now present false motives, and now veil the real. For a fuller explanation I would refer the reader to the principles laid down in Chapter III. of the preceding Essay, on “The Freedom of the Will.” It is true that among convicts the young have a large majority; but this is because, when a tendency to crime exists in the character, it soon finds a way of expressing itself in acts, and of reaching its goal — the galleys, or the gibbet; while he, whom all the inducements to wrong doing, which a long life offers, have failed to lead astray, is not likely to fall at the eleventh hour.

Hence the respect paid to age is, in my opinion, due to the fact that the old are considered to have passed through a test of sixty or seventy years, and kept their integrity unsullied; for this of course is the sine qua non of