861. Did those individuals who commit a murder know, in choosing their life, that they would become murderers?
“No, they knew that they incurred the risk of killing one of their fellow creatures by choosing a life of struggle. However they did not know whether they would or would not because a murderer almost always deliberates before committing the crime, and if people can deliberate they are free to carry out the action or not. If spirits knew that they would commit a murder beforehand, it would imply that they were predestined to commit that crime. No one is ever predestined to commit a crime. Every crime, like every other action, is the result of choice and free will.”
“You are confusing two things that are quite distinct – the events of material life and those of moral life. If any sort of fatalism exists, it is only in the events of your material life of which the cause is beyond your control and independent of your will. As to the acts of the moral life, they always emanate from human beings themselves, who always have the freedom of choice. In those acts, there is never any destiny.”
