That the Intention is Judge of our Actions

There is a governor who, when his city can no longer hold, walks out to surrender with ceremony — his sword presented, his terms stated, his dignity preserved in the very act of yielding. There is another who, in the same circumstances, throws open the gates in panic, thinking only of his skin. Both have surrendered the city. By every outward measure they have done the same thing. The difference between them is entirely interior, entirely invisible to the history that records only the fall of the city, and yet it seems to me the only difference that matters.

Morality, as the philosophers have mostly understood it, is a science of intentions. The act considered apart from the mind that produced it is a physical event, neither good nor bad in itself. A sword that kills a tyrant and a sword that kills an innocent man are the same sword; it is the thought behind the thrust that makes one a liberation and the other a crime. This principle, which sounds obvious when stated plainly, is in practice resisted — because we cannot see intentions, while we can see results, and there is always a temptation to judge by what is visible.

“Fortune can do much, but she cannot touch the intention. She may defeat the action, may corrupt the outcome, may see to it that the brave man dies and the coward prospers — but she cannot, in doing all this, alter what the man meant to do.”

I have been told that this view is dangerous, that it allows any man to claim virtue for whatever he has done simply by asserting good intentions. And there is truth in the objection — the doctrine is easily abused by those who are determined to abuse it. But the alternative is worse. To judge men purely by results is to place them entirely at the mercy of Fortune, which distributes successes and failures with a caprice that has nothing to do with desert. The soldier who charges bravely and is cut down has not, by his death, become a coward. The general whose plan was sound but whose army was betrayed has not, by his defeat, become incompetent.

What I mean is not that intentions excuse everything, but that they are the proper measure of the person, while results are only the measure of the occasion. We are accountable for our aims and our efforts; for the rest, Fortune must bear the blame.