If any term in the moral vocabulary stands in need of strict redefinition, it is sin. Three elements combine to complete the idea of sin: first, that the deed was one that ought not to have been done, not so much because of its painful consequences to others or to self, or to both, or, by repercussion on society as a whole; but because it was opposed to what is intrinsically right: in other words, because it contravened the kind of interrelation which would exist in its purity in the ethical manifold.  
Secondly, the idea of sin implies that the sinner himself is the doer of the deed, or that there is to this extent freedom of the will. I do not say that he is the cause of which the deed is the effect. Causality appertains to sequent phenomena. As regards freedom of the will, the distinction between the category of interdependence and that of causality is vital. A long series of causes, such as bad heredity, bad environment, etc., may have led A to determine to murder B.51
 
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The notion of the freedom of the will as here viewed signifies that no matter what the causal series may have been which leads up to the act, when the act itself is about to be performed, when B is about to experience the effect of A as cause, in that moment the relation of interdependence between A and B ought to arise before the mind of A and withhold him from completing his evil purpose.
 
Thirdly, it is characteristic of sin that the fuller knowledge that the harmful deed is sinful comes after the act,—that it is the Fruit of the Tree, the enlightenment of the eyes. As the serpent said: “If ye eat of the fruit ye shall be as gods.”
 
Many a man has done what is called evil, and done it most deliberately, knowing evil as evil. Remember the career of a C?sar Borgia, the extermination of the Caribbean Indians by the Spaniards, the outrages on women perpetrated during the present war, the exploitation of human labor practiced on a large scale among the civilized nations. That the blackest crimes may be committed with a full knowledge of the horrible consequences to the victims seems hardly to admit of doubt. Evil is known as evil.
 
But evil in its character as sin cannot be fully recognized prior to the act. In this respect the Greeks had a certain prescience of the truth when they asserted that no one can knowingly commit evil; only they failed to distinguish between evil and sin. A man can knowingly commit evil, but cannot with full consciousness commit sin. The knowledge of the sin is the divine elixir which may be distilled from the evil deed 173(“Ye shall be as gods”), and the object of every kind of punishment should be to extract that pain-giving but ultimately peace-giving elixir.
 
Above I mentioned the criminal as the extreme type. But evils in less formidable guise, though not on that account less evil, refined invasions of the personality of others, spiritual oppressions, sometimes deliberate, often unwitting, are included in everyone’s experience. And the process of expiation, by which evil is transcended through the recognition of sin (with its prostrating effect at first, its strangely elevating effect later on) is alike applicable to all. The best of men have to go through this ordeal as well as the worst. Especially is unwitting transgression inevitable. Sophocles makes it the text of his philosophy in the ?dipus, though the solution offered is that of Greek enlightenment and not that of the more profound ethical consciousness.
 
We have next, in close connection with sin, to consider the tremendous question of responsibility, interpreted from the point of view of our ethical principle. Responsible means answerable. Answerable to whom, and in what sense? As commonly understood, it means answerable to God the Law-giver, to God regarded as the Author of the moral law. God is likened to a sovereign. Any infraction of his law is an offense against the sovereign. Answerable means subject to the pains and penalties which it suits the sovereign to annex to moral offences. There is no intrinsic connection implied between pain and redemption. The pain is supposed to break the will of the offender,174 or to mellow him, so that he will in future obey the mandates of the sovereign without a murmur.
 
Again, responsibility may mean responsibility to society. Crime is infectious. A fissure opening at any one point in the dykes erected against crime may let in a flood. The social order as a whole is threatened in every single violation of law. The offender must answer for his defiance of the public will by being subjected to the pains or penalties which society annexes to his crime. The object is the same as before, to break him into submission, to fit or force him into the social mould, to make him harmless, or if possible what is called a “useful citizen.” No internal redemptive change in the nature of the evildoer is contemplated, except as it may be necessary to lead him to a useful or at least a harmless life. The antisocial attitude is to be replaced by the social attitude. Appeals to enlightened self-interest, and to the sympathies are commonly thought sufficient for this purpose.
 
Thirdly, responsibility means responsible to oneself. There is an inner forum, a tribunal in which the spiritual self sits in judgment on the empirical self. Conscience, the voice of this spiritual self, pronounces the verdict. (Cf. the passages in Kant in which this figure of speech is used.) These are metaphorical expressions.
 
To grasp the meaning of responsibility from the ethical standpoint, we must lift into view the............