the will alone; that this it is which decides the nature of the crime,
and the degree of its atrocity; that if this will be not free, it ought
not to be punished. I reply, that society is an assemblage of sensible
beings, susceptible of reason, who desire their own welfare; who fear
evil, and seek after good. These dispositions enable their will to be so
modified or determined, that they are capable of holding such a conduct
as will conduce to the end they have in view. Education, the laws,
public opinion, example, habit, fear, are the causes that must modify
associated man, influence his will, regulate his passions, restrain the
actions of him who is capable of injuring the end of his association,
and thereby make him concur to the general happiness. These causes are
of a nature to make impressions on every man, whose organization, whose
essence, whose sanity, places him in a capacity to contract the habits,
to imbibe the modes of thinking, to adopt the manner of acting, with
which society is willing to inspire him. All the individuals of the
human species are susceptible of fear, from whence it flows as a natural
consequence, that the fear of punishment, or the privation of the
happiness he desires, are motives that must necessarily more or less
influence his will, and regulate his actions. If the man is to be found
who is so badly constituted as to resist, whose organization is so
vicious as to be insensible to those motives which operate upon all his
fellows, he is not fit to live in society; he would contradict the very
end of his association: he would he its enemy; he would place obstacles
to its natural tendency; his rebellious disposition, his unsociable
will, not being susceptible of that modification which is convenient to
his own true interests and to the interests of his fellow-citizens;
these would unite themselves against such an enemy; and the law which
is, or ought to be the expression of the general will, would visit with
condign punishment that refractory individual upon whom the motives
presented to him by society, had not the effect which it had been