Page 2274 - war-and-peace

constitutes the other side of the question.
Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and
all-seeing God. What is sin, the conception of which arises
from the consciousness of man’s freedom? That is a ques-
tion for theology.
The actions of men are subject to general immutable laws
expressed in statistics. What is man’s responsibility to soci-
ety, the conception of which results from the conception of
freedom? That is a question for jurisprudence.
Man’s actions proceed from his innate character and the
motives acting upon him. What is conscience and the per-
ception of right and wrong in actions that follows from the
consciousness of freedom? That is a question for ethics.
Man in connection with the general life of humanity
appears subject to laws which determine that life. But the
same man apart from that connection appears to free. How
should the past life of nations and of humanity be regarde-
das the result of the free, or as the result of the constrained,
activity of man? That is a question for history.
Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of
knowledgethanks to that most powerful engine of igno-
rance, the diffusion of printed matterhas the question of the
freedom of will been put on a level on which the question
itself cannot exist. In our time the majority of so-called ad-
vanced peoplethat is, the crowd of ignoramuseshave taken
the work of the naturalists who deal with one side of the
question for a solution of the whole problem.
They say and write and print that the soul and freedom
do not exist, for the life of man is expressed by muscular

2274 War and Peace