Pursuing the analysis, intent was found
to be made up of foresight of the harm as a consequence, coupled
with a desire to bring it about, the latter being conceived as
the motive for the act in question. Of these, again, foresight
only seemed material. As a last step, foresight was reduced to
its lowest term, and it was concluded that, subject to exceptions
which were explained, the general basis of criminal liability was
knowledge, at the time of action, [131] of facts from which
common experience showed that certain harmful results were likely
to follow.
It remains to be seen whether a similar reduction is possible on
the civil side of the law, and whether thus fraudulent,
malicious, intentional, and negligent wrongs can be brought into
a philosophically continuous series.
A word of preliminary explanation will be useful. It has been
shown in the Lecture just referred to that an act, although
always importing intent, is per se indifferent to the law. It is
a willed, and therefore an intended coordination of muscular
contractions. But the intent necessarily imported by the act ends
there. And all muscular motions or co-ordinations of them are
harmless apart from concomitant circumstances, the presence of
which is not necessarily implied by the act itself.
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