Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 28, 1898 - Appendix

ON HUMAN LIFE
wickedness and wit. What result, then, can be drawn from
two experiences so contrary as yours and mine? For my
part, I lay it down as a principle, no author can be moral
in a merely human sense. And, to pursue the argument
higher, how can you, for one instant, suppose the existence
of free-will in puppets situated as we are in the thick of a
novel which we do not even understand ? And how, without
free-will upon our parts, can you justify blame or approval
on that of the author ? We are in his hands ; by a stroke
of the pen, to speak reverently, he made us what we are ;
by a stroke of the pen he can utterly undo and transmute
what he has made. In the very next chapter, my dear
General, you may be shown up for an impostor, or I be
stricken down in the tears of penitence and hurried into the
retirement of a monastery ! '
' You use an argument old as mankind, and difficult of
answer,'' said the Priest. 'I cannot justify the free-will of
which I am usually conscious ; nor will I ever seek to deny
that this consciousness is interrupted. Sometimes events
mount upon me with such swiftness and pressure that my
choice is overwhelmed, and even to myself I seem to obey
a will external to my own ; and again I am sometimes so
paralysed and impotent between alternatives that I am
tempted to imagine a hesitation on the part of my author.
But I contend, upon the other hand, for a limited free-will
in the sphere of consciousness ; and as it is in and by my
consciousness that I exist to myself, I will not go on to
inquire whether that free-will is valid as against the author,
the newspaper, or even the readers of the story. And I con-
tend, further, for a sort of empire or independence of our
own characters when once created, which the author cannot
or at least does not choose to violate. Hence Lelio was
conceived upright, honest, courageous and headlong ; to
that first idea all his acts and speeches must of necessity
continue to answer ; and the same, though with such different
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