we call rationality, there cannot be on the contrary (properly speaking) any such thing naturally in rational creatures as a disposition to be influenced by wrong motives. This can be nothing but mere perverseness of will; and whether even that can be said to amount to a disposition to be influenced by wrong motives, formally, and as such, may (I think) well be doubted. Men have by nature strong inclinations to certain objects. None of these inclinations are vicious, but vice consists in pursuing the inclination towards any object in certain
circumstances, notwithstanding reason, or the natural disposition to be influenced by right motives, declares to the man’s conscience at the same time (or would do, if he attended to it) that the object ought not to be pursued in those circumstances. Nevertheless, where the man commits the crime, the natural disposition was only towards the object, not formally towards the doing it upon wrong motives; and generally the very essence of the crime consists in the liberty of the will forcibly overruling the actual disposition towards being influenced by right motives, and not at all (as you suppose) in the man’s having any natural disposition to be influenced by wrong motives, as such.
III.
From the original, now in the library at the British Museum. [Add. MS. 12,101.]
Rev. Sir,
I had the honour of your kind letter yesterday, and must own that I do now see a difference between the nature of that disposition which we have to be influenced by virtuous motives, and that contrary disposition, (or whatever else it may properly be called,) which is the occasion of our committing sin; and hope in time to get a thorough insight into this Subject by means of those helps you have been pleased to afford me. I find it necessary to consider such very abstruse questions