The moral perplexity existing in some minds on this subject may be traced to two errors: making malice to be the _only_ bad motive by which we can be actuated, and confounding the mere _absence of malice_ with that active principle of benevolence, or love of our neighbor, which Christianity makes to be the foundation and substance of all true social virtue.
How unfounded the first of these assumptions is, appears generally from what has been said; but the same may also be shown on strictly ethical grounds. We must distinguish between what is simply _odious_, and what is immoral. The malignant passions when acted out by animals are odious, but they are not immoral, because they are not comprehended in that light by the agent. The reason why the malignant passions are immoral in man is that he knows them to be immoral; and accordingly any other passion, which he knows to be immoral, becomes for the same reason alike immoral to him as a principle of conduct. Hence it follows that, though not actuated by malice, we may be by some other motive equally reprehensible in a moral point of view, though not perhaps as odious—by the love of ease, by vanity or pride, by unjust partialities, by inordinate ambition, by avarice or lust—dispositions which have nothing to do with malice, but yet are felt and acknowledged by all to be bad and immoral.
Moreover, the tendencies of modern civilization are to be considered in this connection. Times of violence are gradually giving place to times of self-indulgence and fraud; and the consequence is that now, where one man is betrayed into vices of malevolence and outrage, twenty are betrayed into those of frivolity, licentiousness, or overreaching. I go further still. Suppose a man actuated by none of these positively bad motives; nay, suppose the injury done to be accidental and wholly unintentional, this will not in all cases justify the deed. The question still arises whether the injury done, supposing it to be wholly unintentional, might not have been foreseen, and ought not to have been foreseen; for, where the well-being of others is concerned, we are bound not only to mean no harm, but to take care to avoid everything which is likely to do harm; and negligence in this respect is itself a crime. So obviously just is this principle, so entirely does it approve itself to the reason and common sense of mankind, that we find it everywhere recognized, in some form or other, in the jurisprudence of civilized countries. “When a workman flings down a stone or piece of timber into the street, and kills a man, this may be either misadventure, manslaughter, or murder, according to the circumstances under which the original act is done. If it were in a country village, where a few passengers are, and he calls out to all people to have a care, it is misadventure only; but if it were in London, or other populous town, where people are continually passing, it is manslaughter, though he gives loud warning; and murder, if he knows of their passing and gives no warning at all, for then it is malice against all mankind.”[A]