Part 44

The Determinist method is different. The Determinist would say: "This peer is what heredity and environment have made him. We cannot blame him for being what he is. We can only blame his environment. There must be something wrong with a social system which permits one idle peer to ruin hundreds of industrious producers. This evil social system should be amended, or evictions will continue."

That Determinist conclusion would be followed by the usual inadequate subscription.

And now we will go back to the point we passed. You may say, in the case of Sikes and the peer, that the logic of the Determinist is sound, but ineffective: nothing comes of it.

I admit that nothing comes of it, and I am now going to tell you why nothing comes of it.

The Determinist cannot put his wisdom into action, because he is in a minority.

So long as Christians have an overwhelming majority who will not touch the drains, diphtheria must continue.

So long as the universal verdict condemns the victim of a bad system, and helps to keep the bad system in full working order, so long will evil flourish and victims suffer.

If you wish to realise the immense superiority of the Determinist principles over the Christian religion, you have only to imagine what would happen if the Determinists had a majority as overwhelming as the majority the Christians now hold.

For whereas the Christian theory of free will and personal responsibility results in established ignorance and injustice, with no visible remedies beyond personal denunciation, the prison, and a few coals and blankets, the Determinist method would result in the abolition of lords and burglars, of slums and palaces, of caste and snobbery. There would be no ignorance and no poverty left in the world.

That is because the Determinist understands human nature, and the Christian does not. It is because the Determinist understands morality, and the Christian does not.

For the Determinist looks for the cause of wrong-doing in the environment of the wrong-doer. While the Christian puts all the wrongs which society perpetrates against the individual, and all the wrongs which the individual perpetrates against his fellows down to an imaginary "free will."

Some Free-Willers are fond of crying out: "Once admit that men are not to be blamed for their actions, and all morality and all improvement will cease." But that is a mistake. As I have indicated above, a good many evils now rife would cease, because then we should attack the evils, and not the victims of the evils. But it is absurd to suppose that we do not detest cholera because we do not detest cholera patients, or that we should cease to hate wrong because we ceased to blame wrong-doers.

Admit the Determinist theory, and all would be taught to do well, and most would take kindly to the lesson. Because the fact that environment is so powerful for evil suggests that it is powerful for good. If man is what he is made, it behoves a nation which desires and prizes good men to be very earnest and careful in its methods of making them.

I believe that I am what heredity and environment made me. But I know that I can make myself better or worse if I try. I know that because I have learnt it, and the learning has been part of my environment.

My claim, as a Determinist, is that it is not so good to punish an offender as to improve his environment. It is good of the Christians to open schools and to found charities. But as a Determinist I am bound to say that there ought to be no such things in the world as poverty and ignorance, and one of the contributory causes to ignorance and poverty is the Christian doctrine of free will.

Take away from a man all that God gave him, and there will be nothing of him left.

Take away from a man all that heredity and environment have given him, and there will be nothing left.

Man is what he is by the act of God, or the results of heredity and environment. In either case he is not to blame.

In one case the result is due to the action of his ancestors and society, in the other to the act of God.

Therefore a man is not responsible for his actions, and cannot sin against God.

If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man's acts.

A religion built upon the doctrine of Free Will and human responsibility to God is built upon a misconception and must fall.

Christianity is a fabric of impossibilities erected upon a foundation of error.

Perhaps, since I find many get confused on the subject of Free Will from their consciousness of continually exercising the "power of choice," I had better say a few words here on that subject.

You say you have power to choose between two courses. So you have, but that power is limited and controlled by heredity and environment.

If you have to choose between a showy costume and a plain one you will choose the one you like best, and you will like best the one which your nature (heredity) and your training (environment) will lead you to like best.

You think your will is free. But it is not. You may think you have power to drown yourself; but you have not.

Your love of life and your sense of duty are too strong for you.