An international Congress of Freethinkers, now sitting at Antwerp, has
passed a resolution declaring that " Moral responsibility does not exist; but society has a right to guard itself against criminals and madmen." That is the first time, we think, that this logical outcome of the denial of God has been affirmed, except by a few individual thinkers. The usual line has been to admit that men, though with- out responsibility to God, were responsible for sins as well as crimes, either to society or to the human race as a corporate whole. The gentlemen at Antwerp are logical ; but we wonder if they see two consequences of their postulate. One is that society has a right to slaughter out criminals and madmen, as they would tigers ; and the other is that, if society deems their opinions conducive to criminality, it has a right to slaughter out the Freethinkers themselves. Why not, if that course is expedient, and moral responsibility to anybody does not exist P
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